The State of the Art - Hardcover

Iain M. Banks

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0356196690 ISBN 13: 9780356196695

Publisher: Orbit, 1991

Synopsis

First World edition (British); first printing (not stated); hardcover with dustjacket, 1991. Collection of stories, many part of the author's series, "The Culture." This first edition is quite collectible when found in nice condition. Interior illustrations by Nick Day, and these stories: Road of Skulls (1988); A Gift from the Culture [Culture] (1987); Odd Attachment (1989); Descendant [Culture] (1987); Cleaning Up (1987); Piece (1989); The State of the Art [Culture] (1989); Scratch (1987).

About this title

About the Author:

Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He has since gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels.

From Publishers Weekly:

Accompanied by a lengthy essay, "A Few Notes on the Culture" (1997), these seven arresting short stories and the disturbing novella that provides the title for Banks's latest SF collection all date from 1984–1987, the period of his bizarre mainstream novel The Wasp Factory and the extravagant genre novel Consider Phlebas, both cult-inspiring works. In short pieces like "Road of Skulls" and "Piece," Banks turns convention upside down and inside out, with shocker-endings that linger like smoke rising from a crematorium. "Odd Attachment" traces a marooned spaceman and his AI suit on a tortuous survival trek across an uninhabited planet, illustrating Banks's preoccupation with the "self-generative belief system" that applies to both humans and AIs in the Culture, the setting for the title story and some of his SF novels. Viewing Earth and Homo sapiens through the eyes of the Culture, a galactic group-civilization spawned by a handful of humanoid species several thousand years in the past, allows Banks to speculate on his dearest philosophical topics: the preferability of anarchy in space, denunciation of market economies as "synthetic evil," never-ending education for both humans and machines, and genetic manipulation. For all their wrenching images and sadistic twists, Banks's unsettling tales bestow a grim gift, the ability to see ourselves as others might see us.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Orbit
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0356196690
• ISBN 13: 9780356196695
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 182
• Illustrator: Nick Day