SFF Author: Iain M. Banks

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The Wasp Factory: A flash piece of entertainment

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks Perusing bookshops in Poland one finds fiction is categorized along the same genre lines as America or Britain. They have horror, fantastyka, science fiction, kryminalny — all of which are readily recognizable to the English speaker. There is one additional category, however, that I’d never seen before: sensacyjny. Neither […]

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Consider Phlebas: The first, but not the best, CULTURE novel

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks Consider Phlebas, the first of Iain M. Banks’s CULTURE novels, introduces readers to the Culture, a machine-led intergalactic civilization that offers its biological humanoids a carefree, utopian lifestyle. Though most centuries are free from worry, Consider Phlebas takes place in the middle of the Idiran-Culture War. The Culture is an […]

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Excession: Does anyone do far future better than Banks?

Excession by Iain M. Banks Let’s skip the highty-flighty, atmospheric float of intros and get right to the point. Iain M. Banks’ 1996 Excession is gosh-wow, sense-wunda science fiction that pushes the limits of the genre as far into the imagination — and future — as any book has. The AI ship-minds, post-human world-is-your-oyster humanity, and […]

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Inversions: A CULTURE novel that isn’t a CULTURE novel

Inversions by Iain M. Banks Like Excession, Use of Weapons, and The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks’ 1998 Inversions continues to prove that the reader should expect the unexpected because, with Inversions, Banks explicitly aimed to write “a CULTURE novel that wasn’t a CULTURE novel.” It is likely to be categorized as fantasy by someone who knows nothing of […]

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Surface Detail: Another wild ride in Iain Banks’ far-future universe

Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks Surface Detail (2010), the penultimate CULTURE novel, is another wild ride in Iain Banks’ far-future universe. Interestingly (or at least I think so), this novel deals with the afterlife, as does the final CULTURE novel, The Hydrogen Sonata, which was published several months before Banks’ unexpected death of gallbladder […]

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The Algebraist: Unabashed space opera

The Algebraist by Iain Banks Over the top villain. Check. Strange and funny alien races. Check. Quest for singular object that leads through space. Check. Multitudes of battlecruisers, space wings, and dreadnaughts converging at a single point. Check. Boxes ticked, Iain M. Banks makes no bones about it: The Algebraist is unabashed space opera, for better and […]

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We have reviewed 8040 fantasy, science fiction, and horror books, audiobooks, magazines, comics, and films.

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