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The Culture series
Iain M. Banks (Orbit Books)

Iain M. Banks died more than 11 years ago, but remains a titan of modern science fiction. He wrote “literary” works under the name Iain Banks, but added the “M” for his 14 sci-fi offerings, which are known for an audacious, ground-breaking take on the space opera that transformed the genre.

If you have never read any of these books but love “hard” sci-fi, is it worth diving in now?

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: Banks’s sci-fi, at its best, is staggeringly inventive, beautifully written, dramatic and often very funny. His stories are packed with ideas, warships with minds very much of their own, alien races, charismatic drones and intergalactic politics.

That said, time is a stern judge. I have read celebrated “classics” of sci-fi and found them startlingly misogynistic, homophobic and racist – even for their time. There is nothing so serious to worry about here, but Banks’s novels haven’t aged perfectly. I reread five for this column, and even as a dyed-in-the-wool fan, I couldn’t avoid the fact that, for books set in a future where men and women are meant to be equal, they don’t always read that way.

Take Excession, where there are jokes about an alien race for which rape is part of everyday life. This is dealt with in a “jolly” manner, with the novel’s hero worshipping the aliens and wanting to do everything they do. It is stuff that wouldn’t get through an edit these days, I guess.

You will make up your own mind about whether to proceed. If you do, I would start with his 10-book “Culture” series. These don’t need to be read in order, though I suggest starting with The Player of Games, which is exciting and does a good job of setting out the universe these stories occupy.

Although there isn’t a lot of spaceship action, you get the idea that superintelligent, sentient ships (aka, “the Minds”) make the big decisions, but are benevolent towards humans. The Culture is a “post-scarcity” civilisation, so no one has to work. This can be dull, so Gurgeh, our hero and probably the best (human) player of games in the Culture, volunteers for Contact, an enterprise that deals with non-Culture civilisations.

Other fans argue for starting with the first published novel in the series, Consider Phlebas. The humans in the Culture are often quite alien, and Horza, this novel’s protagonist, is a good example. He is a Changer who can transform into a copy of another human.

As to which Culture book is best, there is no consensus. Earlier reservations aside, I choose Excession. It has multiple points of view and plot strands. We also have spaceships and drones, action from the Special Circumstances unit (an offshoot of Contact), plus fascinating conversations between gangs of ships. Not to mention Culture warships firing on each other and a threat to the central society of the series from an “outside context problem”, in other words, a far superior civilisation. So much going on and all brilliantly handled. Wow.

I have slight reservations about two of his sci-fi works. The State of the Art is really a novella, for fans only I would say, although it gives us the only peek at the Culture interacting with Earth. Then in Feersum Endjinn, a non-Culture work, part is written phonetically, which I limped through when I first read it. But in today’s audio form that may not matter much.

Anyway, a very happy Iain M. Banks experience to you, should you choose to dive in.

Emily also recommends…

The Wasp Factory
Iain Banks (Little, Brown)

Emily H. Wilson is a former editor of New Scientist and the author of the Sumerians trilogy, set in ancient Mesopotamia. The second book in the series, Gilgamesh, is out now. You can find her at emilyhwilson.com, or follow her on X @emilyhwilson and Instagram @emilyhwilson1

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