Iain Banks: A BBC Radio Collection

New from Penguin: Selected readings & full-cast dramatisations from across the literary & science fiction of Iain Banks.

🐝 The Wasp Factory
🚀 The State of the Art
📚 Piece
🎸 Espedair Street

@bookstodon

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/470032/iain-banks-a-bbc-radio-collection-by-banks-iain/9781529954241

#Scottish #literature #IainBanks #IainMBanks #audiobook

@PeterLG @Ericthebeeover2 @andyjennings @MorpheusB
This gets #IainMBanks-like so quickly.

A school of counter-trackers around each capitol sub vs trackers.

Do the counter-trackers disable an enemy tracker?

How is escalation avoided in peace-time?

The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks (1988)

[…] Esta es la historia de un hombre viajó muy lejos durante mucho tiempo, simplemente para jugar a un juego. El hombre es un jugador llamado Gurgeh. La historia comienza con una batalla que no es una batalla, y termina con un juego que no es un juego.[…]

Primeras líneas de The Player of Games (traducción libre)

Llevaba mucho tiempo con las novelas de La Cultura en mi lista de pendientes, y la verdad es que no me arrepiento para nada de haber empezado por The Player of Games. La […]

https://fsolt.es/2025/06/the-player-of-games-iain-m-banks-1988/

I finished The Algebraist. Really liked it. I think some might have felt the ending was anticlimactic, but I enjoyed it. Need to pick up more books from him.

As a quick palette cleanser I’m reading Quick Service by Wodehouse. It could definitely make an interesting little play. Hijinks in a manor house and all that.

#Reading #SciFi #Algebraist #IainMBanks #PGWodehouse

#scifi #memes #theculture #amreading #iainmbanks #surfacedetail #espersium #joilerveppers #applehq

I’m about halfway through the Algebraist, and weirdly the best way to describe it is the Da Vinci Code in space.

Except it’s way better than that.

#Reading #SciFi #Algebraist #IainMBanks #DaVinciCode

Iain (M.) Banks on suosikkikirjailijoitani. Etenkin Kulttuuri-kirjoihin on tullut palattua useita kertoja suomeksi ja englanniksi. Oikeastaan olen Kulttuuri-scifeilystä pitänyt niin paljon, että Banksin muissa kirjoissa, scifeilyssä ja ei-scifeilyssä, on tullut vähän hankala olo - jotain on puuttunut, vaikka teokset ovatkin korkeatasoisia kautta linjan. Tästä syystä johtuen joitain hänen kirjojaan saattaa olla minulla yhä lukematta (ehkä tämmöisessä tapauksessa ei saisi puhua suosikkikirjailijasta, mutta jos tyypillä on useita kirjoja jotka olen lukenut arviolta kolme kertaa niin katsoisin ilmauksen olevan oikeutettu).

Nyt nämä kolme kirjastolainassa. Muista Flebasta ja Aseiden käyttö olivat uusintaluvussa ennen näitä. Kävelyä lasilla luin nyt ekan kerran - tykkäsin kovasti. Omassa hyllyssä Banksia löytyy viisi kappaletta.

Liian aikaisin lähti tämäkin kirjailija.

#kirjat #kirjallisuus #scifi #iainmbanks

I have really been enjoying The Algebraist (yes, I read at least two books at once. Or more precisely, I read one or more books while listening to an audiobook book.)

I knew I should have explored Iain M Banks a long time ago, but there’s just so much to read. I’ll definitely be getting more. Of course, I also need to read the Expanse.

#Reading #SciFi #IainMBanks #Algebraist #Expanse

“If you want to know how Banks views capitalist tech billionaires, you don’t have to hunt very hard. In the Culture series, a capitalist tech billionaire is the literal devil, only he couldn’t be bothered to build hell himself.”

—Constance Grady on how the broligarchy misreads Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels

@bookstodon

https://www.vox.com/culture/413502/iain-banks-culture-series-elon-musk-jeff-bezos-mark-zuckerberg

#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #scifi #SF #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #techbros #broligarchy #Musk #Bezos #Zuckerberg

I just finished reading "The Hydrogen Sonata" by Iain M. Banks. I have now read the whole Culture series 🎉 Check out my review, and my thoughts on the series: app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/0063... #bookreview #scifi #IainMBanks #Culture

app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/006328...

The millions of instances of (accidental) torture which Ray Kurzweil believes will precede the Singularity

Once you accept the premise that brain uploading is possible, Kurzweil’s assumption here that it will take trial and error in order to get it right is clearly plausible. Quoted in Adam Becker’s More Everything Forever loc 1525:

trial-and-error risks here are pretty awful. Let’s say we start to get close to making a sentient representation of a human brain in a computer. . . . If you have a small difference in the information your eye is giving your brain and your ear is giving your brain, that’s already an awful feeling. It’s like seasickness, and nausea, or different types of pain. So what we’re promising to do here is to create thousands or millions of instances of sentient beings in computers that are probably suffering horribly, and are just going to get turned off. I mean, you could see this really macabre process of creating—if you imagine you can—sentient things in computers. There’s a lot of things to get wrong. And those outcomes are terrible.

What’s striking is how these ‘terrible’ outcomes are presented as a detail about implementation. They are a stepping stone, part of the journey, rather than something which might lead us to pause. If uploading is happening at scale, might these not be billions of souls tortured before being put out of their misery, like the digital hells conceived of by Iain M Banks which still haunt me fifteen years after I read the book?

They are presumably licensed by the outcome of infinite life for an infinite humanity. But if millions of instances of torture are licensed by the goodness of the outcome then what wouldn’t be? What more mundane viciousness and injuries might be enacted in pursuit of digital transcendence? I always thought the TESCREAL stuff was slightly overstated, in the sense of taking the intellectual games of digital elites too seriously, but I’m starting to revise that opinion.

What if this did become the dominant ideology amongst the most powerful people in the world, as opposed to something they like discussing when they’re high at parties? How would the goal of transcendence they conceived play out against a backdrop of spiralling inequality, social unravelling and climate chaos? It makes me want to go back to Peter Frase’s Four Futures and suggest a Fifth future, not quite what he called eliminativism but something close to it.

As Becker goes on to observe, Kurzweil’s vision of a universe subordinated to computation is colonialism on a vast scale, which unlike the mass psychological torture which precedes our glorious digital futures (whoops!) the guru only implicitly recognises, even as he insists that restraint would be exercised to prevent the entirety of existence becoming grist to the computational mill. From loc 1534:

There’s still a serious problem with Kurzweil’s notion of waking up the universe: it’s a euphemism for total destruction. It would be the end of nature, colonialism on a universal scale, with entire galaxies’ worth of planets and stars chewed up to provide more computing power for the digital remnants of humanity. Hence Kurzweil’s insistence that alien life is unlikely: it is an assurance that the universe is ours for the taking, with nobody else there to worry about.

And it’s also one in which coding would be the ultimate form of power, creating a universe where one imagines it would be quite a good life for a principle researcher at Google and his descendants. From loc 1652:

With the end of nature and the advent of a universe that is simply one enormous, artificial computer—where we live in still-more-artificial worlds generated by those computers—the promise of control is total, especially for those who know how to control computers. This is a fantasy of a world where the single most important thing, the thing that literally determines all aspects of reality, is computer programming. All of humanity, running on a computer, until the end of time.

Fun fact: I just found out Kurzweil is married to a psychotherapist who he credits here for “her love, guidance and insight into the interpersonal world” (my emphasis). I would be genuinely curious as to whether/how she interprets Kurzweil’s attachment to the Singularity and whether they discuss these ideas in psychodynamic terms.

#AdamBecker #climateCrisis #digitalElites #IainMBanks #ideology #postNeoliberalCivics #postNeoliberalism #postpandemicCivics #RayKurzweil #singularity #TESCREAL #transcendence

Started reading The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks. I haven’t read anything by him before, but it’s a stand alone novel. I’m 100 pages in and I’m not really sure what it’s about, but it’s interesting so far. Very high tech science fiction.

#Reading #SciFi #IainMBanks #Algebraist

🛸 GSV Fucked Around, Found Out, Got Published

#TheCulture #IainBanks #IainMBanks

I don't often do purely decorative prints but I was never happy with my previous attempt at a "suspended" model and I wanted another go

This is the ship "Limiting Factor" from the Iain M Banks book "The Player of Games", the geometry comes from one of his sketches. I looked again at the surround and fiddled with the way the model is defined to make it a bit easier to understand

https://www.printables.com/model/699308-suspended-limiting-factor-v2-from-iain-m-banks-cul

#3dPrinting #IainBanks #IainMBanks #openScad

@tess In Iain M Bank's Culture series there is a (demilitarised) Warship called "Frank Exchange Of Views" and I feel they could have a sibling in the "Frank Exchange Of Banalities"

#IainMBanks

@publictorsten

The Culture series …

„is a science fiction series written by Scottish author Iain M. Banks and released from 1987 until 2012.“

#iainmbanks #sciencefiction

@freequaybuoy @Dianora @_L1vY_ @rateexportpilot @thevivllainous.bsky.social

Responses to points I think you're making (forgive me if I'm misinterpreting):

1) Ghod knows I understand the "too much reading out there to keep up with everybody" rationale for why too few read Iain M. Banks

2) "Against a Dark Background" is a beautiful standalone, not a Culture novel

3) Yep, the Culture is a left-wing utopia. So sign me up ...

#ScienceFiction #Books #IainMBanks

Dear USians,

in keeping with the traditions established by your so-called #Musk and his concerning predilection for the #Culture novels of spinning-in-his-grave-at-supersonic-speeds author #IainMBanks we have decided to rename your society. You shall henceforth be known as #Affront to celebrate the diplomatic tact of your god-emperor #Trump and his high-priest #Vance.

Good day.

Signed,
Sun-Earther Lawrence-Pritchard Hugh Waterhouse dam Qwghlm, Special Circumstances

https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/Affront

This is a good show explaining how, and why, Elon Musk is strange. They don't mention Iain M Banks although Musk claims him as his favourite writer. I suspect that Musk, at some level, recognises that Banks is, from what I can gather, taking aim at someone exacly like himself (Musk).#muskrat #iainmbanks

“The Culture is on again. Five years after Amazon’s previous attempt at adapting Iain M. Banks’ Consider Phlebas collapsed, a new adaptation has risen—and this one has an incredibly promising team behind the scenes. Deadline reports that Charles Yu […] is set to write and produce the series, while Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao (Immortals, Nomadland) is also executive producing.”

https://reactormag.com/charles-yu-is-adapting-iain-m-banks-consider-phlebas-for-amazon-mgm-studios/

#Scottish #literature #TheCulture #IainMBanks #sciencefiction #scifi #television