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That's cool, I've never seen anyone recommend The Hydrogen Sonata so left it to last, along with Inversions. For all the fixation on his comment about American
by midhir 12y ago
That's cool, I've never seen anyone recommend The Hydrogen Sonata so left it to last, along with Inversions.
For all the fixation on his comment about American Libertarianism, Banks's politics seem fairly standard post-Thatcher Scottish to me. After what that PM did to Scottish communities many Scots apparently feel they have little in common with the direction English conservatives are taking the UK.
Banks was a supporter of Independence and famously cut up his British Passport and sent it to Downing Street in protest of the Iraq invasion.
IMO you can see his politics all over the Culture; from the entire tragedy of Look To Windward to the wee things.
- mercurial 12y agoPolitically he was pretty close to Charlie Stross, I think (himself hardly a Thatcher fan). It's also apparent in his non-sci work.
- arethuza 12y agoHere is an interesting article by Ken MacLeod (another excellent Scottish SF author) and long time friend of Banks: http://kenmacleod.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/use-of-calculators.html http://kenmacleod.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/use-of-calculators.... "what mattered was to keep the utopian possibility open by continuing technological progress, especially space development, and in the meantime to support whatever policies and politics in the real world were rational and humane"