Don't mess with the POLLture: The culture novels of Iain M Banks

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I got Surface Detail for Christmas.

Poll Results

OptionVotes
Consider Phlebas 5
The Player of Games 4
Excession 3
Use of Weapons 1
Inversions 0
Look to Windward 0
Matter 0
Surface Detail 0


A brownish area with points (chap), Sunday, 26 December 2010 15:17 (thirteen years ago) link

'consider phlebas' is the only one of these ive read but it is excellent

the Chinese firewall of the heart (Michael B), Sunday, 26 December 2010 16:35 (thirteen years ago) link

I'm going with Player of Games, one of my favourite ever SF novels. Big up Phlebas and Windward as well. Inversions is the worst.

A brownish area with points (chap), Sunday, 26 December 2010 16:50 (thirteen years ago) link

In fact I don't think I even finished Inversions.

A brownish area with points (chap), Sunday, 26 December 2010 16:50 (thirteen years ago) link

Not read Surface Detail yet (cannot face carrying hardbacks on commute), but love the Culture books. Consider Phlebas was my first and probably gets the vote, although I really liked Matter too. A bit of a shame that The Algebraist is disqualified, some very very good stuff in that.

Bill A, Sunday, 26 December 2010 17:00 (thirteen years ago) link

I found the Algebraist a bit dull. My fave non-culture is easily Feersum Enjinn.

A brownish area with points (chap), Sunday, 26 December 2010 18:02 (thirteen years ago) link

I've tried Use of Weapons and Matter and never finished either one. Seemed like he was hammering one point into the ground kinda relentlessly (and yes, I know that's a common problem w/sf, but still). This was especially true of Weapons. I read a review of the new one that intrigued me, though, so I might get sucked in again.

that's not funny. (unperson), Sunday, 26 December 2010 20:07 (thirteen years ago) link

There must be some more people with an opinion about this. DJP? Ledge?

A brownish area with points (chap), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 13:07 (thirteen years ago) link

I suppose it's between Player of Games and Phlebas for me - I like games a lot, and although not everything was right, PoG got enough right that I more or less bought it - I think there's a narcissism of small differences that stops me backing it 100%.

Phlebas I like as pure worldbuilding - the whole Idrian war stuff is super dope - but I think it's noticable that so many people's favourite Culture novel is one in which they barely feature! TBH I think the Culture as a whole is so... wish-fulfilmenty that they work best, as here, as an antongist seen through the angry eyes of others.

Gravel Puzzleworth, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 13:25 (thirteen years ago) link

I remember one brilliant/horrible mental image from Use of Weapons (the main one, I suppose) and nothing else.

Will stan for: Against a Dark Background

Gravel Puzzleworth, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 13:30 (thirteen years ago) link

i have read all of these but i was reading them as they came out from use of weapons onwards and that is like 20 years ago! this is one of those times where i feel like i need to take a year out and just reread old shit. i will say that there wasn't enjoy, and my instinct is to pick out Phlebas, but i don't know if that is just because it was the first i read. altho i also like GP's take on it there.

Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 13:31 (thirteen years ago) link

wasn't one i didn't enjoy

Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 13:32 (thirteen years ago) link

I have only read half of these. When this poll first came up I thought it would be a great incentive to have read another one or two by the poll closing date, but, ha.

Anyway, of the ones I have read, my favourite (and the first I read) was Look to Windward. Maybe if I post that it'll encourage ledge to post, as ledge does not care for that one at all.

bauble metropolis (a passing spacecadet), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 13:43 (thirteen years ago) link

I remember have a debate with Ledge about Windward in another thread.

A brownish area with points (chap), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 14:18 (thirteen years ago) link

Windward was where it started to go wrong, Banks questioning aspects of The Culture and coming up with the wrong answers. Also extreme violence and sadism loom increasingly large in his works, not looking forward to Surface Detail much because of that.

Excession is the best 'up to eleven' new space opera blast, Player of Games prob the most thematically interesting and immersive.

e.g. delay koala, ok ya! (ledge), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 14:49 (thirteen years ago) link

The stuff with the chair in Use of Weapons is a bit o_O but overall it's pretty great, conceit of the title is well fleshed out (multiple times) and the chapter structure is inventive and fun, if not really essential to the novel.

Always liked this zing:

"May your children suffer and die horribly!" the woman shrieked.

"Well, if that's really the way you feel," he sighed, lying back again, "then there's nothing worse I can wish on you than to be exactly the fuckhead you so obviously are."

e.g. delay koala, ok ya! (ledge), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 14:55 (thirteen years ago) link

Excession was the first one i read and found it kind of inpenetrable, but now its my favourite. the best characters are the ships.

zappi, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 15:01 (thirteen years ago) link

ledge, i think you want banks to be a kind of writer he isn't. he is often happy to bend what he creates to some particular purpose, usually to mirror something about the real world as in LTW and even less subtly in Surface Detail. if you are looking for a conceptual purist you've got the wrong guy.

Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 15:03 (thirteen years ago) link

I think Player of Games is still my favourite culture novel, followed by Excession. Out of the non-culture SF I really liked Feersum Endjinn.
I love pretty much everything Banks did up to A Song of Stone/Inversions and I've not been able to finish anything he's done from that point.
Maybe I should give them another go, especially, Look To Windward given the praise it's received here.

treefell, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 15:32 (thirteen years ago) link

xp in pub now, will continue this later...

e.g. delay koala, ok ya! (ledge), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 16:06 (thirteen years ago) link

later...

if you are looking for a conceptual purist you've got the wrong guy.

I dunno if this is a fair characterisation, I just preferred the stories when the culture was more utopian, less ambiguous. If he wants to start making it more morally comprimised, well it is his prerogative. But I think my main problem with LTW was the ultra-violent, retributive, non-due-process, "don't fuck with the culture" ending. I found it pretty distasteful, but - and I could be reading him massively wrongly here - I can't help but feel he endorses it. In other stories as well, most recently Transition, he seems to display a disturbing fondness for retribution, the more violent the better.

e.g. delay koala, ok ya! (ledge), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 22:30 (thirteen years ago) link

Also, I dunno how I feel about subliming, feels - well it is - pretty handwavy mystical, so a book with that as a crucial plot point is not likely to be at the top of my list.

e.g. delay koala, ok ya! (ledge), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 22:40 (thirteen years ago) link

He kind of does endorse the Culture's use of violence, and in doing so challenges the reader somewhat - ie asking them wouldn't you endorse the odd use of lethal force to protect such a wonderfully egalitarian and hedonistic society, and then what would it mean about your moral framework that you do. It makes the Culture more nuanced and interesting to me. Anyway, that's what I got from Windward, I understand Surface Detail is a lot more hardcore in that respect and I haven't read it yet.

A brownish area with points (chap), Thursday, 30 December 2010 02:55 (thirteen years ago) link

Or, thinking about it some more, maybe he neither endorses or doesn't endorse it. Maybe he's come to the conclusion that the society he's created would logically have to do (or that certain agents of it would think they have to do) horrible shit occasionally in order to survive, and Windward was one of the books in which he decided to reveal the warts of the Culture to his readers. Perhaps he conceived of the Culture with a political agenda in mind, but now he's being true to the story rather than pushing his personal beliefs.

A brownish area with points (chap), Thursday, 30 December 2010 03:15 (thirteen years ago) link

But so many of his books contain a scene of sadistic, deadly vengeance, where the 'good guy' takes it upon him or herself to punish with extreme prejudice an almost cartoonishly bad villain, that I can't help but think that despite his general liberal politics and stated opposition to the death penalty, they really reflect his personal beliefs, that he genuinely and enthusiastically subscribes to the retributive theory of punishment.

e.g. delay koala, ok ya! (ledge), Thursday, 30 December 2010 10:04 (thirteen years ago) link

re-read Phlebus late last year and am 80 pages from the end of Matter. but i always have trouble remembering anything about any of these books (despite having re-read pretty much all of them in the last 5 years or so).

koogs, Friday, 31 December 2010 16:15 (thirteen years ago) link

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

System, Saturday, 1 January 2011 00:01 (thirteen years ago) link

finished Matter. didn't like the way the alien artefact was introduced 80% of the way through, seemed like an afterthought.

(i keep thinking reynolds does this stuff better, at least based on the last few. have put IMB's use of weapons and AR's pushing ice on the re-read list)

koogs, Saturday, 1 January 2011 10:56 (thirteen years ago) link

also, for all the talk, there wasn't that much Culture in it.

koogs, Saturday, 1 January 2011 10:57 (thirteen years ago) link

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

System, Sunday, 2 January 2011 00:01 (thirteen years ago) link

Player of Games is the only one of these I ever read. I liked it a lot. Would defs live in the Culture, anyone who thinks otherwise is silly imo.

Stop Non-Erotic Cabaret (Abbbottt), Sunday, 2 January 2011 00:03 (thirteen years ago) link

yeah, no question.

we could play games, idk (ledge), Sunday, 2 January 2011 00:09 (thirteen years ago) link

Well that's the whole point of the cycle in the end -- 'at what price paradise?' is essentially all of them summed up, with the point being that it IS paradise.

Ned Raggett, Sunday, 2 January 2011 00:20 (thirteen years ago) link

be pretty chill to live in the culture. sweet drugs in your brain for free, living to be four hundred and having smart alec computers to shoot the shit with.

there's an article written by george orwell "why socialists don't believe in fun", on how fictional utopias always actually sound really dreary and sanctimonious, but i think banks' culture is the exception here.

carles II of spain (max arrrrrgh), Sunday, 2 January 2011 00:27 (thirteen years ago) link

"state of the art" a short novella about culture ppl visiting 1970s earth is worth a read, too.

carles II of spain (max arrrrrgh), Sunday, 2 January 2011 00:28 (thirteen years ago) link

Finished "Surface Detail". Was great to be back in the Culture.

(SPOILERS) Overall I really enjoyed it; ships and Minds having a ball, high-stakes galactic politics, mysterious entities, not too much torture porn, and a High-Fives-All-Round-Happy Ending! He's getting kinda formulaic - some of the aforementioned, charicature villains, the multiple POVs narrative (one of which ends up being a complete red herring), etc - but who cares, I love it.

However. Could have done without the last chapter. Hate to go on about this but it's yet another sadistic deadly vengeance scene (preceded by a pretty yawnsome chase). Why is it ok to circumvent due process for Veppers? I don't want to see him suffer and die, I want him to be properly tried and punished, and yes, the Culture's idea of punishment, emasculating maybe but otherwise "soft", (although, paradoxically, it would prob be far more painful to him than actual rather swiftly dispatched fate). Time and again Banks spends whole books virtually preaching Justice and Measured Response and Doing the Right Thing, and then at the end shows it up as just so much lip service, with a revenge wank fantasy. idgi. i just dgi.

Lol at the epilogue though.

nanoflymo (ledge), Sunday, 9 January 2011 15:55 (thirteen years ago) link

yeh epilogue was hilarious fan service

zappi, Sunday, 9 January 2011 16:39 (thirteen years ago) link

It's next on my to-read list after I'm done with Mieville's Kraken. I'm heartened that Ledge liked it, I had relatively low expectations.

A brownish area with points (chap), Sunday, 9 January 2011 17:03 (thirteen years ago) link

yeah, haven't read ledge's whole post out of spoiler fear, but ^^^ definitely glad to see a positive review

agrarian gamekeeper (a passing spacecadet), Sunday, 9 January 2011 17:19 (thirteen years ago) link

one year passes...

hydrogen sonata was pretty lame :(

Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Tuesday, 27 November 2012 14:49 (eleven years ago) link

Still haven't got round to Surface Detail.

I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Tuesday, 27 November 2012 14:51 (eleven years ago) link

HS wasn't TERRIBLE but it was hugely culture-by-numbers. i didn't really care too much about the scenario and it took a long time to get going and then just trundled to a halt. i kinda liked how he turned subliming from some handwavy mysticism into an actual thing, though.

ledge, Tuesday, 27 November 2012 15:02 (eleven years ago) link

So Inversions is a bit meh, HS is dull and LTW rubs me the wrong way. Would happily reread any of the others, 2/3 ain't bad.

ledge, Tuesday, 27 November 2012 15:07 (eleven years ago) link

wut didn't even know there was a new book
brb there's a copy at the library 5 mins walk from me

ばか ざっぴ (zappi), Tuesday, 27 November 2012 15:17 (eleven years ago) link

HS wasn't TERRIBLE but it was hugely culture-by-numbers. i didn't really care too much about the scenario and it took a long time to get going and then just trundled to a halt. i kinda liked how he turned subliming from some handwavy mysticism into an actual thing, though.

― ledge, Tuesday, November 27, 2012 10:02 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i just thought the stakes were so low... the whole thing everybody is pursuing seemed pretty trivial and you knew what it was from the start.

characters weren't very interesting and there were too many of them.

Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Tuesday, 27 November 2012 19:06 (eleven years ago) link

three weeks pass...

quite enjoyed Hydrogen Sonata - yes was very Culture-by-numbers but it feels like he hasn't done a true Culture book in so long - tbh i'd enjoy any book he'd put out that included long sections with absurdly-named ships being snippy with/about each other. ITG RIP

ばか ざっぴ (zappi), Thursday, 20 December 2012 00:41 (eleven years ago) link

two years pass...

If his lasting legacy is a way of naming space vehicles then I'm OK with that
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/01/elon-musk-iain-m-banks-just-read-the-instructions?utm_content=buffer18313

( X '____' )/ (zappi), Sunday, 25 January 2015 03:18 (nine years ago) link

three years pass...

dnw. feels like one of those things that will be v poorly served by leaving the imagination

Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 21 February 2018 16:01 (six years ago) link

Would certainly watch out of interest, but could go horribly wrong.

chap, Thursday, 22 February 2018 11:40 (six years ago) link

Amazon the ideal place for literary-minded flights of post-socialist utopianism

smashong pumpgong (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 22 February 2018 12:46 (six years ago) link

I’m glad it’s Amazon doing it because I don’t have Netflix.

grawlix (unperson), Thursday, 22 February 2018 12:53 (six years ago) link

five years pass...

I didn't even know he did drawings. would like to see them but not for £50.

re: the show mentioned in the last revive: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/26/21402585/amazon-cancels-tv-adaptation-culture-series-iain-m-banks-consider-phlebas

ledge, Friday, 21 April 2023 09:56 (one year ago) link

Folio Society released Consider Phlebas recently too, and it looks beautiful, of course.

https://www.foliosociety.com/uk/consider-phlebas.html

brain (krakow), Friday, 21 April 2023 10:09 (one year ago) link

seven months pass...

Consider Phlebus* is 99p on all the uk ebook sites today. but good luck searching for 'phlebus' on kobo.com because it returns 0 results, oddly.

they've all had new geometric covers recently so they all match now. not sure i'm keen though.

*turns out it's 'Phlebas'. 34 years...

koogs, Wednesday, 20 December 2023 13:32 (ten months ago) link

in russia phlebas considers you!

organ doner (ledge), Wednesday, 20 December 2023 22:48 (ten months ago) link

ten months pass...

The last seven words of this thread title were a mastermind specialist subject earlier this week. I got two right. Might have stretched to three.

french cricket in the usa (ledge), Thursday, 31 October 2024 09:36 (three days ago) link

that's always the problem when there are lots of strange names

koogs, Thursday, 31 October 2024 11:00 (three days ago) link

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002415d/mastermind-202425-episode-8

(was two weeks ago)

koogs, Thursday, 31 October 2024 13:50 (three days ago) link

oh yeah. earlier this week in my viewing schedule :)

french cricket in the usa (ledge), Thursday, 31 October 2024 13:56 (three days ago) link


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