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Seth Hi there and welcome back to Hugos There 2.0 for another Zoomed Out Author Deep Dive episode, and this time it's Iain M. Banks, and my guest is Damian MacChoiligh, sorry I think I butchered that a little bit Damian No, that's fine. That's perfect. Yeah, but you can call me Damo. Seth So hi there, Damo, thanks for joining me. Damian How are you? Seth Good Good So tell me a little about about yourself. What's your history as a science fiction fan. Damian Yeah, so so anticipating that you might yeah asked me that I was thinking back on. You know some of your guests and how they answer and they think to fall into two categories. There's there's usually people who can remember that first book they read when they were 15 over number twenty five or forty five or whatever. And but I have no such anecdotes I I cannot remember a time when I was reading when I was not reading science fiction. You know I have always read it I you know when I was a teenager um Dublin used to be in the 1980s falling down with loads of these secondhand bookshops which were full of cheap paperbacks. You know all the covers and all that stuff that and both from the US but mostly from Britain and I just bought them by the sack load you know and devoured my way through them. You know? Seth Mm, yeah. Damian Yeah I think one of the themes I hear a lot in um people's recollections of their of their science fiction history is how much you read when you were a teenager you know and I was no exception. You know so and that's that's really it I Just don't remember a time now I will say I read a huge amount as a teenager as I said but once I came to my twenties and thirties you know tedious things like work and and life and stuff getting away. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian You know So my um, my consumption dropped a good bit you know, but that's really you know I I'm science fiction to the bone I think that might good the best way to put it. Seth Um, so we're going to talk about Iain M Banks also known as Iain Banks depending on what kind of fiction. He's publishing. Um. Seth But so why don't you give us an an introduction and you know why an Irishman wanting to talk about a Scottish author? Damian Yeah, no I will make one comment on that and you can back me up on this I did explicitly say that if a Scottish person came along and wanted to do ah Author Zoom Out Iain Banks that I would magnanimously step aside and but yeah, why do why? you do? why? you want to talk about them I mean. Damian So one of my roles in science fiction I actually have one these days. Um I'm in the Facebook science fiction book club Facebook group and I'm a moderator now and it has quite struck me over the last few years I've been doing that that. Damian When we we ask people to name their favorite Authors and partly just to make sure they're not Russian bots are and like that. But also just to get a sense that they know this is a written science fiction group and and you know we know them and so on so when you look at the list of names that get mentioned you could draw up a list of about I'd say 5 or 6 maybe 10, maybe a dozen, that you know 99% of our applicants would include you know the usual Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury and Banks would be one of those doesn't he comes up a lot and he's ah, very much a favorite of I would say at least 10 if not 20% of our members anyway and you know he comes up over and over again for particularly his storytelling and particularly the ideas that he conveys in his novels. You know that for want of a better word the philosophical ideas he puts forwards and particularly the subset of his work involving the Culture and which would be talking about that. A lot of people just when they asked what are your favorite novels. They just say the Culture series you know, but you is you know a a good few books. You know to say the least and so he comes up all the time you know and he's um, you know he's one of the major figures in he's one of the major figures in science fiction in general he has a particular role though in that he was one and I think he might be the first one you could say of a group of mostly British science fiction writers like Paul Mcauley and Alastair Reynolds and a few others. Who essentially reinvented the idea of what science fiction could could be and and specifically Space Opera they started writing these great tales of galactic interstellar intergalactic goings on and so forth and people can't see but I'm waving my hands here to indicate the scale of things. Seth Right Damian And they you know Space Opera used to be a kind of almost a joke at this you know during the 60s and 70s you know during the New Wave and all this kind of thing you know. So um, it was very hackneyed and old people are thinking that the Lensman series and all that and you know they're not particularly well written. It has to be said, personal opinion there. And whereas Banks on these other guys they reinvented that you know and they brought a completely new sensibility to it and used it for quite different purposes across the board but very much changed the way it was written and made it a much more serious. And a sub genre to be taken seriously as well. Now, there's quite a variety in there some of them like Reynolds in particular are very hard science fiction as well as Space Opera, Banks not so much. But but that's his significance you know I mean he's a hugely significant figure. Seth Mm. Damian Why Irishman will be talking about him I lived there for a few years, and I found out having read his mainstream fiction before I moved there I found that I recognized the place and I recognized the people um and then since I've lived there, you know he's just been a Yeah, he's just one of my favorite writers Anyway, like so so that's why I'm here talking about him. Seth Mm, yeah, one of the hurdles with Space Opera is you you do kind of have to decide is this generation ship ah Space Opera or is it faster than light Space Opera because you those are kind of the 2 ends of it right. Damian Mm, yeah, exactly Yeah yeah Reynolds is very much generation ships stick to the laws of physics you know, noting faster than noise usIain Makes great use of that for dramatic effect and so on. Banks, no I'm just going to invent some sort of hyper drive and off we go you know? So what. Seth Are. Right. Damian People Some people would argue that Banks's science fiction is is not really science fiction per se like definitely not hard science fiction. You know it could be argued that it's almost fantasy in the kind of Star Wars or maybe not Star Wars Maybe Star Trek you know in that kind of sense. You know. Seth Mm, yeah, yeah, and we'll we'll talk more about sort of the the Culture in particular and and and the the kinds of technology and social constructs and that kind of stuff that verge on that. So that's just sort of an intro to Banks right? So anything in particular about the author. Do you want to talk about the you know, biographical kind of details. Damian Yeah. Yeah, what I might do is I'll I'll give a brief summary of his life. But what I might do then is if you if you don't mind I might actually talk about his politics as well. Seth All right. Damian You know to get that out away fairly early on because another thing about the importance of Banks is ah, he is unequivocally what you might call a left-wing writer. He brings forward his ideas that are I'm not sure whether you'd call him in it. Well this might sound like a silly thing but I'm not sure if you'd call him an out and out socialist in a sort of rigorous sense. Well one thing you can say about him is he is extremely anti-capalist. Seth Mm. Damian I've written up all these kind of summary notes here about the various novels I'm going to be chatting about and it's actually interesting for me reading back on his works to come and talk here that I thought he would have casually said yeah you know he's very critical of capitalist societies and imperialism and so on and but reading over this stuff, he really is like it's It's not just a cliche or a truism like it's it saturates his work. He entirely is using Science fiction and indeed his mainstream stuff and we'll talk about that distinction in a minute to critique our kind of societies, capitalism and and indeed Authoritarian governments and. Feudal systems and Monarchies and what have you? you know? So It's one of his defining features I and I'm going to say this early on because some of your listeners might be thinking I might give that Banks guy a try and you know he has certain political positions and opinions that would mean that they will just not enjoy him man. We just switch off you know he could be summarized as being if you know the old classics so to speak and you're not familiar with more modern stuff. He could be summarized as being an Anti-Heinlein He uses science fiction in the same way to discuss ideological ideas and issues, but he's coming from, in almost every way and the opposite form or the opposite idea or the opposite analysis to Heinlein you know and to put my cards on the table Heinlein is not a writer I particularly enjoy Seth Mm, yeah. Damian Ah, including just simply for his writing ability. You know, but aside from more sleazy stuff that's in his book I mean if I mind going. Let's stick with Banks, you can cut that out if you want Seth Yeah, yeah, but we'll get somebody on eventually to talk about Heinlein and we'll we'll see how fair we can be. Damian But anyway, yeah, so let me just summarize his um his life briefly and and then I'll start talking about the politics. So um I will say one thing about Banks as well before I get on that he is extremely Scottish in the sense that and his wit and his his way of talking and his his ideas and. I'm saying this now I'm just a person who reads science fiction as you know your your regular guest or your friend Ivor Watkins whenever he's on a podcast. He just says I'm just a bloke who likes science fiction you know and I'd say that about myself I'm no scholar by any by any stretch of the imagination and but so I mean that in a kind of prosaic sense. Seth Right. yeah. Damian But others, particularly the likes of Paul Kincaid would say that in a literary analysis kind of way like that. There's a lot of themes and in in Scottish literature that that um Banks inherits you know so he's very Scottish in that sense. But there's a great interview with him on the BBC Website he's if you searched for just BBC 5 minute interview Iain Banks you'll find it straight away and and and the chap asks and whoever's doing the interview asks him. Ah should we be looking for two levels in your books right? and straight away Banks says ah only to you know he gives us mock kind of shock and horror, and says you should be more ambitious you know, but then he kind of turns that on his head and he says and you should look for as many as you want is a direct quote, I think you can look for as many as you want they might even be there. You know and. It's such a self-effacing comment but it's also such a witty comment you know and that kind of that summarizes Banks. Seth Mm. Damian So he was born in Dunfermline which if you know Scotland at all. It's in Fife and and his father was ah in the admiralty. So that means the sort of the British government arm that runs the Navy I think that's that's what essentially what that means and so you know they live near the Rosyth Naval dockyards which very significantly is and I'm open to correction on this but I'm pretty sure it's where this Scottish sorry the British nuclear deterrent, which is based around submarines and this was based there and it that became very important for ah for Banks later in his life and so they lived lived in a place called North Queensferry until he was about nine years old and and then they moved to a place called Gourok which is on the the West coast of Scotland near Glasgow. So. Seth Mm. Damian If you listen to Banks's voice if you listen to him talking, he doesn't have a particularly strong Scottish accent. You know it's that kind of product of moving around a bit and so you know he's kind of very clearly spoken very easy to understand you know, even though it's a beautiful accent you know and and somebody while he was living in Gourok gave him a book which I have never heard of and I've never seen a copy of called Kemlo and the Zones of Silence by a writer called EC Elliot and I have never heard of that writer or seen that book or so that was his introduction um to science fiction and he never looked back. Damian And he then went to the university of Stirling and he was there until 1975 so he's kind of someone who was in college during the the 70s you know and what but that sort of employs and quite significantly. He studied English and then Philosophy and P sychology. And while he was there and he would have come across the ideas. There's a Scottish psychologist called Artie Lang and I'm probably pronouncing it wrong. It's probably alreadydi lang or something like that and he wrote a book called The Divided Self and it's an interesting one because in a lot of Banks's work as we' say. Are characters who are unreliable narrators or who have split personalities of certain types now usually based around technology or or you know ideas like that. But it's kind of reminiscent of Robert Louis Stevenson and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which of course is set in Edinburgh and Stevenson was from Edinburgh. So. There's a kind of an echo there of apparently a lot of Scottish literature has these kind of ideas in it. You know so you know that's that's a significant part of his background, they think, that informed a lot of his um writing Damian And then he did that usual thing that writers do where they get all these jobs that lived them leave them time in the evenings to to and to write and then he you know moved around and he worked in London and he he moved of Europe and North America and all that so he was quite well traveled by the time he came to actually publish any of his works. And he worked as something I made a note to this myself something in IBM called an Expediter and Analyzer which I'm not quite sure what that is I think it's some kind of clerk or something like that. But anyway he worked for a legal firm at one point in London and the novel Walking on Glass kind of reflects his experience of being a a Scottish person there so that's his life and now of course the most significant um and a sad fact about Iain Banks is that he died in 2013 and he was in his early 50s he was younger than I am now. So well I'm in my mid 50 s so ah, he announced on his website that he had pancreatic cancer and inoperable cancer and he said he was told I think his exact words were that he was very poorly and that he had only about a year to live according to the doctors and and so on who were trading them but he it didn't even last that long. He only lasted a few months after that so he died on the 9th of June 2013 and and my own on a personal note my own first interaction with social media of any kind was leaving my condolences on his website because his website was absolutely flooded with people some of whom had met him and were saying how what a lovely person he was and by all accounts he was. He was a very nice person and but there was loads of people just who had never met him. Only new him through his books but just came in to say how much they meant to him and how much his books meant to them and and so on and what they had learned from his work and and so on so it was quite extraordinary. Damian He he actually it's kind of a sad fact, but he he actually didn't have enough time to read all the notices that were left on his website before he died I think he only read tourdodom or a quarterdom or something like that you know with just a reflection of how quickly he went but also of the level of of love there was from him you know so it's a that's a kind of sad. Seth Yeah, yeah. Damian Ah, to to his role in science fiction. You know there's a lot of sci-fi guys who lived a long time and we've lost quite a few significant figures over the last few years no but they're usually you know, not that it's any less sad but they're usually figures in their 70s and Ursula Le Guin lived into her 90s um. But he was only yeah I think it was 52 or 50 tree something along those lines anyway. So that's his life. Seth So he's um, you know like I mentioned sort of toward the top right? He published under more than one name because he had science fiction and non-science fiction and so I know you want to talk about sort of what which work do we classify as as science fiction. Damian Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so that's that's a particularly important thing and I should make one point here now here's my advantage of having actually lived in Scotland and the M in Iain M Banks it stands for the name Menzies and well should I say what looks like the name Menzies and but is actually pronounced Minis and there's a chain of of shops I'm not sure if they're even still there. Um. Damian And you know when I was living over there I said oh yeah, I'm gone down to that shop Menzies and all the Scottish people of course poured out laughing and said no no yeah idiot, foreign idiot and it's called Minis and so the m comes from the fact that. his father apparently this is the anecdote anyway his father was apparently meant to call him Iain Minis Banks and after I think it was an uncle or something that and the father somehow forgot to include the middle name or the second surname or whatever so he was just registered as Iain Banks and the family seemed to know him as Iain Minis Banks so he originally published The Wasp Factory that was his first book that was actually published so his mainstream work was published as Iain Banks and he tells this story that he regards as being slightly ludicrous and I agree with him. The publisher didn't want to call him Iain M Banks because there's a writer in I don't know if you've heard of P.G. WodehousIain My mother made me read all those well when I say made introduced me to P.G. Wodehouse when I was a young person, or I encouraged me to read them. So I know how the Brits why the Brits lost the empire. Seth Mm yeah. Damian Because of their degenerate and useless upper classes and and that that was good advice and and ah, there's a writer a fictional writer in the Jeeves and Wooster novels called Rosie M Banks so alleged and she's a romantic novelist. She writes these dreadful sentimentalists awful books. You know apparently? So apparently he would have been confused with horror but Banks thinks that that's nonsense himself. You know that's it's a a bit of a silly. Seth Mm, yeah, yeah, I've only read a couple of the Jeeves books but I don't I didn't remember that character. Yeah. Damian Mm, yeah yeah yeah yeah I can just about remember her. But anyway so the uncles kept giving him a hard time about the fact that the M was gone from his name so when he had his first science fiction novel which was Consider Phlebas and he said look that's distinguished between um, my science fiction and my my mainstream work by using the M you know? So um. And I think the publishers are quite onboard with that because I think they were showing that little bit of what's the word I'm looking for here, that'snobby about science fiction. You know it it. It. It can be treat you as seriously as a regular literature. You know this kind of crap sorry and you know this kind of nonsensical distinction between them. Seth Yeah. Damian And and I might actually just comment on that the distinction between his different types of his different types of of work. He if you read around about Banks, Paul Kincaid, I mentioned him earlier. He I should say I'm talking about him because he wrote a particularly important life of Iain Banks and he would regard Banks's work as occupying a kind of spectrum. You know there's stuff that's very traditional sort of mainstream novels set in usually in Scotland are usually in Britain if not Scotland and that's very kind of you know mainstream literature as it says like the likes Espedair Street or one of his more well-known mainstream works which is The Crow Road and then there's his science fiction you know and including the Culture novels. But ah and I should say also say that John Clute wrote an article on Banks in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and he said pretty much the same thing and think you actually use the word spectrum I think I'm taking that from Clute's article. Seth Mm. Damian But I mean that's accurate. You know that's very you know that is true and it but it's not particularly I going to put it. It's not particularly useful. Do you know what? I mean if you walk into a bookshop and you pick up a book by Banks what are you going to get what I would say is that there's three or three and a half categories of Banks. There's stuff that's mainstream that's called I and that's written by Iain Banks stuff that's it is mainstream but has science fictional elements or fantastical elements in it that likes of The Bridge or Walking on Glass and a lot of it earlier work actually and even The Wasp Factory which is, you know it is a straightforward mainstream novel strictly speaking but it is really weird. So using that word I would follow China how he pronouns his name China Mieville and he uses the phrase weird fiction and me a lot of Banks is weird fiction particularly a lot of his earlier work. Seth Okay Damian And then the Iain M Banks is outright science fiction. So it the one of those things and you could make if it's Iain M, it's going to be in space you know and and one maybe except for 1 or 2 novels. But and the bulk of the science fiction is Culture. There's only about 3 or 4 that are science fiction but not Culture. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian So that's the way we would You know that's how we would view the sort of classification of of his work Seth Okay Damian Now I might go back and talk about the politics side of it. So as I said here he he really was an out and out lefty and so you know he ah one of his best friends in Scotland he actually met him in school I think was a chap called ah Ken Mcleod now he's a what him we call a doctrinaire Communist I think you could call him but and Banks is a little bit more um I won't say soft left. He's not a centrist by any means. You know he's very very definitely left of left of center and but you know he is a definitely a socialist in Scotland he used to vote for a party called and I don't know if you know anything about Scottish politics or history or British politics. But there's a labor party in Britain which is you know one of the two main parties. Seth Yeah. Damian They're very much a kind of a practical socialist party you know links with trade unions and so on um, and and since Tony Blair you wouldn't really regard them as being a socialist party at all and Banks used to vote for a crowd called the Scottish socialist party. And they were you know they wanted to get rid of the monarchy they wanted an independent Scotland socialist Scotland and they were pro-European they would have wanted the UK to stay within the EU and for Scotland to join the EU upon their independence and what they wanted the European Union to. Damian I should say in a science fiction context when I say EU I don't mean Expanded Universe that I mean I mean European Union they he would wanted and that party would have wanted the European Union not to be such a German dominated neoliberal you know marketing not just a common market you know and so that that was his kind of general and politics. But ah 1 you know it's all I should say he was very pro-independence and he was very proud of Scottish culture and life and a lot of his work you could argue he would say that Scottish politics is a lot more communitarian than British politics in general and. Something you think I agree with I think that's probably true. So there's a strong kind of either mellow or even hard left vin in in Scottish politics so that that was him you know he was parted that tradition and and he was proud of that tradition as well. But one aspect of his politics that I should should be open about particularly I don't know how much you want to go into modern politics here now. But anyway he was a he was a ferocious critic of Israel. He was part of the anti-apartheid movement against South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s and in particular he saw how sanctions helped bring about the end of apartheid in South Africa so he was a very early advocate of the BDS Movement (Boycott Divest Sanction) um I actually had a quote from him about Israel but I'm not going to use it actually because it's very strident and you know he just regarded them as a rogue state and and he thought a noting short of BDS would bring about change and he refused to allow any Israelei publisher to publish his work in the same way that I think if he had been published in the 70s he would refuse to allow, for example, it to be translated into Afrikaans or published in in South Africa you know and he took the same approach to um to Israel. Seth Mm, right right. Damian Of course a lot of people take him up on that he was accused of being Anti-Semitic in the same way Robert Fiske was but he would say well look I don't want my books published in Saudi Arabia either you know for exactly the same reason you know and and as part of that you know he was very critical of the whole Western Imperialism colonialism call you what? what you want. He was he famously tore up his passport and posted it to I think he posted it to 10 Downing Street which is where the British Prime Minister lives ah when during the the start of the war in Iraq the 2003 second war in Iraq you know so he's very much a critic of the West, you know and totalitarianism anywhere like so you're in a critic of the yeah Soviet Union as well. If if that still existed. You know so that's maybe an upfront completely about his politics so you know. Seth Yeah, does that fall under the the shocking bits and in in your outline? Damian No, there's a lot more to that Damian Yeah, actually I might talk about his writing style first and then talk about the shocking bits. Okay, So yeah, so the writing style of Banks is I think it's another reason in my opinion or my estimation that ah that he's very very popular because when you read his work I don't know how you found it now when you're reading this stuff but to me he seems very direct and a very so I going to say simple writing style. Now absolutely not simplistic by any stretch of imagination. But he's also he's as I said when I say direct? What I mean by that is that he he sets things out for you quite plainly and straightforwardly and he's not sentimentalist in any way you know there will be a lot of sentiment in his work. But you know hes He's not in anyway, clawing or sentimental or or anything like that. Seth right Damian I'm reading at the moment I'm reading his book. Inversions. It's quite an interesting one in the sense that I said near the start that um, you know when you see Iain M Banks you're in space. But that's not the case with Inversions. It's a book that kind of reads almost like a history Book. You know you're reading about lives and kind of. Monarchical and Semi-feudal um societies. But anyway, there's one part in that there's someone whom we come to know of as a Culture person is working as a doctor on this you know primitive planet for want of a better way to put it. And and she's going out to treat ah a baby or a child who is yeah, not a baby. Actually it's ah it's a younger who is quite sick and you know you you go through you follow the doctor on our journey there and there's various commenting and points being made by Banks as you you know work through that that chapter section. Um, and there's a brutally unsent unsentimental ending to that segment you know and there's no,, There's no equivocation and there's no even hint at a happy ending and you know I I could say the ending I'll try and be as spoiler free as I can but as you read it. You know what's coming and it comes. Seth Mm, yeah, he doesn't let you off the hook. Yeah. Damian And that's it exactly there's absolutely and he he's He's absolutely brutal in some ways with that kind of you know that that that kind of impact you know and and there's a reason for that you know and that's not the shocking bits. Seth Mm, yeah I on on that kind of topic I mean there's that you've listened to enough of take me to your reader that you know that Colin and I react differently to downer endings right? and I I'm much more onboard with a downer ending if I feel like it's earned. Damian Yeah, yeah Seth And we don't just get let off the hook so that we have a happy ending and and that's but I kind of admire that if you can if you can set that up and it still works as a good story to me then then I don't mind that you punch me below the belt. Damian Yeah, yeah, exactly and and that that comes across not just in terms of what I was saying there about you know unsentimentality and so forth. But even one of the themes. You know we'll talk about Culture in a second now, but you know, just to put it very briefly. The Culture is this kind of and post scarcity. Very prosperous society and dealing with less prosperous societies and possibly inter interfering with them to bring on their development and one of the dominant themes of the Culture books is that it's almost impossible to do that without danger of making it worse and you know there's no "these are the good guys, they're going to come in and fix everything" and and you know the effects will take a while to work out. But anyway it's all for the good of none of that you know what I mean they they have to think really carefully about those plans they have to try and improve deal other societies around them. You know so it's very much. Yeah completely I would say you use the phrase downer, I would say realistic to to be absolutely blunt about it. You know, but yeah, it's very much a theme of his work for someone who's quite witty and funny. Damian You know, yeah, can be really some pretty strong stuff. You know it can. It can be quite depressing. Yeah anyway, and yeah, so so I would regard him as as people have different opinions on his writing style Some enjoy it. So not so much and. Seth Mm, yeah, yeah. Damian It's one thing I would say that over the years of reading his books. You know I bought Consider Phlebas in the 1980s like literally hot off the presses and I've been reading them for well until he died in 2013 and then rereading him since and I would say that his style does evolve. It does improve he he does become a lot better a lot more coherent a lot more focused and just his simple prose itself does get better, but it doesn't really change radically. Seth Okay. Damian It's very much ah like his infodumps, for example, when he's giving you all the information on this interstellar society. You're you're looking at. He just tells you the stuff you know it's an infodump but in a very chatty kind of pleasant kind of way I don't know if that makes sense but that's that's my impression. Seth Um, okay yeah I mean so let's let's talk about and sort of entry level Banks right? and and the Culture is is where to start. Damian Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay so we'll start with Consider Phlebas now. I suppose you could call that a yeah chronological choice and it's Phlebas is actually it's quite an interesting and distinct and ah Culture book because it is the first one. It's not the first one. He actually wrote, apparently he wrote a book called Use Of Weapons before even he got the the Wasp Factory or the yeah The Bridge his mainstream work his early mainstream work before he got that published and and Phlebas I'm quite struck at times by how many people I should say if when I say people here because I'm a moderator of the yeah the Facebook science fiction book club group when I say people's opinions or or give you some my assessment of how someone is viewed by the science fiction public my thinking on that is probably pretty much dominated by the members of that book club and a few other book clubs or Science Fiction groups I'm in you know. Seth Yeah Damian And I made another one in a space opera one and of course Banks comes up there all the time and so it's striking how even a lot of really hardcore Banks fans who really like his work his science fiction work and who really enjoyed the Culture novels. Still I won't say they disparage Phlebas but they're just not that enthusiastic about it because they feel he was very much getting his writing skills down you know at the time that it that it was you know his flaws as a writer were on view in that book and I can see it. Seth Mm, right. Seth Yeah, well let's let's let's talk a little bit more about that book and I I've always said Phlee-bus in my head but I have no idea how it's actually pronounced. Damian Yeah, oh worry? Yeah yeah, actually I think Scottish people would say Phleebus so run with that. Seth So so can you give us just a quick sort of, what is it? Entice people to read it. Damian Right, sell it. Okay, ah, now here's the thing this book has quite ah, a sort of personal and thing for me one of the reasons I read science fiction and the only other genre I really read is is crime or not so much anymore. But one of the reasons I read science fiction is because, I want a story, I want a plot, I want a tale. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian Actually I want to yarn as in mixed tales you know, Phlebas is that in spades to me Phlebas is is's just a great story. So the plot of Phlebas. Um, let's just talk quickly about that. It's basically this idea of this society just and closure which is super advanced technology, almost like Clarke with that sufficiently. Advanced technology is like magic and they live not too much on planets but on these wonderful ideas these habitats called orbitals which are essentially huge like Ringworld from Larry Niven except much more realistic and they're much more interesting. Damian And so they're ah very much a you know post-scarcity post post-re religion in a way post capitalism post all these things that we take for granted Seth Mm, yeah, host human in a way too right? Damian Exactly yeah, and no, this is the thing, one of the dominant set of characters in The Culture are these Minds with a capital M. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian Which are these super intelligent and you could call them AII. But I'd be reluctant to use that word anymore because we've kind of seen over the last year or so how crap AI actually is and whereas these are you know these are sentient beings. You know, hugely intelligent vastly intelligent and they're actually like thinking about this you know the opening sequence of the War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells where he talks about and I'm going to get this wrong, but vast intelligence is more sorry more super intelligences more vast and unsympathetic than our own. That's it. Seth Mm, right. Damian Banks's minds are sympathetic. They are empathic. You know they do like human beings even though they can be talking to a million different people at the same time you know which does actually happen or we're told it happens in the novels anyway, so that's the Culture. Seth Yeah. Damian So the Culture are at war in this book or ah, you're at the beginning of a war between the Culture and this other alien species called the Idirans, and they form an empire. It's a Theocratic empire and they're very much planet based, expansive aggressive you know and they have a very, are fundamentalist in ah in a sense in a religious sense in the sense that they want to impose their beliefs on order or convince other Alien species or whatever other civilizations of their um of their beliefs so they are a complete and alternative to the Culture. The Culture worries and stresses about how to deal with less developed societies, the Idirans just go in and kick ass as you Americans say and and just take over you know and so that's the sort of background to the book and the start of the book is where one of these Minds we mentioned is just about to be captured by an Idiran battle fleet or whatever. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian And it escapes and what it does is. There's some very clever stuff about so space or hpyerspace or whatever but it basically slips under the Idiran fleet and gets to a place called Schar's World now this this is again another one of these very subtle ideas that Banks has or maybe not so subtle. Um Schar's World is this place that used to be a humanoid civilization just like our own and they had these underground command bunkers for fighting a nuclear war and then unlike us, so far, they went ahead and did it about I think it's meant to be about 11 or 15000 years before the, uh, the action of the book uh they wiped themselves out and they destroyed their climate and their planet and their biosphere and pretty much Um, you know their entire civilization was was was annihilated. Now they that happened all all that time ago. So what has also happened then is this being called a Dra'Azon I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly as on I think is the correct pronunciation but it's essentially a relic of a previous species that became so advanced that they what Banks called Sublimed. And this means that they move on to some you know superior level of existence and he's deliberately vague about it and. Seth Mm, right, it reminded me of the the kind of evolution of humanity in Childhood's end. Damian Ah, yeah, it's like that idea that Clarke had at the end of Childhood's End. Yeah, that humans become this particularly the notion that all the individual minds merge together in some kind of super Overmind kind of thing. Yeah I think Banks's idea of of the Sublimeed is a bit like that. But. Seth Mm-hmm Damian Essentially what happens then is that species or those creatures move out of our plane of existence. They move out of the ordinary business of Galactic society and ah, they're the Sublimed and then the species who are left behind are the Involved I think he calls them. Yeah, so. And there's a distinction there now. The Dra'Azon and the being who's in charge of this Schar's World is called Mr. Average I think to call him and is still slightly involved in regular life in the galaxy at the moment. Anyway, it has preserved this relic of this civilization as a kind of ah a warning towards it's called a Um, what do I call them the Worlds of the Dead and I probably got that phrase wrong as a sort of exhibition for other species to see this is what will happen if exactly? Seth Right? Don't do this? yeah. Damian Yeah yeah, yeah, hold on their lads. Yeah, and you know that's Banks. That's what I mentioned earlier Banks grew up beside Britain's nuclear deterrent you know so that's him it's kind of an easy way to do it in a way but you know he's presenting that to you and some I started by saying the writing in Phlebas might not be the best but there are some wonderful pieces in that book. Where the characters in this book are walking around this command system the trains underground and so on and reflecting on these events you know and some of that is is great prose. You know what? I mean it's very moving. Seth Mm, yeah, yeah I like that part a lot. So. Damian Yeah, it was yeah um, it was part. The best part of the book and in many ways you know, but anyway. Seth Ah, you haven't mentioned that the the point of view character in this book is not someone from the Culture right? He's a Changer and and essentially sort of a mercenary almost right? Um, and he's looking for that Mind. Damian Ah yeah, yeah, yeah. Seth To have that that POV character not be from the Culture because he's very critical of the Culture and their squashing of religions and things not that he's in favor of the the other folks you know, forcing their religion on people but he feels like the Culture is doing the same thing but with no religion. Damian Um, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, he's a very interesting character. It's and it's very interesting that. Banks's first novel this is Bank's first novel about the Culture that he got published. But yeah, you know as I said earlier I think he had written Use Of Weapons before this and which it also has a kind of a peripheral to the Culture character. So yeah I think he wanted to describe it from the outside first. Seth Mm. Damian And then the very next novel Player Of Games is firmly in the Culture and the one that was meant to be the last one called Look To Windward, same again. It's it's firmly in the ah the Culture idea because this is one of the questions that comes up about Banks and what he's doing here that. Damian It's kind of hard to describe utopia Seth Mm, yeah. Damian And it's kind of hard to you know, have a life That's free of struggle and free of you know we'll we'll get back to this again. No doubt but you know I think he wanted to find his feet a lot earlier and. Ah, to in order to be able to accept that challenge to try and describe you know the interior life of the Culture. You know so he started with people who were outside it and were critical of it as you said yeah and yeah, the the main character is a chap called what's his full name ah Bora Horza Gobuchul. Seth Mm, yeah. Mostly just just described as Horza, right? Damian Exactly Horza is it? Yes, the usual um yeah, the way he's referred to yeah and so he is a mercenary as you said and he's working for the Idirans and his precise logic I think that he he says at early on in the novel is that he sees the Idirans as being representative of life and as as you said that the Culture is by making everyone post scarcity prosperous. And you know lacking fate and spirituality and so on he sees them as anti-life and of course in particular the way that they are dominated by these machines as he calls them the AIs, the Minds you know so and he sees that as anti-life. Seth Mm, yeah, yeah. Damian You know so, yeah, that's the that's the distinctive thing of of Horza Seth Um, so as we were kind of working up to to this episode. We've been planning it for months and months and I was just you know I'll let you know when I get to to some of these and I had picked up the first book and and I'm just going to call it Consider Phlebas because that's what it is in my head. Um and ah. I can't remember like I did listen to the audio book for this one and I think that's how they pronounced it as well. But um, it Yeah I bounced off it a little bit. You know it it it. It did not super work for me. There was some interesting stuff in the beginning and I just sort of trailed off in my audiobook. Damian Yeah Seth My loan expired and and so you know like okay I'll get back to that whenever it comes back through for me it was weeks and weeks later when it finally came back and I just went back to the beginning and started over um, but then I started in on it again I was like, I don't know, this isn't completely working for me and you emailed me that, you know, well I was kind of wondering if you were just going to skip that one and go to the Player Of Games and the same day you sent that to me my audiobook hold for the Player Of Games came through and and I was like you know what? let's do it and I just ripped through that one. Damian Right. Seth Um, and so let's let's talk about that novel as well just because, um, it's it's another but more firmly set in the Culture with Culture POV characters. Seth I have no idea how the book works because I don't think it should work. It's it's about somebody who plays games. The games are not are not described in intricate detail and so you don't really know how he's doing it. Damian Mm, yeah, yes, no yeah, yeah, no, it's funny. You should to say that how how does it work and so on. Seth And it still is completely enthralling and and I it's It's a magic trick. Damian My own opinion on Player Of Games. This might be a little bit strong but let me just say what I want from a science fiction novel and where it takes the boxes for me if you have a well by the way I should say you know you weren't far from being the only as I think I alluded to this earlier. You're far from the only person and a lot of people think you know the writing's poor but a lot of people think that Consider Phlebas is overly complicated like that there are 2 or 3 distinct pieces including the Eaters bit which we'll go back to and Seth Um, oh yeah, yeah, we do need to talk about that? yes. Damian The shocking bits, exactly. Ah, that you know they're not necessary and they kind of have a point you know, but you know Damo likes his plot. So I loved it. But Player Of Games. You know if I want if I classify a science fiction novel or or sorry classify what I want from one I want good writing I want you know, believable. Well-written characters. You know none of this is controversial I imagine now it shouldn't be too long or too short. It should do what it needs to do reasonably economically you know so I'm a real fan of Alistair Reynolds but I would say I hope he's not listening to this I hope so I would say that I think a lot of his novels are ah between five and ten percent too long. You know I find myself just saying that over and over again when I think of his books. Seth Mm, yeah, yeah. Damian But anyway and it most of course have a plot story a point and it must have a conceive a central idea that is science fictional and that would doubt that idea the whole thing falls down. You cannot tell this story without those, that's core Science fiction concept in it and the Player Of Games hits all those buttons and hits them perfectly. Well you know I Just the way it's written. It's it's It's actual writing is fantastic and. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian The characters just even judging from my you say you tore through it I re-read it? um in advance of this this talk and I yeah yeah know I think I read it in 2 or three days myself you know and it's a long time since I've read a book so quickly you know it's it's so readable you you almost don't notice. You're reading the prose just flows and it's not particularly literary although I would argue that in certain points. It does kind of soar. You know there are points where it does become very yeah um, you know you find yourself rereading a piece a few times over you know, but you know and it's it's. You know that that central idea of the game. You mentioned you know Banks himself was a big Player Of Games as well and he he did like the ideas of strategy and so on but he also was intrigued by that idea of a game reflecting a society and then he wanted to use that. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian You know and set it in their science fiction context to make it not just reflect a society So this is the central conceit of the game that the Culture meets this and empire called the empire of Azad I think it's it's pronounced and they have a game by the same name and they play this game as a way of establishing who the senior people in government are going to be the senior tendencies in government the political ideas and so on and now it's it's it's It's the other thing about player games and the reason I like it so much is that it is pure undistilled Banks. Seth Mm, right. Damian I should say by the way Banks was a real I mentioned how much he loves Scottish Culture and society and so on he was also a very strongly I'm trying to say that he loved Whiskey I Don't mean that in the literal sense that he was alcoholic I don't mean it like that and know what I mean is that he um. You know he loved the Culture and the um the whole idea of a sense of place inherent in a food product or ah, a product. You know that's what Scottish whiskey is all about you know and Banks really loved all those ideas you know? So um, why did I start talking about whiskey? Seth Um, well the I think I think it was you can correct me if I'm wrong. The the idea of the game being the society that and the the culture of ah, not not Capital C Culture but the the culture of this society wrapped up in this game. Damian Yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously aliens. Yeah yeah, exactly like and and that's he was. It was a big gamer and this idea really really worked for him. You know so I won the reason why I say. Player Of Games is so fundamentally Banks. Sorry what I was actually doing there when I mentioned whiskey was because I was saying it's the distillation of Banks. So I was actually going to apologize for the pon. Seth Um, ah there we go here. Ah my on my soundboard real quick. (rimshot sound) Damian Yeah, that's okay, thank you for that I think. Should point out like hate pos. So um, you know I say that in sorrow rather than in interest Seth All right. Damian But yeah, there's a complete symbiosis between this game and this society as it we were saying there So the plot of the book is quite straightforward in a way that this chap ah Jernau Gurgeh I think that's how you pronounce it. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian He is a Culture citizen. So as you said earlier this is the novel where we get to see this guy's life in the Culture. You know he he's a Player Of Games right? as the title suggests. He's a a game player. So for someone who's a I think you can call him a citizen of the Culture. Seth Um. Damian Although apparently there's no real concept of formal citizenship but because of their society. He literally does nothing else. He's like I could say I'm a lecturer in Maths he could say I'm a Game Player. You know he does nothing else now he does it a lot. He analyzes games. He writes papers academic papers on games and so on but you know he's not employed by some University or anything like that to to make his way you know in a post scarcity society. You can do what you want? Yeah yeah. Seth Right? But in this case, he is approached by Contact which is the you know the the subsection of the the Culture that interacts with other cultures and I I keep saying cultures and it's getting confusing. Damian I know what you mean, yeah Seth Um, but you know essentially to almost be an ambassador through his games or you know. Maybe not ambassador more like espionage but it it turns out to be more of the the latter and he doesn't know it. So. Damian Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly yeah does it. There's great sort of resonance I suppose between the different layers that ranks alleged where it might have been there and that yeah he's been sent there to play a game. And the Culture Contact section as you said are doing this just as a way to connect apparently with the Azadian ruling classes. But in reality there's a another game going on beneath all that and Gurgeh himself is just a pawn in that game. Seth Yeah Damian And in fact, and again now this is where that team throughout and should say that's a Dublin accent showing there when I say team I mean theme and not team Seth I Understood you. Damian And yeah when I lived in Scotland they used to tell me that people used to ask me did I have a speech impediment. You know I was like no buddy, that's just a Dublin accent. Damian Anyway, anyway, so he's sent there to play this game and you know as a way of analyzing azadian society for the Culture. But yes, there's a game going on and it's that concept of how does the Culture deal with a society the Azadian Empire the Azadian society is a appallingly, you know, brutal society it is based around privilege possession. It's a goge himself as he works his way through that society and the interesting thing to me is that the Culture is the imaginative bit Azad is not for a Azadian society is not imaginative at all. It is our type of society. You know. Seth Um, yes, yeah, um. Damian Kingship monarchy and so on and and and the brutality that goes on with that and of course they're a very imperialistic society. So the Culture are trying to decide what to do about this to just just the misery of everyday Azadian life. So they send him to play the game and as we've been saying the game they're playing underneath that is that they are going to bring about the downfall of the Azadian empire itself and they're going to come up afterwards and mop up the bits and you know try and you know try and make the best of it and. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian Know it's an early novel so he had more subtle ideas about this kind of stuff later on but he I think his point here was that kind of brutal society. There's almost nothing else he can do you know you may as well suck up the the damage you're going to do and you may as well just go in with your boots and kick in the door you know and it's a hugely interesting um book in that sense presenting that dilemma that that that the Culture finds itself in and the strength of the book really comes from when when the character of Gurgeh is in Azad, and he sees that he he sort of thinks. Yeah, this is bad but you know I mean yeah, it's an economic system. Maybe we could tweak it and fix it and gradually evolve blah bla blah but he's accompanied by we were talking earlier about how the the a eyes in the Culture are sentient beings which you know they are people basically and so it's not just. Seth Mm, right the other drones right? yeah. Damian Yeah, exactly yeah, it's not just the Minds with a couple of them it's the drones as well which are more like human beings in the sense that they're at our kind of level of of yeah they can't talk to more than three of our people at a time you know so this drone that accompanies him to um, Azad now. There's a very funny just slight aside there's a very funny part of the book to me is the way this drone must pretend to be a lot less sophisticated technology than it actually is to fool as aliens. Yeah, so there's all this kind of book that it has to Seth Mm, right? Well, it's part of the the unreliable narrator too that you were talking about before. Damian Exactly exactly? Yeah yeah, and then. You know so this drone must disguise itself as a piece of junk basically with hissing and crackling and so forth. But anyway. Seth Um I pictured it I pictured it like the little boxy droid that walks around um I like the Gonk Droid Yeah is is what I pictured but floating um from from Star Wars. Damian Yeah, yes, exactly. Yeah yeah, yeah, ah so the drone takes him out one night the drone has been telling Gurgeh, they're not getting on very well and it's been telling Gurgeh, that it's just been going out monitoring birds and bird life and animal life and so forth on the planet. But what is actually doing is looking at the underbelly of azaian society and you know it how can it put this to me. You know I live in Dublin. It's nice city mostly it's expensive city in case, anyone's a common here but anyway and and it has you know its prosperous areas and in less affluent areas and of course we're a capitalist western country so there are a lot of poor people here. You know to say even though. Ah Ireland is one of the richest countries in the world by the overall GDP and all those sort of measures. You know we have a you know a downside you know, very much have a downside. We have a a terrible homelessness problem here in Dublin, and so it's like any city like that. It's like New York Paris London Berlin whatever and Gurgeh is taken out and shown the downside and in particular, he's shown how he can't just March into some situation he sees and try and fix it that not just the fact that he's an alien. But apparently he like a lot of Culture and people we learn are brown skinned and the Azadians are very white. Seth Mm. Damian And they have are very pale anyway, I don't know if he'd call them white but he's told they have bred themselves to be paler because this is good and if he reaches out with his brown hand. He will be immediately attacked. You know? So it's a profoundly racist society. You know so Banks has thrown all this kind of stuff at us and he's he's making us think you know again Azad is just a mirror to our own society. You know now it's presented as being particularly brutal you know I well I don't want to sound like some naive liberal who's saying how it's not that bad here. Seth Mm, right? yeah. Damian You know it is you know in it certain places you know and but you know societies here with extremes of um of wealth and poverty you know And so yeah, he's he's shown all this and some of this stuff is beautifully written like I think. Those parts were difficult to read that section where the drone shows Gurgeh the reality of society they were kind of difficult to read but they um I read them really quickly because they're so compelling and so wonderfully and plainly written you know and they show what Banks is trying to say about privilege and power and corruption and all these kind of critiques of our own societies you know and he's doing that and he um you know we do not get away with it. You know we we cannot look away and Gurgeh cannot look away you know and has a profound effect on the character of Gurgeh Seth Mm, yeah, yeah. Damian And then just ah, you know in terms of a plotted a novel as we've been saying he has to play these games to interact with the Azadian ruling classes. But what he realizes after all this is that he's playing the game now as you said it is the case we don't really know too much about the details of the game. Do you know what? I mean like it's not as it's and apparently incredibly complex that was the impression I got. Seth Right? Yeah, it keeps talking about how you know he may he may lose this round what he set himself up next for the Board of Becoming you know or or these other things and you start to get used to the the kind of rhythm of it. But you don't really understand the game mechanics. Damian Yeah, no, and actually it's a tribute to Banks writing that you're swept up in his gameplay but you've actually no idea how he is actually playing the game. Yeah, but what he realizes what Gurgeh realizes is that he's playing as a Culture citizen So he marshals all his pieces. He protects them and so forth whereas the Azadians will throw pieces into a fight or you know some piece of combat on the and the game with no concern for the pieces themselves and so then Gurgeh's struggle about the nature of these societies comes back. Seth Mm-hmm. Damian You know it's a way in which the Player Of Games I know I talk about how direct and and straightforward Banks is but the Player Of Games is actually quite a sophisticated novel in that way like the very idea of using a society dependent on a game on a very complicated game. It's quite subtle. You know that there's a lot to it. You know I I know we've been saying all along that he has these political positions and you will know them unequivocally when you're finished a book but you know it's It's not brutally simple. You know it's not simplistic. You know, that's the best way to put it I think. Seth Mm, yeah, yeah, and and there's some great science fiction in there too just about the I mentioned that it's posthuman not just in that there's minds and drones. But that all the apparently human people are also quite engineered right? Damian Yeah, yeah. Seth They're they're I don't know if they're immortal but they're very long lived and then they they have the ability to you know they drink something Oh that might be poison and it just gets shunted off and and not metabolized. Damian Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seth Or there's a point in the novel where he's you know the venue for the game changes to different moons and different places in the Azadian system and there's one that's much higher gravity. Well his physiology is is able to change and so his you know he becomes a little thicker and able to deal with the gravity you know over the course of ah of being there. Um, and that that was really a fun idea. Damian Yeah, and and again Banks is using that because if you remember after, that very thing you're talking about now I've actually my notes I haven't remembered the name of that moon because some very significant events happened there at the end of the book. It's It's essentially it's where the emperor is crowned and the the games reached our climax on this on this moon Seth Right because there's this huge conflagration that comes in you have to finish the game before then? yeah yeah. Damian Exactly. Yeah yeah, which is fantastic. Yeah, and so he. And they go there because of all this and as you said yes, it's a higher gravity moon and and Gurgeh as you said quickly adapts unlike unlike the rest of the Azadian court and and a few the members there you can hear the whirring of their exoskeletons as they come and go from dinner and all this kind of stuff you know, but. Seth Mm. Damian Gurgeh ah has to actually ask the drone. You know I seem to be getting used to this you know I'm doing Well I'm okay now you know and the drone tells them in no one certain terms. You know you were taking your just the phrase genofixing I think is for those modifications you were talking about there. The drone tells them you were taken that for granted just like you were taking almost everything else in Culture Society for granted like and it's another echo of when someone had to explain to Gurgeh what ownership was um and we're told at the very start of the the novel that Gurgeh himself is slightly. Damian At odds with um cultural society in the sense that he lives in a particular house and when he goes away other people have been living there and have changed things slightly and he resents that and that's not the Culture way. You know what I meanly you don't own that house. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian You know, no one else owns at either you know, and Gurgeh is ah an odd kind of fella in the sense that he feels a change of ownership but yet still he has to have that sort of you know, brutal version of ownership in Azad explained to him and he has to have his own body modifications explained to him you know and again referring to a Banks's love of whiskey, there's a character in it who Culture people could drink alcohol and then they can metabolize out as you said the alcohol in the drink you know and they're not get drunk but there's 1 guy who he's been on. He's a previous ambassador so to speak and I think actually no sorry he's the technically. He's the actual ambassador to the Culture to the Azadian court. Yeah and he has had all his glands and genofixing undone so he compensates for that for himself by getting drunk and which he would not be able to do if he was or could choose not to do if he was a still a cultural a Culture citizen. Seth Mm, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I mean there very different two books here and and I do want to at least briefly touch on The Use Of Weapons. That's another one. It's one that I haven't read so I want to you know you can just try and convince me to read it. But I think you did want to go back to talk about some of the the shocking bits like the Eaters in Consider Phlebas. Damian Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, so one of the key things about Player Of Games is that in some ways. It's a response to Consider Phlebas as we've said that it's inside de Culture now and so on um, but so it's it's kind of going back to Phlebas will introduce us in a good way to the shocking bits. Almost every book by Banks and I'm reading or I just recently finished Look To Windward and I think that might be the exception in the sense that it's not particularly strongly shocking this but almost every other book by him has some piece or some element that really shocks you that is really like we're going to talk about the Eaters section of Consider Phlebas a lot of people when you're reading their reviews or their comments about this book. They are people who've lent the book to you know, come back to me and say why did you give me this book with this appalling ah stuff in it. Seth Right heh Damian But yeah getting back to Phlebas basically this section that I'm talking about is a part where in the plot of um. Of Consider Phlebas there's a part where there's an orbital and Vavatch is the name that that our main character Horza ends up on this orbital and he ends up within the orbital. He ends up marooned on this small island and the orbital is going to be destroyed by the Culture because the Idirans are occupying that volume of space and they wouldn't accept a deal from the Culture and to regard it as neutral territory. So if we're going to occupy it sort of Culture says well look. We're going to destroy it then and you know this is the background to um to what's going on and it's interesting. You mentioned at the at the conclusion of Player Of Games. They have to finish these games because as you said that Firestorm is coming to the castle where they're playing their games Consider Phlebas has a similar similar idea that are our games and card games and so forth going on on this orbital called Vavach before the Culture destroys it. You know so it's very interesting thing Seth Right, Damage, right? Damian Exactly the Damage game. Yeah. Which is an interesting one now. But that's one of those pieces that people say you could probably take out of the yeah of the book and not lose a lot which is you know, possibly possibly true. Yeah yeah, that yeah, that was pretty. Seth Um, I know the idea of wagering people's lives is you know, compelling. Damian But anyway so ah Horza gets himself marooned on this island and on the island there is a yeah cult of people who they're called the Eaters and you know get that blooper thing ready because they they literally live on a diet of sh*t Seth Mm, yeah. Damian And they're being fed this by their cult leader and so obviously they're effectively dying of malnutrition and they have they have and forsworn any attempt to leave the Island already orbital and because they're convinced by their their code leader not to do that and it's it's one of those points where you have this situation where. A a society based on rationality and reason and tolerance has to deal with the intolerant and the irrational and how are you going to do that. So what happens there is that the Culture leaves a shuttle on the Island and. You know so that these Eater cult people can borrow the shuttle as the destruction of Vavatch and comes on under Culture. There. The Culture shuttle I think it has countdown clock. So they can see just how long they have before they need to get out of Dodge before the you know before the destruction. Um and they they don't you know they they their critical faculties. Their reason has been impaired by this terrible Diet. They're eating they they actually catch fish from the sea and as far as I remember they caught up the fish and they eat the guts and they throw away the actual meat and they throughout all this of course when Gurgeh has been captured by them and he's starving. You know he's he's really hungry and because he goes through his changing process. He's a changer. Seth Mm, yeah Damian And so he can change his face and appearance and so forth and even I think to a certain extent his species so because he has just gone through that he's especially starving. You know he needs nutrition to make up for that that Work. He's been doing internally and so he keeps looking at all these bits of fish being cooked and thrown away you know and it's. You know I actually feel hungry now just reminiscing about this. Ah, this part of the book mind you dodo would say I'm always hungry but anyway and so so you know these guys are as I said literally eating you know what? you should not be eating and they are starving to death or malnourished so they're not in any position. And to Escape whereas their cult leader and this is something that Banks has been criticized about is you know enormous. He's very very large because he is eating all these things now I've described that that sounds terrible. It sounds disgusting. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian But there's one even worse piece to that you know where and basically this cult leader chap eats Gurgeh's finger and you know he goes into that it is it goes into it in unsparing detail. You know so. Seth Mm, right, It's really gross. Yeah. Damian You know and that's that's that one I think is the epitome of um the the shocking elements that are in almost every single by spoke one of my favorites and one of my favorite articles about and that appeared around the time that Banks announced that he was you know, diagnosed with terminal cancer is a chap called Patrick Freyne who writes for the Irish Times and newspaper here in Dublin and he wrote if you if you can find it. It's a really wonderful piece. But what he did was and I was not aware of this when when I read this and in back then. He referred to the irish times initial review of Banks's first book called The Wasp Factory and and they called it. The exact quote is they called it a work of unparalleled depravity and you know and it's not as bad. Well there is one thing in The Wasp Factory. That's really disgusting pretty if I can use your word, they're pretty gross and but it's it's still you know the Eater is right up there. You know it's genuinely disgusting. It's not an easy read you know and especially for someone like myself if you're rereading it and you know what's coming you know. Damian I will admit there have been 1 or 2 times I've read that book about 10 times and there have been occasions when I've said you know how this time I'll just give it a miss you know and up on to the next bit you know Seth Mm, yeah, yeah. Damian So that's the shocking bits. You know. Seth Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, so just really briefly you. You mentioned that the Use Of Weapons is another one that's more closely like from inside the Culture right. Damian Yeah, yeah, ah well Use Of Weapons has and has some parts that are within the Culture but it is again another one that's mostly about and a guy who's on the periphery. Seth Mm, okay. Damian It's about a character called Zakalwe. And he's not a Culture person and actually Use Of Weapons is another book with an appalling shocking moment in it which I absolutely won't you know Maximum Spoiler Avoidance here I am not I should That's a good name I should have said something there earlier on and one of the funniest things about Banks' books. About the Culture is that the spaceships the so-called general systems vehicles or even any of the smaller ones they all have these witty names. Just what I said they're actually Maximum Avoidance of Spoilers that would be a good name. Seth That does sound like one of the ship names. Yes, the Clear Air Turbulence. Yes, yeah. Damian And yeah the Clear Air Turbulence exactly. Yeah yeah, and and you know you could imagine a a spacecraft named after what your mother says you you know Don't Let Me Come Down To You. You know I think there's I think there's one just like that you know somewhere. But yeah and it's it is. It's a dominant feature and and there's a book called Excession which the plotline there is dominated by Culture mines and the spaceships you know they doing general systems vehicles and there's an endless list of names of these spacecraft you know and they're all extremely witty, but what it would say as well is some of them are very Scottish. There are things that only Scottish people would say are are you know that that style of wit. Anyway, you know so I should have mentioned that earlier on. But anyway yes, sorry we were talking about and use of weapons. Yeah Zakalwe is is outside the the Culture and he's recruited as a mercenary for them so he does and he's a perfect example of ah, an attempt to fix a less developed society that is you know brutal and you know as we were talking about to his Azadian Empire and so on and he tries to do some of that stuff himself. He goes rogue so to speak and he tries to do that himself and makes a hames of it. Seth Mm. Damian And so there's a Culture agent who is his contact, has to go chasing after him and they can't really undo the damage. He does both what they can do is and stop him doing anymore you know? And yeah. Seth Mm. Damian And I think when you said I was talking about a book written in the Culture I think you might have been talking about Look To Windward. Seth Yeah, yeah I think I got that mixed up. Yeah. Damian Yeah yeah, the Look To Windward and the title of that book is it is kind of related to Consider Phlebas and it's kind of a more direct sequel to that. Player Of Games is kind of a you might call it a response to Consider Phlebas but Look To Windward is a yeah, almost a direct sequel. Seth Okay. Damian Yeah, do you want to talk about that one? Seth Um, let's pass it over and just say that you know that's another recommendation for start, we're we're still in sort of entry level Banks and and we do need to move on at some point or the episode's going to get too long. Damian Yeah so Look To Windward, it is as I said a sequel to to to Phlebas and in a very direct way in the sense that this book is very much about the aftermath of conflicts. So I mentioned the Culture-Idiran War that was in the main action I suppose of ah of Consider Phlebas. So what you're going to see in this book. And if I can take the approach you mentioned earlier of just trying to sell it to people to to give it a read and it is I would call it kind of intermediate Banks in a sense. It is quite a sophisticated book like Player Of Games but all of his science fiction I would say is is very accessible. You know it is very this one's very readable. It's another one that I read. And like Player Of Games in about 2 or 3 days you know and it's ah it's essentially set a few hundred years after the and Culture-Idiran War. Now again it addresses that theme of the Culture meddling in and other civilizations' development and so on so it's a kind of a retort or maybe sympathetic view of what Horza was saying in in Consider Phlebas he one of his critiques of the of the Culture aside from what we were saying about spirituality and life and so forth. He disliked their smugness and their arrogance and their meddling you know and this is kind of pursuing that theme you know. So basically there's this other civilization called the Chelgrians and they are. They're not humanoid quite both They're a reasonably advanced civilization and they. Damian They suffered this devastating Civil War They called it the Caste War because theirs was a society that was based around you know, power privilege hierarchical systems. Ah an outright caste system and um, you know they had a war about that. The people at the bottom rebelled and you know that's how it went. Seth Mm. Damian So ah, oh yeah, and particularly the Chelgrians kind of wrap all this up with tradition and it's a very much Banks looking at idea of tradition being an excuse that we should leave things the way they are you know he's he's pushing back against that. But you have a lot of characters the the main character one of the main characters and in this book is ah, a Chelgrian who fought in that war and in in that way, we've you know we've seen a few examples of characters who are on the bad side but are sympathetic. You know are complex in that regard our main guy, one of our main guys here is um, a soldier who fought on that cast side wo on the wrong side. But he lost his wife in that war. So a lot of it is about his grief and you know his loss and it's also about the fact that he doesn't want to make up that loss in any kind of way what he wants is to die. Ah, you know you get that impression straight away from the start of the Book. He wants oblivion. Um, and like ah we talked about the Sublimed and idea of that earlier on a lot of Banks' civilizations have these kind of ideas that you can in a virtual reality sense create an artificial heaven or indeed hell in one of the books and and the Chelgrians have done this. But. His wife Quilllan is the name of his character and his wife was not uploaded into this heaven place. So he doesn't want it either. He wants true death in the sense that we understand it. You know what I mean oblivion. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian As I said there and now I will say Windward. It's a great book in many ways. And the sense that it has that plot that Damo just loves you know what? I mean it's ah, there's a very like Player Of Games. There's a plot going on because the Culture are meddled in the affairs of the Chelgrians and and kind of started the war now the war is over several years at the time in a book and what's happened is they are trying to reach out to a Chelgrian composer a chap called Ziller who lives on a particular Culture orbital Masaq and they send Quillen to try and persuade him to move back. That's the surface story but what's actually going on is this is a suicide mission and Quillen is going to. And well he's going to commit a dreadful act and take revenge for the meddling. Seth Mm. Damian And it's it's one of these we mentioned unreliable narrators. It's one of these books where the main character Quillin in order to sneak in to the the Culture orbital he has had his memory of his mission erased but then he gradually reacquires those memories as we walk our way through the plot and and of course you know we then learn about his whole process have been brought in to whatever faction of the Cheldrians is is doing this but was also a questioned are getting outside help from some other civilization and there's a question about who's actually helping them and it might actually be.. There's a speculation that it's a group of Culture Minds who think their society has become soft and that conflict was coming with the Cheldrians, so they had to they have to prepare the Culture for that with a dramatic event, you know something really awful. You know and that's the kind of plot of the book you know and you know that's just sounds like a you know, exciting Science Fiction novel but just a load of stuff in this book about grief about loss about the just the business of processing grief. Seth Mm, yeah. Damian There's a wonderful piece in it where the target of his mission seems to be the Culture mind that runs the Masaq orbital. But you find out that the Mind that's running this Orbital used to be a General Systems Vehicle in the Culture-Idiran War, and it was one of the GSVs that destroyed some Culture Orbitals to keep them from falling into Idiran hands. And this led to the deaths of I think it was millions but might've been more. Damian But there's a wonderful piece where this Mind tells you about how it's in touch with human minds and other Culture minds as they die. And it says it feels remorse over these deaths but it's not just the way a human being might feel remorse over causing a death, but this Mind was right there when these creatures died, and recorded their horror, their fear, their loneliness and so. If I was to sell this book on one aspect, it would be that piece, where it turns out that the Mind itself wants oblivion itself for the same reason. Seth Mm. Damian Now when I say that though, the other side of this book, some of it is laugh out loud funny, when the character of Ziller the Chelgrian who lives in the Culture orbital. You know you see some of the activities it is as we started saying it's told most of it is told from within the Culture and you see the activities people get up to and. They do this one sport called Lava Rafting where you take this superduper Culture or technology raft and you you paddle them down the output of a volcano you know magma and lava and it's um, it's hilarious. The dialogue between them is just absolutely outrageously funny Damian Full of real dry wit but also full of devastatingly fantastically written um stuff about the whole subject of grief and loss and what have you and revenge. Seth Mm, yeah, all right? So any other I did how much did we talk about the mainstream stuff. Damian We haven't really talked about it and at all I mentioned Wit briefly and yeah, that's ah, that's the one. Yeah I was talking about that where it's about this young woman. Um, who lives in a religious community in Scotland. And I've kind of described it in me notes as a reverse science fiction story so she comes out of a very narrow and small. They live on a very small island so it's very prescribed existence and then she goes into mainstream life in Britain and it's it's quite a, it's another one of Banks analyses of and belief and cults and so on, but it's it's much more sympathetic and as it may have said earlier on it talks about the value of community and so forth that the people in such a religious community and god so it kind of treats I suppose late Twentieth century Britain as a kind of alien society and you know true horizon you know so it's a wonderfully written book and it's extremely funny as well. It's ah it's one where you know it's just Banks writing a regular novel and it's laugh at loud, funny and parts you know and particularly when she comes up against the police you know and she's dealing with them as a sensible young lady and they're saying you know get into the back of the van you know. Seth Right, right. So would you say I mean why would somebody who has come to Banks through his science fiction. Why would they? you know so entertain the idea of reading the mainstream stuff not of course that nerds don't like to read anything that's not science fiction. Um. Is it just because the the commonalities of of his style. Damian Yeah, yeah, it's the commonality of of style theme and the sort of there's always a plot you know you you always have a lot of his books are I think the technical terms a Bildungsroman you know you have someone who learned something about out themselves or the society around them and is transformed by that knowledge. You know a lot of a science fiction is like that and but ah his mainstream work is very definitely along those lines that woman Wit, she learns something about that religious society she came from and you know it won't be a spoiler to say that it's a fraud. You know it's all based on a lie and but she also learns as we were saying there about the value of community and so forth you know and and learned something about I suppose genuine spirituality you know she doesn't shed that part of her life at all, you know she remains to be a spiritual person. So a lot of us. The Wasp Factory is very much like that his his very controversial first published novel like the the lead character Frank and learned something about themselves and reading The Wasp Factory. It's It's very much as I said yeah it is a mainstream novel. There's nothing science fictional in there. But it's tremendously weird and you learned a lot again about you know this one is particularly about gender roles I suppose and also about critiques of magic and irrationality and and you know if if. If you're someone who does the horoscope wouldn't necessarily recommend The Wasp Factory. It's a devastating critique of that. Seth Heh. Damian But yeah, it's except for the Science Fiction Elements. It's almost identical to any of his other books. The writing style the the themes the ideas the analyses. Critique of our society. The critique of power of of you know patriarchal societies and so on his his mainstream work barely differs from his science fiction. Um in that Regard. You know it's it's It's very more very very similar. Yeah. Seth Nice and you know just just for notes for listeners I have a pretty extensive number of recommendations from Damo on on further reading and so if we don't mention some of these novels and you see them in the show notes then consider them recommended by Damo. Damian Yeah, yeah, oh definitely? Yeah yeah I I can't emphasize an offer much of a fan I Am you know it's from that kind of practical point of view that I read Science fiction because I like a plot and I like analysis that can only be done by fantastical literature. Um, and Banks is the epitome of that I would suggest one last book that we we should comment on and and we call this Advanced Banks just to sort of follow the the format to its natural conclusion and that's The Bridge and the The Bridge is actually the very first book I read by Banks I read it before Consider Phlebas which was my first science Fiction book. Um, it's ah it's an interesting one because it is strictly speaking a mainstream novel you can explain everything that happens in this book by it being. Um. The dreams of of someone who's been in a car crash you know and our attempt to come back to their their life. So in that sense it's a mainstream novel you know, but it is very for science fictional the society he lives in while he's in this kind of Dream State. There's 3 strands to the Book. So does the real world. The the coma, the character's new life on this strange kind of society that is quite literally built around the bridge and and then there's this other strand in there where you've got this barbarian character who wonderfully speaks in this Scottish accent this really strong Scottish accent which is, I won't say it's difficult to read, but it's um, you know takes a bit of work you know and and I got the hang of it before I went there and that meant that being there I was able to understand people a lot better. Damian You know and but there's very interesting stuff in the Bridge about what kind of reflects Banks's own life and reflects my life as well that he was from a working that the character in the novel is from a working cast background. So as a child his father works on steam locomotives you know steam engine included and he sees this and and. But then he grows up to become an engineer and becomes quite affluent. You know and he he regards himself as a socialist and a lefty and he votes for labor. But yet Margaret Thatcher's decisions in British life make things very easy for him in terms of you know, keeping that affluence that he has earned you know. Seth Right. Damian And the the accent bit reflects that like the the talk about and I actually mentioned this I here to start to the the podcast just a way that you know if you're from a working class area. You'll have quite a strong local accent and then as you become more affluent and as you move around and meet people as you were saying they're about from all over the world in your job or whatever. Damian You find yourself speaking more clearly or whatever you drop Seth Mm, right code switching? Yeah yeah. Damian Exactly code switching. That's exactly the phrase that I was talking to try and remember which adds a beautiful book about that kind of stuff. You know that there's a lot of subtleties to the book that um, it's by far his most complex book and he himself said ironically for me he himself said. Don't start with The Bridge. Yeah, believe that till you're well used to my work and of course naturally I had to yeah well I've never heard of him before that. Yeah oh and but if you do read The Bridge it would bring you to everything else. He did you know and. Seth Mm, yeah, yeah. Damian There's also I should say again content Warning: there's one of those shocking scenes in the bridge If you if you get to to read it towards the end and I'm just going to say there's a bit about a pig and a rifle and I'm not going to say anymore and you know yeah I'm absolutely not going to say anymore about that. Damian But you know again, the wit of Banks particularly his Scottish wit is is there in spades you know and I mean the The Bridge epitomises that I know we've said this that novel already epitomizes Banks both you know The Bridge epitomizes is yet again you know so um. Seth Mm, right, nice and then he he does have some non Culture science fiction as well. Damian Yeah now one of those books now if we are talking about Advanced Banks and Scottish accents and stuff written to capture that accent his most advanced book in my own opinion is a book called Feersum Endjinn. Now even the way the title of that book is written. It's written as if you're a Scottish person saying it. You know so you you can read and go well I no I'm I was nearly going to try and attempt a Scottish accent to put I am not going to do that and someone will track me down. Seth haha Damian And yeah, it's again it's a book with 3 or 4 strands almost every book he writes. Actually when I think of it has at least 2 if not 3 or 4 strands of of of detail you know and it's I'd almost call it difficult. You know, um. Almost reluctant to say that because you can read it and you're still reading except for 1 stream which is entirely written in a Scots dialect and you can see Scottish people debating about whether it's actually Scots or just a Scottish accent but it is you know for someone like you or me who is not Scottish it does represent a bit of a challenge. Damian I read The Bridge I found that okay so I was fine when I moved to Scotland but I only understood Feersum Endjinn after living there for a few years you know I mean it was of invaluable assistance to me to actually emigrate there now I'm not...well I would almost suggest. It's such a good book and Scotland is a nice place for someone to emigrate there just to get the grips of that book and but it is it is challenging. You know it. It is the Advanced Advanced Banks you know and but just to get back to what I said then the other, one of the most prominent non Culture science fiction novels he has is and The Algebraist. Which is it's not that similar to ah a Culture novels but it again same concepts the same structure is the same idea of 3 or 4 different strands and very subtle complexities in the plot you know I actually haven't read it myself for a few years and would be hard pressed I could tell you the start of all the plot strands but I would be reluctant to say how they you know conclude you know how they are resolved because I might get it wrong I mean so it is definitely a ah complex novel but very rewarding. Seth Mm. Damian You know it's um, wonderfully written just like most of his later books. You know when he really got his craft nailed down Seth Mm, nice. Well I think that's a good, a good place to probably leave it I, uh I really appreciate you doing this I think originally we were talking about just doing an episode on Consider Phlebas and and I think we we sort of did a mini episode. Damian Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly? Yeah yeah I think it was good your it was your suggestion to to fold in the discussion about Phlebas into and is thing and I think that was a good idea Seth Yeah, yeah, just just once once you started to let me know how much of a fan you were I thought well and and and yes you did graciously offer I'll step aside if there's a Scottish listener a Scottish expert who wants to come. Yeah. Damian Yeah yeah, that that was very important I am glad that that has come out in the wash. yeah yeah yeah I will say 1 thing before we before we wrap it up and there's one book of his that I would also recommend people read. It's called Raw Spirit and it's ah it's a book where he tours around Scotland looking at well not looking at obviously tasting and the products of of the various distilleries whisky distilleries in Scotland and it's a it's a very interesting book. Not just if you like whisky but actually your your friend on the Hugos There Podcast is a whisky drinker isn't he? Seth Um, oh Take Me To Your Reader. Yeah James yeah. Damian Yeah yeah, the chap who was served in the navy. Yeah. Um, I'd recommend it for him in particular but it's also a great insight into Banks's life and his you know the kind of person he is and it's also hilariously funny in parts. It's really really interesting. The one downside is that he has fairly scabrous and ill-informed opinions about Irish and American whiskies. And I you know I'm obviously sad that the chap died in 2014 but if he was alive today we're living to a golden age of Irish Whiskey, we're leaving the Scots in the dust and they won't even admit that we invented it. You know and so. Damian You know the poor man I wish he was still alive anyway to be writing books but I wish he was still alive to come and visit. You know the likes of this that or the other distillery I could name here in Dublin you know? So I recommend that book. It's very entertaining. Seth Yeah, yeah, well. Nice. Nice I'll definitely recommend it to James and James will be in Glasgow as well. So so you so we can. We can sit down and you guys can nerd out about whiskey and yeah. Damian Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I'm possibly hopefully not drink too much of it as well. You know that would be important Seth Knowing James I'm not sure that that's in the cards but we'll see nice. Damian Yeah, absolutely. Seth Cool. All right? Um, any social media presence you want to to talk about before we sign off? Damian Ah, yeah I don't um I'm not a big social media person. No anyone knows me would laugh at that. But I'm only on Facebook I joined it very very late and then the first thing I did was just join a clatter of science fiction groups and but that got so bad that I am now the moderator, one of the moderators of the science fiction book club. So that's the only place you'll find me or your Facebook Damo Mac Choiligh or in the science fiction book club itself if you apply for membership then there's a 1 in 4 chance that the person who's seeing did you actually give the name of an actual science fiction writer and not JRR Tolkien? Seth Um, great. Um. Seth Ah, excellent. And yeah I see I see you ah popping up in comments on other podcasts and and that kind of stuff and I always wonder with that like did you come to them through me. Did you come to me through them What you know where where did the the trace start. Damian Yeah, that's a good question I actually can't remember I I think I came to the Hugo Girls first and but as soon as I started listening to them. They mentioned you. So then I think I found you immediately. Damian But then it was a while afterwards before I started listening to order podcasts like you know like Phil's Science Fiction 101 or Phil and Colin and his Bradbury podcasts which I'm really enjoying them. You know that they I haven't read Bradbury for a while and Phil singlehandedly brought me back into the to the fold you know? Seth Yeah, yeah, he he did the same for me so I hadn't really read much of him at all I'm just since ah you know mandatory reading in high school. Seth Well Damo, thanks again for doing this I really appreciate your your flexibility. We've been kicking this around for months and finally got it done. Damian No, but yeah, absolutely no delighted to what was that cliche and longtime listener First time Caller you know So I'm glad to call in you know and yeah knows it's great like I hope I communicated at least something of my of the reasons why I like why Banks you know mean so much to me, you know. Seth Mm, yeah, right. Damian And I hope I haven't put anyone off actually Seth All right. Thanks Damo. Damian Right. Good luck.