Product Description

The first ever collection of Iain Banks's short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, The State of the Art. This is a striking addition to the growing body of Culture lore, and adds definition and scale to the previous works by using the Earth of 1977 as contrast. The other stories in the collection range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks's staggering talent.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6691 in Books
• Published on: 1993-05-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
'Banks is a phenomenon: the wildly successful, fearlessly creative author of brilliant and disturbing non-genre novels, he's equally at home writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance' William Gibson 'Few of us have been exposed to a talent so manifest and of such extraordinary breadth' The New York Review of Science Fiction 'Unfailing inventiveness and wit' Guardian

About the Author
Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He has since gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels.

Customer Reviews

A sound collection...
This is a solid collection of shorter fiction by an author not renowned for such. It is also misleading because it is marketed as an SF collection when there is non-SF contained within.

The price of this book is worth it for one story: 'Piece', which concerns religious fundamentalism and coincidence, and takes the form of one man's letter to his son. I would imagine most writers would have given their right arm to have written this: it is simply that powerful. The ending will leave you numb. And doesn't have any SF connection at all.

'The State of the Art' (which is a novella of The Culture, set mainly on Earth) is absorbing, but a little too long.

'The Road of Skulls' is odd.

'A Gift from the Culture' is a great Culture story.

A worthy addition to the Banks cannon.

Short but sweet…
The State of the Art is currently Iain (M) Banks only short story collection, the majority of the pieces falling towards science fiction. Probably the weakest two pieces are the opening and closing stories – ‘Road of Skulls’ which is too slight to have any impact, and ‘Scratch’ – a Burroughs-style does of cut-up weirdness which seems to have little point beyond being ‘experimental’. More enjoyable is the light-hearted farce of ‘Cleaning Up’, where a malfunctioning alien matter transmitter causes havoc on Earth. The three stories set explicitly in Banks’ Culture setting are all excellent – ‘The State Of the Art’ itself is a novella concerning the Culture’s discovery of planet Earth, ‘A Gift From the Culture’ concerns the blackmailing of a Culture ex-patriot, and best of all ‘Descendant’ examines the man / machine intelligence relationship of the Culture when a man is trapped in his sentient spacesuit on an alien world. Non-SF story ‘Piece’ concerns fundamentalist religion and terrorism, and sadly is just as disturbing today as when it was written. And lastly my favourite in the collection is ‘Odd Attachment’, a wickedly funny look at a lovestuck alien vegetable, complete with a punchline that will leave all male readers wincing. With a couple of slightly flat stories this isn’t consistently brilliant, but the vast majority of this collection is highly recommended.

A varied packet of Banksian brilliance
This collection of short stories is, as one would expect from Iain Banks, a compilation of brilliance. Stepping aside for the moment from the various other stories (each incredibly creative and original, a small delight on its own), the novella of the book's title is something truly special.

A hundred page Culture novel, it is massively imaginative, containing the mandatory Banks sleek prose, sharp wit and almost (but not quite) daunting intelligence and sharp perceptiveness that makes his works so exceptional. The points he raises here about whether or not to interfere with another planet (Earth), whilst reflecting on the many flaws and achievements of our planet, he gives in depth and penetrating analysis not only into the ethics of the Culture's work, but also into how we ourselves live and work in our surroundings.

If you're looking for a short Banks book to dip into quickly, then definitely buy this without fear of it not living up to the imposingly high standards of his full-length novels. Sheer brilliance.