Where to Begin: Iain Banks

start at the beginning for the b&w books (non-M). give up before you get to Whit. (Wasp Factory, The Bridge, The Crow Road are all essential, the others are good, not read the last two.)

(um, turns out the non-SF books no longer have matching B&W covers. never mind)

didn't enjoy Feersum Endjinn of his SF books, but only FE. i lean towards the culture novels.

"It was the summer that grandmother exploded"...

With M is the same bloke, right?

I have got, but not read, Dead Air.

Espedair Street
The Crow Road
The Wasp Factory
The Bridge

Destroy:

Dead Air
Complicity
Canal Dreams

The Bridge, is something I've lived... (let alone the fact that one of the characters in it is called "Steven Grout"!)

Complicity is fine, mr xposter... Canal Dreams is a book.

My favourite non-M books are Crow Road, Espedair Street and Whit, which seems to be a non-typical selection given what other people have said in this thread. The Bridge is fairly good, too. I couldn't get into Song Of Stone. The Business sounded like a promising idea, but turned out to be a bit rubbish in the end.

'Dead Air' may as well have been written by Tony Parsons.

'The Business' is a nothing of a book, leaves you wondering why you bothered.

'Complicity', 'The Wasp Factory', 'Espedair Street' and (in particular) 'The Bridge' are all essential reads.

Of the Sci-Fi stuff I'd recommend, well, all of it that I've read. 'Feersum Endjinn' is a bit of an acquired taste I suppose. 'Consider Phlebas' and 'Player of Games' are both excellent and most of the others aren't far behind.

M:
Start with 'Player of Games', then 'Consider Phlebas', then 'Look to Windward'. 'Feersum Enjinn' is absolutely extrodinary, but takes patience. Ah, fuck it, they're all good.

Non M:
Walking on Glass, The Bridge, Song of Stone.
The Wasp Factory, Complicity and The Crow Road are all overrated.

I'd love to get into his SF stuff. Consider Phelbas has sat, half-completed, in my bookcase since 1991. I think it might finally be time to have another crack at it.

Yeah, The Bridge is very good. I didn't mention that before.

I'm in the minority who liked Dead Air, but anyone around that time who bagged the shit out of Bush automatically got my vote.

Espedair Street, The Crow Road, Walking On Glass (if this is the one with the three different stories that kind of connect in a semi-sci-fi way at the end) are pretty good.

The Wasp Factory is overrated, but has a good twist at the end.

Whit was a load of shite.

I haven't read any of the sci-fi ones. I started to read another one about a woman who belonged to a secret one world government (or something) but it was utterly crap - just loads of descriptions of fast cars, and helicopters and stuff. Sometimes he comes across as an ugly, geeky, middle-aged man, with a car obsession, who keeps trying to be down with the kids and getting it painfully wrong.

I hate that opening line. It's so "Woo! Ha ha crazy first line you've got to read on!"

I don't think Iain Banks is very good.

"Then Papa deflated and we had to patch him up using a bicycle inner tube repair kit. As if that wasn't enough, Uncle Rampak melted and Aunt Widdle drowned in the resulting puddle."

I like your latest photos, Alba. I have no other way of communicating this fact at the moment, being emailless.

This is very true, but he gets away with it because he's funny and usually original.

Forgot to mention: Culture Ship Names! 'Fate Amenable To Change', 'Attitude Adjuster', 'Size Isn't Everything', 'Prosthetic Conscience', 'I Blame Your Mother', 'Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence', etc.

I've never tried his scifi stuff which may be better.

Yup. The Business

Is it really as bad as stated upthread?

I'm surprised I didn't write more on this thread first time round. Whit was the first one I read, and I liked it, even though it feels like an easy read without that much content. I loved The Bridge and Espedair Street, but couldn't get into Song Of Stone (despite it being the one where the BDSM leanings I'm sure he has are most visible). The Business is rubbish, but enjoyable nevertheless - when I read the synopsis I thought that a very good book could have been made from it, but The Business isn't it.

As for the sci-fi, the first one I read was Player Of Games, and - as someone who isn't a big sci-fi reader - I thought it was very good indeed. To be honest I can't remember which of the sci-fi books I have and haven't read - Feersum Endjinn, definitely, and the one with the giant flying whale creatures (Use Of Weapons?). Apart from Player Of Games, their names seem to blend into one.

it started a bit like a Belle and Sebastian song in prose

Pointless trivia moment: when Radio 4 adapted Espedair Street, back around 1997-8, the vocalist they used for Frozen Gold's songs was Monica Queen, B&S's guest vocalist on Lazy Line Painter Jane.

> I think he's only publishes The Algebraist (sci-fi) since Dead Air, which is typically full of great crazy ideas, but a little leaden in pace.

have just read the algebraist (and have just restarted ...Dark Background, signed and dated copy, watford 1995). after 4 or so years of thinking that alastair reynolds writes a bit like iain m banks i now think that iain m banks writes a bit like alastair reynolds (AR is big on the acceleration / deceleration required for space travel, huge space travel epics, a lot like the algebraist)

(there's also been a small book on whisky since dead air, but that's it, i think. that, dead air and the business are the only things i haven't read)

first line of wasp factory is about checking the sacrifice poles.

felt the same about the algebraist tbh.

Look to Phlebas is a nice easy romp with a dark ending.

Player of Games is the 1st Culture book he wrote, not the 1st published though.

Most of the Culture novel are about how a supposed fully democractic utopia has to have a dark side in order to survive. All books WILL contain a torture sequence or a reference to torture.

xpost - exactly.

As I said above, I'm sure IMB is a bit kinky. Doesn't Look To Windward have a brief sentence about the main protagonist's surprised joy when his wife introduced him to bondage?

SC are the "dark side" the people that allow the vast majority of the Culture to live in a peaceful utopia.

is the new one (steep approach to garbadale) any good? all amazon reviews seem to suggest it is a rehash of the crow road (which I still haven't read).

new Culture book out in 3 weeks time!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Matter-Iain-M-Banks/dp/1841494178/

i couldn't finish the crow road, it was interminably meandering and dull

ooh. psyched!

agree on crow road. much of the non-M. stuff is really half-baked. there are obv, and magnificent, exceptions however. (my underrated fave is Walking On Glass.)

OK, I'm excited about Matter. He really should stick to sci-fi these days.

YAY!!!

i love culture books!

Me too!

the business is one of the worst books i have ever finished

That gives me an idea for a thread.

Oh, there already is one.

i was really hoping that was what i would learn when i clicked this thread. about the new culture book i mean.

i couldn't finish the crow road, it was interminably meandering and dull

-- akm, Thursday, 17 January 2008 04:59 (3 hours ago)

^^^

The Bridge <-- A++++

Doesn't he do a good dream sequence Almy? He's so good at depicting the surreal.

I am a geek, Banks and Reynolds are guilty pleasures.

Matter will be a purchase.

Doesn't he do a good dream sequence

Yes. I love his Culture books, but I really think this is his ultimate strength -- surrealism. In fact, a David Lynch adaptation of The Bridge would be... I don't know, something amazing and very different?

Matter is half price at Waterstones at the mo. I bought it today.

get me one?

fuckin hardcover!

sci-fi should come out in paperback. word is bond.

Look to Windward was disappointing, he seemed to have fallen out of love with The Culture, and made it fall out of love with itself. I hope the relationship has recovered.

I really liked LTWW - if you look upthread, Ledge, we had a debate about this a year ago.

The new one is supposed to be a worth inheritor, I just got a copy of the UK trade edition...not read yet. Culture novels being re-released with consistent designs for the US starting this spring, I think...?

*worthy

we had a debate about this a year ago.

note to self, get some new thoughts.

It's alright, I'm sure I exhausted all of my opinions some time back in 2005.

i'd never really heard of this guy. i don't closely follow sci-fi, but i picked up consider phlebas at B&N on whim. it seems great so far.

It's very great. (I much prefer the Culture as a future/past setting to pretty much all others that have come up both in print and on TV.)

As summed up in particular by this upthread from Jarlr'mai:

Most of the Culture novel are about how a supposed fully democractic utopia has to have a dark side in order to survive.

Obviously it's not that this theme hasn't been explored elsewhere; I just think this particular issue is a far more overarching and interesting one to see grappled with in an sf context, and that Banks does so in a way that's more involving on my end than the many other anti-Treks out there (or Trek itself, of course).

Re-reading Consider Phlebas for the first time since '91. I hardly rememeber a word of it, and it's good whizz-bang fast-paced stuff.

Quick Q, as he's been mentioned on this thread, and elsewhere, in comparison to IMB: where should I start with Alastair Reynolds? (I am sort of waiting for House of Suns to come out in paperback)

Anyone else read Matter? I thought it started brilliantly, but dragged a bit in the middle, and by the end it was kind of obvious he'd been ODing on the crazy idea juice -

(SPOILERS)

that shellworld destroying beastie just popped out of nowhere and laid waste to all his elaborately woven plot threads.

Though I liked the pay-off coda with Holse, who was my favourite character by the end.

i felt a bit cheated by Matter, i wanted a 100% Culture book, not (another) medieval set book with Culture interludes. boo. the shellworld & its history was the best thing by miles.
i've read three Alastair Reynolds books & boy could that guy use an editor. the only one i'd recommend was "Century Rain" which (i think) is pretty much self-contained.

I've read Reynold's Inhibitor trilogy, and enjoyed it well enough, though it was clunkily written. Nicely bleak take on the Space Opera.

boy could that guy use an editor.

Ha, that's the genre for you. He's hardly in the big league of SF ramblers (The crown would go to Peter F Hamilton - how many fucking don't-give-a-shit subplots did Night's Dawn have by vol 3?).

I thought I'd never get through the descriptions of the waterfall. Was he being paid for each use of the words "mist" and "spray"? Or had he just glanded blether before writing that chapter?

I passed by a haulage truck the other day emblazoned with a rather Banksian-ship name: Staying Hungry And Humble The Hard Way.

What is the hard way? It's pretty easy if yer poor and unsuccessful.

I thought I'd never get through the descriptions of the waterfall. Was he being paid for each use of the words "mist" and "spray"?

His grand conceits do often outstrip his ability to concisely describe them.

I thought the approach to the Morthanveld Nestworld was evocatively done, on the other hand.

i'm such a slow reader these days i'm still on consider phlebas, should be done later tonight.

but anyway overall i love it....good "literary" sci-fi for my tastes...some really nice passages of writing and deals with some more intelligent themes w.o letting it get in the way of the action and cool "wow" type stuff...

however i would say the last 1/4 has dragged on....all the stuff of looking for The Mind in on Schar's Planet of the Dead or whatever seems to be taking FOREVER.

still love it overall and can't wait to read another book by banks.

the last chunk of phlebas is a bit weak.

just finished matter. SPOILER: some great stuff but ya there's kind of an plot-destroying explosion at the end there.

the last chunk of phlebas is a bit weak.

:-/ I thought it was pretty sharp, but what didn't you like?

maybe I'll try the bridge. but I've not liked his other two books I've read, so this is the last try I'll give him.

SPOILER: some great stuff but ya there's kind of an plot-destroying explosion at the end there.

Yeah, I felt a bit cheated by that. I was looking forward to how he was going to resolve to 8th/9th political stuff, then he just didn't bother.

ya SPOILER but he seemed to be setting up a LOT that never got resolved. i guess he's confounding expectations by not doing a big culture deus ex machina but i figured that whatsherface was a pawn of SC all along, meant to return to the 8th and rule the sarl or something like that... plus the shellworld stuff was so begging for at least some more explanation.

:-/ I thought it was pretty sharp, but what didn't you like?

-- Ned Raggett, Tuesday, June 3, 2008 11:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

i just remember all the running around tunnels stuff taking too long

Hell, I loved the way that slowly racked up the tension -- multiple points of view, everyone chasing after everyone else, and then one forgotten figure slowly making his own last move...

In an interview Banks gave the lame excuse that Matter is supposed to read like the first part of an imaginary trilogy, so of course it leaves loose ends.

Yesterday I walked by a construction lot in which there was a giant two-story concrete cube with one tiny window in it, looking very much like my mental image of the Mysterious Alien Artifact.

>> where should I start with Alastair Reynolds?

> i've read three Alastair Reynolds books & boy could that guy use an editor.

i have never thought this. i get to the end and wish they were longer, if anything. (he has a tendency to introduce completely new things in the last 50 or so pages, stuff that has potential)

> the only one i'd recommend was "Century Rain" which (i think) is pretty much self-contained.

the big trilogy is revelation space / redemption ark / absolution gap and should be read together. chasm city is set in same universe but is unconnected. pushing ice is self contained. century city is self contained (and a bit of a departure from the other stuff). the prefect and the recent one, house of suns (which has only just come out in hardback so you could be waiting a while).

Pushing Ice would be a good start, i think. then The Prefect or Century City.

(there are also two short story collections, Galactic North (which shares a universe with the long stories) and Zima Blues which is all unconnected. oh, and a twofer novella thing, Diamond Dogs and Turquoise Days, which i need to re-read.)

In an interview Banks gave the lame excuse that Matter is supposed to read like the first part of an imaginary trilogy, so of course it leaves loose ends.

-- eater, Wednesday, June 4, 2008 5:19 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

that IS lame!

algebraist was much better.

s1ocki I want you to know that every post of mine on here is the first part of an imaginary googleplexology

Haha, sign of how the language is transmogrified. That should be googolplexology.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hv1dz

Radio 4 Afternoon Play

"Paul Cornell's dramatisation of the science-fiction novel by Iain M Banks. A spaceship from The Culture arrives on Earth in 1977 and finds a planet obsessed with alien concepts like 'property' and 'money' and on the edge of self destruction. When Agent Dervley Linter decides to go native can Diziet Sma change his mind?"

3 days left to listen via bbc iplayer

http://www.iain-banks.net/

The bottom line, now, I'm afraid, is that as a late stage gall bladder cancer patient, I'm expected to live for 'several months' and it’s extremely unlikely I'll live beyond a year. So it looks like my latest novel, The Quarry, will be my last.

:(

Was just coming here to post that very thing. I've lost track of his work recently but it's immensely sad news - his work meant a lot to me when I was in my teens. I saw him on a train to Edinburgh when I was 15 or so and he was really great when I plucked up the courage to speak to him. He's only 59 :(

that sucks. Statement is very dignified, contains some nice praise for the NHS.

404 on the link but fuck, that's gutting.

think it's getting too much traffic...

Shit. Just read it on The Guardian, searched for this thread to post. Awful news.

seriously cancer when are going to fuck off already :((((

That is terrible news. I only read Wasp Factory but I still feel like a friend is leaving. Just read that Roger Ebert has cancer again as well :(

That's horrible :(

Here's the statement:

I am officially Very Poorly.
After a couple of surgical procedures, I am gradually recovering from jaundice caused by a blocked bile duct, but that – it turns out – is the least of my problems.

I first thought something might be wrong when I developed a sore back in late January, but put this down to the fact I’d started writing at the beginning of the month and so was crouched over a keyboard all day. When it hadn’t gone away by mid-February, I went to my GP, who spotted that I had jaundice. Blood tests, an ultrasound scan and then a CT scan revealed the full extent of the grisly truth by the start of March.

I have cancer. It started in my gall bladder, has infected both lobes of my liver and probably also my pancreas and some lymph nodes, plus one tumour is massed around a group of major blood vessels in the same volume, effectively ruling out any chance of surgery to remove the tumours either in the short or long term.

The bottom line, now, I’m afraid, is that as a late stage gall bladder cancer patient, I’m expected to live for ‘several months’ and it’s extremely unlikely I’ll live beyond a year. So it looks like my latest novel, The Quarry, will be my last.

As a result, I’ve withdrawn from all planned public engagements and I’ve asked my partner Adele if she will do me the honour of becoming my widow (sorry – but we find ghoulish humour helps). By the time this goes out we’ll be married and on a short honeymoon. We intend to spend however much quality time I have left seeing friends and relations and visiting places that have meant a lot to us. Meanwhile my heroic publishers are doing all they can to bring the publication date of my new novel forward by as much as four months, to give me a better chance of being around when it hits the shelves.

There is a possibility that it might be worth undergoing a course of chemotherapy to extend the amount of time available. However that is still something we’re balancing the pros and cons of, and anyway it is out of the question until my jaundice has further and significantly, reduced.

Lastly, I’d like to add that from my GP onwards, the professionalism of the medics involved – and the speed with which the resources of the NHS in Scotland have been deployed – has been exemplary, and the standard of care deeply impressive. We’re all just sorry the outcome hasn’t been more cheerful.

A website is being set up where friends, family and fans can leave messages for me and check on my progress. It should be up and running during this week and a link to it will be on my official website at www.iain-banks.net as soon as it’s ready.

Fucking dreadful news. I've read all his sci-fi over the last few years and enjoyed them all, some very much indeed. Beyond that, he's one of the best we have for just speaking sense and supporting the important stuff in politics. A group of us saw him doing a Q&A in Manchester when The Hydrogen Sonata was published and he was as charismatic, engaging and rascally a speaker as I've ever seen; seemed like a really lovely man and eminently wkiw-able.

Such a damn shame.

One of the terrible things about this is that there's no way of knowing whether it could have been caught in time. If he first developed symptoms in January and had had the relevant tests then, maybe it could. Or even if he had been screened before symptoms began to develop.

God, this is horrible. I've fallen way behind now, but when I was younger he was the only author whose paperbacks I would buy the week of release without fail. Loved them.
God dammit.

Sad, love his work.
My have to get them out and read them all again.

Never read any non 'M' stuff after Canal Dreams, except for Transition, but all his SF was worthwhile to some degree and although I have some issues with the directions he took it in, The Culture is sustained world-building without peer, deliciously inventive, playful, and optimistic.

bahhhhhh :( :( :( :(

oh no! sad news.

Soooooo lame ;_;

This is so wrong. As his statement shows he's a necessary antidote to all the shits in the world. Hopefully chemo can be of some help to him if he takes it.

I read The Bridge when I was in hoptl with crohns, and a lot of it rang very true with me and it helped without it being for that purpose..

I have read most of his non scifi books (it ain't for me, all that) but a great many of them have altered sensibilities and I do love them.

The last one I read was Transition, the next one I have but haven't started

For me his mainstream novels are somewhat patchy, but I adore his SF. He was arguably the best writer of Space Opera in the world for much of the late 80s/90s, certainly the funniest and most playful.

Gastric cancers have a very poor prognosis, I don't think it would have made much difference if it had been caught earlier.

wish the Culture mythos could continue solidly enough, the way lovecraft stuff did: faithful but also, maybe, continuing improving it.

What a terrible shame :(

Ian Rankin ‏@Beathhigh

E-mail from Iain Banks this morning. Enjoying life to the max with partner Adele in Italy, and aware of everyone's good wishes and support.

RIP

Aw goddammit. RIP

Shit, I was holding out hope for some kind of miraculous pull-through. RIP.

So much quicker than expected.

He seemed like a man who made the very best of his life. RIP.

:(

:(

rip ian.

i loved your stories.

fuck cancer.

RIP, fuckin hell.

RIP

Such a shame.

dug out my copy of The Bridge and as well as the usual receipt (Tewkesbury Bookshop 13-09-89 £4.99) it contained a postcard of the Forth Bridge and the train tickets my one trip to scotland. haven't read it since 1997, which i must remedy. the SF books get re-read at the rate of about one or two a year, every year.

Aw man, he had no time left at all. RIP. And fuck cancer.

How sad, and fuck cancer in the teeth.

this looks good - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02xf70k

Iain Banks is one of Scotland's most popular and critically acclaimed novelists. In April 2013, he revealed he has terminal cancer, and is unlikely to live beyond a year. In this exclusive television interview, he talks in depth to Kirsty Wark about his career, life and facing up to death.

(Wednesday 21:00 for an hour)

bbc scotland only... (although iplayer too i guess)

RIP :(

RIP

fuck

probably not the place for this, but i am over seeing tyrannical pieces of shit live well into their 80s/90s and by-all-accounts good people lose their lives so very early

Only ever read 'The Crow Road', but what a book it is. Can still recall how I visualised passages of it now, a few years later. I have another of his books waiting to be read ('Aspedaire St'? I'm not by the bookcase just now), struggle to find a reason why I haven't already read it and more other than laziness. I did worry after 'The Crow Road' that I wouldn't like any of his other books as much.

Anyway, it's sad to hear of his passing.

Read a lot of his stuff during standard grades/highers/csys and loved them, especially The Crow Road and Complicity. He seemed like a really nice, down to earth fella too. RIP.

Was wandering up by the actual real Espedair Street on Friday afternoon and wondered how he was getting on :-(

fuck cancer

one of the greatest sf authors of all time

As somebody said yesterday, all of his books are different ..

Easily my favorite author, and I still have some of his to catch up with.

My new favorite is Transition, previously it was, ooh, probably each time I read a new one..

Fuck. RIP banks, RIP the culture.

RIP. Loved his stuff as a teen.

I hope some other talented SF writers get permission from his estate to write more Culture books, it's a concept that would lend itself very well to a shared universe. Maybe Ken McLeod could give it a bash.

One of the constant comforts during my entire adult life has been the knowledge that there was always a new Iain/Iain M. Banks novel underway.
RIP. And fuck cancer.

that scottish bbc2 thing isn't showing up on iplayer. surely it has appeal this side of hadrian's wall.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b02xf70k/Iain_Banks_Raw_Spirit/

wasn't there this morning. honest.

ordered the last two M books the other day and they've already arrived. both weighty hardbacks, £18 for the pair.

Watched this today, sad to say that the sections from The Quarry sound tiresome and ranty, imo. The ascension of this style is when I got off the bus (Dead Air iirc)

I read Stonemouth over a weekend last month, and that was breezy fun where you just basically hang out with this character as he reconnects with old friends and gets into scrapes. It's lightweight but it's an enjoyable read.
I need to read more M. novels.

M>>>>non-M imo.

Have non-M. novels traditionally outsold M. novels?

yes, he quoted 5 to 1 ratio in a recent post (which it's now, of course, impossible to find)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_(novel)

On the cusp of "M", some countries had it, some did not.

My favourite one of recent vint.

not impossible

http://friends.banksophilia.com/28-2/

20 May 2013
...
"I think I’ll only comment on any of the posts if there’s something factually wrong mentioned in them, and so far the only point I can remember is one where an ex-neighbour of ours recalled (in an otherwise entirely kind and welcome comment) me telling him, years ago, that my SF novels effectively subsidised the mainstream works. I think he’s just misremembered, as this has never been the case. Until the last few years or so, when the SF novels started to achieve something approaching parity in sales, the mainstream always out-sold the SF – on average, if my memory isn’t letting me down, by a ratio of about three or four to one. I think a lot of people have assumed that the SF was the trashy but high-selling stuff I had to churn out in order to keep a roof over my head while I wrote the important, serious, non-genre literary novels. Never been the case"
...

A last interview.

there's a review show special which appears to be culled from the bbc2 scotland interview but which is only half an hour long.

watched said bbc2 scotland thing and the heart-breaking thing is that he looks fine, a bit whiter than i remember him, beard and hair-wise, but otherwise fine. he also plays some of his music. he makes it for his own amusement and if anyone else likes it then it's a bonus (which, in this case, is fortunate)

http://minorplanetcenter.net/blog/sci-fi-author-iain-m-banks-gets-asteroid-named-after-him/

close, but no cigar. should've had the m in the name imo.

also

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074t1q

Crow Road repeats on BBC4 start wednesday.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2333693

!!!

Dennis Kelly could be a good fit for this. Fingers crossed.

much Banks talk lately on the yearly polls. watch this bump die a death...

Feersum Endjinn, i have re-read ever, but i remember being impressed at the level of detail he squeezed into the 'dialect' this race of things lisps, this one thing additionally has a cold and you can hear the difference. fun, but hard work at times.

I guess now I should check my read
/unread list against the recommendations here...

Are the final two Culture novels worth reading? I found Matter a bit of a slog.

I gave up after Inversions, but The Algebraist is worth a try for a non-Culture SF novel. Shame he never followed up with more books in the same universe.

I gave up after Inversions

Just before Look to Windward, which is cracking.

I have a grudge against Look to Windward for betraying the ideals of the culture. Only read Matter once I think but I recall it as a cracking read, it's high on my list for a reread.

Hydrogen sonata is, remarkably for a culture novel, a snooze fest.

Crow Road documentary and repeat of the series starts tonight on bbc4