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Iain M. Banks
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democracy in action
bbc radio
Science Fiction Was Made For Radio, BBC Says
BBC Radio is launching a huge science fiction "drama season" that will span three stations in the month of March: Radio 3, Radio 4, and BBC 7. Audio plays, including adaptations of Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama and Iain M. Banks' State Of The Art (adapted by Paul Cornell), will air during Radio 3's Afternoon Play, Classic Serial and Women's Hour timeslots. Meanwhile, BBC 7 will launch a new 10-part audio series called Planet B. The BBC's Jeremy Howe says the initiative is all about celebrating "contemporary science fiction," not chestnuts. And he says radio is the "natural home" of writers like Clarke and William Gibson, who've created "fantastic works of the imagination." [The Stage]
iain m. banks
Apparently scifi author Iain M. Banks (Matter, Consider Phlebas) believes that future humans could conceivably reach the advanced techno-political state of the Culture, a vast, intragalactic society he describes in several of his novels. And we'll get there via designer babies. Over at Biology in Science Fiction, Peggy quotes the author saying we'll become like his A.I.-loving Culture folk by "genetically modifying ourselves, I suspect." And he's figured out exactly how we'll do it.
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Iain M. Banks: Humans Could Join the Culture via Genetic Engineering
Apparently scifi author Iain M. Banks (Matter, Consider Phlebas) believes that future humans could conceivably reach the advanced techno-political state of the Culture, a vast, intragalactic society he describes in several of his novels. And we'll get there via designer babies. Over at Biology in Science Fiction, Peggy quotes the author saying we'll become like his A.I.-loving Culture folk by "genetically modifying ourselves, I suspect." And he's figured out exactly how we'll do it.
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space cocktails
Soak Your Head With The Greatest Cocktails From Science Fiction
After a long week of conquering the stars — which may seem like decades to a stationary observer — you deserve a stiff drink. Luckily, science fiction has a huge selection of bizarre cocktails, from the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster to the Flaming Rum Monkey. Sure, some of them may be poisonous to humans, but that's just part of the fun. Here's our round-up of the awesomest cocktails from SF. Just make sure to strap your drinks tray down, and away we go. More »
mega-sentients
The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe
Are you ashamed of your size? You should be! Compared to Ego The Living Planet or Unicron the planet who turns into a giant robot, you're not only puny and tiny, you're kind of dumb as well. If there's one thing that science fiction teaches us, it's that you need a sun-sized brain to think truly cosmic thoughts. (And to eat other planets for lunch, too.) But which life form in scifi is the hugest (and therefore the smartest)? We've got the answer. More »
horrorhead
Welcome back to Horrorhead, a column all about the connections between horror and scifi. On Battlestar Galactica, there's an ongoing theme of torture: humans gang-rape an imprisoned Cylon; the Cylons beat a man so badly he loses his eye (not to mention all the humans they kill outright); and there's even a little human-on-Cylon washboarding early in the series. These are not scenes that take place entirely offscreen. We see beatings; we see the bloody, freaked-out face of Six the Cylon after she's been raped so many times she can't stand up and has lost the will to eat. The question is, do we need to see these scenes? Would this series be as powerful without them? And by extension, would any torture-laced scifi flick like The Hills Have Eyes or Cube be as enticing if it lost the mutilations or the razor net that falls from the ceiling and reduces living humans to little cubes of flesh? (Spoilers ahead.)
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Do We Need Graphic Torture in Our Dystopias?
Welcome back to Horrorhead, a column all about the connections between horror and scifi. On Battlestar Galactica, there's an ongoing theme of torture: humans gang-rape an imprisoned Cylon; the Cylons beat a man so badly he loses his eye (not to mention all the humans they kill outright); and there's even a little human-on-Cylon washboarding early in the series. These are not scenes that take place entirely offscreen. We see beatings; we see the bloody, freaked-out face of Six the Cylon after she's been raped so many times she can't stand up and has lost the will to eat. The question is, do we need to see these scenes? Would this series be as powerful without them? And by extension, would any torture-laced scifi flick like The Hills Have Eyes or Cube be as enticing if it lost the mutilations or the razor net that falls from the ceiling and reduces living humans to little cubes of flesh? (Spoilers ahead.)
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10:43 AM on Wed Apr 30 2008
By Annalee Newitz
3,751 views,
59 comments
Latest by Shell_Kracker: The main problem with torture in entertainment is its unrealistic. Two main ways: 1). Its not as brutal as the real thing, more »
rant
Newest Book Covers Don't "Scream Scifi"
There's an interesting discussion going on over at Media Bistro's Galleycat blog about when science fiction books should have dignified covers that look less pulpy and "skiffy." Case in point: Clifford Simak's The Way Station, which has had a host of lurid covers over the years (see left) and now has gotten reissued with a nice pastoral grasslands scene, which looks more like a Willa Cather novel. Click through to see the new, classier cover, plus a selection of the old pulpy covers. More »
interview
io9 Talks to Iain M. Banks About His New Novel and Why He Likes to Blow Things Up
Scottish scifi author Iain M. Banks has managed to carve out his own realpolitik-laced subgenre in the world of space opera. Although he writes literary novels under the "pseudonym" Iain Banks, his science fiction is literary in its own right, full of artful surprises and sentient starships with motives far more complex than anything Ian "Atonement" McEwan could ever come up with. The author of nearly a dozen scifi books, including several devoted to a civilization called The Culture, Banks is known for world-building that encompasses the vast architectures created by space-going peoples as well as the intricate social structures needed to maintain them. We caught up with Banks on e-mail, and he talked to us about his new Culture novel Matter, galactic wars, his strange sense of humor, and how everything he creates is ultimately about wanting to blow shit up. More »
matter review
Iain M. Banks' New Novel Kicks Ass on a Galactic Scale
Iain M. Banks is the master of narrative zoom and pan: one minute he'll bring you in very close to a tiny moment in one person's life as she mourns the death of a brother, and the next you'll be spinning in deep space staring at a supermassive artificial world created by liquid-breathing aliens, millions of miles long, made of enormous braided tubes. Which of these minutes matters more? In Banks' new novel Matter, both do — and both are also tragicomically inconsequential. What always pleases about Banks' science fiction novels, many of which are set against the backdrop of a pan-galactic, A.I.-centric, socialist-libertarian society called The Culture, is that Banks always delivers substance and spectacle. You'll get the ethical questions, the sorrowful depictions of war, and the meditations on social evolution. But you'll also get world-shattering explosions, weird-ass aliens, and ancient technologies that are purely there to be fucking cool. More »
iain m. banks
