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Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

Consider Phlebas was my first book too, I liked it enough to read another, but I neither remember much from it nor loved it.

I really liked Player of Games, and I'd like to read a few more books in the series. I also read the Wasp Factory, and while his writing is brilliant, I wasn't too captivated by the story itself.

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Matter and The Hydrogen Sonata are very good, more action-packed stories that I thoroughly enjoyed. Surface Detail is also extremely good, but has some pretty dark setting and themes involving virtual afterlifes. If you’re looking for something different after reading one or two of those, definitely check out Excession. It follows a bunch of the different Culture minds embedded in the various size ships as they investigate strange interstellar goings-on and we get to see the wide range of personalities the ships develop during their existence.

Ah, Excession sounds interesting, thank you. I'll read that one next.

From Wikipedia, quoting the book itself:

"" This novel is about how the 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." ""

Some paperback editions of The Wasp Factory had quotes from reviews included at the start alternating between very positive and very negative reviews.

His non-Culture non-SF works as Iain Banks deserve more attention I think - mind you perhaps that because I frequently travel across the Forth Bridge (The Bridge) and, as I write this, I can see Inchmickery out of the window (Complicity).

However, my favourite has to be Espedair Street - which is simply sublime.

> between very positive and very negative reviews.

Funny that they would put negative reviews on the paperback itself. How honest ...

The Irish Time described it as "a work of unparalleled depravity". - though I've forgotten if that is one of the positive or negative reviews ;-)

> unparalleled depravity

(I mean, I am sure that's a plus for *somebody* :)

PS. I find it funny that the Irish Times would find "post scarcity" depraved :)

Apologies, should have been clearer there - the Wasp Factory is not a Culture novel and isn't even SF - it's about a rather troubled teenager and his unusual circle of family and friends.

When Iain (M.) Banks published science fiction (or essays about science fiction), he used “Iain M. Banks.” Other works he used “Iain Banks.”

You can sometimes separate the fans and the topic by how they refer to him.

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