This is because Gibson and Stephenson in certain ways anticipated the evolution of technology, and considered what the world would look like as transformed by “cyberspace.” Both were crucial in helping us to understand that the real technological revolution occurring in our society was not mechanical, but involved the collection, transmission and processing of information.īanks, by contrast, imagined a future transformed by the evolution of culture first and foremost, and by technology only secondarily.
For me, it established Banks as one the great visionaries of late 20th century science fiction.Ĭompared to the other “visionary” writers working at the time – William Gibson, Neal Stephenson – Banks is underappreciated. Here I found a much more satisfactory elaboration of the basic premise of his world. In the end, I didn’t love Use of Weapons, but I liked it enough to pick up a copy of Banks’s previous book, Consider Phlebas, and read it through. “Oh, and there’s this great part where the main character gets his head cut off – or I guess you would say, his body cut off – and so the drone gives him a hat as a get-well present…” That’s what the Culture is, it’s like the evolutionary winner of the contest between all cultures, the ultimate basin of attraction.”
You could take any dog, of any breed, release it into the streets, and within a couple of generations it will have reverted to the Dog. The thing is, it’s not a breed, it’s more like the universal dog.
You see the Dog wherever you go, hanging around by the side of the road, skulking around markets. “In Thailand, they have this thing called the Dog. “Well,” she said, “it’s kind of hard to explain.” She settled in for what looked to be a long conversation. Many years ago, a friend of mine who knows about these sorts of things handed me a book and said “Here, you have to read this.” It was a copy of Iain M.
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