Anyone read the Culture novels by Ian M. Banks?

[JethroReading]

I just thought I'd see whether anyone's given them a look ! I'm reading them at the moment and they seem awesome to me, I just wondered what other people's views were on them!

Jethro.

[Nertea]

They're superb. Probably not for everyone, but there's great stories, memorable characters and generally cool ideas.

They do pretty well for scientific accuracy, insofar as they represent an advanced civilization that has practically limitless resources and super-intelligent computers . Particularly like the battle in Surface Detail .

[Vanamonde]

As this is not about science questions, moved to the Space Lounge.

[Red Iron Crown]

I'm slowly working my way through them since they were recommended to me by a few people here on the forum. Banks is a skilled writer, the books are quite enjoyable. My favorite of the few I've read so far is Use of Weapons.

[Nertea]

Use of Weapons is quite good, yes. I'm not sure what I'd peg as my favorite, they all tend to be good in different ways. I greatly enjoyed Matter and The Player of Games.

Another Banks book I highly recommend is The Algebraist, which isn't Culture, but standalone (also sci-fi). Quite a clever universe he's built in that one, and quite impressive to do it in one book. I recently read... Transition, which was weird as heck and Against a Dark Background, another standalone, which also has a really interesting conceptual background.

[Specialist290]

I haven't, but I keep hearing good things about Banks in general and the Culture books in particular. They're certainly on my reading list.

[JethroReading]

Yeah, the plot twist at the end of that was superb (if confusing )!

[KSK]

Read them all apart from The Hydrogen Sonata. Highly recommended, for the ship names if nothing else.