Squinty wrote:Tomous wrote:Squinty wrote:Finished The Wasp Factory by Iain M Banks. Weird book. Went in a direction that I never would have considered at the end.
I've just started The Player of Games by Iain M Banks. I've never read his stuff before but wanted something scifi and saw a lot of recommendations for his Culture series.
Yeah, the first three books are great, Use of Weapons is probably my favourite one. I haven't read any of the other ones.
I've read a few of the Culture series, they're great. TPOG is the one I started with as well - it was free for World Book Night a few years ago and I stumbled upon a copy. You're a chess player aren't you (GR tourney
)? I wasn't at the time but still enjoyed TPOG. What's good about TPOG as opposed to some of the other Culture novels is it's short - some of the other ones routinely weigh in at 500 pages or more. They are worth it, but it is grand sci-fi - the first 80-100 pages are often utter gibberish until you're onto page 200 and it all starts to make sense. I've enjoyed all the ones I've read - he does a very good job of maintaining human, an in particular mortal, stakes in a transhuman universe. The last hard sci-fi I read was Diaspora by Greg Egan and I really struggled to give a toss after page 100, because there was technology that meant they couldn't really die so there were precisely zero stakes. Banks explores similar themes in Surface Detail, but does so in a much more elegant and accomplished way, so that I probably read the entire length of Diaspora in Surface Detail aware of the technology available and remained invested in the story.
I've never read his regular fiction but my sister has it on her bookshelf and I think liked it. If you weren't aware
Iain Banks is his fiction nom-de-plume and
Iain M. Banks is his sci-fi nom-de-plume - this may help you navigate his works.
I get absolutely no time to read at the moment but recently finished Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett (over the last 13 months
). This didn't really grab me - hence me not making the time to finish it sooner - but the last 100 pages were good fun.