Darn but you ask the hard questions, Charlie...
]]>A recent post on this is here, but there are many others.
]]>While the chronologically first Culture book is Consider Phlebas, I think most people will be most easily introduced by Use of Weapons, since it follows a surprisingly military sci-fi fold for Banks. Not that he shied from the military side of the Culture. Well, paramilitary maybe. But it may mesh with more expected concepts.
Alternately, if you like concept sci-fi, Player of Games I find rather refreshing. It's short, for Banks & Culture, yet still fairly complete.
And if you like diving into a high-tech fairly alien world (I have to admit, I am a fan of this side of things too, but can see where others may not be) then Excession is probably the other Culture entry-point worth reading about.
As far as his other work, Transitions I thought was well done, very much along a similar vane as Charlie's Palimpeset. Something about The Bridge has kept me going back to it every few years, but personally I never did manage to get through The Wasp Factory.
But I am looking forward to our host's next hard SF entry in a few weeks as well... I think the Banks reread will have to wait until after a slew of living authors have had their products properly digested.
]]>This was one of the themes that I think made the Culture so appealing. Each of the early books was an argument on why the Culture was ultimately a superior, well, culture. And I think he succeeded in demonstrating that we can aspire to achieve such heights. The later books focused on other moral concepts, but I have to say Surface Detail's rejection of the very concept of Hell as unethical I think was amazing. As good as Charlie and many of the other current SF writers are, I haven't found anyone else who can so artfully weave in a moral, political message to a story.
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