#1232

Like @emenel I too have to mention the Neuromancer echoes, but also as a fan of the Blue Ant trilogy, for me this is up there with the Sprawl stuff so far, except the atmosphere is sparser, skeletal.

1 Like
#1233

Just ordered the Peripheral, based on this post. Thank you!

1 Like
#1234

20 chars of strong agree.

#1235

I read Excession recently because the Minds concept seemed great, and I liked it so much I followed it with The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, and Look to Windward, during my commutes this past spring. I just started Surface Detail and plan to read Hydrogen Sonata. The stories are all very distinctive.

Banks’ writing is worldly and genuinely funny in the self-ware sense. The drones’ dialogue in particular. The emotions are complex and mature as well, Look to Windward especially.

There are a lot of “clever” in a cute way writers who like to remind you of it constantly, and others who can do tight punchy plots much better than Banks, but lack the big ideas. If you spend hours writing, clever is really not that impressive. When someone is witty in person, that’s impressive.

7 Likes
#1236

I think Hydrogen Sonata was my favorite. Matter was also very good. It’s been years since I’ve read a couple of the others and I don’t remember much, so it’s time to revisit them :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#1237

Lem has a pretty broad spectrum of work, but I’m a big fan of Pirx the Pilot for some basic sci-fi short stories and Solaris for some excellent sci-fi horror.

Also liked Cyberiad (which is very different than the first two) and Imaginary Magnitude (which is completely different again).

1 Like
#1238

Inversions is sometimes overlooked but it one of my favorite Culture novels. Top ten easy.

2 Likes
#1239

i somewhat recently reread Matter & Excession, as well as The Agebraist (not Culture, but no less fun) and find Banks to be quite re-readable. Probably due for another round with Player Of Games eventually.

3 Likes
#1240

Oh, cool. Good to know Matter is worth reading. Honestly, I would consider anything he wrote at this point, I just love his personality. The university library also has The Algebraist, which is supposed to be good.

Another book I finished after Look to Windward is House of Suns, by Alastair Reynolds, mentioned above. He does space science fiction where the civilizations feel like they could be real very well, and I thought the characterization and dialogue was a big step up from Revelation Space, which I set aside.

2 Likes
#1241

Been meaning to read that too, because it seems people don’t like that one for the wrong reasons. Because the setting is not what they expected.

#1242

It may seem obvious, but I guess you already thought about Solaris ?

#1243

Definitely! I just watched the Tarkovsky for the first time last week. So, I’d imagine I’ll read the book at some point, but I want to put some space between it and the film.

#1244

That seems like a good idea !
By the way, how did you like the movie ?
To me, both of them are quite interesting and moving, but in different ways…

#1245

I was blown away, haven’t stopped thinking about it, and am going to watch Stalker tonight!

5 Likes
#1246

this spring through i guess yesterday i read all of Frank Herbert’s Dune sequels (so Messiah through Chapterhouse). I had re-read the orig a couple years ago. It’s a lot, really, and has the tough task of living up to an exceptionally singular, canonical novel. In general, they get really insane and weird (sex witches vs witches who are not sex witches but also very skilled at sex!) and I think of myself as someone who has read some weird stuff.

happy to discuss these in a spoilery tho I’m pretty sure wiki plot summaries spill it all too.

4 Likes
#1247

Currently reading The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder

2 Likes
#1248

Just abandoned (something I almost never do) Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Book 1). I’m all about the big obsessive epics but I’ve rarely been so put off by a book. So often novels by good writers can seem awful/misguided/ego-mad for the first half or even almost to the end, so I tend to stick with things even if I’m finding it painful. But I had an almost physical reaction to this one. Life is too short for the next however many thousand pages - and I won’t live long enough to get to even 10% of the books I still want to read, let alone the ones to come. So sorry, Karl, but you clearly have plenty of folks who get something out of this, so I won’t feel too guilty leaving you while you/your protagonist haven’t quite reached adulthood.

1 Like
#1249

Recently:

Now:

Also, this:

2 Likes
#1250

Currently re-reading Pal Auster’s New York Trilogy. It’s one if my very favorite books.

image

12 Likes
#1251

Such a phenomenal collection. It reshaped my idea of what great fiction could be. My apologies if it’s way off base, but in one of my non-musical lives, I wrote a retelling of the third story in the New York Trilogy, if you care to read it: https://hazlitt.net/longreads/fanshawe

1 Like