From rec.arts.sf-reviews Wed Jul 24 09:52:39 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!mips!samsung!know!presto.ig.com From: UI0T%dkauni2.bitnet@presto.ig.com (Thomas Koenig) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: Review of Iain M. Banks: Use of Weapons Message-ID: <31338@know.pws.bull.com> Date: 23 Jul 91 14:21:15 GMT Sender: wex@pws.bulL.com Reply-To: UI0T%dkauni2.bitnet@presto.ig.com Followup-To: rec.arts.sf-lovers Lines: 56 Approved: wex@pws.bull.com Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks Review Copyright (c) 1991 Thomas Koenig %A Iain M. Banks %T Use Of Weapons %I Orbit Books %C London %D 1990 %G ISBN 0 7088 8358 3 %P 371 pp. %O Trade Paperback, 7.99 Pound Sterling After CONSIDER PHLEBAS and PLAYER OF GAMES, this is the third book which Banks has written about his "Culture" universe. It tells the story of a mercenary for the Culture, who manipulates less- developed societies to make them more conformant to the Culture's ideals, by direct military action or by intrigue. He is reactivated and sent out on a mission, to get an old friend out of retirement who the Culture wants to take part in a conflict. Intermingled with this, there are episodes reaching further and further back into his traumatic past. Although USE OF WEAPONS is, on the surface, a military/espionage/space opera novel, Banks spends more effort on examining characters than on action; the "hero's" (big quotation marks there) characterization reminded me of John Le Carre's better work. The writing is good, the imagination great and the ship names are just fantastic (ever heard of a warship called "What are the civilian applications"?) Because of the complex structure of the book, it is rather hard to follow; I had to read very carefully to find out what happened when. Banks has a tendency, in his Culture novels, to portray the Culture's enemies in a very negative way, which can be very irritating at times. Fortunately, this trait, which spoiled PLAYER OF GAMES for me, is only slightly present in this book. As a caveat, some of the scenes are rather brutal, and some of the humour is rather sick. Some familiarity with the Culture universe (in other words, reading CONSIDER PHLEBAS first) is probably a good thing when reading this book, in order not to get detracted by too many missing pieces of information. I thoroughly enjoyed this book; I'm sure that if Iain Banks continues to write with this quality, he will turn out many a masterpiece yet. Thomas Koenig EARN/BITNET : UI0T@DKAUNI2.BITNET INTERNET : UI0T@IBM3090.RZ.UNI-KARLSRUHE.DE : ib09@RZ.UNI-KARLSRUHE.DE X.400 : S=UI0T;OU=IBM3090;OU=RZ;P=UNI-KARLSRUHE;A=DBP;C=DE From rec.arts.sf-reviews Tue Oct 15 09:26:25 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!seunet!mcsun!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!pacbell.com!pacbell!pbhyc!djdaneh From: throopw@sheol%dg-rtp.dg.com (Wayne Throop) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: CONSIDER PHLEBAS by Iain M. Banks Message-ID: <6856@pbhyc.PacBell.COM> Date: 14 Oct 91 19:53:11 GMT Sender: djdaneh@PacBell.COM Lines: 84 Approved: djdaneh@pbhyc.pacbell.com This is a large, subtle book, with many layers. Much of the interest in it is the contrasts and juxtapositions of the various layers of events, and the irony/tragedy/whatnot that comes from an outside observer making connections between meanings that none of the participants can see because they are embedded in them. Or so it seems to me. In fact, I'm pretty sure my interpretation of the book wouldn't match others'. I get the impression that I'm missing many of the allusions and impressions that the author may have intended. In other words, I liked it but I'm not sure I can fully analyze why. What I'll describe, however, is the superficial level of the technological background, and the gross plotline. The book is set in the "Culture-Idiran War". To quote from the supplied supplementary material at the end of the book: STATISTICS Length of war: forty-eight years, one month. Total casualties, including machines (reckoned on logarithmic sentience scale), medjel and non-combatants: 851.4 billion (+/-3%). Losses: ships (all classes above interplanetary) 91,215,660 (+/-200); Orbitals 14,334; planets and major moons 53; Rings 1; Spheres 3; stars (undergoing significant mass loss or sequence-position alteration) 6. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE A small, short war that rarely extened throughout more than .02% of the galaxy by volume and .01% by stellar population. Rumors persist of far more impressive conflicts, stretching through vastly greater amounts of time and space. Nevertheless, the chronicles of the galaxy's elder civilizations rate the Idiran-Culture war as the most significant conflict of the past fifty thousand years, and one of the singularly interesting Events they see so rarely these days. In short, we've (sort of) got an updated version of the middle phase of the Arisia-Eddore war. Or another way of putting it is that it's an attempt at a Post-Vinge-Singularity culture, with hints of further cultural/technological singularities to come with several references to even more advanced civilizations, and with updated technology drawn from more recent speculations than those of Lensman days, eg, ringworlds and such. And in further contrast to those super-science tales of yore, the sociodynamics, the personalities, and the scenarios in general are much more fully fleshed out. This story has plenty of technological flash, but rather than describing "coruscating rays" and such to invoke a sense of wonder, the technology is heavily understated. Perhaps the nearest equivalent setting to the Culture might be Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind (though I vacilate over whether it deserves quite *that* much praise). Against this background, the plot follows the adventures of a member of a dying species, the Changers, who is acting as an agent for the Idirans against the Culture for ideological reasons. The book then is superficially an adventure tale, containing a fairly large number of sub-adventures as the protagonist concentrates on local problems of such interest and peril as to make the larger stage fade away from the reader, and snap back into focus as the smaller adventures are resolved. In fact, this changing focus is one of the interesting aspects of the book. In addition to showing the situation from various levels of detail as the story progresses, the reader is presented to various points of view also, both from various characters closer-to and farther-from the "main" adventure story, and from the dispasionate appendix material. Of recent works, it vaguely reminds me of Cook's _The_Dragon_Never_Sleeps_. Of older works (as I said) it reminds me of Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind. I hadn't encountered this author before, but this book has got me looking forward to his next work set in the Idiran-Culture war: _Use_of_Weapons_. %A Iain M. Banks %C New York %D October 1991 %G ISBN 0-553-29281-1 %I Bantam %P 497 pages %T Consider Phlebas -- Wayne Throop ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jan 20 14:25:53 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!psinntp!psinntp!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!network.ucsd.edu!pacbell.com!pacbell!pbhyc!djdaneh From: write@eff.org!write (Glen Cox) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review of Iain Banks' CANAL DREAMS Message-ID: <1992Jan17.173703.3437@pbhyc.PacBell.COM> Date: 17 Jan 92 17:37:03 GMT Sender: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) Reply-To: write@eff.org Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Organization: Pacific * Bell Lines: 43 Approved: djdaneh@pbhyc.pacbell.com === Review of Iain Banks' CANAL DREAMS === Copyright (c) 1991 by Glen E. Cox Banks' first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, was a surprise within a surprise--a well-written horror novel that was also a well-written "mainstream" novel. Since then, Banks has continued to surprise mainstream readers with surrealistic novels like WALKING ON GLASS and THE BRIDGE, as well as surprising science fiction readers with intelligent space opera like CONSIDER PHELBAS and THE PLAYER OF GAMES (Banks' space opera compares favorably with HYPERION by Dan Simmons). In CANAL DREAMS, Banks revisits the type of realistic horror found in the WASP FACTORY. Hisako Onada is a Japanese cellist who refuses to fly, yet wishes to tour Europe. Her agent books her passage on a Japanese freighter, and she gets caught up in a revolution when her ship becomes trapped in the Panama Canal. That's one part of the story. Another story line explores Hisako's background, from the sacrifices that her mother makes early on as she makes it clear that she wishes to play the cello, through the very rigorous Japanese education process, to joining a major Japanese orchestra. The background serves as an important counterpoint to the other storyline, explaining that her refusal to fly is based on a true phobia. Banks is pointing out that phobias are irrational fears, that have no bearing on the bravery or bearing of the person. When the realtime storyline turns wicked, one isn't surprised at Hisako's actions or her ability to weather hardship. Banks' horror is like Stephen King's FIRESTARTER without the pyrokinetic, or Thomas Harris' SILENCE OF THE LAMBS without the psychopaths. CANAL DREAMS is a novel about the kind of horror seen all too frequently in the news, and occurs even more frequently in the real world. And that is true horror. %A Iain Banks %T Canal Dreams %I Macmillan %C London %D 1989 %G ISBN 0-333-51768-7 %O Hardback, UK$12.95 %P 198 pp. %K Associational, Horror, Mainstream From /tmp/sf.4258 Tue Feb 1 03:56:11 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!uunet!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: cortesi@netcom.com (David Cortesi) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review of three novels by Iain M. Banks Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <199312262152.NAA09836@mail.netcom.com> Date: 03 Jan 94 05:38:31 GMT Lines: 222 Bloody Good Reads A Review of Three Novels by Iain M. Banks: CONSIDER PHLEBAS -- USE OF WEAPONS -- AGAINST A DARK BACKGROUND Review Copyright 1993 by David E. Cortesi Iain M. Banks writes great galumphing adventure tales, packed with invention and incident. Barring one important reservation that I'll come to later, I can recommmend any of the three reviewed here as a page-turner that would be perfect for whiling away the hours of a long layover at Dallas-Fort Worth airport or a rainy weekend in Tacoma, WA. What follows are capsule summaries, spoiler-free, of the three titles above. After them I present one important reason you might NOT want to read any of them, and add some general comments on Banks' work. CONSIDER PHLEBAS takes place during a war of galactic scale. Horza, a stoic, bitter, and angst-filled member of a dying sub-species of humanity, is caught up in events and given a dangerous mission: to quest for a missing Mind, a super-AI, hiding in a cavernous labyrinth on a proscribed planet. He pursues this task doggedly, violently, across a staggering variety of awesome landscapes and through a vivid succession of perils. In the end he achieves what is at best a Pyrrhic victory. CONSIDER PHLEBAS takes place in Banks' "Culture Universe." The Culture is a culmination of sorts to humanoid evolution. It is Banks' speculative answer to the following very interesting question: We can now foresee a time when, through genetic engineering -- or robotics -- or nanotech -- or mining the asteroids -- or (here insert your favorite deus ex technica), we will be able to banish all material want. Then what do we do? All of our economic and social mechinery is built on axioms of scarcity. Everything we do is related in some way to the allocation of scarce resources among too many recipients. But in a world in which any human could command literally any material good he or she desired, what foundation would remain for human culture? How can we define ourselves to ourselves when there are no degrees of richness and no "work" that needs doing? I first saw this question posed in a James P. Hogan novel. Hogan's answer was: we would compete for the good opinion of others (respect is always in short supply). Iain Banks' answer is: by good works. The Culture, a multiracial civilization that spans the galaxy and possesses technological power beyond magnificence (which it wields with verve and a complete lack of parsimony) finds its inner purpose in helping younger civilizations along, as subtly and unintrusively as it can -- like an elephant attempting dentistry on a mouse. Banks' Culture folk are well-meaning, hedonistic, possessed of dire powers yet withal a bit vague and ill-focussed. Their benign interventions often go painfully wrong with tragic consequences for their pawns. The Culture, in short, is a European writer's sharp caricature of Americans. The satire is not pressed as such, but it is clear and remorselessly funny. USE OF WEAPONS also takes place in the Culture universe. Cheradenine Zakalwe is a soldier of fortune, the stoic, bitter, angst-filled survivor of too many military misadventures -- some carried out on commission from The Culture, others free-lance adventures. The story is structured as a series of flashbacks that spiral toward the source of Zakalwe's angst. These are interleaved with the account of his final mission for The Culture. He pursues it doggedly, violently, across a staggering variety of awesome landscapes and through a vivid succession of perils. In the end he achieves something rather less than a Pyrrhic victory. AGAINST A DARK BACKGROUND is not a Culture novel. Instead it is set in a single solar system, one which, we are given to understand, is so isolated from other stars that the inhabitants have never been able to make the leap to interstellar travel. They have populated all the planets of their system; indeed several space-faring civilizations have risen and fallen. The present civilization is a colorful, decadent texture of opposing religious and commercial interests, loosely ruled by a hereditary commercial aristocracy. Sharrow is a daughter of an aristocratic house (as she curtly tells a functionary who insists on having her last name, "I don't have a last name, I'm a fucking aristo"). She is -- yes -- stoic, bitter, and angst-filled. Unlike the heros of the previous two books, Sharrow has solid reasons for being so, and these are made clear early in the story. She is stoic because she is an ex-soldier, a successful squadron leader in a recent war. She is bitter because a religious cult has been granted judicial leave to hunt her down and kill her (also for a number of other reasons that are revealed as the story unfolds). She is angst-filled because, indirectly and inadvertently, she caused a few million deaths. The deaths came about from the misuse of the second-to-last remaining Lazy Gun, a relic of a previous civilization. Sharrow had it, but turned it over to the improper authorities, who blew up themselves and a city with it. Now, to save herself from that religious cult, she has no choice but to search for the final Lazy Gun. She reassembles her wartime squadron and sets out on the quest. She pursues it doggedly, violently, across a staggering variety of awesome landscapes and through a vivid succession of perils. In the end she achieves something a little better than a Pyrrhic victory. Very well, I've been poking fun at the fundamental sameness of these stories. In truth, the formula is only evident in retrospect. There is a lot to praise in these books. (There is also a lot to find fault with. In fact, there is simply A Lot in each of them.) Here's why you might want to pass them all up and read something else: Banks kills his sympathetic characters. I dislike and distrust authors who do this -- who create likeable, sympathetic people and cut them down. I will never read another book by Elmore Leonard, not after he made me fall half in love with a female lead and then let her be chased down and butchered with a submachine gun. Joe Haldeman disgusted me when he ended a recent book with a pointless bloodbath. The characters in which an author invites me to invest my empathy are supposed to end up *changed* -- possibly sadder and more scarred, but wiser in some way. Dead is not changed; dead is dead. Unheroic death -- simply falling a casualty to a plot element -- is a denial of the value of the character and a nasty joke on the reader's trust. Banks does this with regularity. This is not a spoiler, it is a consumer alert: do not become attached to any character in the novels under review here. The odds are very good that the character you like best or empathize with the most will not survive to the final page. All of these books close with stages as corpse-littered as Hamlet's. If Banks wrote ordinary eye-fodder, this ugly characteristic would make the books unworthy of review. But there is more to them, both good and bad. The most astonishing thing about Iain Banks' work is his every-changing quicksilver flow of invention. He never seems to run out of new scenery and plot twists. As long as you keep reading and don't think too deeply, the never-ending flow of images is spellbinding. Banks is profligate with his scenery. Larry Niven wrote two novels to explore his one Ringworld. Banks uses a ringworld (he calls it an orbital) as the set for one-third of CONSIDER PHLEBAS, then moves on to bigger things. (The Culture builds ringworlds the way we put up shopping malls.) The elements of this flow are derived from the standard components of science fiction, but they are fractured and recombined by a kaleidoscopic mind. Banks uses the conventions of SF the way Robin Williams uses the voices and slogans of pop culture: you recognize his quotes and impressions, but they come so fast in such outrageous combinations that everything is new and fun again. Some of the fun is in the sheer effrontery of it. You suddenly realize the incongruity of what you've been reading, and you can only laugh at how Banks' narrative skill has conned you into placidly accept something completely over the top. In the opening scene of CONSIDER PHLEBAS, Horza is in the process of being executed by being drowned in shit. In USE OF WEAPONS, Zakalwe recalls in detail the process of being decapitated. (The Culture zoomed in to rescue his head and regrew his body from it). The object of Sharrow's search is a weapon with a sense of humor. Sharrow's sister lives in a monastery where the penitents are permanently manacled to little trolleys that run in tracks that criss-cross the walls and floors. And so on. Mixed up with these cartoon visions are others that have the true science-fiction Awe Factor. Banks is just as profligate with these as with the others (does he know the difference?). For some reason I can't forget one of the most domestic: a glass-bottomed swimming pool in AGAINST A DARK BACKGROUND, cantilevered out over a cliff so that as you swim you look down through water at a sunny landscape thousands of feet below. After his profligate imagination, Banks' greatest skill is in the narration of violence. I don't know another writer who can depict a fight so vividly and with such pace. You see and appreciate every bullet, blow, laser beam or garroting. One of the most striking scenes in CONSIDER PHLEBAS is a foot chase and hand-to-hand fight to the death that takes place in twilight, in a ramp where giant hovercraft are coming up out of the sea. The characters claw at each other in the dark, the glare, the noise and spray -- it has unforgettable, stark clarity. And that brings up a reason why you might be cautious about recommending these books to anyone young: they are unrelentingly violent. The characters kill and are killed, torture and maim and destroy, and rarely for ends that could be justified in any scheme of morals. CONSIDER PHLEBAS is perhaps the worst on this account -- Horza kills twice to save his own life, but he also plots a murder and carries it out for no other reason than to steal a ship. The others are saturated with painful and violent episodes. It's all coloful and cartoon-like, but behind it all is acceptance of the idea that when all is said and done, the effective resolution to any conflict can be found in firepower. Well, Sharrow tries to reach the opposite conclusion, but circumstances won't let her. Finally, I could talk about the structure of the books: how they read as if Banks didn't know the meanings of either "rewrite" or "enough" -- how at least a third of CONSIDER PHLEBAS is tangential to the plot and cuttable -- how the final resolution of USE OF WEAPONS is a twist that is only slightly less manipulative than ending a story with "and then I woke up, it had all been a dream" -- how the fussy, smart-mouth "drones" of the Culture books are nothing but British stage butlers dressed up to look like floating suitcases -- but what's the point? These aren't supposed to be great works; they are meant to be great sprawling entertainments, and they succeed at it. They are bloody good reads, in all senses. %A Iain M. Banks %T CONSIDER PHLEBAS %I St. Martin's Press, NY %D 1987 %I Bantam Books %D 1991 %G ISBN 0-553-29281-1 %O $5.99 %P 497 pp %A Iain M. Banks %T USE OF WEAPONS %I MacDonald and Co. %D 1990 %I Bantam Books %D 1992 %G ISBN 0-553-29224-2 %O $5.99 %P 389 pp %A Iain M. Banks %T AGAINST A DARK BACKGROUND %I Bantam Books %D 1993 %G ISBN 0-553-29225-2 %O $5.99 %P 515 pp From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 01:59:46 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: kevin716@aol.com Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Against a Dark Background Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 9 May 1994 19:00:44 GMT Organization: America Online Lines: 62 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9405082325.tn295267@aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu I read with enjoyment two of Iain M. Banks' earlier works, THE PLAYER OF GAMES and CONSIDER PHLEBAS. Though both were written concerning the same advanced space-faring civilization (the Culture), they differed widely in tone and storyline. AGAINST A DARK BACKGROUND is not a story set in the Culture -- and that is only the beginning of the differences between this work and the two previously mentioned. Events here are not on the galaxy-spanning level of the Culture novels, but on a much smaller scale. We are taken to the planet Golter in the Thrial system and introduced to a world that seems to be an amalgamation of capitalism and litigation run amok. The Golterians have over the countless millennia tried every conceivable political system and found them all wanting. They've discovered and used technologies of almost unbelievable complexity only to disdain, disregard, or prohibit them. Nominally this is all overseen by the World Court. But underneath is a continual but seemingly pointless struggle between various legal, financial, and religious entities. One of these religious entities wants to repossess a weapon of antiquity that they regard as an an irreplaceable religious icon; the Lazy Gun. Failing this they want to kill the last living female member of the family line they hold responsible for stealing it -- the Lady Sharrow. This is ostensibly the crux of the matter; the Lady Sharrow must find the last remaining Lazy Gun and return it to the Huhsz religious fanatics before they find and kill her. There are plenty of subplots, twists, and turns along the way. There are action scenes, sibling rivalries, political and social insights, and various attempts at humor. The Lazy Gun itself seems to pop right out of a Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams slapstick scene. And it probably stands as a symbol of what is wrong with this work. For there is something wrong. The novel doesn't rise to the levels Banks has set in his other novels. Within the first 75 pages I found I was treading water just waiting for it to get better. Before the end of the book I was turning pages simply to find out how it ended; there was little in the writing itself that gave pleasure. The Prologue starts out in the usual Banks style, but it is probably the highlight of the book. After those first six pages it's all downhill. I can see the skeleton of the story and its similarities to Banks' other works, but it's as if he handed that skeleton to a different, less talented writer to flesh out. There are many often pointless flashbacks that give the story a disjointed feel. There are whimsical attempts at humor, like the Lazy Gun, that just seem out of place. And the whole novel runs along willy-nilly lacking a cohesive vision. I wouldn't recommend this book. If you've enjoyed Banks' previous novels you'll be disappointed. If you haven't read anything by Banks, don't start with this novel. It could turn you away from a writer who has written several excellent novels. %A Banks, Iain M. %T Against a Dark Background %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D 1993 %G ISBN 0-553-29225-0 %O paperback, US$4.99 From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 02:03:15 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!ugle.unit.no!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!nuug!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!udel!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: mcb@derrida.postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Organization: Postmodern Consulting, San Francisco, California USA Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: THE WASP FACTORY by Iain Banks Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9405140220.153793@derrida.postmodern.com> Date: Sat, 21 May 1994 19:07:05 GMT Lines: 87 THE WASP FACTORY by Iain Banks reviewed by Michael C. Berch Scottish writer Iain M. Banks is perhaps best known to us for his recent SF novels, notably CONSIDER PHLEBAS and USE OF WEAPONS. But minus his middle initial, he has published seven nominally mainstream novels, the first of which appeared in the UK from Macmillan in 1984. Banks' "mainstream" fiction would have little difficult qualifying for a horror publisher's imprint if it came to that -- THE WASP FACTORY is considerably more disturbing than most work that appears inside the red-silver-and-black covers of US mass-market paperback horror. This novel earned Banks instant (and well-deserved) notice, and this trade paper reprint edition cheerfully displays some samples of contemporaneous British critical opinion, ranging from PUNCH, which called THE WASP FACTORY "a first novel not only of tremendous promise, but also achievement, a minor masterpiece perhaps," to the IRISH TIMES which wrote, "It is a sick, sick world when the confidence and investment of an astute firm of publishers is justified by a work of unparalleled depravity." The TIMES OF LONDON merely noted that "perhaps it is all a joke, meant to fool literary London into respect for rubbish." Notwithstanding the above, THE WASP FACTORY held this reviewer's rapt attention through almost the entirety of a nonstop flight from London to San Francisco. THE WASP FACTORY is the story of 16 year-old Frank Cauldhame, who lives with his father in rural Scotland, and whose world revolves around a bizarre and intricate set of obsessive-compulsive personal rituals, most of which take place on a small, windswept private island or in the loft of the house, a place secure from intrusion by Frank's half-lame father who cannot climb the loft ladder. Early on, Frank calmly recounts to us that as a child, he murdered three young companions, one of whom was his younger brother, but (as he relates), "I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through." Despite this monstrosity, and the cruel details of his mechanical rituals, many of which involve killing and dissecting animals, Frank is a likeable character. We do not understand him, but he is not difficult to get along with. Perhaps he has inherited his eccentric nature from his father, a distant and sardonic man whose own obsessions include requiring Frank to learn -- and recite upon prompting -- the dimensions and mass of various household objects. As the novel begins, Frank learns of a threat to his strangely idyllic existence -- his older brother Eric has escaped from a mental institution and is believed to be headed toward Frank and his father. Eric remains offstage as Frank, in each of the early chapters, anecdotally describes the three murders in complete detail, and shows how each has contributed to his precious store of treasured objects and place-names of his private island. And through this we learn obliquely of a "little accident" in Frank's early childhood that has deformed him in some unstated manner. By mid-book the complete nature of Frank's "accident" is known, and we begin to understand the nature of his acts, and feel sympathy for him as someone who will forever be excluded from mainstream society, and who has instead constructed an intricate system -- almost a complete personal religion, with mythology and sacrifice -- that provides an anchor for him in a world that would otherwise seem unbearable. But by then the escaped Eric is drawing closer, the auguries of Frank's insect-driven oracle -- the Wasp Factory of the title -- have grown dark and threatening, and Banks carries us through the final third of the novel in a dazzling whirlwind of suspense, violence, terror, and ultimately personal discovery and confrontation. This is not a book for the squeamish or easily disturbed, but it is a fascinating portrait of an intelligent but obsessed mind -- and a notable beginning to Iain Banks' brilliant writing career. %A Banks, Iain %T The Wasp Factory %I Abacus/Little, Brown %C London %D 1990 (original 1984) %G ISBN 0-349-10177-9 %O GBP5.99 %P 184 pp., trade pb -- Michael C. Berch mcb@postmodern.com / mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 02:12:15 1994 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!usc!nic-nac.CSU.net!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!csusac!csus.edu!netcom.com!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: hoj@sloth.demon.co.uk (Stephen MG Hodge) Subject: Feersum Endjinn Message-ID: <47@sloth.demon.co.uk> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Organization: The Internet Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 23:31:01 GMT Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Lines: 74 Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks Orbit, June 1994, 279 pages, GBP15.99 A Review by Stephen M.G.Hodge Iain M. Banks' latest SF offering again moves away from the milieu of Culture in which his early SF novels Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games and Use of Weapons are set. Feersum Endjinn however displays the same arresting imaginative flights of fancy as his earlier books, but in a rather more controlled and discplined manner than in Against a Dark Background which I felt was perhaps over full with novelties. However Feersum Endjinn still has the authentic Banks' look and feel of a complex civilisation in full maturity, if not decay, with millenia of history tradition and culture determining events as much as the efforts of the characters; and he is still fascinated by size. In Feersum Endjinn, instead of intelligent starships hundreds of kilometres long as in the Culture, we have a 20-plus kilometre high structure set somewhere on the North American land mass, in the form of a medieval castle, with a tower and rooms and halls and windows kilometres high and wide; as so often with Banks' inventions one says to oneself 'Why not?', especially later in the story when the original purpose of this gigantic structure becomes clear. Banks has applied his fertile imagination to the cyberpunk/virtual reality world, and comes up with the Data Corpus or the crypt. The crypt is the result of thousands of generations of humnan and cybernetic evolution for into the crypt go the personalities of every inhabitant of the planet, as downloaded by their 'implants' at the moment of their final death (in this world you get eight real lives and eight virtual lives) A good part of the action takes place in crypt, where times runs several thousand times faster than in 'base reality', (a useful plot device), and you can get killed or damaged severely in an impressive variety of ways. Indeed some of the characters exist only in the crypt, while the most engaging of them, Bascule, makes his living by diving into the crypt to interrogate its inhabitants. Banks I think likes to challenge his readers, sometimes - as in his main stream novels such as the Wasp Factory - by shocking them, and in this case making us suffer from Bascule's insistence on spelling phonetically (he can't do otherwise he tells us because 'unlike evrybody els I got this weerd wirin in mi brane so I cant spel rite juss have 2 do evrythin foneticly') You suffer with it however (Bascule writing in the first person takes up perhaps 20% of the book) because Bascule is an engaging character, and the action moves along when he takes up the story. As always with Banks there are plenty of other interesting characters, both bad guys and good guys, cyberbetic, animal and human, including Egates, a mechanical ant who is Bascule's friend but has a mission, Count Sessine who someone is trying to assassinate, which is a long job when you still have one real and eight virtual lives to go through, a King who gets his kicks by spying on his subjects through their implants and Gadfium the Chief Scientist and the alter ego she creates in the crypt. The story line concerns the response of this decaying civilisation on Earth -- left behind after most of mankind migrated to the stars -- to the encroachment on the Solar syatem of an interstellar dust cloud, which is first going to freeze the Earth, then turn the Sun nova. The political classes and their henchmen are of course working on saving themselves and no-one else, and actively opposing the effort of the good guys, and whoever or whatever it is at the bottom of the crypt and the top of tower. The action moves along rather smartly on several levels with a satisfying outcome at the end. All in all a worthwhile read. %A Banks, Iain M. %T Feersum Endjinn %I Orbit/Little Brown & Company (UK) Ltd. %C London, UK %D 1994 %G ISBN 1-85723-235-6 %P 279pp %O hardback, GBP15.99 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Jun 25 13:37:52 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!erix.ericsson.se!fci-se!fci!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!netnews.com!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!ai-lab!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: agapow@latcs1.cs.latrobe.edu.au (p-m agapow) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: "Excession" by Iain M Banks Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 24 Jun 1998 15:15:24 -0400 Organization: Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Biologists Lines: 78 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1939 "Excession" by Iain M. Banks A Postview, copyright 1998, p-m agapow In the galaxy-spanning utopia of the Culture, an Excession is an object that is excessively strange, excessively violent, and excessively dangerous. One has cropped up right on their doorstep, an enigmatic black sphere that does nothing. But just by being there the Excession galvanises a number of conflicting parties into action: a centuries-old conspiracy, a belligerent alien horde, a teenage dilettante angling for a military career, and a rogue warship turned orbital graveyard. Banks could spend a profitable career just churning out more Culture books. Thankfully he hasn't opted to do that and instead has slowly peeled the layers surrounding his fictional universe, which thus becomes more interesting with every book. With "Excession," we get our closest look at the Culture yet. As a consequence, this book is largely, but not exclusively, for those who have read at least some of the preceding books. One could profitably read with without knowledge of those preceding: "Consider Phlebas," "The Player of Games," some stories in "State of the Art," and "The Use of Weapons." Being set in an effective utopia, stories of the Culture face a general problem. In a world with almost limitless energy and resources, where almost all things are possible, how does one introduce drama? Banks has solved this problem previously by telling stories of individuals, and dealing with things that - ethically - neither the Culture nor these people will do. In "Excession" the situation has changed. The artifact presents an Out-of-Context Problem, Culture-speak for something so wildly out of their experience that countermeasures are unthinkable. Despite vast military power, another group may gain control of the Excession first. For once the Excession is something the Culture needs. Also we see the universe not through one point of view, but a multitude. This complexity does present some challenges. Hydra-like, the book keeps sprouting new plot threads and characters to a point at which it is difficult to keep it all straight. Especially when it comes to Culture ships and distinguishing names like "Fate Amenable to Change" from "Not Invented Here" and "Shoot Them Later." Arguably, some of these do not advance the story and may even be connected only tangentially to the main plot. One character, after a several pages of life history and description, is then summarily killed. In effect, he shows up just so he can die. Also problematic is the ending. Although not, as others have described it, a "shaggy dog" finish, there is the sense that the central problem of the Excession is not really resolved but just dispelled. Perhaps it is best to think that "Excession" is more about the smaller stories that make up the narrative rather than the eponymous artifact. These are small complaints, provoked only by the high expectations one has of Banks. As usual, he has produced a story that is an enjoyable romp without being dumb, and a detailed setting that is not a dry tour of interesting landmarks. The most amusing and horrifying are the alien Affront, a species whose boisterously violent nature is illustrated by their use of genetic engineering to ensure that all their food is alive, sentient, and easily frightened. As their name indicates, they are an affront to all the civilised species in the galaxy. Along the way we see the complicated and hedonistic lives of Culture citizens and the complex politics of the Minds (AIs) that actually run the Culture. This is not to deny the vicarious pleasure of several boffo space battles and a sprinkling of sex, violence and betrayal. Amazingly, despite its complexity and reasonable length, "Excession" is very readable and pacy. For those who may have been a little disappointed by Banks' previous "Feersum Enjin" and "Against A Dark Background", this will represent a return to form. Those who weren't will find this another great book. As always with Banks, recommended, [***/interesting] and a five-ring circus on the Sid and Nancy scale. %A Iain M. Banks %T Excession %I Orbit %C London %D 1997 %P 455pp %G ISBN 1-85723-457-X %O paperback, Aus$16.95 Paul-Michael Agapow (agapow@computer.org), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse "There is no adventure, there is no romance, there is only trouble and desire." From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 10 12:42:53 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: pj@willowsoft.compulink.co.uk (Paul S Jenkins) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Banks' _Consider Phlebas_ Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 03 Aug 1998 12:03:11 -0400 Organization: CIX - Compulink Information eXchange Lines: 47 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: pj@willowsoft.compulink.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2079 _Consider Phlebas_ by Iain M. Banks Review Copyright (c) 1998 Paul S. Jenkins One of the questions that novice writers are told to ask is, "What's the worst thing that could possibly happen to your main character?" Banks has obviously asked this question, and he answers it on the first page of Chapter One. _Consider Phlebas_ opens with the protagonist suspended in a rapidly filling tank of ordure. By the end of page two he's holding his breath because the excrement has risen above his nose. This is an all-action space opera. Bora Horza Gobuchul, a 'changer' able to alter his physical appearance using a kind of metamorphic trance, takes the side of the Idirans in their galactic war with the 'Culture.' It's not long before nail-biting action sequences are relentlessly piling in, each related in breathless but intricate detail. I came to this novel, Banks' first book in the 'Culture' series, having read only one other of his -- _Complicity_ -- written under his Iain Banks identity, the missing middle initial indicating 'mainstream' rather than SF. I wasn't sure what to expect, but whereas _Complicity_ uses some unconventional techniques, _Consider Phlebas_ is -- with a few digressions -- a straightforward single-viewpoint third-person narrative. _Consider Phlebas_ introduces the Culture in some detail, but the passages describing various aspects of it seem largely irrelevant to the plot. Banks is obviously setting up his milieu for a series of sequels. In appendices he gives details of the war, and the subsequent exploits of the novel's survivors. The outcome for his main character is such that the sequels are guaranteed to be different, not just more of the same. The scope of the novel is vast, conjuring huge civilizations, humanoid aliens, non-humanoid aliens, artificial intelligences, sentient spacecraft, hyperspace, anti-gravity, and all manner of generally acknowledged SF cliches. But Banks' handling of all these is so assured, one just sits back and enjoys the ride. His style is direct, detailed and transparent. At about 450 pages (not counting the appendices) the novel is fairly long, but there's a lot in it. For its ingredients Banks has borrowed from the best, and mixed a rich stew. Highly recommended. %A Banks, Iain M. %T Consider Phlebas %I Orbit (Little, Brown) %C London %D 1988 (copyright 1987) %G ISBN 1 85723 138 4 %P 471 pp. %O paperback, GBP 6.99 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Jun 11 09:38:53 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!nntp.primenet.com!nntp.gctr.net!newsfeed.enteract.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.cwix.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: danny@anatomy.usyd.edu.au (Danny Yee) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Book Review - The State of the Art by Iain Banks Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Organization: A poorly-installed InterNetNews site X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Date: 06 Jun 2000 11:09:18 -0400 Message-ID: Lines: 40 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 960304158 10887 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2738 The State of the Art, Iain Banks Review Copyright 2000 Danny Yee When the Culture General Contact Unit _Arbitrary_ arrives at Earth, it finds nothing that is at all novel in the global scheme of things -- a textbook "sophisticated stage three" culture, this one obsessed with weird concepts like "property" and "money." But for the people on board it is still rather exciting, and they respond in radically different ways: Sma argues for contact, for an attempt to try and fix the mess; Linter goes native, even choosing to have his body crippled so as to be more like the locals; and Li argues that dropping a micro black hole into the Earth's core would be a more elegant way to dispose of the whole "incontestably neurotic and clinically insane species" than using a virus or collapsed anti-matter. But the _Arbitrary_ has ideas of its own and, being a million times more intelligent (and powerful) than anything else in the system, it gets to call the shots. With its direct juxtaposition of the Culture and Earth reality, the novella "The State of the Art" is less subtle in its politics than Banks' other Culture novels, but still a major addition to the corpus. It takes up half of the collection named after it; seven short stories make up the rest. Among them are two more Culture stories ("A Gift From the Culture" and "Descendant"), the playfully macabre "Odd Attachment", the surreal "Road of Skulls", and another alien contact story with a twist ("Cleaning Up"). Newcomers should probably start with one of the novels, but Banks fans won't want to miss _The State of the Art_. %T The State of the Art %A Banks, Iain M. %I Orbit %C London %D 1991 %O paperback %G ISBN 1-85723-030-2 %P 216pp %K science fiction, short fiction 3 June 2000 Danny Yee's Book Reviews http://dannyreviews.com/