"Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The"
"Hand Me The Gun And Ask Me Again"
"Lapsed Pacifist"
"Subtle Shift In Emphasis"
I read science fiction to wonder at new ideas, concepts and their effects. But the Culture sounds like an incredible place to live. It's incredible that Banks could invent, create and hold the entirety of the Culture in his head.
We live in a pretty cynical time. One part of that is in our stories. We often take the quick path to "interesting" ideas by tearing apart good things. Utopia can't be, write about a dystopia instead. It is easier that way. This rut is comfortable.
It gets the author out of the hard task of building something that fits together well, and out of having to dream up something that works and that they would genuinely like to live in. Thinking up terrible things and things that fall apart can be much easier than thinking up what would make us lastingly happy. It also lets the listeners/readers/viewers of the story not think about their world in relation to some better world. That can be depressing; looking into a warm, comfy restaurant can just highlight how cold, poor, and hungry you are. Comparing our lives to those poor schmucks in some "utopia" with an terrible dark side isn't so bad; it doesn't impugn us for not having made something truly good to live in a reality.
But I'm so glad that Banks didn't go that route. Sci-fi needs to be able to get out of that rut. And it isn't that he doesn't know dark topics or how to write them; he can wrench a reader's guts along with the best of 'em. Yet he did the harder thing of looking for a consistent, shining-happy civilization to dream of living in. Gene Roddenberry got no small fame for a popular but rather more shoddy try at that many decades back. Banks did it with top notch sci-fi and writing skill. And I'd love to live in his utopia too.
But the books themselves, not the Culture, also include plenty of gut wrenching. Not as some easy dark side to the Culture itself. But at the edges of it, where the friction happens from its interaction with less nice places to live.
> Just introduced the works of Iain M. Banks to a friend, so something happy does come from sad news.
And I've just purchased Player of Games, maybe not based on your personal recommendation, but certainly on the collective recommendation since this news broke. Kind of a sad way to get introduced to an author, but OTOH I think it would be somewhat nice that even my impending death would lead to new readers of my work.
I do feel like I'm the last geek/techy/nerd/HN/SlashDot reader on the planet to have heard of him, though.
Good to hear. I also just purchased Player of Games... for the 3rd time... I think I'm going to read through the Culture novels again... for the 2nd or 3rd time.
Also, if you're a fan of the Culture universe and want a smile, have a gander at a list of Culture ship names @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Cultu...
I read science fiction to wonder at new ideas, concepts and their effects. But the Culture sounds like an incredible place to live. It's incredible that Banks could invent, create and hold the entirety of the Culture in his head.