Iain M. Banks

Consider Phlebas

(Culture) Start here

Banks himself once described the plot of Consider Phlebas as: "a shipwrecked sailor falls in with a gang of pirates and goes in search of buried treasure." And that's precisely...

Player Of Games

(Culture)

Probably the best of Ian Bank's Culture novels. Strong characters and a light-hearted tone to the novel despite the "seriousness" of the actual plot make this an easy, addicting read....

Use Of Weapons

(Culture)

Iain Banks burst onto the literary scene with his controversial first novel, The Wasp Factory, the violent story of a girl who had been brought up as an emasculated boy....

The State Of The Art

(Culture)

A collection of short fiction set in Iain M. Banks's Culture, including the title novella about a Culture contact officer on Earth in the 1970s.

Excession

(Culture)

The only negative accusation that the Culture Novels series receives is that it's too complicated and detailed, with so many AI characters to remember. Now of course, we don't think...

Inversions

(Culture)

A Culture novel set among a pre-industrial people, where a doctor-spy serves a king and learns that outside forces are watching her world. Iain M. Banks tells it in two...

Look To Windward

(Culture)

A Culture novel in which a composer from the Chelgrian people and a visitor with a secret mission both come to the Culture's Orbital, in a story of memory, loss...

Surface Detail

(Culture)

A Culture novel about a virtual Hell, built by a civilisation to punish the digital copies of the dead, and a woman who escapes it to take her revenge in...

The Hydrogen Sonata

(Culture)

The tenth Culture novel, a story of an ancient music, a dying civilisation and a war that touches the Culture, from Iain M. Banks.

Transition

I wonder if inserting an M in between my first name and surname will magically turn me into a top science-fiction writer like Iain Banks. (Really, he writes non science...