451 pages
English language
Published Nov. 2, 1996
Excession is a 1996 science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks. It is the fifth in the Culture series, a series of ten science fiction novels which feature a utopian fictional interstellar society called the Culture. It concerns the response of the Culture and other interstellar societies to an unprecedented alien artifact, the Excession of the title. The book is largely about the response of the Culture's Minds (benevolent AIs with enormous intellectual and physical capabilities and distinctive personalities) to the Excession itself and the way in which another society, the Affront, whose systematic brutality horrifies the Culture, tries to use the Excession to increase its power. As in Banks' other Culture novels the main themes are the moral dilemmas that confront a hyperpower and how biological characters find ways to give their lives meaning in a post-scarcity society that is presided over by benign super-intelligent machines. The …
Excession is a 1996 science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks. It is the fifth in the Culture series, a series of ten science fiction novels which feature a utopian fictional interstellar society called the Culture. It concerns the response of the Culture and other interstellar societies to an unprecedented alien artifact, the Excession of the title. The book is largely about the response of the Culture's Minds (benevolent AIs with enormous intellectual and physical capabilities and distinctive personalities) to the Excession itself and the way in which another society, the Affront, whose systematic brutality horrifies the Culture, tries to use the Excession to increase its power. As in Banks' other Culture novels the main themes are the moral dilemmas that confront a hyperpower and how biological characters find ways to give their lives meaning in a post-scarcity society that is presided over by benign super-intelligent machines. The book features a large collection of Culture ship names, some of which give subtle clues about the roles these ships' Minds play in the story. In terms of style, the book is also notable for the way in which many important conversations between Minds resemble email messages complete with headers.
Solid space opera, but construction (how Banks creates suspense and mystery) and message ("more humility, less competition") are a little in-the-face ("man merkt die Absicht und ist verstimmt"). Good: how Banks deals with identity, memory and guilt.
5 stars indeed. A book I first read on publication (1998) stands up very well in 2022. I am wary, in these re-reads, of succumbing purely to nostalgia but this would definitely feel fresh to someone reading it for the first time now, I think.
Once again, this is Banks describing his utopia by defining its boundaries. In this case something far more powerful than they are. The titular Excession. It's about how the Culture (and other galactic 'cultures') respond to this.
This one I like because it mostly focusses on the Minds, the machine intelligences that are the core of the Culture. Banks obviously had a lot of fun composing the snark and bite with which they communicate. The line describing what an 'out of context' problem is, still made me laugh out loud as it has before.
This is really good 'high concept' science fiction that zips nicely …
5 stars indeed. A book I first read on publication (1998) stands up very well in 2022. I am wary, in these re-reads, of succumbing purely to nostalgia but this would definitely feel fresh to someone reading it for the first time now, I think.
Once again, this is Banks describing his utopia by defining its boundaries. In this case something far more powerful than they are. The titular Excession. It's about how the Culture (and other galactic 'cultures') respond to this.
This one I like because it mostly focusses on the Minds, the machine intelligences that are the core of the Culture. Banks obviously had a lot of fun composing the snark and bite with which they communicate. The line describing what an 'out of context' problem is, still made me laugh out loud as it has before.
This is really good 'high concept' science fiction that zips nicely along. This is Banks, so we are clearly drawing parallels to colonialism and toxic masculinity while having a swipe at that old rubbish 'The ends justify the means'.
Recommended. Yes, yes.
I know it's not fair to the book itself, but I struggled to finish this one because the narrator's voice did not agree with my ears. It's quite interesting overall, a bit complex but I think necessarily so given the topic.
