Venkatesh Rao

Finished Iain M. Banks’ Matter last night. Probably my favorite display of writing virtuosity so far. The sheer amount of world-building crammed into a single story... and literally into a single world. Wow. The shellworld idea is a sci-fi narrative engineering masterpiece.

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.

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.

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.

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.

https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1341285050537504771 …

Now on to Consider Phlebas. Nice to be reading it at #6. It will feel like a prequel and I’m a big fan of prequel narratives.

Finished Consider Phlebas last night. Easily the worst so far, but still worth it for getting the backstory of the world. It is both technically weaker than later novels and less inventive. Has a color-by-numbers feel. Player of Games too. The rest feel organic by contrast.