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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

wasn't one i didn't enjoy

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.

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

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.

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."

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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)

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

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

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.

yeah, no question.

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.

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.

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

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.

yeh epilogue was hilarious fan service

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.

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

hydrogen sonata was pretty lame :(

Still haven't got round to Surface Detail.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Hello.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/consider-phlebas-tv-series-works-at-amazon-1086840

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

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

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

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

https://www.orbit-books.co.uk/landing-page/orbit/the-culture-the-drawings/

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

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

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

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...

in russia phlebas considers you!

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.

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

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

(was two weeks ago)

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