Gadfium, who uses bed meetings as a cover for espionage, much like in The Algebraist (and possibly in The Business, which either way had the ‘count to 1024 in binary using your fingers’ bit). The meeting is one where she declines the comfortably jocular offer of sex (more on that in a moment), yet her relationship with another woman, observatory chief Clispier implies a recognisable queerness: Ever since his stunning novel The Wasp Factory set readers on fire, Iain M. Banks has been defying category and convention with his thrilling speculative fiction. Now he goes a step beyond his previous imaginative journeys to create his most exciting and provocative science fiction novel yet. I happily skipped one major complaint of this novel by listening to the audiobook version with Peter Kenny. He's awesome. That's great all by itself. But the best part is breezing right past the creative spellings of words. You know. Like the title of this book. Weird, right? But it's just Fearsome Engine. :) I'm sure this would be fine for people who read Shakespeare or any number of novels including Mark Twain's, but it is dense and some people might get turned off.

Iain banks Culture : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming

I have read all of Iain M Banks books, and I read Feersum Endjinn the year after it was first published in 1994. This is probably the only Science Fiction book of Iain M Banks that I had read problems finishing. In Feersum Endjinn, we see a variation on specific markers of Banks’ ideas around selfhood which he makes a core principle of the Culture: the ability for self to be stored in the Crypt for multiple (maximum seven) reincarnations; the ability to be reincarnated in the sex/gender/ethnicity of one’s choice (choice being conditional here, because the Crypt has its own agenda); the ability to split oneself off into the Crypt; the ability to share one’s self with those split-off selves via ‘implants’, which are more like the Culture’s genetic modifications and enhancements that you’re born with than actual things implanted, and which bear a striking resemblance to the Culture’s neural lace. Plus whatever else I’ve forgotten.

It grabbed me from the start. Part of this was the simple spectacle of it all, of the brobdingnagian "castle" where most of the story is set, in its kilometers-long, kilometers-tall chambers, of a destructive civil war between royalists and those aligned with the clan of Engineers, of the grotesque "chimeric" animals of sentience, and of the multiple layers of reality implemented in the vast dataspace of the cryptosphere where the data chaos lurks. And then there is the overwhelming concern of the Encroachment endangering the planet. But don't just think this is just a novel of ideas. The characters and the individual stories were all fascinating and funny and full of great reveals and twists. More than enough for three normal novels, even. :) Set on an almost unrecognizable far future Earth, this book is Iain. M. Banks' second non-Culture SF endevour. Earth is past it's golden hour, and technology has fallen into the realm of mysticism and ritual. The story follows four different people living in the remains of what can only be described as an disproportionately scaled super-city as they are reluctantly dragged into a plot involving a threat against the entire Earth. They face a conspiracy of powerful individuals with their own agenda, not necessarily interested in averting the looming threat.

Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks | Hachette UK

Iain M. Banks is the only sf author I've actively pursued in years. His Culture novels have been particularly interesting, their sociological framework being unusually intelligent for the genre. What an oddball s-f novel. My first I. M. Banks. Instead of venturing down any paths eventually leading to me reading his other standalone novels, I will probably just revert to my original plan and start the Culture series. She was the only speaker in a tribe of the dumb, walking amongst them, tall and silent while they touched her and beseeched her with their sad eyes and their deferent, hesitant hands and their flowing, pleading signs to talk for them, sing for them, be their voice.”Chief Scientist Gad­fium is about to receive the mysterious message she has been awaiting from the Plain of Sliding Stones . . . Bonus points in that his parts of the book have to be read out loud in your head - if anyone was to see your lips moving they might conclude YOU are the one who's dyslexic. My favorite moment in Feersum Endjinn is a beautifully written chapter in which a character is psychologically manipulated through a series of increasingly elaborate digital environments designed to make it easy and even preferable for her to divulge the information her interrogators are attempting to extract. The section takes place entirely inside the virtual construct of the Crypt, and on its own makes little sense without the context provided in previous chapters. The way in which these scenarios are presented to the reader is a thing to behold. First edition hardcover: The Algebraist, Iain M. Banks, London: Orbit, 2004 ISBN 1-84149-155-1 (UK) Bascule may actually be Banks' most likable sci-fi character, and his search for the talking ant, Ergates, is satisfying in its future picaresqueness.