When Banks died, I was in the process of starting one of my usual re-reads of the Culture novels. I decided it was not the time to start that re-read. I said to myself, “I’ll just wait another couple more years.” It’s now 2017, and I’m not sure I’ll re-read them now in one large gulp. I want to be able to savour the remaining books over time. One of my main attractions to Banks' novels lies in his version of AI. Stephen Hawking and colleagues worry about tooth and claw Darwinian features of AI, that threaten us all. Why not allow for the possibility that a truly superior intelligence would follow its own independent moral code? Banks' machine minds have values and follow courses of action that are far more admirable than what our species can manage.

No longer being able to look forward to a new Iain. M. Banks novel every twenty months or so is a source of great sadness. "Consider Phlebas" was such a dazzling, utterly astonishing tour-de-force, the grandest and saddest of all space operas, which nothing before or since has even come close to. And I can still remember the delight of coming across a 'hard' SF writer whose politics were, for a change, anti-authoritarian.

If you're into SF, read on.

Adequate space adventure but Banks enjoys elaborating on the grossest parts, and I do not. I like the Culture, but there is just too much nauseating gore. So, I feel like I can safely scratch the rest off the List.

Library copy

Adequate space adventure but Banks enjoys elaborating on the grossest parts, and I do not. I like the Culture, but there is just too much nauseating gore. So, I feel like I can safely scratch the rest off the List.

Library copy