So that’s 4/9 Culture novels finished
Use of Weapons
Hydrogen Sonata
Look to Windward
Matter
Next up: Player of Games which I started but abandoned previously.
Probably the most inventive and richly imagined (in a baroque way) SF world-building I’ve read ever.
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Vernon Vinge (Deepness in the Sky) is the only thing I’ve read that seems to be imagined on a similarly lavish scale, and evoke operatic space of similar narrative proportions. Both are galaxy-sized stories for galaxy-sized canvasses. They don’t feel like stretched planet-scale.
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By contrast, Asimov’s foundation, despite being otherwise pioneering in the genre, feels like planet-scale narrative stretched to fit galaxy-scale canvas, and the pixelation shows. It is self-admittedly just the decline-and-fall-of-Roman-empire transposed to a space-operatic key.
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Hyperion (I only read one volume) had the potential despite starting with Canterbury tales sub-planet scale inspiration, but I felt lost its way. Didn’t feel inspired to finish.
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Adding it to the list. Thanks.
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A new book of his every year or two used to be such a pleasure. I'd pre-order the hardback as soon as I could, and the next Saturday after it arrived I would lie on the sofa and get through it in one go.
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Jack Vance is worth checking out, if you don't know him. Different from Banks, but another true virtuoso.
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Love Vance. Almost all books tell the same story. Young spaceman bilked out of inheritance feuds with status obssessed courtiers and triumphs. Yet always wonderful because Vance's ecological, anthropological and cultural creations are so delicious. Night Lamp is the opus.
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I loved Wasp Factory, this is slowly convincing me to just go all in on his ouevre
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Wait till you get to Excession, IMO the best of the Culture books.
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Yeah so brilliant!
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