The State of the Art,Ā Iain M. Banks
The State of the Art is a collection of short stories, some of which relate to the Culture novels and some of which donāt (or at least, donāt overtly). I actually wasnāt much impressed by Iain M. Banks as a short story writer, it seems: the best of the stories was the titular story itself, which is both a Culture story and rather longer than the other stories in the collection, which gave it more space to interest me, and more space for him to set up the kind of story that’s grabbed me in his novels.
Thereās nothing wrong with the stories per se, but they didnāt grab me at all (with the exception of the one already mentioned and āA Gift from the Cultureā). Where I was interested was when it was closest to Banksā other SF work, but otherwise the stories seemed fairly unremarkable. There are some interesting bits of humour; wry looks at staples of the genre.
Iām hoping thatās not a reaction to Banksā work in general, as I know I did enjoy several of his Culture novels and I was looking forward to reading the rest. Perhaps he just isnāt to my taste as a short story writer.
Rating: 2/5