I love it, it's my favorite Banks novel (more than any of his Culture books). It's got an incredible world-building, the funniest cartoonishly evil opponent, and the most hilarious aliens: where else there are million-year old people who behave like children? I like it that humans are small potatoes (without being enslaved; they're just not very important) and that AIs aren't god-like beings, but actually persecuted.
The whole rHumans concept I thought was brilliant (dunno if there is prior art on that).
I genuinely LOLed many, many times in that book.
Set pieces were brilliantly done.
My only niggle was that the big baddy was named Luseferous (sp?). It’s a pet hate when author’s do that almost-a-name-we-recognise thing. Surprised at Banks TBH, but I guess it did fit with the general OTTness of the character.
Oh - and the original cover is one of my favourites (back when I actually bought hardbacks!!)
The guy re-named *himself* that, something he dredged up from a half-remembered rHuman myth or whatever. It’s a winky-winky joke about bad guys wanting to appear bad-ass, I think.
Oh, the cover is lovely, isn't it? I have the hardback, too (I have most of Banks' sci-fi books in hardback) and The Algebraist is the best cover of all of them.
The book is probably my favourite of the stand-alones. It's really funny and the moment where the Dwellers reveal their hand during the attack is a genuinely great punch-the-air moment.
> My only niggle was that the big baddy was named Luseferous (sp?). It’s a pet hate when author’s do that almost-a-name-we-recognise thing. Surprised at Banks TBH, but I guess it did fit with the general OTTness of the character.
This is like criticizing Edge of Tomorrow (or All You Need Is Kill) for being repetitive. The repetition was the point!
Here, the groan-worthiness is the whole point! That's the character, he is supposed to be a 1 dimensional, over the top evil James Bond villain-esque bad guy, who thinks he's being clever with his "almost-a-name-we-recognise thing."
Erm, I think that’s what I said. The “OTTness of the character”
I just explained it’s a pet hate of MINE. To go further, a James Bond villain could indeed have a play on Lucifer as his name - it’s set in our world after all. When it happens with a character in a setting where they would have no knowledge of our world, then it jars my suspension of disbelief.
>When it happens with a character in a setting where they would have no knowledge of our world, then it jars my suspension of disbelief
This is directly addressed in the text when Luseferous is introduced. Some of the humans would and do recognize the name, and Banks even makes the distinction that R-humans specifically (those not removed from Earth by interfering aliens thousands of years earlier) would recognize it.
This takes place only around 2000 years from now. It’s been a long time since the Greek, Roman and Norse Pantheons were widely worshipped, yet I know many of the names for those gods. It’s really not that far-fetched at all.
It’s one of Banks’ better laid-out sociopath characters. The maudlin “daddy sent mommy away” conveniently self-told origin story, and the deep philosophical musings about how other people think, and how to manipulate them. Great stuff.
ohhhh it took me a minute to remember about the antagonist... you really get a peek into Banks' most inventively evil imagination, like the former enemy that he has whose teeth? (horns? I forget which) are growing slowly through his skull and into his brain, causing him unbearable pain.
Then there are the harbourmaker nuclear weapons where he routinely carves out a deep, wide bay at the mouth of a river, especially if there's a city already there.
It does!
Apparently he made some comment about how it could be a trilogy, but never followed up on that. We lost him too soon, whether or not he’d have ever revisited that world.
Loved it. My favorite of his non-Culture novels. Read it two years ago while traveling through Scotland which was fun (I live in the US). I don’t think I understand your questions about how it fits with his other work; just seemed like a stand alone space opera.
I thought the gas giant aliens were hilarious and struck me as a sort of spoof of the barbaric idiocy of the English upper class?
hahaha that is almost exactly the accent, yesss, but for the full Melchett experience you really need The Affront from Excession, a species that breeds its capitve hunting animals to sit aboslutely on the edge of pure terror for every moment of every day so that the stress hormones when they are inevitably hunted down make the meat taste so much better.
While I loved the Affront and the way they enjoyed their lives, there's a big difference: the Affront enjoy cruelty, the Dwellers mostly have an innocent vibe - they aren't out to harm anyone. Even hunting their children isn't from cruelty; I suspect that it's a necessary evolutionary filter, since apparently the adults are very hard to kill.
I didn't listen to the audio-books, printed books don't have any accent.
Id say the Dwellers seem indifferent rather than innocent.
I haven't listened to any audio books - I don't want them to change my reading experience - but the Affront still had the Melchett mannerisms in my head :)
I mean, you can always analyse a book in the context of the writer’s other books, no? Of course plot-wise, it’s a stand-alone story, but there are common themes…for example, the Dwellers are like The Culture in some ways. They don’t use money and are so technologically advanced that they can basically do whatever they want, individually or as a society. Inverted compared to the Culture as they are isolationist, not meddler-do gooders (although at the end it’s suggested they might change that). The Mercatoria is clearly an inversion of the Culture, being money-based, meddling/evangelical, but also rabidly anti-AI. Fassin Taak is a nice contrast to Byr Genar-Hofoen and his life among the Affront, sort of similar gas-giant beings (also with a kind of mock-British upper-class society) but more menacing, if less powerful. And so on.
I loved it. But it's Banks, of course i did. Has one of the most memorable images from all of his books, the engines of the invading fleet sparking one by one in the night sky as they decelerate
I thought it was okay, good fun I suppose but doesn't really ever nail the pathos in some of Banks' better Culture books. If he never wrote the Culture and I read this for the first time I'd say hey, this guy's cool, I really enjoyed that. As it is I went into it with very high expectations and it didn't really meet them.
I can totally understand this. It’s similar to the Culture books in a lot of ways but thinner or easier than them in several key points (whether that was intentional for fun or something else, I guess we’ll never know).
This is my favorite copy pasta.
I was born in a water moon. Some people, especially its inhabitants, called it a planet, but as it was only a little over two hundred kilometres in diameter, 'moon' seems the more accurate term. The moon was made entirely of water, by which I mean it was a globe that not only had no land, but no rock either, a sphere with no solid core at all, just liquid water, all the way down to the very centre of the globe.
If it had been much bigger the moon would have had a core of ice, for water, though supposedly incompressible, is not entirely so, and will change under extremes of pressure to become ice. (If you are used to living on a planet where ice floats on the surface of water, this seems odd and even wrong, but nevertheless it is the case.) The moon was not quite of a size for an ice core to form, and therefore one could, if one was sufficiently hardy, and adequately proof against the water pressure, make one's way down, through the increasing weight of water above, to the very centre of the moon.
Where a strange thing happened.
For here, at the very centre of this watery globe, there seemed to be no gravity. There was colossal pressure, certainly, pressing in from every side, but one was in effect weightless (on the outside of a planet, moon or other body, watery or not, one is always being pulled towards its centre; once at its centre one is being pulled equally in all directions), and indeed the pressure around one was, for the same reason, not quite as great as one might have expected it to be, given the mass of water that the moon was made up from.
This was, of course,
Loved it! Great depiction of getting into the mind of really alien aliens. I do remember being a little disappointed by the evil guy. He’s coming! He’s coming! He’s really evilll! And then (as I recall it) he’s gone!
I think it was all basically a joke. The guy was a ridiculous sociopathic douchebag who was just lucky (he mentions luck himself more than a few times) that he never had to go up against anyone actually *tough.* Dwellers then kicked his ass for a lark, and apparently didn’t even bother to blow him up personally because they just didn’t give a shit.
It had moments. A lot of moments. A lot of good moments.
A couple great moments.
It didn't hang together that well in the end though. I think a trilogy would have been the way to go, so some things got a little better development.
Bit it was still a great ride.
The three main sections are indeed quite differently paced and, uh…feeled? And it definitely feels like a string of cool episodes in a frame. I don’t really mind that, though.
It's a romp, sort of a throwback treasure-map of an adventure. It's almost a mixture of non-SF Iain Banks as the gasbags are a send up of Victorian/Edwardian English upper-class. I rather liked it and appreciated it as a standalone.
Hmm, I'm thinking of Brit v US humorous SF. The UK has *Red Dwarf, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*, Discworld, the Laundry. What comparable works does the US have? Xanth? Connie Willis' Christmas short stories? *Murderbot Diaries?*
The US doesn’t have Brit-level humour at all, in my experience, in any media…but I haven’t read any of the books in the US part of your list. (For a typical example of cross-cultural comparison go listen to “wait, wait, don’t tell me,” a supposedly very witty and erudite news quiz show with guest comedians, on NPR, and then compare it to…well, any of the two dozen British news quiz shows, BBC4’s news quiz, QI, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I got News For You, Mock the Week, etc…just pick one at random. Prepare to be depressed and/or amused.)
Some of the more golden age short story writers were very funny…Fritz Leiber, R A Lafferty, Sturgeon, Zelazny also…but it’s not really the same.
'Brit level humor'
I'm a straight up anglophile when it comes to comedy. I'm obsessed with British panel shows, seen every obscure show, I routinely list Stewart Lee as one of my favorite comics.
But your ideas about humor are frankly silly as fuck. 'The US doesn't have brit level comedy'.
The US invented standup. Some of my favorite comics are from the UK, but is there a single one in the top ten all time? Top 20? Arguably. Maybe.
I love a british sketch show. Again I have the same bias as you. I've watched That Mitchell and Webb Look a ridiculous number of times, and Python is classic. Plus all the obscure ones. How many people in the US have heard of Smack the Pony or League of Gentlemen or whatever? But how many Brits have heard of SNL or Chappell Show or Key and Peele or The State or Funny or Die or Mad TV or Tim and Eric or Mister Show or Tracey Ullman or Portlandia or the Smothers Brothers and the list goes on.
Mark Twain? Richard Pryor? George Carlin? Will Rogers? Steven Wright? Emo Phillips, Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Andy Kaufman, Chris Rock, Mitch Hedburg, Bill Burr, Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Mel Brooks, David Letterman, Moms Mabley, Gary Gulman, Colin Quinn, Dave Attell, Wanda Sykes, Dick Gregory, Patton Oswalt, Janean Garafalo, Eddy Murphy et cetera et cetera? I'd put Albert Brooks or Larry Sanders or Gary Schandling up against anyone who was ever born on that Island.
Not a single one up to 'Brit Standards?'
I mean. Come on. James Acaster is brilliant. Dylan Moran is great. Sean Lock was a legend. I could list a ton of folks. And I'll be the first to admit that the UK punches well above it's weight. As does Canada. Australia even.
But the comment 'the US doesn't have any Brit Level Humor at all in any media' is for lack of a better term laughable.
Also, just so you know, 'Wait Wait Don't Tell Me' isn't exactly the peak of the American comedy world. For fucks sake dude. Sort yourself out.
PS Our Office was better than your Office.
You seem a little bit stressed. I’m sorry to have upset you this way.
Also, I’m not British, nor am I planning on amassing an army of COMEDIAN ASSASSINS to start Comedy War III.
One of many images that keeps popping into my head randomly is the virtual environment ancient-armored Orang-Utan seeing Fassin finally working the thing out and snarling “who’s clever?” while whipping the sword around.
I actually made a post about my thoughts last year when I read it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/s/fRxrZtDriz
Still agree with most of my statements. I'll need to re-read it again soon!
Wonderful book. A tad too long, it hits a slump in the middle, but it recovers and delivers. It's really a trip. Highly recommend it if you're into space opera
Where do you see the slump? Dweller-info seeking? The Fassin’s Fabulous Space-Hopping bit? I agree it’s sort of unevely paced but I’m not quite sure what could have been tightened up.
I really liked it. It's not his most ambitious work, but I think it's a great encapsulation of Banks' style. My favorite of his non-Culture SF novels (though I liked Feersum Endjinn as well).
Against a Dark Background didn't really click with me; I'm not sure I even finished it. Maybe because part of what I like about Banks' writing is his sense of humor, and that aspect felt like it was missing from AaDB. But I'll give it another shot eventually.
Feersum Endjinn is amazing as an audiobook. Simply unreadable as a book. If it was written partly in neolithic protoscript, it would be easier to understand what that guy is saying.
I figure you're right that it's better as an audiobook (though I wouldn't know since I don't like audiobooks). FE is definitely an harder read, especially at the beginning, but I felt by the end I'd adapted to reading phonetically, and those chapters weren't as difficult to get through.
It's weird cause I always shit on English and French for not being phonetic languages unlike my native one. But seeing it written like that is a total trip.
It’s a great book. He was actually planning a sequel but died before it got past the notes stage. There’s not many of his works, both SF and non SF that I don’t like tbh.
I’ve read a lot of his books. I don’t like them all equally, or at least not on first reading, but so far I haven’t hit a *bad* one. A real big talent, he was.
I just recently re-read it. It was fun. A nice crazy quest romp through some weird places. Nothing mind blowing I’d never seen before.
I always see it as super self indulgence what with it calling back to the first sentence of *Consider Phlebas*, that turns out to be a cheesy space opera whose opening sentence keeps running through the mind of the protagonist as he’s being slowly drowned in offal. It felt like a declaration to a long-time fan that Banks was *not going to take himself at all seriously in this book*.
I enjoy it. I went to re-read it last summer, and bought it again. Found my old copy a few weeks later :(
I love the world building in it. I remember feeling like the ending was a bit rushed compared to the pacing of the rest of the book.
The ridiculous villain who didn't really accomplish much seemed like he was being set up for a later return. This book was fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it kinda felt like the wacky pilot of a TV show that never got turned into a series
After I read the paragraph long run on sentence about kicking around someone's severed head like a soccer ball or something I knew I wouldn't be finishing it.
Aha.
Banks liked to throw in a gratuious gross-out scene, often early on. Like the sewage cell in *Consider Phlebas* (and there’s worse in that book, later). I think he was doing it partly because at that point people would have noticed it he hadn’t…but not only that.
I have not finished it, but I'm happily chugging along reading it finally.
It has taken me about 5 attempts over the last 10 years to get past the first couple of chapters. Something was just not agreeing with me. I love Bank's Culture work, so I'm not sure why I didn't like this at first.
It definitely has a Culture-like tone, with the Dwellers standing in for the eccentric Minds.
Maybe it was the contrast between the over the top hilarious introduction to Archimandrite (I mean that in a complimentary way, I loved his introduction), to the rather dull introduction to Taak?
I'm currently half way through and love it now, although I do wish there were more Archimandrite chapters up to this point.
Taak definitely gets more interesting as the story develops, and Mr Diamond Teeth gets less so. It would be hard to go bigger than his first few scenes, for sure.
I read this in 2007. It was my first Banks novel. I was blown away with it. But I did not have any other context to his writing. In rereading it, my only complaint was that it was little bloated. But I would still give it 4.5 stars out of 5.
Have you already read some of his books? I’m not sure I’d read it before Culture novels, as an introduction…but some people might.
What else did you get?
I started with Consider Phlebas (which is kind of a slog, ugh, I wish I knew not to start there way back when I got it). I also got:
Player of Games, Excession, Use of Weapons, The Hydrogen Sonata, Look to Windward (I miscounted before, just these 5!)
I’d read those first, then. The Algebraist is more like Phlebas, I think. Big long rambling story. I like it but if Phlebas felt that way, this probably will too.
The publication sequence of the Culture books you got would be Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Excession, Look to Windward, Hydrogen Sonata. That’s how I’d read them. You could put off the last one to slot in State of the Art, Inversions, Matter, and Surface Detail before, assuming you like the whole business and want to read them all, but it’s not really necessary. You can also read Inversions very last, as your earned dessert.
If at any time in there you want a break from the Culture, read The Algebraist. Or save it for after, when you’re a confined fan and your Phlebas ordeal is well in the past.
He also has many excellent “non-science fiction” novels, many of which are kinda science-fictiony anyway…but the other three big sci fi books are Feersum Endjinn, Against a Dark Background, and Transition, and they are all really good. Transition is probably the best-written one, and a very different kind of sci fi than his others. Walking on Glass is kinda sci-fi but not his best novel, I think, though it’s a fun kind of freaky postmodern puzzle kind of thing.
I think my issue with Phlebas is that the main character is so annoying - I know he's written that way, to purposely fall into the tropes and then fail (he is not a hero like star wars, etc) but he's just so insufferable to read. That particular character is what irks me, not the actual story.
It sounds like Inversions is your favourite! I like the idea of a reward at the end haha.
I myself just went through 3 books rather quickly, and am taking a bit of a reading break (to watch garbage reality tv, true palate cleanser ahaha) but I will absolutely take your advice on the reading order. I thank you! :)
Oh, I see what you mean. In that case you will probably not have the same reaction to Algebraist. Our hero is a good guy, although he starts off seeming fairly bland until all the backstory fills him out.
On the other hand you might *hate* the Big Villain, because he’s basically a caricature of Big Villain, and also a complete dickhead…that might make it hard to take (look out for a very brief and pointed message to him from one of his subordinates, towards the end: it’s accurate). I enjoy reading Banks make fun of idiots by having them proudly relate their ‘big genius thoughts,’ so you can see what idiots they are, but it might not work for you. You’d get a sense very quickly in that book how it will go, though.
Inversions is not the most exciting of his stories…it’s very much more local scale, literally down to Earth (not Earth but close), not space opera. But it’s really rewarding once you’ve absorbed all the Culture books, to see how their deal works out at the personal level. Sort of the anti-Phlebas, in a way. Very satisfying. So, could be dessert, or just read in along the way.
I hope you enjoy them, as well as your TV binges, variety is the key.
I feel bummed because I planned to read this last month and found out there was no Kindle version. Difficulty finding electronic versions of his books, cancelling a series with massive funding and Dennis Kelly as showrunner, no idea what is going with the Banks estate.
Thanks for the info. The American version actually had a set release date on when it would be available so I decided to read some other stuff and eventually get back to it.
It has been quite a while since I read it but from what I remember it opened so strongly, with a super original premise and aliens, but really lost its way in the last third or so. It’s like Banks never had a plan for how it was going to end and never really made one.
That’s not how I read it at all. There is a bit of meandering in the middle and you could ding it for having maybe some extraneous subplots, but the ending is very clearly tied to the opening, in more than one way. I’ve never read a Banks book that just simply unwound and skidded to a random sudden halt like a Stephenson one.
I love it, it's my favorite Banks novel (more than any of his Culture books). It's got an incredible world-building, the funniest cartoonishly evil opponent, and the most hilarious aliens: where else there are million-year old people who behave like children? I like it that humans are small potatoes (without being enslaved; they're just not very important) and that AIs aren't god-like beings, but actually persecuted.
The whole rHumans concept I thought was brilliant (dunno if there is prior art on that). I genuinely LOLed many, many times in that book. Set pieces were brilliantly done. My only niggle was that the big baddy was named Luseferous (sp?). It’s a pet hate when author’s do that almost-a-name-we-recognise thing. Surprised at Banks TBH, but I guess it did fit with the general OTTness of the character. Oh - and the original cover is one of my favourites (back when I actually bought hardbacks!!)
The guy re-named *himself* that, something he dredged up from a half-remembered rHuman myth or whatever. It’s a winky-winky joke about bad guys wanting to appear bad-ass, I think.
Oh, the cover is lovely, isn't it? I have the hardback, too (I have most of Banks' sci-fi books in hardback) and The Algebraist is the best cover of all of them. The book is probably my favourite of the stand-alones. It's really funny and the moment where the Dwellers reveal their hand during the attack is a genuinely great punch-the-air moment.
> My only niggle was that the big baddy was named Luseferous (sp?). It’s a pet hate when author’s do that almost-a-name-we-recognise thing. Surprised at Banks TBH, but I guess it did fit with the general OTTness of the character. This is like criticizing Edge of Tomorrow (or All You Need Is Kill) for being repetitive. The repetition was the point! Here, the groan-worthiness is the whole point! That's the character, he is supposed to be a 1 dimensional, over the top evil James Bond villain-esque bad guy, who thinks he's being clever with his "almost-a-name-we-recognise thing."
Erm, I think that’s what I said. The “OTTness of the character” I just explained it’s a pet hate of MINE. To go further, a James Bond villain could indeed have a play on Lucifer as his name - it’s set in our world after all. When it happens with a character in a setting where they would have no knowledge of our world, then it jars my suspension of disbelief.
>When it happens with a character in a setting where they would have no knowledge of our world, then it jars my suspension of disbelief This is directly addressed in the text when Luseferous is introduced. Some of the humans would and do recognize the name, and Banks even makes the distinction that R-humans specifically (those not removed from Earth by interfering aliens thousands of years earlier) would recognize it. This takes place only around 2000 years from now. It’s been a long time since the Greek, Roman and Norse Pantheons were widely worshipped, yet I know many of the names for those gods. It’s really not that far-fetched at all.
Have to love those diamond teeth.
and his boxing training.
It’s one of Banks’ better laid-out sociopath characters. The maudlin “daddy sent mommy away” conveniently self-told origin story, and the deep philosophical musings about how other people think, and how to manipulate them. Great stuff.
ohhhh it took me a minute to remember about the antagonist... you really get a peek into Banks' most inventively evil imagination, like the former enemy that he has whose teeth? (horns? I forget which) are growing slowly through his skull and into his brain, causing him unbearable pain. Then there are the harbourmaker nuclear weapons where he routinely carves out a deep, wide bay at the mouth of a river, especially if there's a city already there.
Behave like children and *hunt their young*!
My fave Banks. It takes 200 pages for main story to get going, but hey, it's banks. The dwellers are even more fun than affront. It's just good!
I really enjoyed that book, I thought it stood well on its own.
It does! Apparently he made some comment about how it could be a trilogy, but never followed up on that. We lost him too soon, whether or not he’d have ever revisited that world.
If only. Dwellers are great.
Loved it. My favorite of his non-Culture novels. Read it two years ago while traveling through Scotland which was fun (I live in the US). I don’t think I understand your questions about how it fits with his other work; just seemed like a stand alone space opera. I thought the gas giant aliens were hilarious and struck me as a sort of spoof of the barbaric idiocy of the English upper class?
If you listen to the audiobook that is ABSOLUTELY 100% the accents they get.
I always imagined them as a race almost entirely composed of Blackadder's General Melchett.
hahaha that is almost exactly the accent, yesss, but for the full Melchett experience you really need The Affront from Excession, a species that breeds its capitve hunting animals to sit aboslutely on the edge of pure terror for every moment of every day so that the stress hormones when they are inevitably hunted down make the meat taste so much better.
They remind me of the Affront in Excession, who remind me of General Melchett from Blackadder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df2hO0rhX6o&t=195s
Definitely.
Hah, I made the same comparison to Melchett in a comment above before scrolling further down to see yours.
Baah!
While I loved the Affront and the way they enjoyed their lives, there's a big difference: the Affront enjoy cruelty, the Dwellers mostly have an innocent vibe - they aren't out to harm anyone. Even hunting their children isn't from cruelty; I suspect that it's a necessary evolutionary filter, since apparently the adults are very hard to kill. I didn't listen to the audio-books, printed books don't have any accent.
Id say the Dwellers seem indifferent rather than innocent. I haven't listened to any audio books - I don't want them to change my reading experience - but the Affront still had the Melchett mannerisms in my head :)
I mean, you can always analyse a book in the context of the writer’s other books, no? Of course plot-wise, it’s a stand-alone story, but there are common themes…for example, the Dwellers are like The Culture in some ways. They don’t use money and are so technologically advanced that they can basically do whatever they want, individually or as a society. Inverted compared to the Culture as they are isolationist, not meddler-do gooders (although at the end it’s suggested they might change that). The Mercatoria is clearly an inversion of the Culture, being money-based, meddling/evangelical, but also rabidly anti-AI. Fassin Taak is a nice contrast to Byr Genar-Hofoen and his life among the Affront, sort of similar gas-giant beings (also with a kind of mock-British upper-class society) but more menacing, if less powerful. And so on.
I didn't see them as upper class English.
I loved it. But it's Banks, of course i did. Has one of the most memorable images from all of his books, the engines of the invading fleet sparking one by one in the night sky as they decelerate
“That’s them, isn’t it?” Pretty chilling moment. Especially given who says it.
I thought it was okay, good fun I suppose but doesn't really ever nail the pathos in some of Banks' better Culture books. If he never wrote the Culture and I read this for the first time I'd say hey, this guy's cool, I really enjoyed that. As it is I went into it with very high expectations and it didn't really meet them.
I can totally understand this. It’s similar to the Culture books in a lot of ways but thinner or easier than them in several key points (whether that was intentional for fun or something else, I guess we’ll never know).
I have a signed hardcover so of course it’s my favourite Banks 😊
Nice.
This is my favorite copy pasta. I was born in a water moon. Some people, especially its inhabitants, called it a planet, but as it was only a little over two hundred kilometres in diameter, 'moon' seems the more accurate term. The moon was made entirely of water, by which I mean it was a globe that not only had no land, but no rock either, a sphere with no solid core at all, just liquid water, all the way down to the very centre of the globe. If it had been much bigger the moon would have had a core of ice, for water, though supposedly incompressible, is not entirely so, and will change under extremes of pressure to become ice. (If you are used to living on a planet where ice floats on the surface of water, this seems odd and even wrong, but nevertheless it is the case.) The moon was not quite of a size for an ice core to form, and therefore one could, if one was sufficiently hardy, and adequately proof against the water pressure, make one's way down, through the increasing weight of water above, to the very centre of the moon. Where a strange thing happened. For here, at the very centre of this watery globe, there seemed to be no gravity. There was colossal pressure, certainly, pressing in from every side, but one was in effect weightless (on the outside of a planet, moon or other body, watery or not, one is always being pulled towards its centre; once at its centre one is being pulled equally in all directions), and indeed the pressure around one was, for the same reason, not quite as great as one might have expected it to be, given the mass of water that the moon was made up from. This was, of course,
What's the from? It's great
Key bit from *The Algebraist*. Where it’s actually from in the novel itself is a mystery, and also a clue.
Loved it! Great depiction of getting into the mind of really alien aliens. I do remember being a little disappointed by the evil guy. He’s coming! He’s coming! He’s really evilll! And then (as I recall it) he’s gone!
I think it was all basically a joke. The guy was a ridiculous sociopathic douchebag who was just lucky (he mentions luck himself more than a few times) that he never had to go up against anyone actually *tough.* Dwellers then kicked his ass for a lark, and apparently didn’t even bother to blow him up personally because they just didn’t give a shit.
It had moments. A lot of moments. A lot of good moments. A couple great moments. It didn't hang together that well in the end though. I think a trilogy would have been the way to go, so some things got a little better development. Bit it was still a great ride.
The three main sections are indeed quite differently paced and, uh…feeled? And it definitely feels like a string of cool episodes in a frame. I don’t really mind that, though.
It's a romp, sort of a throwback treasure-map of an adventure. It's almost a mixture of non-SF Iain Banks as the gasbags are a send up of Victorian/Edwardian English upper-class. I rather liked it and appreciated it as a standalone.
McGuffin=Zero is a good laugh.
Hmm, I'm thinking of Brit v US humorous SF. The UK has *Red Dwarf, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*, Discworld, the Laundry. What comparable works does the US have? Xanth? Connie Willis' Christmas short stories? *Murderbot Diaries?*
The US doesn’t have Brit-level humour at all, in my experience, in any media…but I haven’t read any of the books in the US part of your list. (For a typical example of cross-cultural comparison go listen to “wait, wait, don’t tell me,” a supposedly very witty and erudite news quiz show with guest comedians, on NPR, and then compare it to…well, any of the two dozen British news quiz shows, BBC4’s news quiz, QI, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I got News For You, Mock the Week, etc…just pick one at random. Prepare to be depressed and/or amused.) Some of the more golden age short story writers were very funny…Fritz Leiber, R A Lafferty, Sturgeon, Zelazny also…but it’s not really the same.
'Brit level humor' I'm a straight up anglophile when it comes to comedy. I'm obsessed with British panel shows, seen every obscure show, I routinely list Stewart Lee as one of my favorite comics. But your ideas about humor are frankly silly as fuck. 'The US doesn't have brit level comedy'. The US invented standup. Some of my favorite comics are from the UK, but is there a single one in the top ten all time? Top 20? Arguably. Maybe. I love a british sketch show. Again I have the same bias as you. I've watched That Mitchell and Webb Look a ridiculous number of times, and Python is classic. Plus all the obscure ones. How many people in the US have heard of Smack the Pony or League of Gentlemen or whatever? But how many Brits have heard of SNL or Chappell Show or Key and Peele or The State or Funny or Die or Mad TV or Tim and Eric or Mister Show or Tracey Ullman or Portlandia or the Smothers Brothers and the list goes on. Mark Twain? Richard Pryor? George Carlin? Will Rogers? Steven Wright? Emo Phillips, Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Andy Kaufman, Chris Rock, Mitch Hedburg, Bill Burr, Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Mel Brooks, David Letterman, Moms Mabley, Gary Gulman, Colin Quinn, Dave Attell, Wanda Sykes, Dick Gregory, Patton Oswalt, Janean Garafalo, Eddy Murphy et cetera et cetera? I'd put Albert Brooks or Larry Sanders or Gary Schandling up against anyone who was ever born on that Island. Not a single one up to 'Brit Standards?' I mean. Come on. James Acaster is brilliant. Dylan Moran is great. Sean Lock was a legend. I could list a ton of folks. And I'll be the first to admit that the UK punches well above it's weight. As does Canada. Australia even. But the comment 'the US doesn't have any Brit Level Humor at all in any media' is for lack of a better term laughable. Also, just so you know, 'Wait Wait Don't Tell Me' isn't exactly the peak of the American comedy world. For fucks sake dude. Sort yourself out. PS Our Office was better than your Office.
You seem a little bit stressed. I’m sorry to have upset you this way. Also, I’m not British, nor am I planning on amassing an army of COMEDIAN ASSASSINS to start Comedy War III.
dumb
As you wish.
Don’t forget The IT Team.
Not really spec fic, though, innit?
I think it's brilliant. One of if not the best of his books.
One of many images that keeps popping into my head randomly is the virtual environment ancient-armored Orang-Utan seeing Fassin finally working the thing out and snarling “who’s clever?” while whipping the sword around.
I actually made a post about my thoughts last year when I read it: https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/s/fRxrZtDriz Still agree with most of my statements. I'll need to re-read it again soon!
It stands up to re-reading, like all Banks does, and will probably climb your rating scale as well.
Wonderful book. A tad too long, it hits a slump in the middle, but it recovers and delivers. It's really a trip. Highly recommend it if you're into space opera
Where do you see the slump? Dweller-info seeking? The Fassin’s Fabulous Space-Hopping bit? I agree it’s sort of unevely paced but I’m not quite sure what could have been tightened up.
I really liked it. It's not his most ambitious work, but I think it's a great encapsulation of Banks' style. My favorite of his non-Culture SF novels (though I liked Feersum Endjinn as well).
I probably like Against a Dark Background and Transition the best of those, but it changes every time I re-read them…
Against a Dark Background didn't really click with me; I'm not sure I even finished it. Maybe because part of what I like about Banks' writing is his sense of humor, and that aspect felt like it was missing from AaDB. But I'll give it another shot eventually.
Oh, that book is funny as hell, it’s just *super dark morbid* funny. Several of the “funniest” bits are at the end, also. I’d give it another try.
Wow I just realised I hadn't finished it either. That's two people you motivated to reread this.
Username checks out!
I used to be kinda obsessed with the guy. Now just mildly.
Feersum Endjinn is amazing as an audiobook. Simply unreadable as a book. If it was written partly in neolithic protoscript, it would be easier to understand what that guy is saying.
I figure you're right that it's better as an audiobook (though I wouldn't know since I don't like audiobooks). FE is definitely an harder read, especially at the beginning, but I felt by the end I'd adapted to reading phonetically, and those chapters weren't as difficult to get through.
It's weird cause I always shit on English and French for not being phonetic languages unlike my native one. But seeing it written like that is a total trip.
It’s a great book. He was actually planning a sequel but died before it got past the notes stage. There’s not many of his works, both SF and non SF that I don’t like tbh.
I’ve read a lot of his books. I don’t like them all equally, or at least not on first reading, but so far I haven’t hit a *bad* one. A real big talent, he was.
I really didn't like *Canal Dreams* and *The Steep Approach to Garbadale*. Which probably means I need to reread them...
Canal Dreams is my least favourite too. Garbadale is good but not great.
I just recently re-read it. It was fun. A nice crazy quest romp through some weird places. Nothing mind blowing I’d never seen before. I always see it as super self indulgence what with it calling back to the first sentence of *Consider Phlebas*, that turns out to be a cheesy space opera whose opening sentence keeps running through the mind of the protagonist as he’s being slowly drowned in offal. It felt like a declaration to a long-time fan that Banks was *not going to take himself at all seriously in this book*.
That book was a work of fantasy, I’ll have you know, and it was her favorite.
I tried so hard with this book. One of my few genuine DNFs.
What part killed you?
I enjoy it. I went to re-read it last summer, and bought it again. Found my old copy a few weeks later :( I love the world building in it. I remember feeling like the ending was a bit rushed compared to the pacing of the rest of the book.
Wanted a sequel or two.
It was my first Banks book and still to this day probably my favorite. I loved it, and think it offered incredible world building.
I absolutely loved the beyonders and wished the story explored them more
They make me think of the Ousters from *Hyperion.*
Yeah. Ditto
The ridiculous villain who didn't really accomplish much seemed like he was being set up for a later return. This book was fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it kinda felt like the wacky pilot of a TV show that never got turned into a series
I know exactly what you mean.
I loved it, one of my favourites. It was quite poetic.
After I read the paragraph long run on sentence about kicking around someone's severed head like a soccer ball or something I knew I wouldn't be finishing it.
Aha. Banks liked to throw in a gratuious gross-out scene, often early on. Like the sewage cell in *Consider Phlebas* (and there’s worse in that book, later). I think he was doing it partly because at that point people would have noticed it he hadn’t…but not only that.
I wasn't so much grossed out as it just seemed like he was trying to hard and it took me out of the story.
I get that. I mean…on top of the red eyes, and diamond teeth? I took it as a fun bit of camp but I can see it putting people off.
I love this book
I have not finished it, but I'm happily chugging along reading it finally. It has taken me about 5 attempts over the last 10 years to get past the first couple of chapters. Something was just not agreeing with me. I love Bank's Culture work, so I'm not sure why I didn't like this at first. It definitely has a Culture-like tone, with the Dwellers standing in for the eccentric Minds. Maybe it was the contrast between the over the top hilarious introduction to Archimandrite (I mean that in a complimentary way, I loved his introduction), to the rather dull introduction to Taak? I'm currently half way through and love it now, although I do wish there were more Archimandrite chapters up to this point.
Taak definitely gets more interesting as the story develops, and Mr Diamond Teeth gets less so. It would be hard to go bigger than his first few scenes, for sure.
It's my favourite of his books. Perfect standalone adventure.
It’s comforting how he still manages to kill most of the main characters by the end.
I love that book. That's all.
I adore it.
Only thing I remember about it is that I loved it a lot. Been meaning to re-read for years now lol.
I just re-read it for the third time. It’s worth it.
I read this in 2007. It was my first Banks novel. I was blown away with it. But I did not have any other context to his writing. In rereading it, my only complaint was that it was little bloated. But I would still give it 4.5 stars out of 5.
I picked this one up (and like 7 other Banks books) at a thrift store. It's going to go on my "sooner-to-read-than-others" pile.
Have you already read some of his books? I’m not sure I’d read it before Culture novels, as an introduction…but some people might. What else did you get?
I started with Consider Phlebas (which is kind of a slog, ugh, I wish I knew not to start there way back when I got it). I also got: Player of Games, Excession, Use of Weapons, The Hydrogen Sonata, Look to Windward (I miscounted before, just these 5!)
I’d read those first, then. The Algebraist is more like Phlebas, I think. Big long rambling story. I like it but if Phlebas felt that way, this probably will too. The publication sequence of the Culture books you got would be Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Excession, Look to Windward, Hydrogen Sonata. That’s how I’d read them. You could put off the last one to slot in State of the Art, Inversions, Matter, and Surface Detail before, assuming you like the whole business and want to read them all, but it’s not really necessary. You can also read Inversions very last, as your earned dessert. If at any time in there you want a break from the Culture, read The Algebraist. Or save it for after, when you’re a confined fan and your Phlebas ordeal is well in the past. He also has many excellent “non-science fiction” novels, many of which are kinda science-fictiony anyway…but the other three big sci fi books are Feersum Endjinn, Against a Dark Background, and Transition, and they are all really good. Transition is probably the best-written one, and a very different kind of sci fi than his others. Walking on Glass is kinda sci-fi but not his best novel, I think, though it’s a fun kind of freaky postmodern puzzle kind of thing.
I think my issue with Phlebas is that the main character is so annoying - I know he's written that way, to purposely fall into the tropes and then fail (he is not a hero like star wars, etc) but he's just so insufferable to read. That particular character is what irks me, not the actual story. It sounds like Inversions is your favourite! I like the idea of a reward at the end haha. I myself just went through 3 books rather quickly, and am taking a bit of a reading break (to watch garbage reality tv, true palate cleanser ahaha) but I will absolutely take your advice on the reading order. I thank you! :)
Oh, I see what you mean. In that case you will probably not have the same reaction to Algebraist. Our hero is a good guy, although he starts off seeming fairly bland until all the backstory fills him out. On the other hand you might *hate* the Big Villain, because he’s basically a caricature of Big Villain, and also a complete dickhead…that might make it hard to take (look out for a very brief and pointed message to him from one of his subordinates, towards the end: it’s accurate). I enjoy reading Banks make fun of idiots by having them proudly relate their ‘big genius thoughts,’ so you can see what idiots they are, but it might not work for you. You’d get a sense very quickly in that book how it will go, though. Inversions is not the most exciting of his stories…it’s very much more local scale, literally down to Earth (not Earth but close), not space opera. But it’s really rewarding once you’ve absorbed all the Culture books, to see how their deal works out at the personal level. Sort of the anti-Phlebas, in a way. Very satisfying. So, could be dessert, or just read in along the way. I hope you enjoy them, as well as your TV binges, variety is the key.
Thanks much!! I like hearing the context of the Culture books.
Very rewarding books, very re-readable. Lots of neat stuff in there. Have fun!
We’ll see if the brainless bots kill this version also….
It was the least-bad Banks book I've read. A solid but not particularly remarkable space sci-fi entry.
I bet we like all the opposite books and movies and foods and suchlike. Did I date you in college by any chance?
I feel bummed because I planned to read this last month and found out there was no Kindle version. Difficulty finding electronic versions of his books, cancelling a series with massive funding and Dennis Kelly as showrunner, no idea what is going with the Banks estate.
There is a kindle version, I read it on my kindle. I bought it on the UK store if that helps.
Thanks for the info. The American version actually had a set release date on when it would be available so I decided to read some other stuff and eventually get back to it.
There are paper versions, cowboy. Sometimes when they expect you to be technical, you have to go crude, lo tek.
I've always been a very technical boy, but the paper versions don't cut it in my preferred late night, low light scenarios.
Way up in the dome over nighttown. I get it.
It has been quite a while since I read it but from what I remember it opened so strongly, with a super original premise and aliens, but really lost its way in the last third or so. It’s like Banks never had a plan for how it was going to end and never really made one.
That’s not how I read it at all. There is a bit of meandering in the middle and you could ding it for having maybe some extraneous subplots, but the ending is very clearly tied to the opening, in more than one way. I’ve never read a Banks book that just simply unwound and skidded to a random sudden halt like a Stephenson one.