Iain Banks (possible spoilers)

[Matty]

Damn i love this guy. My favourite author of all time.

I intend to go into some depth with a bunch of his novels but i just wanted to say as an intro i am a chunk of the way into the new book Matter, the special circumstances agent is tooling up for some serious action, and has a legit beef, a friendly knife missile, a eccentric ex military ship mind onside, and is firing up to kick a galaxy worth of humanoid and alien ass by the looks of it.

I am fucking excited. Can you tell:D

Anyone else into the guy? I know we have a few fans about the place just from the ship names floating about, so whats your favourite? do you read the sci fi, general fiction and non fiction expressions equally enthusiastically or prefer a particular sub genre ( i personally think that he defies pigeon holing fr the most part, but still)

Also which do you think would make the best movie. I've been hard push over a while to choose, i think Consider Phelebus is an epic movies just waiting to happen, but i also think that Against a Dark Background, PLyer of Games and Look to Windward all have equally massive potential for taking to film.

This thread will be an ongoing one, i;ve been meaning to do one for ages but was daunted by the scale of the task, however i figure get one going and keep adding to it instead, so please help me out. Any killer spoilers in tags eh, i'd hate to spoil any of the books for people, even though i did warn about spoilers in the title.

[ravenscape]

I just picked up Look to Winward at lunch today. It's supposed to be a good drop-in for his Culture series. We'll see.

[Matty]

Awesome book, one of my favourites. And yeah it is a friendly culture intro.

To be fair, most of the stories stand alone really well, the only one that i wouldnt really recommend as an early intro would be Excession, there is a lot of ship dialogue and a bunch of in jokes in that one that might be a bit off-putting/indecipherable but the rest are all very much accessible.

[Jet Black]

Use of Weapons would be a tough one to get into as well. Brilliant book once you're familiar with the culture though.

(and it's consider Phlebas) .... While I really like Player of Games as a book, I can't see how it would make a good movie though.

[His Noodly Appendage]

I never got the fuss over PoG.

[Jet Black]

I never got the fuss over PoG.

the black helicopters are on their way.

[Ray Moscow]

Yeah, I love his scifi stuff. I'm reading Matter now.

A friend of ours is an old friend of his, so I hope to meet him one day.

[Don Alhambra]

There's a new one? Fucking yes.

Is it Culture, standalone, something else?

[Ray Moscow]

There's a new one? Fucking yes.

Is it Culture, standalone, something else?

Culture, baby -- plus something else!:cool:

[Don Alhambra]

There's a new one? Fucking yes.

Is it Culture, standalone, something else?

Culture, baby -- plus something else!:cool:

Mmmm!! Bah, I need to finish reading some more science books for the Nexus first.

On that note, back to writing my (late) review...