The Official Iain M Banks Thread

[Danster]

Hey guys!

So, i thought I'd start this thread in order to hold discussion of Mr Banks' finest science fiction. Please feel free to contribute in anyway.

But first up, the books:

Culture novels in order of Publishing

Consider Phlebas (1987)
The Player of Games (1988)
The State of the Art (1989)
Use of Weapons (1990)
Excession (1996)
Inversions (1998)
Look to Windward (2000)
Matter (2008)
Surface Detail (2010)
The Hydrogen Sonata (2012)

The publishing order is probably the best order to read them in... but having said that I read Player of Games first and it didn't hurt me! However, do avoid Excession and Look to Windward if you haven't read any others. You could read Inversions first but you'll get more out of it if you understand the Culture before you do. You could also read Matter first and you'd probably get a pretty odd first impression of the Culture if you did. The State of the Art is also a good starting point (it is a collection of short stories) with two Culture stories to get your teeth into.

 

Edit 2016:

 

Found this radio play of State of the Art, might be worth a listen.

Others

Against a Dark Background (1993)
Feersum Endjinn (1994)
The Algebraist (2004)
Transition (2009)

Against a Dark Background is probably my favourite of these. Ferrsum Endjinn is a bit odd and hard to follow in places, though the concept is interesting. The Algebraist is a good stand-alone novel and has some cool characters but I felt that it dragged on a bit. Transition was marketed under his contempory fiction name in the UK, although it went with an M in the US. It is sci-fi and an entertaining read.

Also, if you're a fan of the Culture then this is well worth reading:

http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm

It is an essay that the man himself wrote about the Culture, interesting indeed.

Edit June 2014: This too may be of interest, it is a "Spoil-o-thon" by a poster called Richard Puchalsky, he used to post on the alt.books.iain-banks, and wrote a very interesting series of posts on Use of Weapons. I have compiled them together here in a text document because it is quite tricky tracking them all down on Google Groups (In fact I couldn't find part 12 at all). It's rather long and goes into more detail at the beginning than at the end, and is (unfortunately) incomplete. last post from him was back in 2004 I think; but if you like Use of Weapons it is well worth a read.

Needless to say this is absolutely chock full of spoilers, so ONLY read if you have read Use of Weapons already - it also references things in other books, up to Look to Windward, so I'd probably avoid it just in case there too..

 

use of weapons.txt

 

IMO Banks' best were his earlier novels. The first three (four incl State of the Art) culminating in Excession (my favourite) were, I think, his best. Later novels seem to make the Culture have more human traits which I didn't like so much. Plus his writing, while flowery and descriptive and imaginative seems sometimes to lack a decent story.

Having said that, Matter is good and I hope it rekindles his journey into the Culture's universe.

Any thoughts?

EDIT:

So that's it as far as the culture books go, Hydrogen Sonata being his last ever. I suppose it is possible that there may be half-finished books in his study, or notes on where the Culture were going to go and whatnot. But I fear it is unlikely we'll ever see anything about the Culture that was as good as Excession ever again.

That makes me sad.

But I am so glad I read his books and that he put the effort in to make them as good as they are. I'll never forget reading that last post by Flere-Amasho in the Player of Games, or the Excession's name claim. The Grey Matter's digging of history, Damage and Azad, the pylons, the Orbitals and GSVs, people with wings, ancient drones, mad sex and food and drink and... guns. Action and love and death and terrible evil and honourable deaths and dishonourable death, a galaxy brimming with life. Creatures that live for billions of years, technological hells, torture, war... religion.

You gave us so much and we still complained that it wasn't enough or was too long when it did arrive and now you are gone. Farewell thee good sir, we'll always have your words.

Edited December 7, 2016 by Danster

[Flams]

Matter didn't work for me at all. I saved it for ages and ages and read it on holiday. It wasn't that good if you ask me. The others that I've read (looking at my collection) are Excession, Consider Phlebas, Use of weapons and look to windward. I read excession first and didn't enjoy it much, but I'm going to go back to it as I reckon I'll appreciate it more now that I understand the culture better.

I reall liked the one that has the two stories going at once about the main character. It took me forever to work out what was going on. I think its Use of Weapons.

I think my favourite so far would have to be Consider Phlebas, it was the first culture book I really really enjoyed reading and couldn't put down.

Elsewhere, I'm about two thirs of the way through The Algebraist and it is immensely good. Its got just the right mix of drama, humour and sci-fi-ness that I love about Banks' work.

I'm just after the bit where

the Dwellers turn out to be not full of shit and DO have secret weapons hidden away

. Loving it but it has taken me absolutely ages to read

[Danster]

I should read the Algerbraist again. I love the big bad guy in it.

You should definitely read The Player of Games. Enjoyable, shortish and leaves you asking questions.

Some guy on an old Iain Banks newsgroup once analysed Use of Weapons, writing an essay on practically every chapter, very interesting and very well written.

[toonfool]

I'm just getting to the end of Consider Phlebas, having taken AGES to plough through it. There's an awful lot of action, similar to 24 in its relentlessness, which is no bad thing.

[(Bad Egg)]

I once turned down sex to read the final chapter of Use of Weapons.

What greater compliment can I bestow?

[Sportello]

I read Matter last month and it really whet my appetite for more Culture stuff, so I've started with Consider Phlebas.

Although I enjoyed it, Matter had a really disappointing final act after such a meticulous set up. It almost seems as if he got bored of the story on the last few pages and rushed through to the end. Compared to the description of the Falls, the Shellworld Core barely got a mention.

I'm not far in, but Consider Phlebas seems, as Toony says, to be more action-centric. And I'm liking it very much.

[Danster]

Although I enjoyed it, Matter had a really disappointing final act after such a meticulous set up. It almost seems as if he got bored of the story on the last few pages and rushed through to the end. Compared to the description of the Falls, the Shellworld Core barely got a mention.

My thoughts exactly. I totally got the feeling that he was drifting on and on and enjoying his work when he suddenley thought, fuck! How many pages, quick write an ending....

I think you'll find Consider Phlebas' ending a little more "satisfactory"...

[stefcha]

The way Consider Phlebas was set up (and the time it was set especially) gave me the wrong impression about what to expect in later books, at first I was a bit disappointed that

the Idirans were just reduced to a history note

. Was there really that much Culture in there overall anyway? I'll have to dig it out again when I finish Matter, which I'm enjoying lots although I wish it explained about the world a bit sooner than it did because I just felt thick due to lack of imagination before then.

[Danster]

Was there really that much Culture in there overall anyway? I'll have to dig it out again when I finish Matter, which I'm enjoying lots although I wish it explained about the world a bit sooner than it did because I just felt thick due to lack of imagination before then.

There was fair bit of arguing between Sma and Horza (apologies if the names are wrong) about the rights and the wrongs of the Culture and its effect on the galaxy as a whole; as opposed to the Idirans pov. Which gives a good grounding in what the Culture is about.

I read Matter for a second time (to see if I enjoyed it more, I did a little ) and found that now I really understood the Shellworld I could appreciate the story more.

[ZOK]

Although I enjoyed it, Matter had a really disappointing final act after such a meticulous set up. It almost seems as if he got bored of the story on the last few pages and rushed through to the end. Compared to the description of the Falls, the Shellworld Core barely got a mention.

I see it as practically the reverse of that...Matter is average for most of the book, then the last couple of chapters are real back to form stuff.

[srgbilco]

I absolutely love the Culture novels. My favourite is probably Consider Phlebas or Use of Weapons. I think Banks has a real mastery of the ending for the most part. He always manages to invert your conceptions of the characters and the story. I really like how you can get caught up in the fast pace and action of the main story, only for the ending to reveal how it was just a small part of the overall Culture's plan. It's quite breathtaking to suddenly be shown the scale and scope of the Culture as a whole and how almost every eventuality in the story was somehow planned for or engineered by the Minds. Using this tool of the reveal I think he very neatly straddles the small scope but great emotion and pace of the character based story and the vast machinations and scale but sometimes cold and distant viewpoint of the space opera.

I do enjoy the stories set in the heart of the Culture though, such as Look To Windward and Excession. The descriptions of the Culture's behavioural eccentricities and the way the entire society is laid out and somehow works really engenders me towards it. I really think it's the best and most full description of a utopia I've ever heard. Conversely, the stories about Special Circumstances agents in primitive societies leave me a bit cold but it's always fun to spot the little Culture touches at work and the similarities and differences to our own history.

[toonfool]

Having finished Consider Phlebas, my only other Culture book is Look To Windward. Would it be advisable to read this next?

[Area]

Skips about 1000 years but its about the Idirans so yes should be a good follow on.

[MemoryLeak]

Excession is proper good. The conversations between the different groups of minds are fantastic, especially as you gradually start to piece together what's going on, who's telling who what and why. I think Banks does a pretty decent job of giving a large number of super intelligent computers characters, no mean feat.

[Danster]

I absolutely love the Culture novels. My favourite is probably Consider Phlebas or Use of Weapons. I think Banks has a real mastery of the ending for the most part. He always manages to invert your conceptions of the characters and the story. I really like how you can get caught up in the fast pace and action of the main story, only for the ending to reveal how it was just a small part of the overall Culture's plan. It's quite breathtaking to suddenly be shown the scale and scope of the Culture as a whole and how almost every eventuality in the story was somehow planned for or engineered by the Minds. Using this tool of the reveal I think he very neatly straddles the small scope but great emotion and pace of the character based story and the vast machinations and scale but sometimes cold and distant viewpoint of the space opera.

I do enjoy the stories set in the heart of the Culture though, such as Look To Windward and Excession. The descriptions of the Culture's behavioural eccentricities and the way the entire society is laid out and somehow works really engenders me towards it. I really think it's the best and most full description of a utopia I've ever heard. Conversely, the stories about Special Circumstances agents in primitive societies leave me a bit cold but it's always fun to spot the little Culture touches at work and the similarities and differences to our own history.

I think the SC operatives in primitive tribes was taken to its limits in

Inversions

how can you better that?

Yeah, I love the huge convoluted setups in the books, only a Mind could think of all the subtleties and arrangements possible to make things happen. Probably summed up best with Gurgeh's vague wondering about the time of his birth coinciding with the discovery of the Empire, something which the drone (

Mawhrin-skel

) brushes off a little too lightly.

Having finished Consider Phlebas, my only other Culture book is Look To Windward. Would it be advisable to read this next?

Yeah, you'll probably get on with Look to Windward okay. It is very self-contained as a novel and I just love the Mega-Fauna and the epilogue

Excession is proper good. The conversations between the different groups of minds are fantastic, especially as you gradually start to piece together what's going on, who's telling who what and why. I think Banks does a pretty decent job of giving a large number of super intelligent computers characters, no mean feat.

Yes! I've always marvelled at how he is able to bring those characters alive. It'd be like writing a forum thread all by yourself, convincingly. Tough. And perhaps one of the best moments of any Culture book is when the Interesting Times Gang turn up...

[Sportello]

My thoughts exactly. I totally got the feeling that he was drifting on and on and enjoying his work when he suddenley thought, fuck! How many pages, quick write an ending....

I think you'll find Consider Phlebas' ending a little more "satisfactory"...

Finished it (finally!) last night. Things certainly got very breathless towards the end and, as you said, the ending was excellent. I liked the bonus chapters about the Culture-Idiran war.

It's very different from Matter, isn't it? The action rattles on at a terrific pace.

I've got Player of Games next after I finish Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Looking forward to it.

[Flams]

I finally finished the algebraist today, whover it was that said in here about the ending dragging on was right, I loved it right up until the last chapter or so. I haven't got anymore that I haven't read so I'm having a break from banks for now.

[K]

Excession is proper good. The conversations between the different groups of minds are fantastic, especially as you gradually start to piece together what's going on, who's telling who what and why. I think Banks does a pretty decent job of giving a large number of super intelligent computers characters, no mean feat.

Ironically, I think a lot of sci-fi authors find computers and robots much easier to bring to life than humans; I think the fact that they're not writing about humans relieves a bit of the pressure to imitate real people and allows their imagination to shine. In other words, the Drones and Minds and other non-humans tend to be Banks' best characters.

The same goes for loads of other SF writers, i.e. Clarke, Heinlein, Asimov, Brin, Niven etc. I think they relax more when writing non-human characters.

[Danster]

Finished it (finally!) last night. Things certainly got very breathless towards the end and, as you said, the ending was excellent. I liked the bonus chapters about the Culture-Idiran war.

It's very different from Matter, isn't it? The action rattles on at a terrific pace.

I've got Player of Games next after I finish Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Looking forward to it.

Player of Games was my favourite for a long time. Only Excession bested it and even now I think perhaps PoG is a better story.

[stefcha]

Finally got round to finishing Matter last night, and that was quite a brave way to end it. It all seemed so sudden, not least because

I didn't realise there was a bloody great index and glossary at the back! I was expecting another 20 or so pages after the "looks like we're totally fucked" with some unlikely escape or something, and to just read the last page and a half and find there really was no chance for anyone to get out without Djan and another dying was actually quite exhilarating to read, with the speed of it all

. Not sure the epilogue was really necessary and it seemed a bit odd, but I do prefer to be put out of my misery rather than be left totally hanging on possible outcomes so I'm glad it was there.

Really enjoyed it overall.

[K]

I'm halfway through Matter at the moment and man alive, it's slow. Iain Banks badly needs an editor with the stones to cut out big parts of his books, as his last few have been way too long. The Algebraist suffered most of all - the whole middle section of that book was pure flab - but at this point in Matter, I'm sick of reading about Djan's dreams and Ferbin's journey across the sphere thing.

There's a bit earlier on that exemplifies the problems - in a court scene, Banks spends a good page or so describing all the characters clothes and the animals that are wandering round inside the chambers. It's good that Banks has come up with all these ideas and imagined it in so much detail, but at the same time it just slows the book down far too much. I don't care what the characters are wearing!

Banks does this in his contemporary novels, where he'll list every album a character listens to on a plane journey; it's less annoying in his sci-fi novels, where he's describing something imaginative rather than banal, but his books would be ten times better if he just cut to the chase and stopped showing off every single idea he's had while writing the book.

[Nick R]

I was watching Hot Fuzz with its trivia track subtitles the other day, and it pointed out that during one of Bill Bailey's first appearances he's reading an Iain Banks novel, then later on he's reading an Iain M Banks book. It's supposed to be a clue to the fact that the end of the film reveals

they're twins.

Anyway, having read two of the three parts of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, I've taken a break from that and last night I started reading Consider Phlebas, which will be my first Banks book of either kind. Only a couple of chapters in so far, but it's promising...

[toonfool]

Consider Phlebas is great. Enjoy the ride.

[stefcha]

I'm halfway through Matter at the moment and man alive, it's slow. Iain Banks badly needs an editor with the stones to cut out big parts of his books, as his last few have been way too long. The Algebraist suffered most of all - the whole middle section of that book was pure flab - but at this point in Matter, I'm sick of reading about Djan's dreams and Ferbin's journey across the sphere thing.

There's a bit earlier on that exemplifies the problems - in a court scene, Banks spends a good page or so describing all the characters clothes and the animals that are wandering round inside the chambers. It's good that Banks has come up with all these ideas and imagined it in so much detail, but at the same time it just slows the book down far too much. I don't care what the characters are wearing!

Banks does this in his contemporary novels, where he'll list every album a character listens to on a plane journey; it's less annoying in his sci-fi novels, where he's describing something imaginative rather than banal, but his books would be ten times better if he just cut to the chase and stopped showing off every single idea he's had while writing the book.

I quite liked all that, it made me care more about who I was reading about because I knew more about them.

As a result, I was completely gutted when Oramen got caught out and ultimately died, and to a lesser extent when Djan and even Ferbin bought the farm

. Or something like that. I didn't find it a chore to read all that stuff, even if it is quite long winded anyway.

[Flams]

I just finished the state of the art a few days ago. Stonking stuff. Its nice to see some stuff by Banks that doesn't ponder over every tiny sodding detail but gets down to it in relatively short time.

The titular story

was fantastic. I loved the whole thing where that guy was trying to become captain of the ship

. The other stories were almost all great too, hillariously funny, scary and weird. Fantastic read, could hardly put it down.

[Eats hoops and leaves]

The State of the Art is definitely his most mature story. The struggle to search for your own identity is hard enough on this planet - imagine being faced with that in a pan-galactic civilization. It deals with such a massive issue on such a personal scale. I can't get enough of that story.

[Danster]

On State of the Art:

Yes State of the Art is great. I love the way it shows how fragile any human mind can be, even those that have been born and raised in a society as forward facing as the Cultures.

I also miss the more ruthless Culture that appears in The Gun in The State of the Art.

Their use of both the young idealist who wanted away from them (whether for some adventurous fun or ideology) and the Culture Ambassador and the sheer propensity of shooting down a frigging star ship.

In later novels they feel too Labour in gov instead of Labour in opposition. Their radical edge seems more muted. I'd rather believe that while the citizens live in pure hedonistic lifestyles that there true masters (as Horza said all that time ago) are the machines. The Minds.

Yep, State of the Art is a must read for any Culture fan.

[Nick R]

Consider Phlebas is great. Enjoy the ride.

"Ride" is right. It's a constant case of "out of the frying pan, into the fire" - for the whole book!

In particular, there was the climax with the

accelerating train

. It built up the tension for ages with rapid switches between characters, which almost got as exaggerated as the Calvin and Hobbes strip with the out of control plane and train converging on a gas leak... ("his eye twitches involuntarily" )

The bit with the Eaters was not what I was expecting from a book that began as high-tech as this one did...

[K]

I finished Matter over the weekend, and was amazed by the shift in pace towards the end; after the novel spent so long treading water, I was wondering how he was going to tie everything up in two chapters, but the end of the book was an absolute masterclass in economy of writing. If the whole book was as lean and fast-moving as the last two chapters, it would have been an absolutely amazing book; as it is, pages 100-450 could more or less have been removed (or at least brutally trimmed) without damaging the story one iota.

The problem is that the first hundred pages set up an exciting story, and the next three hundred pages put the story on hold while the characters travel from one place to another. The lop-sided plot and uneven pace and tone add to the feeling that the book is a little underdeveloped, as quite a few plotlines are underdeveloped – Banks appears to be taking some care to

set up the Aultridia (the parasite, mat-like aliens) as superficially disgusting and shady characters who later turn out to be benevolent, but that plotline doesn’t really go anywhere.

Similarly, the plotline of the

Oct hiding the location of their ships with holograms doesn’t really go anywhere; given that they’re effectively prepared to declare war on The Culture to protect this secret, it doesn’t really play any role in the climax, it’s just a plot device to get Special Circumstances involved. In fact, it would have been nice to see the villains developed a bit more; the Oct don’t really appear much, and the revelation at the end that the thing buried in the city was an Iln was somewhat lost on me due to the fact that I’d forgotten what an Iln was. The Iln are only described once before that reveal, right at the start of the book, and given that the main characters basically shit themselves when they hear the name, it might have served the reader a bit better if Banks had dropped a few reminders throughout the book as to who these things are.

(Actually, come to think of it, a bit of explanation at the end would have been nice. At the end, we’re left with no idea as to why an Iln was in the middle of this buried city, how the Oct knew it was there, or what the Sphereworlds were originally built for; at least one of those things probably works better as a mystery, but a bit of explanation for the first two might have given the book a bit more resonance.)

However, that aside, the book is full of great stuff, and the climax is riveting. I especially liked the

zero-g combat at the end, with Ferbin’s suit effectively taking over control. That reminded me of some of the set-pieces in Excession; in fact, a lot of it was reminiscent of Excession. I thought the Sarcophagus was going to turn out to be a fragment of the black sphere from the earlier book, or something.

I just think the book, like a lot of Banks’ stuff, needs at least one more draft.

[ZOK]

Yeah, I totally agree. As I've said before, Matter is a couple of great chapters at the beginning and end, with a load of filler in between.