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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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That's the The Algebraist which a lot of people aren't that keen on (although some really like it). If you want to give him another try I'd go with Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons or Player of Games as being more representative.
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Feb 11, 2009 16:27
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Turpitude posted:Do any of Banks' books have satisfying endings? So far I've read The Wasp Factory, Consider Phlebas, The Algebraist, and Excession, and none of them have had strong endings. The ride is awesome while it lasts but then he just kind of throws everything out the window and decides the story is finished. I can go into specifics on why I didn't like the endings of those books, but I get the impression others were similarly put off by the end of The Algebraist, for example. I think several of his books including a couple you've mentioned here have this kind of "shaggy dog" style ending that some people don't like. I find them satisfying because he does them really well. I've always had trouble explaining what I mean though. It's like the book will have a central plot that acts as a catalyst for a lot of side stories. All the side stories will end up coming together and being ties up in a satisfactory manner, but then the main plot will have an anticlimactic ending. I think Excession is the best example of this, Feersum Endjin is another one. Something like Excession improved a lot on the second reading for me. Once I know that the Excession itself is only really a catalyst, and nothing more, for the rest of the story it beame a lot more enjoyable for me. I think it leads to a situation whee the climax of the novel occurs before the main plot is resolved. This gives the impression of "throw everything out the window" but actually everything is nicely wrapped up an reached a satisfactory conclusion... and then there is a conclusion to the catalyst plot, which as a result makes the ending appear rushed and anti-climactic. I think the way this is done is a very intentional literary device and I absolutely understand why some people don't like it. I don't like it all the time, the Algebraist is one of my least favourite Banks books because I think he totally blows the ending and fails to do what he has done well in the past. Not all his books are like this though. And on another note, what are everyone's favourite Banks action scenes? Absolutely the Consider Phlebas one you posted. I can think of a few other's but that's a stand-out. Against a Dark Background has some crazy over-the-top action of a similar kind. Also in Excession when Grey Area/Meat Fucker shows up with it's own personal fleet of like 50,000 ships.
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Mar 1, 2009 15:21
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Fishbulbz posted:You misremember, it's Sleeper Service. This is a good thing as my faulty memory gives me an excuse to read Excession again.
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Mar 6, 2009 11:46
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Danhenge posted:I figured it out pretty early in the book but it was still pretty good Out of interest did you know there was some kind of twist at the end? I think it's one of those books that get spoiled a lot because it gets recommended with "there's a really big twist that'll freak you our" or whatever... and once you know that there's not much it could be.
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Mar 8, 2009 20:02
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JgPz posted:Ah this is where I'm running into problems with Use Of Weapons. The characters and situations are on occasion so drat wacky and zany when I was expecting it all to be a little more gritty. I almost stopped reading after the orgy, and again with the mutilation party. Pretty much all of Banks' books do this to some extent. Even the more serious ones tend to have their absurdist moments. This goes for his non-science fiction as well. He's not and never has been a particularly gritty author. I think if anything the recurring theme in all his work is excess. So when he writes about crime, violence and murder (in the case of something like Complicity) or disfunctional sociopaths (like The Wasp Factory), that too tends to be excessive. He can get some mixed reviews because of this, what some percieve as over-the-top nastiness/grittiness, I've always felt was actually intended as tongue-in-cheek, hyperbolic nastiness. To me it's all whacky and zany. If you're expecting anything else I suspect you may be disapointed. It might be in a minority with this but as far as I'm concerned all of Banks' books are comedies. Not as overtly so as something like the Diskworld novels or the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, but still at heart comedic in nature. I don't think they tend to get marketed as such though, especially the science fiction books. If you end up deciding this isn't the sort of stuff you're into and want some genuinely gritty sci-fi you could do worse than checking out Richard Morgan's stuff, especially the Takeshi Kovacs books. Gravy Jones fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Mar 20, 2009 |
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Mar 20, 2009 10:18
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Joshtafari posted:The spoiler text in the quote above brings up something that I have an issue with with most post-singularity science fiction - the lack of tension. Everyone is practically invulnerable and can be ressurected or re-instanced or whatever, so what do we care happens to the characters? When I read Peter Hamilton's "The Dreaming Void", I was definitely having singularity fatigue, and was really having a hard time caring about what was happening. Somehow, though, Banks made me care about what happened to the Prince and his family, which surprised me a little. I think Banks would probably be totally on board with this. There is an extent to which many of his characters suffer from "singularity fatigue" as you've called it. The way people react to and try to combat this is a bit of a recurring theme.
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May 27, 2009 11:37
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:yeah, it's a particular kind of hedonistic utopia. If you want to be a human being and do meaningful work, though, it probably isn't -- no matter what you do, there's a machine doing it better, etc. Show the Culture through a different lens -- something closer to, say, E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops -- and you'd have essentially the same "Culture" viewed as a horrific dystopia. It's basically a perfect utopia for individuals who are perfectly hedonistic, with no ambition or desire to achieve. Given Banks' interview answer posted earlier it's interesting how many of the Culture novels feature protagonists who are bored or unsatisfied (or in some cases, just plain dislike) this Utopia. I think you're pretty spot on here and it's a theme that's explicitly explored in the books. He might be being a little facetious in his reply as he is often a bit self-deprecating in interviews.
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May 19, 2010 10:34
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I wonder how many Culture based usernames are on the forums. Aside from the ones on this page there's a Zero Gravitas and a Zakalwe at the very least. I have no idea if WeaponGradeSadness is, but they should be. I too enjoyed Excession a lot more on a reread. I did like it the first time, but the second time it went to being one of my favourites. I can understand why some people dislike it, especially the ending. There are elements of a shaggy dog story to several Banks novels (both with and without the M). I tend to like endings like that, but know a lot of people don't.
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Jul 11, 2012 22:42
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