This article is an overview of one of my favourite writers in the Science Fiction genre.
About Iain M. Banks
Iain Banks (16 February 1954 – 9 June 2013) was a Scottish author. He wrote mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, including the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies.
After the publication and success of The Wasp Factory (1984), Banks began to write on a full-time basis. His first science fiction book, Consider Phlebas, was released in 1987, marking the start of the Culture series. His books have been adapted for theatre, radio and television. In 2008, The Times named Banks in their list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945”.
Iain M. Banks Culture Series Books and Review
The Culture is a fictional interstellar post-scarcity civilization created by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks. The Culture series consists of a series of ten novels set in this universe.
Each book has a different story (space opera like Star Wars, not much hard science), characters and though each could be read independently, I suggest following the sequence to make better sense of some of the universe and civilization-building elements.
The series is what I imagine a space-faring human civilization will hopefully evolve into – a benevolent culture encouraging all humans to work towards realizing their potential, made up of different species co-existing on Galaxy spanning star systems and their planets, but also in artificially created Orbitals and run by all-knowing artificial intelligence Minds, Drones and General Systems Vehicles (space ships with funny and memorable names like Of Course I Still Love You* or Funny, It Worked Last Time, All Through With This Niceness And Negotiation Stuff) the size of entire worlds, and that can evacuate planets should the need arise. And, of course, Special Circumstances, the shadowy agency of Culture that “had always been the Contact section’s moral espionage weapon, the very cutting edge of the Culture’s interfering diplomatic policy, the elite of the elite, in a society which abhorred elitism.”
* Elon Musk is a fan of this series and SpaceX’s droneship, where the Falcon rocket’s Stage 1 back on Earth, is also named Of Course I Still Love You.
The series is a fascinating read – with good character building, poignant stories and an experimentation with the narrative structure. You may enjoy it even if you haven’t read Science Fiction before.
The series starts with the novel Consider Phlebas whose name is inspired by T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Wasteland.’
Books in the Culture series
- Consider Phelbas
- The Player of Games
- Use of Weapons
- The State of the Art
- Excession
- Inversions
- Look to Windward
- Matter
- Surface Detail
- The Hydrogen Sonata
Use the ‘Free Preview’ link to read an excerpt of the book.
Consider Phlebas (Culture series Book 1)
An episode in a full-scale war between the Culture and the Idirans. Told from the point of view of an Idiran agent, Bora Horza Gobuchul who is chasing after a Culture Mind that has taken refuge in a forbidden Schar’s world, and who in turn is being chased by Special Circumstances agent Balveda with the drone Unaha-Closp mixed up with both.
The first part of the plot takes us on a whirlwind tour of and universe building and then focuses on the story around the Mind.
Consider Phlebas Quotes
I had nightmares I thought were really horrible until I woke up and remembered what reality was at the moment.
Empathize with stupidity and you’re halfway to thinking like an idiot
They sought to take the unfairness out of existence, to remove the mistakes in the transmitted message of life which gave it any point or advancement…
Us with our busy, busy little lives, finding no better way to pass our years than in competitive disdain.
The Player of Games (Culture series Book 2)
A bored member of the Culture, Jernau Gurgeh, is blackmailed into being the Culture’s agent by a Special Circumstances drone, Flere-Imsaho, in a plan to subvert a brutal, hierarchical empire. His mission is to win an empire-wide tournament of Azad, ‘a game that represents life itself‘, by which the ruler of the empire is selected.
The Player of Games Quotes
By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, at the sub-atomic level, cannot be fully predicted, the future remains malleable, and retains the possibility of change, the hope of coming to prevail; victory, to use an unfashionable word. In this, the future is a game; time is one of the rules.
Common misconception that; that fun is relaxing. If it is, you’re not doing it right.
All reality seemed to hinge on those infinitesimal bundles of meaning.
A guilty system recognizes no innocents.
“..Jernau Gurgeh,” the machine said, making a sighing noise, “a guilty system recognizes no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody’s either for it or against it, we’re against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. The very way you think places you among its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximize that effect, and some try to minimize it. You come from one of the latter and you’re being asked to explain yourself to one of the former. Prevarication will be more difficult than you might imagine; neutrality is probably impossible. You cannot choose not to have the politics you do; they are not some separate set of entities somehow detachable from the rest of your being; they are a function of your existence. I know that and they know that; you had better accept it.” Gurgeh thought about this. “Can I lie?
Does identity matter anyway? I have my doubts. We are what we do, not what we think. Only the interactions count (there is no problem with free will here; that’s not incompatible with believing your actions define you). And what is free will anyway? Chance. The random factor. If one is not ultimately predictable, then of course that’s all it can be.
Use of Weapons (Culture series Book 3)
This one has an interesting narrative structure with chapters describing the current mission of a Culture special agent, Cheradenine Zakalwe, born and raised on a non-Culture planet, alternate with chapters that describe in reverse chronological order earlier missions, and the traumatic events that made him who he is. A brilliant tale, containing other memorable characters Diziet Sma and a drone named Skaffen-Amtiskaw, with a twist in the end!
Use of Weapons Quotes
‘You been mud wrestling..?’
‘Only with my conscience.’
‘Really? Who won?’
‘Well, it was one of those rare occasions when violence really doesn’t solve anything.’
…in all human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.
The bomb lives only as it is falling.
I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives them pleasure. And anyway” – the man laughed – “people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of course, if all I did was wipe tables, then of course it would seem a mean and despicable waste of my huge intellectual potential. But because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure. And,” the man said with a smile, “it’s a good way of meeting people. So where are you from, anyway?
The way to a man’s heart is through his chest!
But just because something does not have an ending doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a conclusion.
The State of the Art (Culture series Book 4)
This is a short story collection.
The State of the Art Quotes
What’s one more meaningless act of violence on that zoo of a planet?
It would be appropriate.
When in Rome; burn it.
Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.
Excession (Culture series Book 5)
Excession is tale where all the primary actors are GSVs and their Minds, where an alien artifact, advanced beyond the Culture’s understanding, is used by one group of Minds to lure a civilization (the behaviour of which they disapprove) into war; another group of Minds works against the conspiracy. A sub-plot covers how two humanoids make up their differences after traumatic events that happened 40 years earlier.
It outlines how Culture deals with an Outside Context Problem (OCP), the kind of problem “most civilizations would encounter just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.“
Excession Quotes
But then, as she knew too well, the more fondly we imagine something will last forever, the more ephemeral it often proves to be.
Look at these humans! How could such glacial slowness even be called life? An age could pass, virtual empires rise and fall in the time they took to open their mouths to utter some new inanity!
Inversions (Culture series Book 6)
Another one with an interesting plot with two interleaved narratives in what is considered as Bank’s attempt to “write a Culture novel that wasn’t.” – it recounts what appear to be the activities of a Special Circumstances agent and a Culture emigrant on a planet whose development is roughly equivalent to medieval Europe.
Inversions Quotes
Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place – and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all – so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.
One believed what one was told to believe, what it made sense to believe. Unless one was a foreigner, of course, or a philosopher.
Look to Windward (Culture series Book 7)
The Culture has interfered in the development of a race known as the Chelgrians, with disastrous consequences. Now, in the light of a star that was destroyed 800 years previously during the Idiran War, plans for revenge are being hatched. Another novel with a name inspired by T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland.’
Look to Windward Quotes
‘The point is: what happens in heaven?’
‘Unknowable wonderfulness?’
‘Nonsense. The answer is nothing. Nothing can happen because if something happens, in fact if something can happen, then it doesn’t represent eternity. Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that is almost a definition of what life is: change.’
‘If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual’s circumstances – and that must include at least the possibility that they alter for the worse – then you don’t have life after death; you just have death.’
Matter (Culture series Book 8)
A Culture special agent, Djan Seriy Anaplian, who is a princess of an early-industrial society on a huge artificial planet, setup by an ancient long-dead species, learns that her father and brother have been killed and decides to return to her homeworld. When she returns, she finds a far deeper threat.
Matter Quotes
In life you hoped to do what you could but mostly you did what you were told and that was the end of it.
Surface Detail (Culture series Book 9)
A young woman seeks revenge on her murderer after being brought back to life by Culture technology. Meanwhile, a war over the digitized souls of the dead is expanding from cyberspace into the real world. Has a character from earlier novels using an alias that’s revealed in the end. Hence not giving out any names!
Surface Detail Quotes
All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself. Very specific; this bit, here, right now.
He knew all the answers. Everybody did. Everybody knew everything and everybody knew all the answers. It was just that the enemy seemed to know better ones.
It could always all be unreal – how could you ever tell otherwise? You took it on trust, in part because what would be the point of doing anything else? When the fake behaved exactly like the real, why treat it as anything different? You gave it the benefit of the doubt, until something proved otherwise.
Insult, like many such feelings, is experienced in the soul of the person addressed; it is not something that can be granted or withheld by the person doing the addressing.
The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture series Book 10)
The Gzilt, a civilization that joined Culture ten thousand years ago, has decided to Sublime, leaving behind ‘the Real’ and take up residence in higher dimensions. However, a secret from far back in their history threatens to unravel their plans. Aided by a number of Culture vessels and their avatars, one of the Gzilt tries to discover if much of their history was actually a lie.
The Hydrogen Sonata Quotes
One should never regret one’s excesses, only one’s failures of nerve.
There was something comforting about having a vast hydrogen furnace burning millions of tons of material a second at the centre of a solar system. It was cheery.
One should never mistake pattern … for meaning.
“Thing about emergencies,” he said, sounding weary. “Rarely occur when they’d be convenient.”
Other Iain M. Banks Quotes
The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn’t.
I can understand that people want to feel special and important and so on, but that self-obsession seems a bit pathetic somehow. Not being able to accept that you’re just this collection of cells, intelligent to whatever degree, capable of feeling emotion to whatever degree, for a limited amount of time and so on, on this tiny little rock orbiting this not particularly important sun in one of just 400m galaxies, and whatever other levels of reality there might be via something like brane-theory [of multiple dimensions] … really, it’s not about you. It’s what religion does with this drive for acknowledgement of self-importance that really gets up my nose. ‘Yeah, yeah, your individual consciousness is so important to the universe that it must be preserved at all costs’ – oh, please. Do try to get a grip of something other than your self-obsession. How Californian. The idea that at all costs, no matter what, it always has to be all about you. Well, I think not.
One hundred idiots make idiotic plans and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot, whose plan succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he’s a genius.
Apparently I am what is known as an Unreliable Narrator, though of course if you believe everything you’re told you deserve whatever you get.
Transition
I’m saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and among those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.
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