“So that’s where you look for aliens. In the course of an eclipse totality track. When everybody else is looking awestruck at the sky, you need to be looking round for anybody who looks weird or overdressed, or who isn’t coming out of their RV or their moored yacht with the heavily smoked glass.”
Where to look for #alien tourists – from Iain (M) Banks’s 2009 novel TRANSITION
Never-before-seen writings & correspondence from author Iain Banks form part of an exhibit at the University of Stirling as it celebrates one of its most famous alumni.
Iain (M) Banks: Two Authors, One Man launches at a free event in the University of Stirling library on Thursday, April 4 from 4pm to 6pm, & will run until August 30.
I just finished reading Iain M. Banks’ The Player of Games.
Starts out quite slow, I didn’t quite understand why the blackmail was needed to advance the plot, and the characters felt like cardboard cutouts. But there are some interesting food for thoughts—like how in The Culture sex change is only as remarkable as a fashion change and no more. Now I want to know what his ardent fans thought about the world-building for this series. #bookstodon#scifi#IainBanks
INTERVIEWER: When somebody asks you to describe your book LANARK, what do you say to them?
ALASDAIR GRAY: I say it is a Scottish petit bourgeois model of the universe.
INTERVIEWER: Just like that?
ALASDAIR GRAY: Yes, I’ve rehearsed it and honed it down to as few words as possible.
From 25 Feb 2021 – the first ever #GrayDay, marking the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Alasdair Gray’s novel LANARK
“I was absolutely knocked out by LANARK. I think it’s the best in Scottish literature this century. It opened my eyes. I had forgotten what you could do – you can be self-referential, you can muck about with different voices, characters, time-streams, whatever. LANARK had a huge effect on THE BRIDGE. I’m quite happy to acknowledge that debt.”
@bookstodon
“As a humanist, atheist, and socialist, he preferred to place his trust in techno-scientific development, rather than his faith in gods, or his capital in the market”
Joseph S. Norman on the legacy & utopianism of Iain M. Banks’s Culture series
@bookstodon
“Banks… envisions the overcoming of scarcity as the signal achievement of the civilization made by the Minds, and yet he focuses time and again on objects of unfulfilled desire”
—The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M Banks: Alan Jacobs on the price of bliss, in The New Atlantis Journal
@bookstodon
“Our strange wee country is as complex as any alien civilization, and getting it as right as Banks did in The Crow Road required every bit as much world-building skill as his Culture”
—“The Difference is Entirely One of Setting”: Simon Stephenson travels THE CROW ROAD
@bookstodon
Why has Banks’s Culture series – “a world where your Bezoses & your Musks are not just irrelevant, but actively sought out & disempowered” – garnered a billionaire fanbase?
Kurt Schiller writes in Blood Knife Magazine on what misreadings might attract Jeff Bezos & Elon Musk
#FinishedReading the last book by #IainBanks , about a group of friends visiting a man dying of cancer, in his condemned house about to be swallowed by the next door quarry. Not quite as grim as it sounds, even though Banks's cancer diagnosis came while he was finishing the book; it argues for the value of meeting terrible things with dark humour and even rage. It feels a bit like a stage play with its restricted setting, small cast, and focus on dialogue and monologue. #Bookstodon@bookstodon
I just learned that there was going to be a TV adaptation of #IainBanks#Culture#scifi series by Amazon and it was cancelled, which I learned by googling to see if anyone had ever talked about doing one.
And while I would looooove a good Culture TV show, I'm kind of glad it was cancelled, to be honest. 3 reasons 🧵
#TheCrowRoad by #IainBanks on #BBC Scotland channel just now. A good adaption of a favorite book of his. I had a copy, signed by the big man himself for mec, but I lent it someone who lent it to someone and it never came back sadly.
New introductory post on this new instance. For anyone new to Mastodon, this is a great way of linking up with likeminded people. Boosts are always welcome to help with that!
As might possibly be gleaned from my profile, I am a fan of #DoctorWho.