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Re: Iain Banks
Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 8:22 am
by pixelboy
Wasp Factory is amazing, I love it.. It's my favourite book..
VERY dark.. I read it every few years.
Re: Iain Banks
Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 9:00 am
by Exar Kun
Still working my way through lots and lots of sci-fi but we'll see how I go. Reading Matter now only because the other novel I had at hand was Peter F Hamilton's latest and I didn't want to be lugging around a 1000+ page large form paperback as I travel over the next month or two.
Read Ender's Shadow before this and that was pretty enjoyable. Not sure I'll pick up anymore of the books in the Enderverse but I'm all set for the movie now.
Re: Iain Banks
Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 3:06 pm
by Johnny X
pixelboy wrote:
"The Crow Road" is a cracker as well... with an opening paragraph like this
'It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach.'
Just watched a BBC Scotland production of The Crow Road, stays pretty true to the book. Excellent piece of work
(It's quite an old tv series, available on the trails
). I've also got Complicity to do now along with the film version of that. My mother (who is 80 and likes her Scandinavian detective novels - Wallander etc - and generally doesn't mind a little "darkness" ) has been pulling faces at me saying "This Banks stuff is very dark and weird" but she's still reading it
Re: Iain Banks
Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2013 3:34 am
by Johnny X
RIP Iain M Banks
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22835047" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Gonna miss his epic Sci Fi, currently working through his general fiction and have just completed Complicity which is one distorted and dark piece of writing.
See you in the Sublime Iain
Here's some words taken from a BBC interview not too long ago about his last book - The Quarry.
"The narrator is an 18-year-old boy who's on one or two different spectra, possibly Asperger's being one of them. But in a sense, the main character's his dad, who's dying of cancer.
"But I was 87,000 words into the book before I discovered the bad news. I had no inkling. So it wasn't as though this is a response to the disease or anything, the book had been kind of ready to go. And then 10,000 words from the end, as it turned out, I suddenly discovered that I had cancer.
"I've really got to stop doing my research too late. This is such a bad idea."
Re: Iain Banks
Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2013 4:00 am
by Exar Kun
Wow, that was quick
I just finished Matter and am now reading State of the Art which has a number of regular fiction short stories in addition to the titular story so is giving me a taste of something different from him.
RIP.
Re: Iain Banks
Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2013 8:57 am
by pixelboy
Goodbye Iain, thanks for all of your wonderful stories!
Re: Iain Banks
Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2013 7:21 pm
by smithcorp
Wow, that was too quick. He will be missed.
Re: Iain Banks
Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 10:48 pm
by Johnny X
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... aw_Spirit/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Dunno if you guys have your ways to view the Beebs iPlayer but they showed an interview with him, filmed about 3 weeks ago Not too much about his sci-fi work but a wonderful insight into the man
Re: Iain Banks
Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2013 10:57 pm
by pixelboy
Wonderful docco, One of my hero's bowing out gracefully.
Bravo, thank you Iain.
If you are looking for it a certain UK "box" has it for download
Re: Iain Banks
Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2013 6:41 am
by Johnny X
Now that I've got a few things out of the way I'm just starting Iain's last work - The Quarry. It's not sci-fi but I've got into his general fiction over the last few months. Ironically, this story is about a man getting to grips with terminal cancer. The story was practically finished before he got his diagnosis prompting him to make one of his dark quips stating that he really needed to work on his research earlier.
Apparently it's quite a rant about the fucked up world that we inhabit... looking forward to reading it
Re: Iain Banks
Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2013 5:16 pm
by pixelboy
I got my copy from the book depository a few weeks ago but haven't started it..
Re: Iain Banks
Posted: Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:12 pm
by Exar Kun
So I've just started on Hydrogen Sonata which means I'll have no more Culture novels to read after this. I've really enjoyed this universe and, in particular, the way Banks played around in it. Hard to say which I've enjoyed the most. Use of Weapons and Player of Games are both right up there. Even Inversions - the 'non-Culture' Culture novel was really good.
I've got another Peter F Hamilton epic to get through after this so that'll keep me occupied whilst I figure what to read next (a break from Banks for a little while).
