Transition
There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive in...more
Hardcover, 404 pages
Published
September 23rd 2009
by Orbit
(first published 2009)
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IAN'S NEW AND IMPROVED REVIEW OF TRANSITION.
Immediately below is my original review, written 2/27/10. Farther down is my update and addendum, written 3/1/10 after I'd given this book a lot more thought.
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Apparently, every contemporary sci-fi author is now required to weigh in on the Multiverse. Perhaps it will soon be as indispensable to a sci-fi author's repertoire as a layup is to a basketball player's. The best Multiverse n...more
Immediately below is my original review, written 2/27/10. Farther down is my update and addendum, written 3/1/10 after I'd given this book a lot more thought.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apparently, every contemporary sci-fi author is now required to weigh in on the Multiverse. Perhaps it will soon be as indispensable to a sci-fi author's repertoire as a layup is to a basketball player's. The best Multiverse n...more
Is it considered an artificial padding of my GR shelves to add the audiobooks I've "read"? I loved the shit out of Transition, the actual book; you can read my review here. I loved the audiobook every bit as much. Peter Kenny is easily my favorite narrator. He does voices and accents amazingly well. (Okay, so he doesn't do an American accent very well, but kicks butt with all the European accents.) His sense of timing is wonderful, as is his situational awareness for lack of a better term ... I...more
I loved this book – it’s probably now one of my favourite Banks books – though I suspect that just two or three years ago I would have been much more ambivalent; possibly even disliked it. I am glad I have recently read my first couple of Iain Banks ‘mainstream’ books, as opposed to Iain M Banks science fiction, as this book seemed to have a foot in each camp. The main story premise is firmly science fiction but the style of writing is much closer to his pretty weird mainstream writing; I saw a...more
I've not actually finished this, but currently I'm unsure whether I will. I'm halfway and taking a break from it - most likely I'll come back to it, but I'm not certain.
Why? Because most of it is Banksy talking at me. He's not telling me a story, he's telling me about elements within a story and i'm struggling to care. there's little interaction with people and relatively little action. Individual pieces are interesting, but while the connections are clear there's not yet been much to make me c...more
Why? Because most of it is Banksy talking at me. He's not telling me a story, he's telling me about elements within a story and i'm struggling to care. there's little interaction with people and relatively little action. Individual pieces are interesting, but while the connections are clear there's not yet been much to make me c...more
Aug 30, 2011
Manny
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
People who've been to Venice, like the quantum multiverse, and have read A Plague of Pythons
This entertaining SF thriller combines the premises of two of my favorite SF classics. In Asimov's
The End of Eternity
, an all-powerful group called the Eternals use time-travel to control the course of human history. Whenever something bad is about to happen, they engineer a carefully timed intervention to steer us away from it. Typically, these interventions are as inconspicuous as possible. Pohl's underrated
A Plague of Pythons
explores another, rather nastier idea. Suppose a device were in...more
I have just finished this book, in the British edition (without the "M" in the author name) and while I've read other Banks works this one didn't excite overly much. Too complex, too many characters, although the basic premise of the book was sound. Plenty of moralising... I found it curious that the "terrorist culture" of this age, on this Earth, were Christians, when most people know which religion's adherents perform most of the contemporary Earth's terrorist acts. Perhaps Mr Banks transposed...more
Originally published on my blog here in April 2010.
The idea behind Transition is not one particularly new in science fiction: there are millions of alternate Earths, and it is possible to travel between them through the use of a special drug; septus works rather like the sixties perception of the action of psychedelics, letting the mind transfer to a new body in a different world. However, a secret society, the Concern, acts in all the accessible worlds to ensure that history develops in a parti...more
The idea behind Transition is not one particularly new in science fiction: there are millions of alternate Earths, and it is possible to travel between them through the use of a special drug; septus works rather like the sixties perception of the action of psychedelics, letting the mind transfer to a new body in a different world. However, a secret society, the Concern, acts in all the accessible worlds to ensure that history develops in a parti...more
Ok. This book was rather long, fairly weird, and took a while just to figure out what the heck was going on. I'll at least help you with that last part.
There are multiple worlds/universes & in one of them there is a society that can travel among them. There are different skills in this society (travelers, people who can block travelers, people who can travel while taking someone else with them) and a group called the Concern that controls the drug that allows people to travel, as well as wh...more
There are multiple worlds/universes & in one of them there is a society that can travel among them. There are different skills in this society (travelers, people who can block travelers, people who can travel while taking someone else with them) and a group called the Concern that controls the drug that allows people to travel, as well as wh...more
SUMMARY: There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?Among those operatives are Temudji...more
"Transition" is typical of Banks' more recent (and lazier) science fiction- multiple character perspectives, stories within stories, a deus ex machina that gets pulled out towards the end to sort of tie things up without actually resolving very many of the plot points - but it's not his best science fiction by a long shot.
The tale revolves around a mysterious organization calling itself The Concern, whose adepts can "transition" or jump from reality to reality in the many-dimensional multiverse,
...more
The worst book by Iain M. Banks I have ever read.
Normally, I enjoy his books, but this one seems like he just threw it together without bothering to put much effort into it.
Maybe this is a criticism of the editors also, but there were so many inconsistencies that I found the book very irritating. Some eaxmples:
pg 213: All the transitioners lived on Calbefraques when they weren't on missions to other world. Does no-one care thay they are leaving an unattended husk in their own world? Does no-one...more
Normally, I enjoy his books, but this one seems like he just threw it together without bothering to put much effort into it.
Maybe this is a criticism of the editors also, but there were so many inconsistencies that I found the book very irritating. Some eaxmples:
pg 213: All the transitioners lived on Calbefraques when they weren't on missions to other world. Does no-one care thay they are leaving an unattended husk in their own world? Does no-one...more
I don't think I can legitimately say I read Iain M. Banks' latest SF book, Transition. I think it's best to say that I subjected myself to it. Sometime past the halfway point, I snarked to someone that this book answered one of the burning questions of my lifetime: "What would happen if China Mieville wrote Nine Princes in Amber fanfic?" Having finished the book, I stand by that assessment.
Spoiler for the Zelazny snark: (view spoiler)...more
Spoiler for the Zelazny snark: (view spoiler)...more
Oct 20, 2011
Andrew
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
science-fiction
It looks like Iain Banks managed to sneak a science fiction book into what is normally his general fiction brand. Transition is very different from his usual space opera written as Iain M. Banks though.
The story follows four main characters, each one working, sometimes unknowingly, for the Concern. The Concern is an enterprise consisting of people who can move between alternate Earths, and their purpose seems to be to try and alter the course of history in the Earths they can get to, hopefully f...more
The story follows four main characters, each one working, sometimes unknowingly, for the Concern. The Concern is an enterprise consisting of people who can move between alternate Earths, and their purpose seems to be to try and alter the course of history in the Earths they can get to, hopefully f...more
Iain Banks is one hell of a writer. This ambitious and profoundly complex novel, a poetic meditation on power and its abuses, notions of doing good and fighting evil, and the implications of the human tendency to solipsism, is beautifully written, entertaining and thought-provoking from beginning to end.
You’re more or less told what you’re about to read up front, although I promptly forgot. You then find yourself in a world in which a sinister organisation has discovered a way to travel between...more
You’re more or less told what you’re about to read up front, although I promptly forgot. You then find yourself in a world in which a sinister organisation has discovered a way to travel between...more
Although Transition could be classified as science fiction, it is a departure from Banks' usual sci-fi fare, which is perhaps the reason why it has been published both Banks' sci-fi and non-sci-fi monikers. The story focuses on The Concern, a shadowy organization with a byzantine chain of command which fields operatives capable of transitioning, that is, moving between parallel universes. The motivation and history of The Concern, and the precise mechanics of transitioning are never thoroughly e...more
Not very good. I give it two stars out of five because I did actually finish it, but I didn’t really like it much. For those of you who have not read the story elsewhere, the idea is that there is an infinite number of parallel and very similar worlds. A group of people calling themselves the “Concern” has discovered that by using a special drug, they can “flit” into other bodies in other dimensions and there adjust what will happen in other versions of Earth. The idea is that they can prevent b...more
Jul 05, 2011
Erik Graff
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Banks fans
Recommended to Erik by:
John Elkin
Shelves:
sf
This is the first Banks novel I've read which was not about the Culture, not set in the far future. Still, it is science fiction, the device being interdimensionsional travel, the old branching time-line thing--all of it happening on various Earths, all of it in times more-or-less like our present. The overarching plot concerns a covert interdimensional organization, its contested leadership and their purposes. In this way it has many of the characteristics of a spy novel and may interest those...more
I generally adore all of Iain Banks' non-Culture novels. Of his Culture novels the only one I've read was an early one, "Consider Phlebas", which was... eh. Ok. Interesting, but Space Opera isn't really my thing. His non- SF books, which are all published as "Iain M. Banks" instead of just Iain Banks, are freakin' brilliant, every one of them. This is one of his non-culture but still SF books, so it gets the central "M.". The basic plotline centers around the multiverse theory that will seem ext...more
Jan 15, 2011
Alan
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Slippery solipsists and slipstick-kissers (whatever that means)
Recommended to Alan by:
Previous work and current subject matter
The events of September 11, 2001, reverberate across many worlds, both of fact and of fiction. Informed and infused by those events, Transition could not exist without them... even though it is set primarily in parallel threads of time, ones in which 9/11 did not happen at all, or happened in horribly different ways. In our universe, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were brought down by hijacked jet planes; in others, perhaps, organized CTs (Christian Terrorists) are committing massacre...more
Transition is a frustrating book.
This is my second attempt at reading Iain Banks. My first attempt at reading him, Inversions, was less than satisfactory. I have never read any of the Culture novels, despite having friends who have raved endlessly about them.
Being a fan of Moorcock, and Zelazny, and well immersed in the idea of multiple universes and alternate histories, I thought I would try and give Transition a try, and see if I could unlock Iain Banks to my imagination at last.
The attempt w...more
This is my second attempt at reading Iain Banks. My first attempt at reading him, Inversions, was less than satisfactory. I have never read any of the Culture novels, despite having friends who have raved endlessly about them.
Being a fan of Moorcock, and Zelazny, and well immersed in the idea of multiple universes and alternate histories, I thought I would try and give Transition a try, and see if I could unlock Iain Banks to my imagination at last.
The attempt w...more
Ok, so I should say up front that I quite liked this book. Is good. Not, maybe, Culture-novel-great, but it had more of a point than his The Buisiness, or that Scottish one that he wrote that was atmospheric but sort of ran off the rails at the end (The Crow Road, I think?) This was a good paralell-worlds yarn with some interesting twists and some cool characters.
So now the nitpicking. It was unusually sex-obsessed for Banks. I don't consider myself a prude, and I don't mind a bit of sex in a st...more
So now the nitpicking. It was unusually sex-obsessed for Banks. I don't consider myself a prude, and I don't mind a bit of sex in a st...more
I always like a bit of Banks, although to be honest I've generally enjoyed his SF alter-ego's recent works a bit more than his 'straight' fiction. That isn't to say that I wasn't interested in reading this, mind you, but when I got hold of the proof and read the blurb on the back (not to mention the first few pages), I realised that this was going to be far more unusual than some of his recent 'mainstream' work. The fact that it's being published in the States as one of his 'M' books is a fairly...more
Madam d'Ortolan valiantly attempts to keep the peace across a multitude of worlds, between the fall of the Berlin wall and the Saudi Arabian attack on the US, while rebels and traitors conspire to open up humanity to alien incursion, led by a suspiciously-eyed Mrs Mulverhill. One suspects that the downfall of a tyrant will not result in the return of a republic...
I am so happy to see a non-dull, yet also non Culture novel! The ideas are properly old school, carried off with aplomb and lashings o...more
I am so happy to see a non-dull, yet also non Culture novel! The ideas are properly old school, carried off with aplomb and lashings o...more
Don't know why this isn't an 'Iain M.' Definitely science fiction, though admittedly not space opera. A thriller set across the parallel worldlines postulated by Everett's famous many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics.
A mysterious outfit called the Concern sends its agents across the worldlines, ostensibly to do good. But is the mission truly philanthropic, or is there a darker, hidden agenda?
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It has all the qualities you expect from Iain Banks, with or wi...more
A mysterious outfit called the Concern sends its agents across the worldlines, ostensibly to do good. But is the mission truly philanthropic, or is there a darker, hidden agenda?
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It has all the qualities you expect from Iain Banks, with or wi...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
I've read a few Iain Banks books (some with the "M", some without), and this one fell a somewhat short for me. Told through a variety of alternating voices, the premise is pretty straightforward: there is a vast multiverse of parallel or alternate Earths, each of which represents some small change somewhere in history. Monitoring all these is an organization called "The Concern," whose members have the ability to travel (or "transition") between these worlds and intercede in them to maintain wha...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Hmmm... interesting. Better than I was expecting, not as good as I'd hoped. In retrospect the whole, "is it an Iain Banks or is it an Iain M. Banks?" question seems a lot less controversial, half way through I remembered "The Bridge" which had elements of both.
The characters weren't as well drawn as I'd hoped though if this milieu is continued maybe that will change, and I could have done after a while without quite so much of the rather purposeless shagging!
I also have to say I'm sure I came ac...more
The characters weren't as well drawn as I'd hoped though if this milieu is continued maybe that will change, and I could have done after a while without quite so much of the rather purposeless shagging!
I also have to say I'm sure I came ac...more
Billed as a "return to form" (although apart from the more recent The Steep Approach to Garbadale I haven't really had any issues, especially the Iain M Banks sci-fi as opposed to the Iain Banks thrillers (which tend to be weaker). (Ok, goodreads and the US indexing system doesn't highlight this discrepency so go view it at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks).
This is meant to be The Bridge-like and also to straddle his genres.
It starts well but then establishes itself as a fairly standard...more
This is meant to be The Bridge-like and also to straddle his genres.
It starts well but then establishes itself as a fairly standard...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iain Banks / Iain...: Transition | 7 | 21 | Feb 11, 2013 10:33am | |
| 608 pages? | 4 | 37 | Sep 20, 2011 05:00am |
Iain M. Banks is a pseudonym of Iain Banks which he uses to publish his Science Fiction.
Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, li...more
More about Iain M. Banks...
Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, li...more
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“Perdition awaits at the end of a road constructed entirely from good intentions, the devil emerges from the details and hell abides in the small print.”
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