Iain M Banks

Johnny Storm

JIMHO "Consider Phlebas" is probably the second best Culture book.

CiDeRmAn

I started with Player Of Games back in the day, then went to the start again, but at the time Use of Weapons hadn't been published so it made it a tad easier to choose!
Player of Games is also that but lighter than his other books, so easier to "get into" the Culture, an anarchist socialist society, why can't I live there?

If you like Mr Banks then you should try The Nights Dawn trilogy, big space opera, very cool!
Also Ilium is wonderful by big Dan Simmons, not to mention the sequel Olympos.

transylman

I started with Player of Games too and would recommend it as a starting point.

That, Use of Weapons, Consider Phlebas, Against a Dark Background are all very good books.

Would leave reading his more recent books (2000 onwards) until the end as there is a noticeable decline in the quality of his writing.

the_monkey

transylman wrote: »

I started with Player of Games too and would recommend it as a starting point.

That, Use of Weapons, Consider Phlebas, Against a Dark Background are all very good books.

Would leave reading his more recent books (2000 onwards) until the end as there is a noticeable decline in the quality of his writing.

ok good.

I'll try "Player of games" ..

Memnoch

For some reason I was a little disappointed with Matter, but I think that's because I'm not really into Fantasy that much and the Fantasy aspects of the story bored me a little and could just have been any story of medieval intrigue, though I liked the way it fitted into the rest of the culture universe in the end. Still felt it was one of his weaker works.

Inversions is probably the second weakest one for me, again, too much real world stuff I guess.

Excession is my favourite novel of his, I think it's just pure genius. In fact, it's probably my favourite novel of all time in any genre. It really makes you stop and think and re-examine concepts of good and evil and I've never seen the brilliant hypocrisy of the culture so beautifully exposed.

Also, I know this is the Ian M Banks thread, but if you like that style of sci-fi novels, I can also strongly recommend House of Sons by Alistar Reynolds.

InvisibleBadger

The cover and blurb of the next Culture novel have been released. It looks like it's going to look at the sublimed races of the galaxy.
http://www.iain-banks.net/2010/06/23/surface-detail-cover-launch/

Dades

I'm excited but dubious about this. I think I prefer more laser guns than conceptual stuff and Culture ship-speak.

More Use of Weapons, than Excession, like.

In the middle of Look to Windward at the moment and find it is really drifting. No real urgency or stakes to speak of.

InvisibleBadger

Look to Windward should please in the end. I think its up there with Excession as my favorite culture novel.
Apparently the new novel is going to be a big one(200,000 words), so there should be room for guns, thoughtfulness and excellent ship names.

Vim Fuego

I've just recently finished State of the Art, and Use of Weapons shortly before.

State of the art is alright, nothing of real consequence but some nice images here and there. The title story features Diziet from UoW working in Contact on Earth in 1977. Interesting but it didn't grab me, the poignancy signposted all along the way.

I enjoyed Use of Weapons but still, not a patch on Player of Games.

I have been reading chronologically so far so I should read Against A Dark Background next but I want more Culture.

Trojan

Vim Fuego wrote: »

I have been reading chronologically so far so I should read Against A Dark Background next but I want more Culture.

Against A Dark Background is incredibly good. Go for it.

Shryke

Trojan wrote: »

Against A Dark Background is incredibly good. Go for it.

Seconded.

ixoy

Shryke wrote: »

Seconded.

Thirded. One of my favourite Banks' books.

Vim Fuego

SOLD

Against....it is so. Thanks

Arfan

Reading Consider Phlebas at the moment. The cannibalism made me feel sick which is a testement to Banks. You know a writer must be good when he can make you physically ill with just words.

mikhail

Trojan wrote: »

Against A Dark Background is incredibly good. Go for it.

Yes it is. Until the end, where it goes all pear-shaped.

the_monkey

Bargain alert ... most of Iain M Banks books available new in Chapters for €4.99!!!!

SNAP EM UP!!!

I've only read two of his books so far. Matter, I couldn't get into and Transition was brilliant.
Perhaps I should give his culture novels another try, but it was taking too long to actually describe anything interesting about The Culture for my liking, which is why I haven't finished it.

mikhail

Deleted User wrote: »

I've only read two of his books so far. Matter, I couldn't get into and Transition was brilliant.
Perhaps I should give his culture novels another try, but it was taking too long to actually describe anything interesting about The Culture for my liking, which is why I haven't finished it.

You might try The State of the Art. It's a collection of short stories plus one novelette, all set in the Culture universe.

InvisibleBadger

The first chapter of his new book Surface Detail is on his website:
http://www.iain-banks.net/2010/09/28/read-an-extract-from-surface-detail-by-iain-m-banks/
I don't know if I can hold out for the paperback version!

madrab

Werent there

hints at a massive conspiriacy/plot gainst the culture in look to windward? i thought that the chel had allies (in big floating enviroment suits) or am i just getting confused? Has anymore been said on this??

desertcircus

Just finished Surface Detail - little short of astonishing, and an ending that completely reconfigures the entire context of the story with the very last word. I may have to read the whole thing again in the next couple of days.

Also: Transition is non-Culture and listed as Iain Banks rather than Iain M Banks, but it's an excellent sci-fi work. Complicity and Dead Air are seriously good as well, although set in the here and now.

Synalon Etuul

Never forget I am not this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side.

CiDeRmAn

Surface Detail is great alright, a nice inclusion of some very, well, almost HitchHiker humour in there as well.
Transition was an odd one, Iain Banks alright, unless you are a resident of the US (poor you) in which case it was written by Iain M. Banks. A great SF book though, very enjoyable.

robindch

On the Culture side, it has to be Use of Weapons, Player of Games or Consider Phlebas. They're all cracking good reads.

On the non-Culture side, I've read The Bridge perhaps once every two years or so since it came out in the mid-80's.

Lightshow

Apart from Inversions (which was a little slow and uninteresting), I haven't read a bad Banks book. The Wasp Factory is still in my top 5 books and the culture novels are some of the best sci-fi out there.

The Player of Games is definitely the best route into the whole realm. I reckon Excession is one of the funniest books I've read of his.

Funglegunk

Just finished Surface Tension, absolutely crackin' read. Some of my favourite bits:

Pavulean Hell
Some of the passages describing Pavulean Hell are just awe-inspiring to read. Have a look at this:

"The wheel was constructed of many, many ancient bones, long bleached white by the action of acid or alkali rains that fell every few days and caused such torment to the people held in the pens upstream. The wheel turned on bearings made of cartilage laced with the nerves of yet more of the condemned whose bodies had been woven into the fabric of the building, each creaking, groaning revolution of the wheels producing seemingly unbearable agony. Other sufferers made up the roof slates with their oversized, painfully sensitised nails - they too dreaded the harrowing rains, which stung with every drop - or the mill's thin walls with their painfully stretched skins, or its supporting beams with their protesting bones, or its creaking gears and cogs, every tooth of which hurt as though riddled with disease, every stressed and straining bone bar and shaft of which would have screamed had they possessed voices."

Plenty more where that came from.

Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints
Possibly one of my favourite Culture ships ever. A foul-mouthed warship with some laugh out loud dialogue.

I love how it's despised and disrespected by the other ships for enjoying killing/destroying so much.

The Epilogue
EPIC SPOILER ALERT

Is this the first Culture book that references characters/events in another Culture book (apart from the Idiran War in Consider Phlebas)? I am now tempted to read both this and Use of Weapons again to see if there any other hints throughout the book that Zatueil is Zakalwe. Can anybody help me out here, I can't really remember how Zakalwe finished up at the end of Use Of Weapons?

Indented Intagliation
Yet another idea of Banks' that just makes me sit back and think "How the **** did he come up with that?".

the_monkey

I started Culture series with The player of games - great read, am now reading Consider Phlebas and is v good so far, but what does the word 'phlebas' mean ?

Funglegunk

Phlebas is a person's name, the title is taken from a T.S Eliot poem The Waste Land.

Tyler MacDurden

Also just finished this in the wee hours, awesome read. I'd put it up there along with the three Robin mentioned as the best of The Culture series.

Highlights:

Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints is one of the best characters in the entire series (and his/its annihilation of the enemy fleet is a spectacular passage;

The description of the Hells is masterful, as diabolically inventive as any horror writer;

The above-mentioned revelation, with the very last word of the book.....I'm guessing no-one saw that coming.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

I started with "The Player of Games", and actually wasn't that gripped by it. If I didn't like the ship names so much, I might never have read another. After "Consider Phlebas" I was sold on the Culture.

Of the non-Culture ones, I thought "Against a Dark Background" was good but I found the 'dyslexic' bits of Feersum Endjinn just plain annoying after a couple of paragraphs.