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Surface Detail (Culture #9)

4.13 of 5 stars 4.13 · rating details · 6,284 ratings · 518 reviews

It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. It begins with a murder. It will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself. Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release,...more

Hardcover, 627 pages

Published October 28th 2010 by Orbit/Hatchette Book Group (NYC) (first published 2010)

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Dec 10, 2011 Ian rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook, fits-like-a-glove, love-strong-women, religion-spirituality, blew-my-mind, must-read-again, the-culture

When one rates an audiobook, is one rating the quality of the underlying written work, the quality of the audio version, or both? I suppose I'll just clarify that my five-star rating applies to both in this case.

Surface Detail is the latest of the Culture Novels from Iain M. Banks. The wait for this one was worth it. I think I'm ready to say that Use of Weapons has finally been supplanted as the best of the Culture books.

I'll write a proper review of Surface Detail, the book, after I've read the...more When one rates an audiobook, is one rating the quality of the underlying written work, the quality of the audio version, or both? I suppose I'll just clarify that my five-star rating applies to both in this case.

Surface Detail is the latest of the Culture Novels from Iain M. Banks. The wait for this one was worth it. I think I'm ready to say that Use of Weapons has finally been supplanted as the best of the Culture books.

I'll write a proper review of Surface Detail, the book, after I've read the hardcopy. For now I'll make a couple of points.

First, I love how the shock and consequences of the Idiran War continue to resonate across 1,500 years of Culture history. Fascinating stuff. How long will the shock of World War II resonate across our world's history? It seems that, only 65 years after WWII's conclusion, the shock is dissipating fairly rapidly at this point.

Second, this book keeps you going until, literally, the very last word of the epilogue. Obviously, I can't say here what that last word is without hitting the spoiler box. Let's simply say that the last word is worth waiting for, that it imparts a great deal of meaning to the rest of the book, a book already quite full of meaning. Well, maybe I should clarify that the last word imparts meaning to those of us who are Culture fans and have read a certain prior Culture book. Again, I can't say which book, or you might figure out what that last word is, which in turn would spoil some of Surface Detail.

About the audiobook, specifically: Surface Detail is read by my one of my favorite narrators, Peter Kenny. He's a master of voices; at times it seems that each character is being read by a different actor/narrator, but it's all just him. Peter Kenny also read the Transition audiobook, for those interested, and my comments about him in that review apply with equal force here. Peter Kenny's voice and tone sound very much like the book would sound in my head were I reading hardcopy. He and Iain Banks are a match made in heaven. I have since listened to Peter Kenny's readings of Consider Phlebas and Player of Games and, I think, my ears have a man crush.

I suppose, then, I can't recommend Surface Detail, in hardcopy or audio format, strongly enough to those of you who share my love of good sci-fi. Happy listening!(less)

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Oct 24, 2010 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars

Banks is one of my all time favourites, but had put out some disappointments recently - Algebraist and Matter were just plain no good. Some of the straight fiction stuff had also been really below par, but he's put out Transitions and now this and I'm ready to say 'all is forgiven.' There are some cookie-cutter chapters, where you think that he's repeating scenes and characters and just varying the outlandish architecture/hunt-scene/cruel game/unusual dinner and pretending that it's something el...more

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Aug 08, 2012 aPriL MEOWS often with scratching rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, soap-opera

I think an Intagliate being is the neatest alien pan-human I've ever read about it. Every cell in her body tattooed? Wow.

However, despite the amazing plot intricacies of the 600+ page book, I was disappointed by the somewhat secondary roles of most of the female characters. They were mostly appealing, needing rescue, and not as tough as the males despite the Culture's ability to change anyone into anything. Apparently sexual transmutation does not mess with sexual stereotypes from primitive 20t...more

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Apr 08, 2011 Palmyrah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Iain M. Banks’s Culture stories are among my favourite science-fiction reads, and I fall eagerly upon each new book in the series as it appears. They vary in their emotional intensity and the degree of intellectual effort they demand from the reader, but they are unfailingly entertaining.

Surface Detail is surely the lightweight in the Culture club. It does not fail to entertain, but it disappointed me all the same. This was for several reasons, the most salient being that I found the constantly...more Iain M. Banks’s Culture stories are among my favourite science-fiction reads, and I fall eagerly upon each new book in the series as it appears. They vary in their emotional intensity and the degree of intellectual effort they demand from the reader, but they are unfailingly entertaining.

Surface Detail is surely the lightweight in the Culture club. It does not fail to entertain, but it disappointed me all the same. This was for several reasons, the most salient being that I found the constantly changing scenes annoyingly difficult to follow, even though I am quite accustomed to Banks’s favoured technique of cutting back and forth between multiple sub-plots. One of the sub-plots in Surface Detail involves a soldier of fortune in a virtual war who keeps turning up in different guises (mediaeval sapper, ice-dwelling energy being and deep-space cyborg killing machine being just three of them). Every time the focus moves to this guy’s sub-plot, you have to work out who and what he is, what his environment is and just what the hell he is trying to do in it. His virtual reality is also multi-layered, adding another layer of confusion as he bounces between levels like a squash-ball.

Meanwhile, a second strand of the narrative follows the adventures of two civil-society activists trapped in a virtual hell. The activists aren’t human – they resemble intelligent tapirs with prehensile double trunks – but their hell is thoroughly Miltonian in conception and highly detailed, clearly invented with a view to letting Banks deploy his talent for gratuitous violence and nastiness to full effect. Unfortunately the final effect tends to be more comic than disturbing. I found it very hard to identify with the characters in this plot-line, and although it wasn’t actually tedious to read, it was always with a slight sinking of the heart that I greeted its reappearance at the turnstile of auctorial focus – 'oh no, here comes another thirty pages of hell...’

In between these two plot strands is a third, which is actually the 'main’ story. It is about a runaway slave from a Contacted humanoid lower-level tech society who is ‘reborn’ on a Culture starship and is now finding her way back to her home planet, with the help of Special Circumstances, in order to revenge herself on her former master. From this hangs yet another sub-plot, which is about political manoeuvres between the Culture and a number of other advanced Galactic civilizations and their less-advanced client societies. Readers of Matter, Banks’s previous Culture novel, will notice strong similarities with the plot of that book. Here, however, there’s more skullduggery, very little of it credible.

And credibility, sadly, is the real Achilles heel of Surface Detail. Its central conceit – that some advanced, yet religious civilizations would create virtual hells into which their less well-behaved citizens are 'uploaded’ in virtual form after their physical death – is quite literally incredible; surely no sentient being with a grain of sense would ever countenance such an idea. Without a convincing engine to power it, the ingenious contraption of plot and subplot never really gets moving.

Nor does the author seduce you with gem-like prose. Banks has full technical command of the English language and can write brilliantly at times, but this isn’t one of those times. Surface Detail contains the worst couple of sentences by Iain Banks (with or without the 'M’) that I have ever read, a hideous two-headed monster of mutant alliteration that should have never got past the author’s desk, never mind the editor’s:

She had decided there was a perverse beauty about it, an almost celebratory fecundity about the depths of creativity which must have been plumbed to produce such imaginative cruelty. The very bestiality, the absolute depravity of it raised it to the level of great art; there was a transcendent quality to its horror, its complete commitment to agony and degradation.

'Transcendent horror’, indeed.

And then, the final disappointment: at the very climax of the book all the dazzling virtual worldcraft and complex interweaving of plot and subplot simply fall away into irrelevance, and the last twenty pages or so are nothing but a simple on-foot chase, one armed humanoid in pursuit of another, through the formal gardens of a large country house on a planet whose technological level is not dissimilar to Earth’s current one. In other words, you could be reading the climax of any trashy airport thriller for all the evidence to the contrary.

Actually, 'surface detail’ is an appropriate title for this book; the plot and setting are incredibly complex, but beneath the busily detailed surface, there really isn’t much happening. This is one Culture novel I shan’t be re-reading in a hurry.(less)

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Dec 01, 2010 Stefan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: library-loan, science-fiction

Another excellent installment in what's probably my favorite ongoing SF series. Banks plays with themes of life, death, illusion and virtual reality, in a number of permutations and twists that's dizzying right from the beginning. There's more sheer old-fashioned sense of wonder in this book than you can shake a stick at. Some of the story lines are painfully intimate, others relate to the galaxy-wide politics of the "In-Play" civilizations, one of which is the post-scarcity Mind-run Culture we'...more

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Apr 28, 2013 Jpugh rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Apr 15, 2013 Johnsergeant rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiblecom, audiobook, sci-fi

I tried out this audiobook when Paul Krugman mentioned in his blog that Iain Banks is dying. Krugman is a big Sci-Fi fan. I wasn't sure if I had read any Iain Banks, so I checked out reviews on Goodreads and chose this one as the first to try. It turns out it is Book 9 in the series, so it may have been a shock immersion. I enjoyed it, but at times found it hard to keep track of the characters. I may try to work back through the earlier books. I think another reason I chose this one is that Audi...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Michael Duff rated it 5 of 5 stars

Critics are calling it “Singularity Punk” – stories about societies so advanced, even death becomes a lifestyle choice.

Imagine being able to copy, download and store a human mind – to be able to move it around like a computer program and run it inside a simulation that is absolutely indistinguishable from reality — a society where citizens are encouraged to “back themselves up” regularly so they can be resurrected in new bodies if they die.

If you had the power to store individuals in elaborate v...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Smcleish rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

Originally published on my blog here in April 2011.

Another Banks novel sticks to a formula which he has now used many times. Perhaps this is not a shock, but for someone who was praised for his inventiveness at the beginning of his career, it is disappointing to read another failure to produce something new. That is not to say that Surface Detail is not well written and enjoyable to read; it is just too much like the other Culture novels, without a spark of special inspiration.

The background to...more Originally published on my blog here in April 2011.

Another Banks novel sticks to a formula which he has now used many times. Perhaps this is not a shock, but for someone who was praised for his inventiveness at the beginning of his career, it is disappointing to read another failure to produce something new. That is not to say that Surface Detail is not well written and enjoyable to read; it is just too much like the other Culture novels, without a spark of special inspiration.

The background to the plot does in fact introduce a new (as far as I can remember) element to the Culture. There have been enhanced humans, and intelligent machines, but here in Surface Detail we also have virtualised humans. One of the galaxy's cultures runs virtual hells, into which its inhabitants are loaded on death. This is a practice widely condemned in the galactic community, and a virtual war has been going on for some time between pro- and anti-hell factions.

The descriptions of the hells owe a lot to Dante's Inferno and, more directly, the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. The torments of the damned seem to me to be more effectively portrayed by Banks' models, as the details of the nastiness of the torture are blunted by their extremity: it is hard to be affected by an account of someone who has been flattened and used to pave a road, because the experience is just so alien and cartoonish. It is hard to accept it as real enough to empathise. Banks is no stranger to the portrayal of the unpleasant and violent, as can be seen from his very first novel, The Wasp Factory.

Against this background, the main action is about revenge. The book starts with a tycoon from a relatively backward world, Veppers, killing a slave who has bitten off his nose. She finds herself not dead, but with her conscious mind transmitted at the moment of death to a Culture ship, courtesy of an unexpected present from a Culture citizen for whom she had done a favour. Equipped with a new body, Lededje sets off on a mission to kill Veppers, which becomes enmeshed into the complex machinations which surround the war over the future of the hells - a war which the Culture is not officially involved, though sympathetic to the anti-hell side.

It is this plot which is infuriatingly similar to previous Culture novels. The idea of a personal quest is an extremely common way to drive a plot, because the concentration on the desires of a single individual makes the story more likely to grip the reader, who is after all an individual human being. But for the Culture, parts of the background make this more difficult to accept than usual: why would the immensely powerful machines, who can create superhuman avatars at will, manipulate human beings into taking the central roles in their schemes? Banks also has a tendency to dilute the effectiveness of the personal quest through the use of multiple viewpoints, which doesn't help. Usually, this hasn't affected my enjoyment of Banks' writing too much (though I've never enjoyed the Culture novels as much as his others), but here it does seem particularly problematic.

Given that I often take space in these reviews to criticise a book's production (appearance, proof reading, gushing blurbs, etc.), it is nice to be able to say that I really liked the design of this edition of Surface Detail, which uses fractal images (specifically the Mandelbrot set) effectively and evocatively in the cover image. And, most importantly, the picture used is relevant to both the title and the content of the novel.

All in all, Surface Detail is a well executed but ultimately disappointing Iain Banks novel.(less)

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Mar 12, 2013 Joseph Mulhall rated it 4 of 5 stars

Surface Detail - Iain M Banks

A nice chunky book to get my teeth into whilst on holiday, and to immerse myself in the familiar Culture universe Mr Banks created so long ago. I'm not sure I can review this book as anything other than 'another' Culture novel, it's very hard to imagine picking this book up without having read so many of the others yet it does stand on it's own as they all do.

The subject this time is a paradoxical one, and one that I can't help but judge from the viewpoint of having...more

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Nov 08, 2012 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

Iain Banks "Culture" series is one of my favorite universes--a multi-cultural, multi-level, non-human-centric future where interstellar FTL ships (often warships retired from some great space war of the past) are inhabited by 'ship-minds', a form of intelligence greater than humans--although humans originally built them.

The separation of the more-advanced 'Culture' civilization from both higher-order forces of unknowable 'overseers' and more primitive societies that are nonetheless allowed thei...more

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Sep 07, 2012 Nyla Nox rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

I am so glad the 'culture' novels are still being written, published and read. Here is sf not only with a grand vision but also with extremely well thought out details and a philosophical superstructure. sf for adults. I wish more of that got published, I'd read it in an instant (and I'm sure it's being written...)
what i love about this book which I think is one of the better 'culture' books (and even being able to say that speaks for Banks' monumental success) is the wealth of invention. I simp...more

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Jun 28, 2012 Richard Barnes rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Culture is a great place to hang out - Iain M Banks crafts fantastic worlds where he doesn't simply look to the future but takes possibilities to their extremes. I used to read lots of Star Wars books and think they were good sci-fi; once you read Iain M Banks you will realise that space opera can be so, so much more. And it's all done with a razor-sharp black humour, that verges on the sick, but is always clever.

Surface Detail is a great example - in the Culture, and other sci-fi/ advanced...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Patrick rated it 5 of 5 stars

The story concerns virtual afterlives. Sufficiently advanced species across the galaxy build cyberspace realms for their members to upload their consciousness into after physical death. Certain perverted species create "Hells" to imprison and torture those who disagree with the ruling elites. These "Hells" network over the eons such that aliens of different species join each other in mutual everlasting pits of Government-enforced despair. Our friends in The Culture -- that perpetual, starfaring...more

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May 11, 2012 Zach rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Those poor ponies. Why did he do that to them?"

That's all I could think when about a quarter of the way through this fantastic book -- "he" being Iain Banks. The ponies are actually a race of intelligent horse-like creatures with a pair of prehensile trunks, and Banks imagined an actual Hell for them to inhabit. I would call the horrors they endure there "indescribable," but Banks does an admirable job in describing them.

The basic idea is that once a civilization perfects virtual reality and br...more "Those poor ponies. Why did he do that to them?"

That's all I could think when about a quarter of the way through this fantastic book -- "he" being Iain Banks. The ponies are actually a race of intelligent horse-like creatures with a pair of prehensile trunks, and Banks imagined an actual Hell for them to inhabit. I would call the horrors they endure there "indescribable," but Banks does an admirable job in describing them.

The basic idea is that once a civilization perfects virtual reality and brain-scanning technology, they usually go ahead and make their ancient religious beliefs real by building Heaven simulations for people's mind states to live in after they die. Some cultures go the extra step and also create Hell; the ponies belong to such a civilization. The setting of the book is a virtual (simulated) war over whether the Hells should be allowed to exist.

Banks touches on every speculative aspect involved in perfectly recording someone's mind state, such as whether an exact copy of yourself living in a simulated world is "really" you, if your body suffers death. Much of the action takes place inside various simulations (sometimes simulations of simulations), so there are plenty of opportunities for him to play with the various philosophical quandaries.

The characters are some of the best Banks has written, with ship Minds who refuse to behave, a furious protagonist out for revenge, and a villain it's incredibly fun to hate. There's also some fantastic supporting characters, especially an inept and hopelessly vain alien race called the GFCF. The plot seems spread a little thin at points, but for the most part moves at a good clip and never feels bogged down.

Overall, I really appreciate this book (and much of the rest of the Culture series) because the speculative element does such a fantastic job of dissecting human nature and institutions. I mean, really: the idea that alien races would punish their sinners with real (subjective) eternal torture is too human for comfort.(less)

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May 07, 2012 Charlie rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a large and convoluted book about the meaning of life, which, of course, starts with a death. It is also a stunning story set in the world of The Culture and its neighbours. It follows several very different protagonists in several very different environments and mostly keeps the whole thing pulling together smoothly.

My only gripe with it would be that sometimes when Banks changes which protagonist's point of view he is narating from he does not always make it clear (sometimes not for a...more

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Mar 24, 2012 Prashanth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf

This is my second book of Culture series, and I continue to enjoy the happenings profoundly. This novel follows Lededje Y'breq, an abused lady through her death, afterlife and reincarnation. Meanwhile, we have parallel threads running about the war b/w hell and anti-hell factions and the impact it has on the rest of the mortals. Of course, we all know where Culture's inclinations lie, but it is fascinatingly unravelled. As in the other book, Minds are more fascinating and provide for a good read...more

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Mar 16, 2012 Lysergius rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Feeling ill and wanted an easy read. Not too easy these days if you are not a Potter or a Twilight fan... Iain M. Banks has always provided a fine dark vision sparkling with irreverence and a sort of tongue in cheek view of his own creations.

Needless to say, "Surface Detail" provides the sort of fractal complexity coupled with topological intricacy that one has come to expect. Not sure that the plot matters too much as long as it has a beginning, a middle and an end. Its the "surface details" th...more

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Jan 17, 2012 Susanne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sff

How do I love thee, Culture universe? Let me count the ways by playing--

Culture bingo!

Awesome tech: check
For starters, we have the standard fare of neural laces, AIs, drug glands, etc etc, everything that makes the Culture a level 8 civ. Today's main course is a Bulbitian, an ancient ship and a talking singularity. For desert, have a virtual Hell. Oh my.

Cool aliens: sorta-check
A clear majority of pan-human players this time, but you gotta love the GFCF. Plus, the Pavuleans are like...elephants o...more

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Jan 13, 2012 Helen Lowe added it Recommends it for: SciFi readers, especially those who enjoy "space opera."

Now I was probably always going to enjoy this book, because I am a longtime fan of the Culture ‘verse, ever since I read "Consider Phlebus"—which may even be Banks’ first novel, not just his first Culture novel.(Not sure on this point, but 'early' Banks at any rate.)

To me, the ‘verse of the Culture is space opera at its best—and here’s three of the things I really love about it: 'the ships, the ships, the ships.' (Oh yes, and knife missiles.) The Culture is a super-civilization of humans and AIs...more

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Oct 30, 2011 Elf M. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Surface Detail is Iain M. Banks latest Culture novel, and... that's about it.

No, really. If you've read a Culture novel, you know what you're in for: a series of novelletish vignettes featuring a vast cast of characters, from all different types, two of which (the corporate sociopath and the political sociopath) will crop up, be lectured to by some nominal "good" protagonist, and eventually fall from grace and probably be killed in some gruesome manner.

If Banks applies himself at all in Surfac...more

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Jul 05, 2011 Clay rated it 4 of 5 stars

Iain Banks returns to The Culture, his massive, hugely advanced, galactic civilization, in “Surface Detail” (Orbit, $25.99, 627 pages) – which is good news for fans, who had to undergo an eight-year hiatus in the now eight-book series from 2000 to 2008.

The Culture is a liberal’s dream: Advances in technology and language have created a society in which everyone is healthy, there’s plenty of everything, and powerful artificial intelligences are just one of many species that live and trade togethe...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Will rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If this were a movie, I'd be blinking myself awake in a chair, belly stuffed full of popcorn, remembering vaguely that there were lots of explosions and weak acting, and feeling a bit silly for having hoped it was going to be something else.

I really wanted to like this book. And I did, when it was called Excession. Banks has had these problems before in other novels, but here it really all comes together. It's a Culture Novel by the tropes.

Seriously, there's nothing in this book that you haven'...more

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May 23, 2011 Josh Hamacher rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I first discovered Iain M. Banks about two decades ago, when I read "Use of Weapons" in junior high or thereabouts. I've been hooked ever since - I've read most of his output, whether as Iain M. Banks or just as plain-old Iain Banks. I eagerly devoured Matter several years ago when it first came out, only to be left disappointed.

So it was with some trepidation that I started reading this volume. But within 100 pages I was hooked and I didn't look back until I had finished it. Is this his stronge...more

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May 11, 2011 Matus rated it 4 of 5 stars

I did not read this book; when I first opened the package, I gently wadded up clusters of ten or so pages, careful not to damage them too much; pulled out my paraphernalia kit, and one by one heated the clumps on a spoon, injecting them directly into my bloodstream.

As always, the effect of the drug only kicks in after about 100 pages of hits; it's less the body adjusting to the magic substance, and more the fact that the first 100 pages are created somewhat defensively, always a little bit rough...more

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May 10, 2011 Alan rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Confirmed and experienced fans

Recommended to Alan by: Previous work

Iain M. Banks has earned more than a little slack from us over the years with his prodigious and amazing output. Surface Detail calls some of that back in. The book takes its time getting started. Its multiple opening chapters seem like little more than vignettes. But Banks' ability, the trust that he has earned over those decades, should keep you reading, as he begins weaving these disparate tales together.

Surface Detail turns out to be something like a pleasant, prolonged stroll through unfami...more Iain M. Banks has earned more than a little slack from us over the years with his prodigious and amazing output. Surface Detail calls some of that back in. The book takes its time getting started. Its multiple opening chapters seem like little more than vignettes. But Banks' ability, the trust that he has earned over those decades, should keep you reading, as he begins weaving these disparate tales together.

Surface Detail turns out to be something like a pleasant, prolonged stroll through unfamiliar areas of a favorite park. It is a Culture novel, and that is really all you need to know—all of the familiar trappings are here: whimsically-named starships with wise-cracking drones and avatars on a human scale; vast and ancient engineering marvels; depraved individuals at the top of their barbaric capitalist civilizations, coming up against the urbane, effete Culture which will, in the end, best them with one manipulator metaphorically tied behind its collective back.

But there is much that is new here as well. The heretofore unmentioned Hells, for one main thing—virtual afterlives to which the less-than-virtuous are consigned, in those civilizations that, unlike the Culture, still believe in such notions. (There are Heavens, too, but they are of course much less interesting and figure very little in the novel.) There is a war in, and among, the Afterlives, both Heavens and Hells, a virtual war that has been going on for thirty years. That's three decades in the Real, that is—time runs differently in the Afterlives, and death is but a temporary setback.

Now, though, things are coming to a head, and the confliction between the anti-Hell and pro-Hell forces is threatening to spill over into the Real, in defiance of all treaties, all honorable agreements among the combatants.

Will the Culture sit idly by while the carnage mounts? Will the worthy be redeemed, and the wicked (and there are most certainly wicked) be punished? The surface details vary, but the outcome never really seems to be in doubt.

Despite or maybe because of its length, Surface Detail's impact seems blunted. Unfocused. Obscure. I liked it well enough, myself—I always like visiting the milieu of the Culture and its surrounding, less-genteel Galactic neighbors, and on a sentence-to-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph level, Banks' writing remains as sharp and entertaining as ever. But I'm thinking I'd like to see something a little less Cultured, next time.(less)

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Apr 10, 2011 Rushabh rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

Ian M. Banks's latest Culture novel is, in my opinion, his best work to date. For the uninitiated, Culture novels usually revolve around the Culture, a perfect civilization of sorts, where people live as long as they want, benevolent (and sometimes malevolent) AIs control and provide for everything etc. Except there are tons of races in the galaxy (it is huge, after all) and the Culture deals with those both above and below it on the technological ladder. The most interesting sections of the Cul...more

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Apr 03, 2011 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 50books2011

The publication of a new Iain M Banks Culture novel is greatly exciting for me. Banks is one of the few contemporary sf writers who keep me interested in the state of the genre and give me faith in the longevity of science fiction. The Culture novels (of which this is the 8th) are not tied together by plot or character but by the universe he has created. The Culture is a fictional interstellar anarchic, socialist, and utopian group of post-scarcity Minds (AI) that exist individually as ships. Th...more

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Apr 02, 2011 William rated it 5 of 5 stars

Banks’ “Culture” setting is one of the best pieces of world-building in Science Fiction and “Surface Detail” is another strong addition to the series of books set there. It is one of the longer Culture books and it does take some time to really get going with a lot of set-up and disparate plotlines that only really start to come together in the final section of the book so a bit of persistence is required to really understand where the story is going. Even if it can be hard to work out their sig...more

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Feb 09, 2011 Dan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Satisfying but not spectacular entry in Banks' Culture series. Still has the trademark grand scope and wild imagination but lacking in the moral equivocation and dynamite plotting of some of his earlier books. I paused halfway through to read a couple of other books, which I haven't done with Banks before. Partly because I feared that he wouldn't be able to come up with an ending dramatic enough to live up to the heady concepts he introduced in the beginning. Interstellar societies going to virt...more

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About Iain M. Banks

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 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, living in Edinburgh and then Fife.

Banks met his wife Annie in London, before the release of his first book. They married in Hawaii in 1992. However, he announced in early 2007 that, after 25 years together, they had separated. He currently lives in North Queensferry, a town on the north side of the Firth of Forth near the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge.

As with his friend Ken MacLeod (another Scottish writer of technical and social science fiction) a strong awareness of left-wing history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence.

In late 2004, Banks was a prominent member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Prime Minister Tony Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In protest he cut up his passport and posted it to 10 Downing Street. In an interview in Socialist Review he claimed he did this after he "abandoned the idea of crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns." He relates his concerns about the invasion of Iraq in his book Raw Spirit, and the principal protagonist (Alban McGill) in the novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale confronts another character with arguments in a similar vein.

Interviewed on Mark Lawson's BBC Four series, first broadcast in the UK on 14 November 2006, Banks explained why his novels are published under two different names. His parents wished to name him Iain Menzies Banks but his father made a mistake when registering the birth and he was officially registered as Iain Banks. Despite this he continued to use his unofficial middle name and it was as Iain M. Banks that he submitted The Wasp Factory for publication. However, his editor asked if he would mind dropping the 'M' as it appeared "too fussy". The editor was also concerned about possible confusion with Rosie M. Banks, a minor character in some of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels who is a romantic novelist. After his first three mainstream novels his publishers agreed to publish his first SF novel, Consider Phlebas. To distinguish between the mainstream and SF novels, Banks suggested the return of the 'M', although at one stage he considered John B. Macallan as his SF pseudonym, the name deriving from his favourite whiskies: Johnnie Walker Black Label and The Macallan single malt.

His latest book is a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012.

Author Iain M. Banks has revealed in April 2013 that he has late stage cancer and is unlikely to live for more than a year.

The Scottish writer posted a message on his official website saying his next novel "The Quarry", due to be published later this year, would be his last.(less)

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Quotes from Surface Detail

“- "They speak very well of you".
- "They speak very well of everybody."
- "That so bad?"
- "Yes. It means you can´t trust them.” — 34 people liked it

“-"Then what," Lededje asked, trying to keep her voice cold and not get caught up in the avatar´s obvious enthusiasm, "is making you smile about a disaster?"

-"Well, first, I didn´t cause it! Nothing to do with me, hands clean. Always a bonus.” — 11 people liked it

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Surface Detail (Culture #9)

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