@bookstodon

Why has Iain Banks’s Culture series – “a world where your Bezoses & your Musks are not just irrelevant, but actively sought out & disempowered” – garnered a billionaire fanbase? Kurt Schiller examines ultra-rich misreadings & delusions for Blood Knife

10/13

https://bloodknife.com/culture-war-iain-m-banks-jeff-bezos/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #billionaires

“Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION was one of the most addicting games of my life… I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Iain M. Banks shared the addiction and that his Culture novel EXCESSION was in part inspired by it.”

—Peter Tieryas on how Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION helped inspire Iain M. Banks’s 1996 Culture novel EXCESSION

@bookstodon

https://reactormag.com/on-iain-m-banks-and-the-video-game-that-inspired-excession-sid-meier-civilization/

#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #videogames #Civ #Civilization #SidMeier

“Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION was one of the most addicting games of my life… I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Iain M. Banks shared the addiction and that his Culture novel EXCESSION was in part inspired by it.”

—Peter Tieryas on how Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION helped inspire Iain M. Banks’s 1996 Culture novel EXCESSION

@bookstodon

https://reactormag.com/on-iain-m-banks-and-the-video-game-that-inspired-excession-sid-meier-civilization/

#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #videogames #Civ #Civilization #SidMeier

@bookstodon

Why has Iain Banks’s Culture series – “a world where your Bezoses & your Musks are not just irrelevant, but actively sought out & disempowered” – garnered a billionaire fanbase? Kurt Schiller examines ultra-rich misreadings & delusions for Blood Knife

10/13

https://bloodknife.com/culture-war-iain-m-banks-jeff-bezos/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #billionaires

@bookstodon

“Our strange wee country is as complex as any alien civilization, & getting it as right as Banks did in The Crow Road required every bit as much world-building skill as his Culture”

—Simon Stephenson travels THE CROW ROAD for Reactor Magazine

9/13

https://reactormag.com/the-difference-is-entirely-one-of-setting-iain-banks-the-crow-road/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

@bookstodon

“Banks… envisions the overcoming of scarcity as the signal achievement of the civilization made by the Minds, & yet he focuses time and again on objects of unfulfilled desire”

—Alan Jacobs on the Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M Banks, for The New Atlantis

8/13

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-ambiguous-utopia-of-iain-m-banks

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #utopia

@bookstodon

“As a humanist, atheist, and socialist, he preferred to place his trust in techno-scientific development, rather than his faith in gods, or his capital in the market”

Joseph S. Norman on the legacy & utopianism of Iain M. Banks’s #scifi Culture series

7/13

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2023/11/better-to-create-your-own-on-the-legacy-and-utopianism-of-iain-m-bankss-culture-series/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #utopia

@bookstodon

HIPPY COMMIES WITH HYPER-WEAPONS

“I think space opera in general celebrates a certain manic wildness and vivacity of vision, a refusal to be constrained”

A Few Questions About the Culture – an interview with Iain M. Banks, on Strange Horizons

6/13

http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/a-few-questions-about-the-culture-an-interview-with-iain-banks/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

@bookstodon

“THE BRIDGE bends reality, breaks the rules of physics, invents technologies & plays around with impossible inventions”

—Sam Jordison explores the link between Iain Banks’s “mainstream” & science-fiction novels

5/13

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/23/iain-banks-the-bridge-link-mainstream-literature-science-fiction

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

Iain M. Banks (1954–2013) was born #OTD, 16 Feb: a 🎂 🧵
1/13

“Iain Banks… is a novelist who has his own ‘double’, an author for whom the idea of a split writing persona is emphatically not out of place”

—“Reading Double, Writing Double: The Fiction of Iain (M) Banks” – a 2010 article on Banks’s genre-busting career

@bookstodon

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2010/11/reading-double-writing-double-the-fiction-of-iain-m-banks/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

“[P]ay attention to the moments of contradiction and uncertainty threaded through character dialogue and self-reflection […] Watch his tone. Watch his humour. For me, that’s where the sharpest lessons are.”

—Bethany Jacobs on the worldbuilding of Iain M. Banks

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2506129-why-sci-fi-novelist-iain-m-banks-was-an-astounding-world-builder/

#Scottish #literature #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #ScienceFiction #Scifi #worldbuilding

“[P]ay attention to the moments of contradiction and uncertainty threaded through character dialogue and self-reflection […] Watch his tone. Watch his humour. For me, that’s where the sharpest lessons are.”

—Bethany Jacobs on the worldbuilding of Iain M. Banks

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2506129-why-sci-fi-novelist-iain-m-banks-was-an-astounding-world-builder/

#Scottish #literature #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #ScienceFiction #Scifi #worldbuilding

What is your favorite ship name from the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks?

Mine is the Offensive Unit named, in small print, "I Said, I've Got A Big Stick".

#books #bookstodon#scienceFiction#theCulture#IainMBanks

The Culture in other words, they thought living on Planets was a bit throwback and unfair to the planets.

#TheCulture