Iain M. Banks (Modern Masters of Science Fiction)

Original review: I was really looking forward to reading this, but as the pages went by found myself becoming frustrated in many ways.

I won't go into excessive (surface) detail, but I am often irritated by critics who posit their view of something as fact, and that definitely happens here. The author doesn't rate the final three Culture novels (and personally I don't view Matter in a particularly favourable light), but I know of many Banks fans who rate Surface Detail as being right up there with his best. But that's just a matter of opinion, I suppose.

Similarly, there's also a very strong feeling of high-level concept 'knowing what the author meant', which I have always found just a little presumptuous. Banks, as we all know, said he'd love to live in the Culture.

So, a few specifics:

The revelation of Vatueil's identity at the end of SD is 'careless' and 'a slip', as it undermines the character's actions in UoW. I don't (and didn't) see it this way - it seems as though his assumed actions in the meantime may be his own self-chosen penance as he was (and is) unable to obtain the forgiveness he seeks, to the extent that his chosen name is an anagram of the one who will never forgive him - something that is not mentioned in this book. Whether this is a slip or accords with my view is a matter of opinion, not fact.

The book also cites the actions of Grey Area in Excession as an example of the Culture being as capable of evil as some of the societies that it interferes with - yet without acknowledging that Grey Area is viewed as being a moral outcast within the Culture, because it is prepared to cross lines that are otherwise accepted as being verboten - such as peering inside a living being's mind. It cannot therefore be deemed representative of the Culture.

Many of the most interesting ethical dilemmas in Culture history occur when well-intentioned interference goes awry, but I don't subscribe to the view that the author holds that the Culture is a sort of almost-evened-out balance of good and evil. It may have done what turned out to be bad things but as someone who's read the books repeatedly, I take the view that its general moral compass (whilst fallible) is based on the Utilitarian principle of maximising the likelihood of overall good - or minimising overall harm. I suppose that a good yarn is more likely to arise from things going wrong, and from examining those who might be tasked with doing ill in the name of expected greater long-term good - something that the vast majority of Culture citizens, to their credit, would not be able to do.

I would also disagree that some examples of silliness on the part of ship crew justify the statement that 'a post-scarcity utopia does nothing to change the essential pettiness of humanity.'

It could be that I am merely such a fan of the Culture books that I am blinded to some of their flaws, but the above suggests that the author perhaps doesn't know them as well as he might.

Addendum: I wrote my review after reading the main body, but not the summary at the end. I think here the views espoused of the Culture and its merits and demerits probably accord rather more with the general view, though sections of the main text do still present the Culture as being as much evil as good.

I still think that books of this nature are more certain of their conclusions than I would be comfortable being, and infer more about a writer's intent than I'd feel able, but that probably says more about my relationship with criticism that anything else.

Apologies for being too harsh - additional star added - though I feel that my point about Grey Area is still a strong one, and I do wonder about the anagram. My brother is another massive Banks fan and he missed it, though I cannot conceive it to be a coincidence!

I've read all of Iain Banks's science-fiction (I abandoned Feersum Endjinn) but I do find the novels curiously unmemorable. Partially this is to do with their complex structure, the large cast of characters with indecipherable names, and detailed and baroque settings which can overwhelm the storyline. Sometimes it's hard to see the wood for the trees. The first great service Paul Kincaid offers in this impressive piece of literary criticism is to confirm these complexities and to summarise the novels for the floundering reader. More than this, Kincaid dives deep into each book's thematic unconscious, distilling what he believes to be motivating the author.

He does a pretty good job. Kincaid sees Banks as eternally wrestling with his ideal society. If utopia is post-scarcity communism where oppression is definitionally absent, then how do people spend their time? If the Culture is about freedom, how does it deal with cultures which don't share the Culture's value system? Perhaps in Banks's earliest formulations, these seemed distant and rather easy problems to solve. Yet the more he engaged, the more problematic the Culture became. In the end, utopia seems smug, boring, shallow, selfish, cowardly - even imperialistic.

Banks was a smart guy but he was also a proud bien-pensant liberal, a world-view which is curiously unreflective of the true roots of its value-system. In that spirit, Banks never quite resolves the contradictions at the heart of his own philosophy.

This is a mature, comprehensive and above all interesting take on all of Iain Banks's work and it's recommended.

This is a very readable, concise and scholarly study of Banks’ science-fiction novels. As the title indicates, the author focuses on those under the name Iain M Banks, but also discusses the ‘mainstream’ novels when the distinction is less clear. I suppose the inclusion of M in the authorial designation broadly indicates the novel falls into the space opera category, while the others are more generally imaginative or speculative.

There is discussion of all the Culture novels as well as the Culture itself. The early novels, so imaginatively written, so well structured, even concise, attract the greater part of the discussion. The author suggests that the Culture novels really reached their logical conclusion with ‘Look to Windward’ and subsequently Banks became increasingly devoted to religion and death in the later novels. These are not discussed in anything like the same depth as the earlier ones, even though they are all much longer, perhaps because Banks himself could not take the logical step of ending the series, just as his construct, the Culture, could not take the logical step of ending itself through the process of subliming. The Culture is described as an atheistic paradise and the writer discusses at length the problem about all paradises and heavens – the constant risk of eternal boredom! These novels are linked with relevant ‘mainstream’ novels such as ‘The Bridge’ or ‘The Business’ to demonstrate that Banks with or without an M was recognisably the same writer, one whose own biography had a profound influence on all his writing.

I suggest that this is not simply required reading for all of Banks’ many followers, but that it is thought-provoking, insightful and pleasurable too.

I have enjoyed the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series and this is a good addition.

Este ensayo es una introducción muy interesante a la obra de Iain M banks,en especial a sus libros de La cultura.Lo recomiendo a todos los seguidores de este autor