What am I in for?

What am I in for?

Conisder Phlebas by Iain M. Banks.

it's a bit shaky in places, but it shapes up really well. the other Culture books paint a picture of a future that i would really like to live in, which is more than you can say for most SF today.

when you've finished this, go read Player of Games.

An adventure. Banks said he'd like to have seen it filmed, and wouldn't even mind if they messed the story up as long as they got the action scenes right.

Also there is a cannibalism scene so be ready for that.

that grotesque fat fuck with the filed teeth on that island? hahah, i'd forgotten about him.

His teeth weren't filed they were replaced with replaceable sets of metal ones that he could swap out for different jobs, Including a set that had little holes through them that could be used like wire strippers to strip the flesh off of your fingers.

Banks is great at writing this kind of shit.

it's been a while since my ex left and took all of my books with her, so i'd have to try to download an epub. but, yeah. Banks is great at writing that kind of shit.

>Letting your ex take all your books

I disliked it so much I stopped reading half way through. Just did nothing for me at all.

this
(my sides!)

I am reading it (have read 2/3 by now). It's really enjoyable and you don't feel it's length.
There are a few cool ideas in it, but few paragraphs of techno babble. So it goes down well.

You should've considered that before buying!

>Dating at all

It's British science fiction, written like American science fiction, but with an underlying Britishness.

It owes a surprising amount to Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide" trilogy, despite being superficially serious and epic. It is a wonderful rollercoaster of a novel. Very good.

>It's British science fiction, written like American science fiction, but without the gratuitous explosions, starship chases, sex scenes and colonialism

Consider Phlebas has all of these things.

its essential Britishness is revealed in that the whole book was a set-up for the scene where the Idirans run an atomic train head-on into another atomic train.

just like Gomez Addams. you can almost imagine Banks' grin as he typed those scenes.

This

Being s-single is the b-best

Dating is ok but never live together

A totalitarian communist dystopia in which everyone is enslaved to robot gods, that the author for some inexplicable reason thinks is a desirable future.

im pretty sure this is actually the best way

The evocation of intense emotions
This book made me genuinely upset, but in a good way.

it's more like a last man type deal only some of the last men are godlike robots (because they were built by last men and inherited their values)

It's a solid Science Fiction Adventure with a suspenseful story. I'm about to start Use of Weapons myself.

Against a Dark Background is better.

>in which everyone is enslaved to robot gods,


said slavery consisting of full-time partying, fucking, games, more partying, more fucking and some exploring for a change of pace.

o jesus, will nobody save the citizens of the Culture from their dismal dystopia?

humans in the culture were literally pets for the computers; also not every intelligence there was equal, humans were like privileged pets for the bigger computers while some of the lesser artificial intelligences were deemed to serve and sometimes even were bullied by the bigger computers, like that crow from excession (or many other minor minds like sapient spacesuits etc)

Wellbeing as you understand it – that is no goal, that seems to us an end!

They weren't slaves or pets, they participated in their society's collective decision-making. Each individual human had less say than a Mind, but there were many more humans than Minds.