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 Iain M. Banks 16 February 1954 – 9 June 2013  Iain Banks was a prolific Scottish author of both mainstream and Science fiction. He wrote SF as Iain M. Banks and "regular" fiction as plain old Iain Banks. Most of his SF output was based in the same universe, centred around a galaxy-spanning post-scarcity utopia called "The Culture". Banks himself has written a good overview/introduction to his Culture universe which can be found here: A Few Notes on The Culture The Culture books are a very loose series, they're written "in order", but you don't particularly need to have read any of the previous books to understand any of them. Not that there aren't a few callbacks for those who have read them all. His M-less books are all stand-alone. Bibliography As Iain Banks:
Nonfiction:
Good starting books: Opinion varies, but these ones seem to come up a lot. Debate is welcome! The Wasp Factory - His first published novel. A quick read, a good introduction to his sort of dark humour, but might give the wrong impression: most of his other books aren't nearly so disturbing. (Complicity excepted) Use of Weapons - Widely acknowledged as one of the best, if not the best, of the Culture books. (Banks himself names it as his favourite of his SF books. (The Bridge is his favourite M-less book.)) Has a bit of an odd structure (with two sets of chapters numbered in opposite directions, one going forward in time and the other going back) but once you get your head around it it's not that hard to follow. Fun characters, lots of great settings, and it builds steadily to a conclusion that is spectacularly worth it. The Player of Games - The second of the Culture books, and a very straightforward tale. It has none of the disjointed jumping back and forth in time that shows up in so many of Banks' books, and it's a very good introduction to The Culture as a setting. Personally I found it to be a fun read, but a little too simplistic. It has far less moral ambiguity than most of the rest of the Culture series. Entropic fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Aug 13, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2009 22:32
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I've only read The Crow Road by him and it was based on a recommendation from someone here in TBB. I absolutely loved it. Not having read anything else by him, I wouldn't be able to tell you if you'd like it based on what you have read but for what it's worth, I thought it was a great read.
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Feb 5, 2009 23:02
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Much love for Banks. I have only read three of his sf novels, and while I really liked them, the only criticism that I can level is that the creativity of the setting to his books usually outstrips literary style. But it doesn't impede enjoyment of them, I guess for the more high-end literary stuff you should turn to his non-sf material. Oh, and Raw Spirit, superficially about whisky, is awesome.
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Feb 5, 2009 23:09
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I'm about three-quarters through Feersum Endjinn, which I found out about through the "videogames you wish existed" thread in GBS. So far, I'm really enjoying it. Especially Bascule the Teller's sections which are narrated by the illiterate bascule in a sort of phonetic pseudo-language with a slight Scottish accent. I would recommend this book to anybody.
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Feb 5, 2009 23:17
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Alvie posted:I'm about three-quarters through Feersum Endjinn, which I found out about through the "videogames you wish existed" thread in GBS. So far, I'm really enjoying it. Especially Bascule the Teller's sections which are narrated by the illiterate bascule in a sort of phonetic pseudo-language with a slight Scottish accent. I would recommend this book to anybody. Naartjie posted:Much love for Banks. I have only read three of his sf novels, and while I really liked them, the only criticism that I can level is that the creativity of the setting to his books usually outstrips literary style. But it doesn't impede enjoyment of them, I guess for the more high-end literary stuff you should turn to his non-sf material.
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Feb 5, 2009 23:40
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Even though it's the least complex of the Culture novels, and is also in some ways a bit scrappy compared to the later books, Consider Phlebas is my favourite of them simply for its unashamed glee in coming up with one mindblowing Big loving Artefact after another - and then blowing the poo poo out of them in genuinely thrilling action sequences. There may not be the intricacy of The Player Of Games or the sheer head-loving  /  of Use Of Weapons, but Banks' blatant delight at getting to devise all this awesome stuff is irresistable.
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Feb 6, 2009 23:40
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Payndz posted:Even though it's the least complex of the Culture novels, and is also in some ways a bit scrappy compared to the later books, Consider Phlebas is my favourite of them simply for its unashamed glee in coming up with one mindblowing Big loving Artefact after another - and then blowing the poo poo out of them in genuinely thrilling action sequences. There may not be the intricacy of The Player Of Games or the sheer head-loving I have to kinda agree. Possibly because it was the first of his books I read, possibly because of the massive variety of worlds and cultures it encompasses and possibly because the Idirans are just so badass the graphic depiction of the dying one going for that final last gasp effort at the end was beautiful it holds a bit of a soft spot despite the fact that I think in a literary sense it was topped by later efforts like Use of Weapons (which incidentally was probably the hardest to get into, but once you got the hang of it was well worth it) and Look to Windward. Excession was probably the weakest of the Culture novels, and to date the only one IMO where he didn't do the subject matter justice due to tackling ideas way too big in scope. The ship dialogues were good fun though. quote:I haven't read Against A Dark Background or The Algebraist yet, but I gather there's a similar ambiguity going on in those. Its been a long time since I read AADB but I'm fairly certain the universe was distinct from the Culture settubg, The Algebraist is quite blatently a different universe.
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Feb 7, 2009 00:10
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Payndz posted:Even though it's the least complex of the Culture novels, and is also in some ways a bit scrappy compared to the later books, Consider Phlebas is my favourite of them simply for its unashamed glee in coming up with one mindblowing Big loving Artefact after another - and then blowing the poo poo out of them in genuinely thrilling action sequences. There may not be the intricacy of The Player Of Games or the sheer head-loving I don't know, maybe it's because I grew up reading Larry Niven, but Orbitals seemed like no big thing to me. I think he succeeded better at driving home The Immense Scale Of Things in Look To Windward, with Masaq Hub recounting how it had to destroy Orbitals in the war. The descriptions of the GSVs in that book are really impressive too. And just the amount of time the book spends exploring all these wildly different and equally vast environments on the same Orbital drives home how massive the thing is. I liked Consider Phlebas but it has a very different feel from the rest of the Culture books, more '50s swashbuckling space adventure than modern SF. Which isn't a bad thing, it just felt like a very different tone, particularly reading it right after UOW.
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Feb 7, 2009 00:35
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As much as I love the Culture series, I think The Algebraist is actually my favorite of his SF novels. Also, I kind of wish the Culture novels were a littler 'harder'. With the complete awesomeness of GSVs and Minds in general, I would enjoy a book just about them.
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Feb 7, 2009 02:52
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Here's a recent podcast from the Guardian where Iain does a Q&A about The Wasp Factory. Interesting stuff. Has some major spoilers partway through, though there's a bit of warning beforehand. Probably more interesting if you've read it already anyway. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2008/jul/16/guardian.bookclub.podcast Sailor_Spoon posted:Also, I kind of wish the Culture novels were a littler 'harder'. With the complete awesomeness of GSVs and Minds in general, I would enjoy a book just about them. Well, Excession comes close to being just about the Minds.
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Feb 7, 2009 03:03
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I think I started out on Iain M. Banks with Against a Dark Background, and I hated it. It's so damned dark and gloomy, I just wanted to sit down and cry. Luckily I didn't give up, and while Consider Phlebas lacks the grace and stride of the rest of the series, I think the Culture novels are fantastic on the whole. Particularly Use of Weapons, which absolutely floored me. The Player of Games must be the most accessible of the lot, and probably a good entry. Unfortunately the latest, Matter, failed for me somehow. Not sure what it was, exactly. 
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Feb 7, 2009 13:38
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I reckon Excession was the best culture book by quite a long way. I mean Use of Weapons was good and all but the bits with Minds interacting in Excession were just loving awesome. Also the whole idea of something even more godlike than a Mind was very cool.
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Feb 7, 2009 13:51
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I found Feersum Endjinn quite painful to read due to all the phonetic dialogue - When I met Iain Banks he told me it should be painful to read as it was painful to write !
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Feb 7, 2009 14:48
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darkgray posted:Unfortunately the latest, Matter, failed for me somehow. Not sure what it was, exactly.
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Feb 7, 2009 16:34
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AcidBlack posted:I reckon Excession was the best culture book by quite a long way. I mean Use of Weapons was good and all but the bits with Minds interacting in Excession were just loving awesome. Also the whole idea of something even more godlike than a Mind was very cool. I thought it was the weakest of them. The Minds were great and I liked the Affront, but the central idea was kinda cliche and it overall just didn't grab me that much. Didn't help that I read it right after UoW. I haven't read Consider Phlebas. Inversions, or the newest one... I rank the ones I've read so far like this: Use of Weapons Player of Games Look to Windward Excession I actually own Inversions but couldn't get into it. Maybe its worse than Excession, or not really even a Culture novel anyways. The Algebraist was good but not great: some cool concepts, but the over-the-top, mustache-twirling villain dragged it down, and it seemed like that whole plot thread could have been cut out entirely without really affecting the book that much, IIRC. The Wasp Factory I enjoyed, and would definitely pick up more non-M Banks if I came across it.
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Feb 7, 2009 16:46
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I remember reading somewhere that you can view the Culture books from the late '90s as forming a sort of loose trilogy: Excession is the Culture seen from above, looking down, Inversions is the Culture seen from below, looking up, and Look to Windward is the Culture seen head on from the point of view of another relatively advanced civilization. So far my favourites are Use of Weapons, Look to Windward and The Bridge. I haven't read Inversions or many of the M-less yet though. Oh, and I always forget about The State of the Art, which is great too, especially the Culture stories in it. The title story is about Dizzy Sma from Use of Weapons visiting Earth in the 1970s, which is kind of silly, but great fun. I still can't make heads or tails of the story "Scratch" though.
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Feb 7, 2009 16:51
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Pompous Rhombus posted:
The Algebraist was tacky as hell. It also reeks of British post-colonial whatever, at least to me. Anyway, I re-read all the M's every summer, and buy new ones as soon as they're out. Banks is a smart author and has a way with words that puts him above your standard Sci-Fi hack. My top three: Look to Windward Excession Player of Games Also, A Song of Stone is dreadful and Against a Dark Background is a pointless McGuffin chase.
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Feb 7, 2009 23:23
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Pompous Rhombus posted:I thought it was the weakest of them. The Minds were great and I liked the Affront, but the central idea was kinda cliche and it overall just didn't grab me that much. Didn't help that I read it right after UoW. I don't want to start an argument, but if the idea behind Excession is a cliché I'm afraid I've no idea where else it's been done.
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Feb 7, 2009 23:45
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Posting to complain that I can't find Look to Windward in any of my nearby bookstores. I go into one? The only Banks thing they have is that horrible short story collection, The State of the Art. The other has every Culture book EXCEPT what I want. And so on. And everywhere, fifty thousand copies of Wizard's First Rule ALL OVER THE loving PLACE ARRGH DIE TERRY GOODKIND YOU loving HACK
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Feb 8, 2009 05:29
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Look to Windward is probably my favorite book, with the part where the Hub describes how he has experienced death in all its myriad forms and how that makes it particularly suited for watching over the people living on the hub. How it will do whatever is necessary for the rest of its existence in order to atone for what it has done.
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Feb 8, 2009 10:56
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Danhenge posted:Look to Windward is probably my favorite book, with the part where the Hub describes how he has experienced death in all its myriad forms and how that makes it particularly suited for watching over the people living on the hub. How it will do whatever is necessary for the rest of its existence in order to atone for what it has done. Not to mention his great line, "I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side." which somehow manages not to sound pompous or grandiose.
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Feb 8, 2009 19:39
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Just a heads up if you use the Sony Reader Use of Weapons is only $1 on the sony store. Time for me to finally read something else by him besides Wasp Factory.
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Feb 9, 2009 05:14
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Atomicated posted:Just a heads up if you use the Sony Reader Use of Weapons is only $1 on the sony store. Time for me to finally read something else by him besides Wasp Factory. Same on the Kindle!
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Feb 9, 2009 07:35
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A big fan of Banks. The only two of his books I haven't read are The State of the Art and The Business. My favorites of his Ian Banks are (in no particular order): The Wasp Factory The Crow Road Complicity Walking on Glass Espedair Street The only one I didn't really like was A Song of Stone. As for M Banks stuff my favorites are: Player of Games Use of Weapons Excession Inversions Consider Phlebas was my first read of his sci-fi. I enjoyed it well enough but mostly because I found the culture an interesting concept. The plot wasn't anything special. I still think its the weakest of his sci-fi stuff. One thing I appreciate about the Culture is that it deals with the whole singularity concept but takes it as a matter of fact. This is a nice change from a lot of writers who deal with the same kinds of ideas but get overly focused on technical jargon. Banks manages to achieve high-concept sci-fi without becoming "hard" sci-fi. That may also put some potential readers off him, I realize, but he is well worth reading.
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Feb 9, 2009 10:50
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I have so far only read The Algebraist but I loved it and have the first couple of Culture books on my "to read" list.
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Feb 9, 2009 11:24
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ElectroMagneticJosh posted:One thing I appreciate about the Culture is that it deals with the whole singularity concept but takes it as a matter of fact. This is a nice change from a lot of writers who deal with the same kinds of ideas but get overly focused on technical jargon. Banks manages to achieve high-concept sci-fi without becoming "hard" sci-fi. That may also put some potential readers off him, I realize, but he is well worth reading. Plus I really like the idea of technology so advanced that it's essentially invisible to the people relying on it. There's no big messy engine rooms or command centers, stuff just works. If we're being ultra-optimistic in our assumptions about civilizational advance anyway (which you kind of have to be to get to something like the Culture) then that seems like the obvious way for technology to go.
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Feb 9, 2009 21:32
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I found a pile of these on eBay, so I bought almost all of his Culture books at the same time. I never read Inversions or Feersum Endjinn, or I should say I started them and never finished them. I really like his epic sci-fi, the fantasy elements didn't do that much for me. In any case, Use of Weapons is probably my favorite Culture novel and I think -heretically I'm sure- that Against a Dark Background is my favorite overall. There was so much in that to love, the monastery, the shoot out on the ski lift and the Lazy Guns. Holy poo poo are they cool. I haven't gotten the Algebraist or Matter yet, but there on the list. As for his Non-M stuff, I read the Wasp Factory which is still really bad rear end. I started Song of Stone but it just didn't seem to be going anywhere, and I read another one ofthe Non-M books, but I'm not sure which one it was. All I remember is a scene where a girl is talking to her boyfriend while leaning out a window as another man screws her. I definitely reccomend any of his sci-fi. The Culture universe is so well thought out and interesting that it keeps surprising you at every turn. The standard fiction is not my thing, but I think I may have gotten some of the not-so-good stuff.
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Feb 9, 2009 21:48
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flamingmuse posted:As for his Non-M stuff, I read the Wasp Factory which is still really bad rear end. I started Song of Stone but it just didn't seem to be going anywhere, and I read another one ofthe Non-M books, but I'm not sure which one it was. All I remember is a scene where a girl is talking to her boyfriend while leaning out a window as another man screws her. And poo poo, I haven't got Matter yet; what's wrong with me?
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Feb 9, 2009 22:25
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Morlock posted:Walking on Glass. I really love Walking on Glass, but mainly for the fantasy/far-future/almost-Borgesian elements - the present-day bits aren't particularly interesting, though the way all the threads tie together at the end makes me happy. The early non-Ms are the best ones, definitely - he dropped off sharply after Whit.
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Feb 9, 2009 23:46
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Baconroll posted:I found Feersum Endjinn quite painful to read due to all the phonetic dialogue - When I met Iain Banks he told me it should be painful to read as it was painful to write ! I wholeheartedly disagree with both of you (Though not on the point of it being painful to write. I can imagine it was very difficult to write like that, though it paid off). The first chapter is difficult to slog through but once I picked up the rhythm of it, I was able to read it just as easily as the sections written in plain English. And I enjoyed it even more than those sections, probably because of the challenge of reading. I really think you get more of a sense of Bascule's character than any of the others just because of his mode of writing. It's like he's not hiding behind English. He writes exactly how he thinks and talks.
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Feb 10, 2009 02:55
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Pompous Rhombus posted:
The over the top villain was worth it if only for the Dweller's reaction when he starts firing people into space as a negotiating tactic. In fact the Dwellers were IMO the coolest race ever created in any fantasy/sci-fi setting ever. Their dialogues, modes of thought and culture were by far the most interesting part of the book for me.
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Feb 10, 2009 04:44
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I met the man himself briefly at a talk I went to in highschool. That was before I'd even read one of his books. What a shame, it would have been cool to have a signed copy of, for instance, the Crow Road, which I loved. I never got into his sci-fi stuff, but I love all of his regular fiction.
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Feb 10, 2009 12:54
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Chokeslam posted:In fact the Dwellers were IMO the coolest race ever created in any fantasy/sci-fi setting ever. Their dialogues, modes of thought and culture were by far the most interesting part of the book for me. Except for the Affront. Still well written but, gently caress those guys. And I'm about to start reading Excession, too.
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Feb 11, 2009 04:59
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Away Message posted:Banks seems good at creating alien species that are, well, alien. Unless they're humanoids (the Culture universe is rather Star Trekish in that regard) he tends to describe them pretty well; he makes them interesting, fun to read about.
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Feb 11, 2009 06:57
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I also should mention that I enjoyed Raw Spirit as well. A fun book and it got me interested in Single-Malts. I'm not an expert or anything but I am developing an appreciation for them. Thanks Iain!! To anyone viewing this thread; give his books a try.
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Feb 11, 2009 07:56
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Entropic posted:If you want really alien aliens, you can end up with some pretty bizarre stories SIR, I cannot properly convey the gratitude I hold to you for posting this link. Two and half pages in and this is the most... I diverge to convey; On numerous occasions the skillfully ordered presentation of concepts has resulted in mental states reminiscent of drugged ones ...this beauty is seeping into my mind. This is to Accelerando what Accelerando was to everything else. I also don't think it would be having this effect if I hadn't spent as much effort as I have to make my own "genuinely alien" aliens. So, yeah, thanks a bunch, man. Going to share this around.
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Feb 11, 2009 08:49
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narfanator posted:SIR, I cannot properly convey the gratitude I hold to you for posting this link.  I found it via the blog of yet another SF writer, Peter Watts. (Who wrote the excellent Starfish and Blindsight, the latter of which is also a first contact story with some genuinely alien aliens.) I keep meaning to write it up and post it in LF or something.
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Feb 11, 2009 09:29
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Phaeoacremonium posted:I met the man himself briefly at a talk I went to in highschool. That was before I'd even read one of his books. What a shame, it would have been cool to have a signed copy of, for instance, the Crow Road, which I loved. When I was living in Australia and my sister was back-packing around the world she bumped into Iain Banks at a cafe. She only knew it was him because she over heard someone talking about him. She happened to be reading a copy of Crow Road I'd lent her at the time. When she came back and gave me my book back it had "Hey XXXXX, cool name! Iain Banks" written on the title page (my first name is the same as one of his characters) which I was pretty impressed with. The Crow Road is one of my top five favourite books of all time. I'm more into his Sci-Fi in general, but read everything he writes, well I haven't started Matter yet.
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Feb 11, 2009 16:05
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Entropic posted:Right now I'm working my way through the M-less books now and looking for recommendations on which one to pick up next. I really enjoyed The Wasp Factory and The Bridge, I liked The Steep Approach to Garbadale even though it was a bit rambling and took be a while to get through, and I gave up on Canal Dreams about halfway through out of boredom. What should I read next? I've heard good things about The Crow Road... If you like Garbadale then definitely worth checking out The Crow Road. They share some similarities (Family drama/old mystery) and I think The Crow Road is a much better book. I also like Espidair Street, Complicity, Whit and Dead Air. Unlike his science fiction his regular stuff tends to be a lot more hit and miss for me.
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Feb 11, 2009 16:19
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I've read one Banks book, and it was kind of all over the place. Early on you had some colonists I think, exploring a crashed starship and finding something, and then there's an alien warlord with a head for a punching bag and then you're with one of the colonists as he's fleeing someone and ends up with a bunch of balloon people. I didn't really like it. :X
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Feb 11, 2009 16:22
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