Airs – Ian Lance Taylor

Banks

I’m happy to see that there is a nice new edition of one of my favorite books, The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks. For some reason the book drags me in every time I read it. Much of it amounts to a critique of an exaggerated version of our own society, but the most interesting part for me is just the protrayal of Gurgeh (the protagonist) and his very plausible fascination with games. It’s also interesting to consider whether our society would be as unable to cope with the Culture as the society that Banks describes.

It seems that Orbit is planning to rerelease all of Banks’s SF books. Of course Banks should need no introduction to anybody who follows science fiction, but it’s nice to see some high quality editions sold in the U.S. My copies of his early books were all printed in the UK.

I recently read his latest novel, Matter, also published by Orbit. I was mildly surprised to see that he wrote another Culture novel–it seems to me that he pretty much said everything he had to say about it in Look to Windward. As it turned out Matter doesn’t have much to do with the Culture at all; it amounts to a background element in a reasonably typical Banks space opera. In other words, an interesting book well worth reading, but not the fascinating experience of, say, The Player of Games.

Of course Banks has also written a number of non-SF novels, also well worth reading. My personal favorite of those is The Crow Road.

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3 responses to “Banks”

  1. tromey Avatar
    tromey

    Did you read The State of the Art? That directly deals with the Culture visiting Earth.

    FWIW I also consider Inversions to be a Culture book, even though it is never explicitly stated.

    I didn’t read Matter yet. Somehow I forgot.

  2. etbe Avatar
    etbe

    How is The Player of Games a critique of our society?

    Our society seems mostly incapable of reacting in a sane manner to every challenge that it faces. If nothing else the religious nutters would all flip out if we were to have close contact with aliens (as opposed to radio signals which can be ignored by people who like to ignore things).

    My favourite IMB book is Excession.

  3. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    tromey: I’ve read The State of the Art. I’ve read every book that Banks has written, including Raw Spirit, a nonfiction tour of Scottish distilleries.

    I agree that Inversions is definitely a Culture book. I saw a comment somewhere that Banks said that Against a Dark Background was a Culture book also–that there is a single sentence in there which reveals it. I haven’t been able to find that sentence, though, so I don’t know if it’s true.

    etbe: I would argue that In The Player of Games the Empire of Azad is an exaggerated version of our society: the discrimination, the violence, the hidden poverty, the system which pretends to be a meritocracy but is actually controlled by the elite.

    I think our society is actually fairly capable of reacting to things, we just do it slowly and with a lot of struggling. The religious nutters, to the extent that there really are nutters, are a fairly small part of our society.

    I like Excession also, it’s a fun book.

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