Amazon resurrects CULTURE TV project, based on the Iain M. Banks novels

Amazon have decided to have a second go at adapting the Culture series of science fiction novels by the late Scottish author Iain M. Banks.

Amazon previously put an adaptation into development in 2018, with Jeff Bezos himself - a huge fan of the series - ordering work to begin. Dennis Kelly (Utopia) was in charge, with a guaranteed season order apparently in the works if the scripts were good. However, the project appeared to stall and was then cancelled in 2020, after the Banks Estate themselves withdrew from negotiations. Speculation at the time was that Banks, an avowed socialist, may have not been keen on working with the ultimate capitalist enterprise, and perhaps the Estate belatedly realised that. However, other reports suggested a more obvious explanation: Amazon was adapting The Expanse at the time and may have not had the appetite for airing two space opera shows simultaneously, even if they are remarkably different in tone and setting.

Apparently, with The Expanse concluded for now, the earlier project may be back on. This time Amazon has teamed with Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown) and Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, Eternals) to develop a new take on the idea. Yu will showrun whilst Zhao will executive produce and may direct; Zhao is also developing the Buffy the Vampire Slayer legacy sequel show with Sarah Michelle Gellar.

As with the previous project, this adaptation will begin by adapting Consider Phlebas (1987), the first-published novel in the series. The other books may follow. Consider Phlebas sees the Culture, a post-scarcity utopian society, and the expansionist Idiran Empire clashing for control of a Culture Mind, an ultra-advanced AI, that has taken refuge on a forbidden planet. The protagonist is Horza, a shapeshifting mercenary working for the Idirans. In a 1995 magazine interview, Banks said (possibly joking) that he'd have cast Arnold Schwarzenegger in the role himself.

The Culture is something of an anthology project, with each novel and story having its own setting, cast of characters and storyline, with only passing references to the other stories, with sometimes centuries and thousands of light-years separating the different stories. Banks published ten Culture books in total, each with a very different tone: Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, The State of the Art, Excession, Inversions, Look to Windward, Matter, Surface Detail and The Hydrogen Sonata. This means that Amazon would not necessarily have to adapt each book in rapid turn, and could choose what order to approach the project in.

Banks wrote mainstream fiction under the name "Iain Banks" and science fiction under the name "Iain M. Banks" (a conceit which became a running gag in the Simon Pegg and Edgar wright movie Hot Fuzz), publishing twenty-eight books in total between 1984 and his untimely death from cancer in 2013.

Iain M. Banks's CULTURE universe to get two new companion volumes

Iain M. Banks's Culture universe is one of the most accomplished in all of science fiction and fantasy, and is now getting two companion volumes.

Iain Banks wrote copious notes for the setting, along with his own illustrations of spacecraft, people, places and hardware. Orbit Books, in collaboration with Banks's close friend and colleague Ken MacLeod, is to now present this material in two volumes. The first is entitled The Culture: The Drawings and will focus on Banks's illustrations. The second, presumably The Culture: The Notes, will be a companion guide to the series drawing on Banks's own background material and information for the setting.

The two new books replace what was originally one project, The Culture: Notes & Drawings, once it was realised the material was too large to fit comfortably into one book.

The Culture novels are Consider Phlebas (1987), The Player of Games (1990), Use of Weapons (1991), Excession (1996), Inversions (1998), Look to Windward (2000), Matter (2008), Surface Detail (2010) and The Hydrogen Sonata (2012). Iain Banks passed away in 2013.

Development ceases on Amazon Prime's CULTURE TV series, at the request of the Iain Banks Estate

Amazon have cancelled work on their planned television adaptation of Consider Phlebas, the first novel in Iain M. Banks' Culture series, after the Banks Estate decided not to proceed with the project.

Jeff Bezos himself, a huge fan of the Culture books, personally announced that Amazon were working on the TV show back in February 2018. Writer Dennis Kelly developed a treatment and series bible, but it seems that when it came time to sign the final deal, the Banks Estate decided not approve the option.

Banks wrote ten books in the Culture universe between 1987 and 2012: Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, The State of the Art, Excession, Inversions, Look to Windward, Matter, Surface Detail and The Hydrogen Sonata. This is more of a common background for the books rather than in-depth series, with the books jumping backwards and forwards in time.

The Culture is a massive, multi-species, utopian civilisation spanning thousands of worlds and space habitats. The Culture finds itself pitted against various external and internal challenges and threats, which its agents and citizens find themselves having to deal with.

Iain M. Banks sadly passed away in 2013 and development of the TV show began after Amazon made overtures to his Estate. It appears no formal deal was signed, since the Estate has now decided not to proceed with the project.

None of Banks' SF work has been adapted to the screen, although several of his mainstream novels have been adapted for TV and film: The Crow Road, Complicity and Stonemouth.

Amazon has also passed on its adaptation of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, which has instead moved to HBO Max, whilst their planned take on Larry Niven's Ringworld also seems to have stalled. They also passed on a Conan the Barbarian TV show from Ryan Condal a couple of years back (Condal is instead now working on the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon).

Amazon do have some big SFF projects moving forwards, however, with a fifth season of The Expanse due to air before the end of this year, the first season of The Wheel of Time next year and The Lord of the Rings: The Second Age in 2022.

Amazon developing Iain M. Banks' CULTURE novels as a television series

In a surprise announcement, Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, has personally confirmed that his company is developing Iain M. Banks' Culture series of science fiction novels as a television series. The series will open with an adaptation of the first novel in the series, Consider Phlebas.

Originally published in 1987, Consider Phlebas introduces the Culture, a hyper-advanced, post-scarcity civilisation which appears to be a utopia. However, the existence of the Culture is dependent on the incredibly sophisticated AIs known as Minds, which control most of the Culture's ships and space habitats, and also on the existence of Special Circumstances, an elite intelligence agency which intervenes on other worlds to stop them developing into a threat against the Culture (or the rest of the galaxy). Consider Phlebas is set during a brutal war between the Culture and the Idiran Empire and follows the misadventures of the central character, Horza, a mercenary hired by the Idirans to recover an imprisoned Mind from a distant planet.

Banks published nine novels and a short story collection set in the Culture before his untimely death from terminal cancer in 2013. The novels were immensely critically-acclaimed and sold well. Banks also published three SF novels not related to the Culture and fourteen "mainstream" novels (Banks published SF under the name "Iain M. Banks" and non-SF as "Iain Banks"), three of which - The Crow Road, Complicity and Stonemouth - have been adapted for the screen.

The Culture novels have been hugely influential, with Banks regularly acclaimed as the greatest British SF author of his age. The Culture Orbitals - massive, ring-shaped artificial planets (theselves a more plausible iteration of Larry Niven's Ringworld concept) - are one of the main influences and inspirations for the Halo series of video games. Elon Musk has also cited Banks as a literary hero, even naming two of his drone ships after Minds from the books. Bezos himself is also a major fan.

Dennis Kelly, the acclaimed showrunner of Utopia, is developing the new series, which apparently is guaranteed a direct series order if the scripts impress.

Amazon is on a bit of a roll recently, having also greenlit new TV series based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian character.

Reading order of the Culture novels (updated)

Back in 2009 I published a reading order to the Culture novels of Iain M. Banks. Sadly, Iain is no longer with us, meaning that the Culture series is effectively complete, so now a final order can be given.

As always, it's worth remembering the following:

It Doesn't Really Matter
The Culture novels are all stand-alone stories separated from one another by decades and centuries of time and thousands of light-years of space, so you can pretty much read them in whatever order you wish.



Publication Order
That said, publication order probably makes the most sense, due to the (very) minor and occasional reference in one book to the events of another. This is the order the books were published in:

1. Consider Phlebas (1987)
2. The Player of Games (1988)
3. Use of Weapons (1990)
4. The State of the Art (1991)
5. Excession (1996)
6. Inversions (1998)
7. Look to Windward (2000)
8. Matter (2008)
9. Surface Detail (2010)
10. The Hydrogen Sonata (2012)

Chronological Order
I don't recommend the chronological order, since I don't think Banks was paying enormous attention to this when writing the books. For example, Excession (which is set 400 years after Consider Phlebas) has a clear reference to the events of The Player of Games, but the latter novel is set well over 700 years after Consider Phlebas, which is a clear discrepancy. Still, for the curious, the order the books apparently takes place in is as follows:

1. Consider Phlebas (1331 AD)
2. Excession (c. 1867)
3. Matter (c. 1890)
4. The State of the Art (1977)
5. The Player of Games (c. 2085)
6. Use of Weapons (2092)
7. Look to Windward (c. 2170)
8. The Hydrogen Sonata (c. 2375)
9. Surface Detail (c. 2767)

Note that The State of the Art refers to the titular novella of the collection, not the other two Culture stories in the book. I could be wrong (not having read them yet), but I believe the other two stories and Inversions lack any information that can be used to reliably date them at all.


Note on the Dates Above

The appendix to Consider Phlebas gives the date for the beginning of the Idiran War as 1327 AD and the book takes place four years later. The war ends in 1375. Excession takes place 500 years after the war ends. Matter takes place over twenty years after the Sleeper Service vanishes (which happens at the end of Excession). The State of the Art features a Contact group surveying Earth in 1977. One of the same characters turns up in Use of Weapons 115 years after the mission to Earth. One of the ships in The Player of Games is 716 years old and was built at the end of the Idiran War (so near the end it never engaged in combat with the enemy). Look to Windward takes place 803 years after the Twin Novae Battle, one of the final space battles of the Idiran War. The Hydrogen Sonata takes place 1,000 years after the end of the Idiran War in Consider Phlebas. Surface Detail takes place 600 years after the events of Look to Windward but about 1,500 years after the end of the Idiran War; this may be a simple rounding error.

According to Consider Phlebas' appendix, the Culture contacts Earth some time around 2100 AD. Earth joins the Culture but never really amounts to much as a member.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content weeks before it goes live on my blogs. The Cities of Fantasy series is debuting on my Patreon feed and you can read it there one month before being published on the Wertzone. 

A previously unpublished interview with Iain M. Banks

Strange Horizons have published a previously unreleased interview with the late Iain M. Banks. The interview was conducted in 2010 and focuses on the Culture, the signature SF setting of so many of Banks's novels. It was carried out by former student Jude Roberts as part of her PhD.

A brief extract:

The way the Culture came about initially was as—I thought at the time—a single-use solution to a particular problem. I was getting ready to write Use of Weapons and I knew that Zakalwe was this sort of ultimate warrior guy, just very martially able, but I wanted him to be on the side of the good guys somehow. Squaring that circle was the problem, so I came up with the idea of the Culture as his ultimate employers: a society basically on the side of the angels but willing to use people like Zakalwe (utopia spawning few warriors, as the later-written poem says) to do its dirty but justified work. The "justified" bit always having something to do with statistics; from the beginning the Culture had to be able to prove—rather than simply assert—that it was generally doing the right thing, even when it interfered without permission in other societies. That was it, initially, but then the Culture proved to be the nucleus around which all my other until then rather nebulous ideas started to cluster and take shape, and it just developed—naturally, it felt—by itself, from there.

The full interview is very much worth reading for any fan of Banks, space opera or SF in general.

RIP Iain Banks

The terrible news has broken that author Iain Banks has lost his battle with cancer. He was 59 years old.

Iain Banks came to immediate attention with the publication of The Wasp Factory in 1984. A contemporary novel, the book told the story of a mentally ill murderer and wasp-torturer. With its twist ending, matter-of-fact descriptions of stomach-churning scenes and its thick vein of black humour (best exemplified by the infamous 'psychopathic rabbit on a minefield' scene), it was immediately successful and made readers sit up and take notice. A series of similarly vivid and successful 'literary' novels followed: Walking on Glass, The Bridge and Espedair Street.

In 1987 Iain Banks released his first science fiction novel, Consider Phlebas. The move - a successful mainstream novelist moving into SF - was unexpected and commercially questionable. Banks moderated by the blow by continuing to alternate SF and mainstream work, and publishing his SF under the impenetrable pseudonym 'Iain M. Banks' (the M is for Menzies). Banks had actually started off writing SF in the 1970s, writing early versions of what later became Player of Games and Use of Weapons before the decade was out. He had switched to writing mainstream fiction to achieve enough success to get the SF published, and was successful in that regard (despite concerns over the SF community of accusing him of 'selling out', which never materialised).

Consider Phlebas introduced Iain Banks's signature creation, the Culture. Banks envisaged a utopian society consisting of multiple species and advanced benevolent AIs, living on a mixture of planets and exotic megastructures (most notably the Orbitals, more sensible and practical versions of Niven's Ringworld; it was actually the Orbitals that served as the inspiration for the titular constructs in the Halo video game series). In his novels Banks explored how such a utopian society could exist, usually by showing the more underhand and devious ways the Culture would protect itself and affect other civilisations.

Banks continued writing both mainstream and SF. His 1992 novel The Crow Road was adapted as a successful BBC mini-series, whilst 1993's Complicity became a feature film. However, his masterpiece is his 1990 SF novel, Use of Weapons. This novel features two streams of narrative, one moving forwards and one moving backwards, both building to huge climaxes.

Outside of his fiction, Banks was a huge fan of whiskey. In 2003 he wrote his only work of non-fiction, Raw Spirit, an account of Scottish whiskey distilleries.

Banks's work meant that he simultaneously became known as one of Britain's leading SF authors as well as a rising star of its literary scene. He ultimately became one of Britain's best-known authors. In 2007 his dual writing identity was acknowledged in a running gag in the Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright movie Hot Fuzz, in which two identical twins can be identified because one always reads Iain Banks and the other always reads Iain M. Banks.

In April Banks announced that he had inoperable cancer. He immediately married his partner and took a short honeymoon. He was hopeful of living for another year or so, but the news sadly came today of his passing. Banks's final novel, The Quarry, will be published next month.


Bibliography

As Iain Banks
The Wasp Factory (1984)
Walking on Glass (1985)
The Bridge (1986)
Espedair Street (1987)
Canal Dreams (1989)
The Crow Road (1992)
Complicity (1993)
Whit (1995)
A Song of Stone (1997)
The Business (1999)
Dead Air (2002)
Raw Spirit (2003, non-fiction)
The Steep Approach to Garbadale (2007)
Transition (2009)
Stonemouth (2012)
The Quarry (2013)


As Iain M. Banks 
The Culture Series
Consider Phlebas (1987)
The Player of Games (1988)
Use of Weapons (1990)
Excession (1996)
Inversions (1998)
Look to Windward (2000)
Matter (2008)
Surface Detail (2010)
The Hydrogen Sonata (2012)

Stand-alone SF novels
Against a Dark Background (1993)
Feersum Endjinn (1994)
The Algebraist (2004)

Short Fiction
The State of the Art (1991, includes both Culture and stand-alone stories)
The Spheres (2010)

Iain Banks only has months to live

In an official statement, Scottish author Iain Banks has confirmed that he has only months to live after it was discovered he'd had cancer for several years without being diagnosed.

I am officially Very Poorly.

After a couple of surgical procedures, I am gradually recovering from jaundice caused by a blocked bile duct, but that – it turns out – is the least of my problems.

I first thought something might be wrong when I developed a sore back in late January, but put this down to the fact I’d started writing at the beginning of the month and so was crouched over a keyboard all day.  When it hadn’t gone away by mid February, I went to my GP, who spotted that I had jaundice.  Blood tests, an ultrasound scan and then a CT scan revealed the full extent of the grisly truth by the start of March.

I have cancer.  It started in my gall bladder, has infected both lobes of my liver and probably also my pancreas and some lymph nodes, plus one tumour is massed around a group of major blood vessels in the same volume, effectively ruling out any chance of surgery to remove the tumours either in the short or long term. The bottom line, now, I’m afraid, is that as a late stage gall bladder cancer patient, I’m expected to live for ‘several months’ and it’s extremely unlikely I’ll live beyond a year.  So it looks like my latest novel, The Quarry, will be my last.

Banks, 59, rose to prominence with the publication of his first, controversial novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. In 1987 he began publishing science fiction under the cunningly impenetrable moniker 'Iain M. Banks' (M stands for Menzies), and has, for most of his career, alternated SF and non-SF work (although several of his non-SF works have strong genre elements). In SF he is best-known for his nine Culture novels, a sequence of stand-alone novels set in an AI-run, utopian interstellar society often forced to resort to shady activities to keep it safe. Banks has twice won the BSFA Award and has been nominated for the Locus and Hugo Awards. His novel The Crow Road has been adapted as a BBC mini-series, whilst Complicity has been made into a film.

Banks has approached the news with his traditional gallows humour and put the best spin possible on it, but by any standards this is devastating news. Definitely one of the British lit scene's most interesting authors (in any genre).

Excession by Iain M. Banks

Thousands of years ago, the Culture encountered an Outside Context Problem. A perfectly black sphere materialised out of nowhere next to a trillion-year-old sun from another universe. It did nothing and vanished. Now it has returned, and both the Culture and a hostile alien race known as the Affront are desperate to uncover its secrets.

Excession was originally published in 1996 and is the fourth novel in Iain M. Banks's Culture series. As with all of the Culture books, it is a stand-alone novel sharing only the same background and setting, with minimal references to the events of other books and no characters crossing over.

A plot summary of the novel makes it sound like Banks's version of a 'Big Dumb Object' book, a novel where the characters are presented with an enigmatic alien entity and have to deal with it (similar to Rendezvous with Rama or Ringworld). However, this isn't really what Excession is about. Instead, the novel operates on several different levels and uses the titular artifact as a catalyst for a more thorough exploration of the Culture and its goals, as well as a more human story about relationships and change.

Excession is the first book in the series to explore the Minds, the (mostly) benevolent hyper-advanced AIs which effectively run and rule the Culture (as both spacecraft and the hubs of the immense Orbital habitats). Previous novels had portrayed the Minds as god-like entities whose vast powers allowed the various biological species of the Culture to live peaceful lives of post-scarcity freedom. Aside from their whimsical sense of humour and tendency towards ludicrous names, the Minds had not been fleshed out much in the previous novels. Here they are front and centre as several groups of Minds attempt to deal with the Outside Context Problem, or Excession, and find themselves working at cross-purposes. One group of Minds appears to be involved in a conspiracy related to the object's previous appearance, whilst another is trying to flush them out. Another Mind appears to be operating on its own, enigmatic agenda. There are also Minds belonging to the Elench, an alien race closely aligned with the Culture but who may have different goals in mind in relation to this matter.

Banks depicts communications between the Minds as something between a telegram and an email, complete with hyperlink-like codes (in which can be found some amusing in-jokes). Following these conversations is sometimes hard work (especially remembering which ship belongs to which faction), but worth it as within them can be found much of the more subtle plotting of the novel.

The stuff with the Minds and with the alien Affront (think of the Hanar from Mass Effect but with the attitude and disposition of Klingons) is all great and somewhat comic in tone, but the book also has a serious side. Several human characters are dragged into the situation as well, and it turns out two of them have a past, tragic connection that one of the Minds is keen to exploit. It's rather bemusing that Banks drops in a terribly human drama into the middle of this massive, gonzoid space opera, but the juxtaposition is highly effective, giving heart to a story that otherwise could drown in its own epicness.

Excession (****½) is, as is normal with (early) Banks, well-written and engaging, mixing well-drawn characters (be they human, psychopathic floating jellyfish or Mind) with big SF concepts. The book's only downside is a somewhat anti-climactic (though rather clever) ending. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

New cover art

Some upcoming cover art, courtesy of Jussi at Westeros.org once more:

First up, the American cover for Blood of Dragons, the fourth volume in The Rain Wild Chronicles by Robin Hobb. This book is due for publication in the UK and USA in April 2013:

Next up is the American cover for Great North Road, Peter F. Hamilton's new massive SF epic. This book will be out in the USA in December this year (and September in the UK):

The final UK cover art for Iain M. Banks's The Hydrogen Sonata, the latest excursion to The Culture. This book will be out in the UK and USA in September this year:

Rounding things off is the UK artwork for The Dirty Streets of Heaven, the first in Tad Williams's new urban fantasy series. This book will be out in both the UK and USA in September as well:

Kim Stanley Robinson and Iain M. Banks event in London

Forbidden Planet are hosting an interesting event at the British Library in London on 9 June. SF heavyweights Iain M. Banks and Kim Stanley Robinson will be discussing a large number of topics related to SF and their work.

For more info, including tickets, check out Forbidden Planet's website.

New cover art: Abercrombie, Sanderson, Banks, Sapkowski

A host of cover art for forthcoming books.

First up is The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson. This 30,000-word novella is a limited edition from Tachyon Press and sees a young woman use her forbidden magical skills to save the life of a dying emperor. The book appears to be set in Sanderson's unified Cosmere super-setting, but not on one of his established worlds. The book is due in December.

Next up is the American cover art for The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks, his ninth novel in The Culture setting. This book is due in October.

The American audience is also getting new covers for the Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski. The Last Wish and Blood of Elves are being rejacketed and should be available soon, and will later in 2012 be by The Time of Contempt, which is finally hitting the stands after years of delays due to rights issues.

Finally, there's the American cover art for Joe Abercrombie's Red Country (dropping the 'A', at least on this early version of the cover). Aidan has more info on the cover art here. The book is currently being revised and edited and will be out in late 2012 or early 2013.

New Iain M. Banks Culture novel on its way

Iain M. Banks is returning to The Culture setting in his new novel, The Hydrogen Sonata. It will be published on 4 October this year in the UK by Orbit Books.

Cover art for Iain Banks's new CULTURE novel

Orbit have released the cover art for Iain M. Banks's new Culture novel, Surface Detail.


Interestingly, last time I saw news on this book it was an early 2011 release, but seems to have been brought forward to October 2010. The cover blurb:

It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. It begins with a murder. And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.

Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture. Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful - and arguably deranged - warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war - brutal, far-reaching – is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it's about to erupt into reality.

It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the centre of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether.

This sounds encouraging. I haven't read Matter yet, but by all accounts it is not amongst Banks' best novels. His other Culture books (I still need to re-read and review Excession as well) are much stronger works, so hopefully Surface Detail will be up to the quality of the earlier books in the series.

Common mistakes in SF&F

This is one everyone can join in on. What are the most common errors you see people making about SFF books? Not spelling mistakes or things of that nature, but more assumptions that people make and trivia that commentators may not be aware of? Here's a few to get started:


1. It's Otherland, not Otherworld.

Tad Williams' four-volume Otherland series is a fine 'rationalised fantasy', with the fantasy elements taking place in a VR simulation in late 21st Century South Africa. However, everyone and their uncle seems to get the name wrong, calling it Otherworld. To be honest, this is probably a more accurate title, but it's not the right one. Yet I've seen bloggers, magazines and even hardcore Williams fans make this mistake as well.

Anomander Rake not present.

2. It's Steven Erikson, not Steve Erickson.

The author of the Malazan series is called Steven Erikson, not Steven Erickson. This is probably the single most common mistake I encounter on forums, and used to make it myself. You may say, so what? But in this case the distinction is important, as there is also an accomplished, award-winning speculative fiction author called Steve Erickson who has written books such as Arc d'X and Zeroville and championed a young Neil Gaiman during his Sandman days (he wrote the introduction to one of the graphic nove collections). Of course, to add to the confusion, Malazan Steve's real name is actually Steve Rune Lundin, with Erikson as a pen-name (according to rumour, adopted because it puts his and Ian Esslemont's Malazan books next to one another on the shelf). In a similar vein, Frederik Pohl gets renamed 'Frederick' quite a bit as well.


3. Nights of Villjamur isn't Mark Newton's debut novel.

Mark seems rather embarrassed by it, but a year before Nights of Villjamur came out, British small press Pendragon Publishing put out a book by him called The Reef. It's a proper novel, 310 pages in length, and is set in the same world as his Legends of the Red Sun series (albeit thousands of years removed in a remote part of the world). More importantly, despite Mark's claims, it's actually pretty good.

But who'd win in a fight between an Ultramarine and Jim Raynor?

4. Warhammer & 40K predate WarCraft and StarCraft.

Penny Arcade put it best, but it's not uncommon to see people making this mistake even today: Dawn of War ripped off StarCraft, Warhammer Online ripped off World of WarCraft, the Tyranids are totally repainted Zerg and so on. You know, ignoring the fact that Warhammer debuted in 1983 (eleven years before WarCraft: Orcs and Humans) and Warhammer 40,000 in 1987 (eleven years before StarCraft). And that Blizzard reportedly asked Games Workshop to do official Warhammer computer games in the early 1990s and were turned down, so had to create their own IP. Not knocking Blizzard here (StarCraft II will be my first day-of-release PC game purchase in almost three years) who make fantastic games, but the idea that Games Workshop stole anything from them is chronologically impossible.

5. The Wolfman predates Twilight.

By about sixty-five years. Seriously.


6. The Halo is more like a Culture Orbital than the Ringworld.

The titular construct from Bungie's X-Box games is actually much more like an Orbital from Iain M. Banks' Culture novels than Larry Niven's Ringworld (from his classic 1970 novel of the same name). They pretty much all look the same, but famously Niven's construction is too big to actually work in accordance with the laws of physics, and increasingly ridiculous explanations are offered in the succeeding books as to how to stabilise the structure, including fitting rocket engines the size of Jupiter to it. The Culture Orbitals are 'merely' 3 million km across and much more stable. Oddly, it's the computer game which makes the most sense, with the Halos only being about 10,000 km across. The biggest similarity between the two is that both Orbitals and Halos orbit a star (the latter in conjunction with supermassive gas giants), whilst the Ringworld completely encloses it. All of that said, Microsoft did give Niven a complimentary X-Box and copy of the game, acknowledging the visual similarity of the design.

7. A Song of Ice and Fire, not Fire and Ice

I thought we'd seen the back of this one many years ago, but the recent announcement of the HBO TV series has seen a whole truckload of coverage of the books and the series in more mainstream outlets. Thus we are now seeing stories about A Song of Fire and Ice, an SF series set on the planet Westeros where the seasons last for forty years, or some other butchering of title and premise. Less of a criticism of SF fans as mainstream journalists who can't even be bothered to look at Wikipedia for five minutes.

The 'successor' to Revelation Space, but not the 'sequel'.

8. Chasm City is a Revelation Space 'novel', but not part of the Revelation Space 'Trilogy'.

Alastair Reynolds' first novel was Revelation Space, the first novel to be published in the Revelation Space Trilogy and also the first book set in the wider Revelation Space setting (note to authors: calling your book, series and wider setting all the same thing can be confusing). It was followed by Chasm City, which was marketed as the follow-up to Revelation Space, but is not Book 2 of the Revelation Space Trilogy, whilst it is the second book in the wider Revelation Space setting and in fact takes place immediately before the events of Revelation Space (its main character has a cameo in Revelation Space, a cameo that would have passed readers by as they had no idea who he was and it was so fleeting it's unlikely they'd remember him when Chasm City came out a year later). At the time of publication this was extremely confusing, although with the distance of ten years, the completion of the trilogy and the arrival of additional books in the same setting, it is now easier to sort things out, but even so there remains some confusion over what book goes where in what order.

9. Gentleman Bastard, not Gentlemen Bastards.

Scott Lynch's fantasy sequence is called The Gentleman Bastard, singular, a reference to the central character of Locke Lamora. The confusion is understandable since Locke's gang is called the Gentlemen Bastards, but the singular title makes more sense given the fate of many of the Bastards and their allies in the first two books.

Impressive? Yes. Even remotely plausible? Not really.

10. A Dyson Sphere isn't what writers often think it is.

In SF parlance, a Dyson Sphere is a solid shell completely enclosing a star at a distance of roughly 1 AU, providing a living surface billions of times greater than that of a terrestrial planet, powered by absorbing 100% of the energy of the englobed star. Whilst a fantastic and mind-blowing idea, it's not actually what the term means. A 'proper' Dyson Sphere in fact consists of many individual solar collector satellites stationed in orbit around the Sun, absorbing the energy and returning it to Earth for use. Freeman Dyson, the creator of the concept, was not a fan of the 'sold shell' approach, finding it unconvincingly unrealistic. Also, vast numbers of problems have been identified with the 'solid shell' approach, enough to render the idea almost completely unfeasible. But SF writers still use them (and misuse the name) because the idea is cool.

Further suggestions will be gratefully received.

A Culture movie in the works?

As picked up by Aidan, a Culture movie could be in the works. Director Dominic Murphy is attached to an adaptation of Iain M. Banks' short story 'A Gift from the Culture', which appears in the collection The State of the Art.

I'm going to hazard a guess that the story, which is really short, and would probably take less than twenty minutes to tell on screen as is, is going to be used as a jumping-off point for a story that is mostly original material, but still utilising the Culture backdrop. This could be an interesting move, certainly more viable than cramming one of Banks' larger 400-page novels into less than two hours, and probably much cheaper as well. Consider Phlebas, the logical starting place for a Culture adaptation, would require a special effects budget that would probably give Michael Bay pause, so testing the waters with a smaller story could be a good move.

Whether they maintain the central concept of the premise - a female Culture citizens goes native on a primitive planet in a male body but is blackmailed into operating a Culture weapon lest harm come to her/his boyfriend - is also another question. Such questions about gender and identity in the face of (relatively) easy sex-changing technology are the bread and butter of hard SF, but could make movie companies uneasy, especially if it does become a larger-budget production.

Still, an interesting idea at any rate. We'll have to wait and see if anything comes of it.

Wertzone Classics: Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

Cheradenine Zakalwe is a (non-Culture-born) agent in Special Circumstances, skilled in steering less-developed planets towards the path that the Culture thinks is best for them. Unlike most SC agents, Zakalwe's speciality is fighting and the use of weapons in both prosecuting wars, and averting conflicts. His handler is SC agent Diziet Sma who, along with her drone companion Skaffen-Amtiskaw, has to set out to locate Zakalwe when his abilities are needed again.


I've read enough of Iain Banks' other work to be able to say that Use of Weapons is almost certainly his masterpiece, which is really saying something compared to the high quality of his other novels. In this book everything just works. The characters are sublimely handled, with Banks immersing you in their lives to the point where you stop thinking of them as characters and instead accept them as people. The structure of the story is inventive without over-relishing its own cleverness. The chapters alternate between a forward-moving story about Diziet tracking down Zakalwe for a new mission, and how that mission unfolds, and a backwards-moving one as we follow Zakalwe's story back to his youth. Just to shake things up, both narratives also feature flashbacks to earlier events as well. The structure could have confusingly imploded in on itself (and earlier drafts stretching back fifteen years before it was published are apparently far more complex), but in the published book it works effortlessly. The storylines may be moving in different directions and feel dislocated from one another, but they collide with impressive force at the end of the novel in a stunning final chapter.

Banks' signature creation, the Culture, has never been so convincingly portrayed or as well-handled as in this book, and its total bafflement at Zakalwe's antics (personified by Skaffen-Amtiskaw's exasperation with events) is amusing to see. In fact, there's a lot of Banks' traditional black humour running through the book, lightening the gloom that threatens to descend during some of Zakalwe's more introspective moments.


Use of Weapons (*****) is a spectacularly good science fiction novel that addresses questions of memory, motivation, guilt and conscience in a consistently entertaining and sometimes very funny manner. A masterful novel from a writer at the very height of his powers, and highly recommended. The novel is available now from Orbit in the UK and USA.

The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks

The State of the Art is Iain M. Banks first, and to date only, short story collection. It was originally published in 1991 and features both genre and mainstream fiction, as well as three stories set in his signature Culture setting.


The collection opens with 'Road of Skulls', a sort of jaunty little SF-fantasy tale with a Douglas Adams-esque comic conclusion. It's fun but very slight and very short. 'A Gift from the Culture', about a Culture citizen living undercover on a recently-Contacted world, is better but a bit odd. It's not a story by itself but feels like the opening chapter to a longer novel which ends in a rather pointless and abrupt manner. Interesting, and perhaps meant to convince us that Culture citizens aren't flawless, but still not the best story I've read.

'Odd Attachment' is dark and very funny, bringing a certain Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene to mind. This film is possibly a Banks touchstone, as he both appeared in the movie (he's one of the extras in the final scene) and referenced the rabbit scene in The Wasp Factory as well. 'Descendant', the second Culture story, is a story of survival and the bond between a man and his sentient spacesuit. A macabre and most effective story.

'Cleaning Up' is brilliant, a very funny SF novel about what happens to Earth when an alien spaceship accidentally dumps a load of rejected consumer products on the planet. From the evidence presented here (not to mention the humorous streaks in his other books), Banks could do a great SF comedy, and I'm surprised he's never tried to do it at novel length. 'Piece' is more sobering, a mainstream story reflecting on terrorism and the arguments of science versus faith and God versus evolution. A very thoughtful and prescient story with a gut-punch twist ending. 'Scratch' is very weird, a stream-of-consciousness oddity which is barely readable. Not really sure what Banks was aiming for there.


Fully half the book is taken up by the title novella. The premise of this story is very simple. The Culture's General Contact Unit Arbitrary arrives in orbit around the third planet of a remote, yellow star in the closing months of the year 1976 by the local calendar and spends the next fourteen months or so surveying the world to see if it is ready for official Contact. Much of the book is taken up by the attempts of the central character Diziet Sma to convince the Arbitrary's Mind - and thus the wider Culture - that Earth should be Contacted to prevent its inevitable slide into nuclear armageddon, whilst the Culture is more inclined to leave the planet as it is as a 'control experiment' to show the dangers faced by a nascent spacefaring civilisation. There isn't a huge amount of drama or personal jeopardy in the story, but the intellectual arguments between the two and the other characters' reactions to the situation are all handled intelligently and in a fascinating manner. The story also acts as an effective prequel to the third proper Culture novel, Use of Weapons.

The State of the Art (****) shows a broad range of Banks' writing skills and is well worth tracking down. The book is available from Orbit in the UK and Night Shade in the USA.

Reading Order of the Culture Novels

As keen-eyed readers may have noticed, I am currently undertaking a read-through of Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. Whilst trundling around the Internet I noticed that quite a few people are puzzled over the best reading order or the chronological order of the series, so I set about assembling this guide, with a few notes.

It Doesn't Really Matter
The Culture novels are all stand-alone stories separated from one another by decades and centuries of time and thousands of light-years of space, so you can pretty much read them in whatever order you wish.


Publication Order
That said, publication order probably makes the most sense, due to the (very) minor and occasional reference in one book to the events of another. This is the order the books were published in:

1. Consider Phlebas (1987)
2. The Player of Games (1988)
3. Use of Weapons (1990)
4. The State of the Art (1991)
5. Excession (1996)
6. Inversions (1998)
7. Look to Windward (2000)
8. Matter (2008)
   

Chronological Order
I don't recommend the chronological order, since I don't think Banks was paying enormous attention to this when writing the books. For example, Excession (which is set 400 years after Consider Phlebas) has a clear reference to the events of The Player of Games, but the latter novel is set well over 700 years after Consider Phlebas, which is a clear discrepancy. Still, for the curious, the order the books apparently takes place in is as follows:

1. Consider Phlebas (1331 AD)
2. Excession (c. 1775)
3. Matter (c. 1800)
4. The State of the Art (1977)
5. The Player of Games (c. 2085)
6. Use of Weapons (2092)
7. Look to Windward (c. 2170)
   

Note that The State of the Art refers to the titular novella of the collection, not the other two Culture stories in the book. I could be wrong (not having read them yet), but I believe the other two stories and Inversions lack any information that can be used to reliably date them at all.

Note on the Dates Above
The appendix to Consider Phlebas gives the date for the beginning of the Idiran War as 1327 AD and the book takes place four years later. Excession takes place 400 years after the war ends. Matter takes place over twenty years after the Sleeper Service vanishes (which happens at the end of Excession). The State of the Art features a Contact group surveying Earth in 1977. One of the same characters turns up in Use of Weapons 115 years after the mission to Earth. One of the ships in The Player of Games is 716 years old and was built at the end of the Idiran War (so near the end it never engaged in combat with the enemy). Finally, Look to Windward takes place 803 years after the Twin Novae Battle, one of the final space battles of the Idiran War. According to Consider Phlebas' appendix, the Culture contacts Earth some time around 2100 AD.

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

Jernau Morat Gurgeh is a master games-player. From his home Orbital, he has mastered many different games played by many different species and been beaten rarely. Slightly bored with his life, the Culture offers him the chance to travel to the cruel Empire of Azad and there take part in the most complex game the Culture knows of, a game so important that those who win it can become generals, statesmen and even emperors.


As an alien, Gurgeh is of course barred from winning public office from the game, but is determined to win anyway, even when doing so may strain relations between the Azadians and the Culture. However, nothing is as it seems.

The Player of Games, the second Culture novel originally published in 1988, is less epic than Consider Phlebas and much more personal. It is nevertheless every bit as compelling. The first third or so of the novel follows Gurgeh's life on his home Orbital and his growing dissatisfaction with life there which provokes him into making a rash move which soon has him considering the offer to journey to Ea, the Azadian homeworld. As the story develops, we explore both the Culture and the alien society through the games that Gurgeh plays, but the book itself is also a game. The characters are the pieces, being moved around for stakes far greater than those in the fictional game itself, and the finale offers a highly satisfying resolution and explanation of what has gone before.

Gurgeh isn't the most likable of protagonists, as he's an obsessive who is naive about the world outside his games, but at the same time his conflicts make for interesting reading. The secondary cast of drones, Azadians and fellow Culture agents are all well-drawn, and their reactions to Gurgeh tell us a lot more about his character than he reveals himself (with a couple of very brief exceptions we are in Gurgeh's head in a limited third-person POV for most of the book). Banks' black sense of humour is also present and correct.

The Player of Games (****½) is an unusual but highly satisfying SF novel that couldn't be more different from its predecessor but works just as well. An ingenious and compelling story of games, intrigue and character, and well worth a look. The Player of Games is available now from Orbit in both the UK and USA.