Scan barcode
A review by mschlat
The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks
3.0
There are nine pieces in this collection; five are them are short stories not about the Culture and tend towards the gimmicky. One piece is Banks writing about the basic assumptions of the Culture; it's a bit obtuse at times, but otherwise very informative about how his utopia works. Two pieces are short fictions about Culture ("A Gift From The Culture" and "Descendant"); both scratched my itch for these types of stories in which a dystopian situation is thrown into sharp relief, and I really liked the pair.
But the reason I'd guess most people read this book is the Culture story "The State of the Art", where a Culture ship and crew visit our 1978 Earth. It's a tale that goes about where you would expect --- there's a lot of comparing our current civilization to the Culture's, with a great deal of emphasis on the barbarism and degradation on Earth (a common Banks trope) and some question if Earth humans are in fact living more intensely than Culture folk. (A big piece of the story is a Contact operative who "goes native".)
There's more to the story than that (quite a bit more, given the story's length and Bank's interest in describing much of 1970's Western civilization), but the plot always returns to that question. And I found the discussion of the comparison so on the nose as to be distracting. I have always been comfortable with Banks' novels serving as an allegory on human behavior, but the collapsing of the allegory with the reality took away the sharpness I expect from his plotting and prose.
I read this because I wanted to read all the Culture fiction, but it's been the least interesting piece I've read so far. Still a good read (especially the two stories mentioned above), but not necessary.
But the reason I'd guess most people read this book is the Culture story "The State of the Art", where a Culture ship and crew visit our 1978 Earth. It's a tale that goes about where you would expect --- there's a lot of comparing our current civilization to the Culture's, with a great deal of emphasis on the barbarism and degradation on Earth (a common Banks trope) and some question if Earth humans are in fact living more intensely than Culture folk. (A big piece of the story is a Contact operative who "goes native".)
There's more to the story than that (quite a bit more, given the story's length and Bank's interest in describing much of 1970's Western civilization), but the plot always returns to that question. And I found the discussion of the comparison so on the nose as to be distracting. I have always been comfortable with Banks' novels serving as an allegory on human behavior, but the collapsing of the allegory with the reality took away the sharpness I expect from his plotting and prose.
I read this because I wanted to read all the Culture fiction, but it's been the least interesting piece I've read so far. Still a good read (especially the two stories mentioned above), but not necessary.