The Hydrogen Sonata

[Vince W]

Vince, you're British, right? The current standard Orbit UK paperbacks are small size, except the trades that were sold instead of hardcovers for export (though hardcovers are available in the Netherlands as well). The US Orbit paperbacks are larger size. Do you mean you have a collection of US paperbacks?

I initially bought the US paperback of Against a Dark Background and was horrified to find they had converted the book to American spelling. It went straight into the trash. Might seem strange as I am not a native speaker, but I can't abide that nonsense.

I meant trade editions. They are older and have nice stiff covers for trades. It's probably the reason haven't bothered with hardcovers. All my Banks are UK prints not US.

 

[Av Demeisen]

I meant trade editions. They are older and have nice stiff covers for trades. It's probably the reason haven't bothered with hardcovers. All my Banks are UK prints not US.

I have an original UK trade of Use of Weapons with similar artwork to the hardcover. Very nice and firm indeed. The artwork was printed with colours a few shades ligher than the hardcover for some reason (no fading).

 

[Rodders]

Bumping this thread as i start reading it today.

 

[Rodders]

Finished this last night. I did enjoy it very much, but after reading it after Surface Detail, i felt a little let down. (Not the books fault, but i read it too soon after what can arguably be described as Banks's best book.) Still, it was a great read and goes to show the power of Banks's writing in that it's not his best, but still of an excellent standard.

I really enjoy Vyr Cossont and Qi'Ria parts of the story. Interesting that in both this and Surface Detail the Culture warships come out on top both times. Don't F' with the Culture indeed.

I think Matter will be a little harder for me to get into (like Inversions), so i'm going to read a few books in between this and that.

 

[BigHappy]

I read the Hydrogen Sonata a long time ago, but from what I remember I thought it was one of Banks's best, mostly because of the way he depicts the Minds. In other books featuring highly intelligent AIs such as Neuromancer or Hyperion, they're kind of far-off and their motives are always mostly unknown. But Banks's Minds have a more personal nature, and they're treated as individual characters with personalities rather than just being in the plot from their association with human characters - he is also the only author I know who gives the AIs a sense of humour, which makes them more like people than anything else.

 

[Pyan]

Absolutely agree - one of the joys of this book are the conversations between Minds. I do like the fact that, in spite of being mega-intelligent, far surpassing their original creators, they still remain sarcastic and downright catty about each others perceived failings.

 

[Rodders]

The ships in this and Surface Detail really came into the fore.

I really felt that Banks's story telling art, his depiction of the ships Minds along with his very graphic descriptions of new parts of the galaxy had gotten spectacularly good on these later novels. He was really settling into his craft.

 

[Vince W]

Very true, Rodders. Shame he was taken from us too soon.

 

[Rodders]

I thought i'd bump this, as i've just listened to the audiobook, read by the excellent Peter Kenny.



A really beautiful book second time around. Death is very much the subject of this novel, with the Gzilt sublimation being very much a metaphore for it. I felt the two younger "client" races squabling for the Gzilt lagacy to be very reminiscent of family arguing over who gets what in the will.

I also thought that it was a bit of an odd book. After all their effort, the Culture were able to uncover the truth, but it wouldn't have impacted on the Gzilt subliming, which was the back story to the book. Still, in Banks's own way it was quite brilliant and can be summed up with the phrase, "life's too short to take seriously".

Loved Pyan in this.

Alas, I think i only have Matter left in my Culture re-read. I'll go through his non-Culture science fiction as well.

R.I.P. Iain.