[Dolorous Menhir]

The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe is my favourite character in a book ever.

[Tom]

Anways, the best one in terms of action and adventure is Consider Phlebas. The best one in terms of examination of social interaction is the Player of Games. The best one in terms of sheer brilliance, creativity and imagery is Look to Windward.

Edit: Whoops, I though DPs would join...

[Dolorous Menhir]

No, the best one in an all respects is Use of Weapons.

And I couched my earlier post in terms so that someone else would not have to come along and clumsily GIVE AWAY THE ENTIRE PLOT.

Seriously, that's a huge spoiler. You should remove it.

[Tom]

I've not given away anything that's guessable, don't worry. I know my Banks.

Anyway, Use of Weapons, while clever, is far too discombobulated and mixed up to be truly entertaining in my opinion. It's got a few nice scenes - in the armoury with all those guns: awesome - but generally it's just not as fun as any of the others. Read it to complete your Banks experience or if you want something to twist your mind around, but for sheer entertainment you can't beat Consider Phlebas and Look to Windward.

[councilor]

i just read Consider phlebas which i think is damn good. unlike you guys, i can't really dissect and examine the books i read for good and bad things - i just know what i like or not.

[Morgoth]

well, then you will love Use of Weapons, which is on my top ten list of all literature

should point out that his none sci-fi books are excellent as well. The Wasp Factory is some of the most disturbing stuff I've ever read

[drinksinbars]

@TOM please delete that spoiler post!!!! you are ruining a good book!!

use of weapons rocks

[The .303 bookworm]

Tom;99909 said:

It's also been postulated that The Algebraist is set in the distant past, before the Culture came into being. Someone thought races dissappearing was a reference to them 'Subliming'. But it is annoying when people take every book and make it a Culture novel - ZOMFG!!!1111 its a cultrue novl!!!!111 Cultre r the pwnzorss!!!111 Heck, even 'Walking on Glass' has links to the Culture if you read enough into it. I mean, those two people stuck in the castle are *clearly* disgraced agents of Special Circumstances, aren't they? /sarcasm.

It's not, since the Culture books take place before Modern Earth [Time].
The Short story Anthology has the Culture checking 1970's Earth (And considering it a dump).

It's an alternate universe, simple as that. (There are other contradictions like FTL, and the dwellers, but thats unnecessary)

[Tom]

I was being sarcastic. As the '/sarcasm' tag should have implied.

There's a bit in 'The State of the Art' (the short story you're referring to) when the ship asks a radio station to play it a song - and they ignore the request, which the ship thinks is hillarious - this from a vessel which at any time could completely swamp earth's communications with its effector from a lightyear away. Priceless.

[williamjm]

Tom;122276 said:

There's a bit in 'The State of the Art' (the short story you're referring to) when the ship asks a radio station to play it a song - and they ignore the request, which the ship thinks is hillarious - this from a vessel which at any time could completely swamp earth's communications with its effector from a lightyear away. Priceless.

The bit in State of the Art where one of the Culture 'humans' watched a broadcast of Star Trek and decided the ship therefore needs a Star Trek-style captain was quite amusing as well.

[The .303 bookworm]

Not to mention the ship making a lightsaber (Then the "Captain" leaning on it as it very slowly burned through the table)

[polishgenius]

I finished Use of Weapons yesterday. Isn't as funny as some of the others, but it's as good a book.

Spoiler

And that twist - went all Usual Suspects on me! Actually, that kind of holds it back. While it's brilliantly done, and even tells you at one point who he is (during one of his memory/hallucination sequences), it whips away all the sympathy you've been building for him, and you're left realising you've been rooting for a monster while the person you thought you were for never appeared in the book.

[drinksinbars]

@polish genius - thats why its so good!!

[Dolorous Menhir]

good! it's brilliant! Use of Weapons is perhaps the best book I've ever read.

[stone monkey]

That's the point of it. He's not who you think he is. That character's POV is largely a self serving lie; arguably because he really could do without facing what he's done, as the denouement shows, so I guess it's more a form of self preservation.

But either way this is still the definitive unreliable narrator in sf, if you as me.

[vaiski]

Encouraged by the all the praise here I finally picked up Consider Phlebas and Player of Games and read them over the weekend. Truly excellent books, looking forward to rest of the series (which I promptly ordered from amazon).

[Illuyankas]

You did the right thing.

[Dolorous Menhir]

Glad to hear it Vaiski, but it's not a series. Only some of the novels are set in the Culture, and even those don't share characters since they are mostly set in wildly varying time periods.

Can't actually think of any characters who are properly in more than one book (not counting references, actual appearances).

[vaiski]

Dolorous Menhir said:

Glad to hear it Vaiski, but it's not a series.

Yeah I know, I meant the remaining Culture novels, but series was shorter to write

[Morgoth]

I believe the culture woman who's in Use of Weapons reapear somwhere, or at least a person with that name.. Canna remember whether it was the culture short story in the short story collection or in inversions