Consider Phlebas Published by the Folio Society | Hacker News Reader

Consider Phlebas Published by the Folio Society

foliosociety.com

94 pointssaltysalt102 comments

I love a properly made book, though I don't buy Folio Society books due to the illustrations. Don't get my wrong, they're beautiful, but any time a book has illustrations it feels like I don't get to use my imagination (as much) for world building. The drawings seem to overwrite my own image-making process for characters, environments, etc. I don't like it.

Another example: I was re-reading the Lord of the Rings recently and I couldn't get Peter Jackson's big screen images out of my head while reading. Same thing with Gaiman's Norse Mythology—for the first few stories all I could see was Chris Hemsworth's Thor, running around in my head as I read Gaiman's interpretation.

In time, my mind seems to come up with its own imagery that's a mash-up of all the worlds and art and images I've seen. But I still want to "do the work" while reading. It feels like illustrations alongside text rob my mind of that opportunity, and give me a ready-made world with details and characteristics and visuals that are not my own.

I often get a similar phenomenon, for better or worse. I kind of have this rule: read the book first if there's a movie/show about it, then watch the movie/show, then read the book again. This helps me avoid "the book is better" (sometimes -- it's a rare case where the audiovisual format excels, but it happens).

First reading I get my imagination and expectations. Watching the movie/show lets me know how others interpreted it.

If it was a well made, casted, and acted depiction, then the 2nd reading often will conjure images of specific scenes, actors, soundtracks, etc. even if it wasn't quite what I imagined initially. If it was a poor adaptation, rereading the book reminds me that my imagination was better.

To date I can only think of two movies that captured their respective novels nearly identically to my imagination (within reason, given content and technological limitations):

- Phillip K Dick / Richard Linklater - A Scanner Darkly - Michael Crichton / Barry Levinson - Sphere - Ted Chiang / Denis Villanueve - Story of Your Life (Arrival) - Bret Easton Ellis / Roger Avery - The Rules of Attraction - Alex Garland / Danny Boyle - The Beach

I often wonder if the influence of the authors of these books upon the production of the movies was a factor, but I've seen plenty movies where the original author had lots of input/approval and the result was a mess. Dunno.

I said two but got caught up in more as I thought about it, my bad.

When I read norse mythology, I can't unsee this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159017125X (D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths)

The illustrations in their Greek myths book were how the Greek gods and heroes looked to me for many years.

To me they looked like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemision_Bronze

Very nice, thank you.

Tangent: "Originally, they used stone lithography for their illustrations. A single four-color illustration required four slabs of Bavarian limestone that weighed up to two hundred pounds apiece."

(Stone stone-writing stimulates my department of redundancy department ...)

> I was re-reading the Lord of the Rings recently and I couldn't get Peter Jackson's big screen images out of my head while reading.

Why? You shouldn't be able to get Alan Lee's illustrations out of your head while watching the movie :)

I feel exactly the same way. I would love to buy these books with the beautiful cover and production without the illustrations. The magic of a book of fiction is you get to imagine.

Yes, but if the illustrations were actually drawn by the author like the recent re-release of The Silmarillion, or Tolkien’s illustrations for The Hobbit, it’s a different matter.

Consider Phlebas was such an odd entry point into the Culture series. In a way it makes more sense as a prequel, to be read after you understand the world and the general conceit of the series. In fact, I think Consider Phlebas is better upon rereading than it was going in cold. In this light, I'm kind of surprised I went on to read the other books after starting with this one. But, I'm incredibly glad I did, and I recommend them to anyone with an interest in far-future sociological sci-fi.

It's a fun action novel; I loved the part with the cult on the island. But yeah, it has nothing on Player of Games.

Consider Phlebas was my third Culture novel after Use of Weapons and Player of Games. I very much enjoyed it, but definitely didn't enjoy the Island cult bit!

Its a acquired taste.. it was a fascinating insight though, into a luxurious, post-scarcity societies tolerance for extremes, as long as they all did what they did out of choice, not even a machine could overrule them.

I love, how the tragic choices of the "organics" are mirrored hinted as part of the PTSD of the orbital in "Look to the winward", which can "relive" the destruction of orbitals, ships and worlds in the idiran war in perfect detail. It could have zapped the mindstates of the mortals, like the meat-fucker (Sleeper Service), but choose to not do so out of respect for the choices.

The whole book part of the orbital, was a careful flashed out testing of the extremes of a highly hedonistic, machine governed society thrown in a "culture" war against religious zealots and it explored those themes well.

> meat-fucker (Sleeper Service)

The GCU nicknamed meat fucker’s chosen name was the Grey Area. It was a protégé of the GSV Sleeper Service.

Reread, you are absolutely right. Shame. I mixed up a machine that is mostly engine and dioramas with a machine that is mostly brainscans and genocide-drama.

Use of Weapons is typically what I recommend as the first book to read, it was mine, and it was mind blowing. The Chair...

This is a consistent complaint I have about that whole series. Banks clearly enjoys writing action sequences, and is very good at it, and they are a poor fit for the stories of the series. They're tonally out of place with the setting, throw off the pacing, and require extravagant plot contortions to allow for them.

Booo! Banks loves writing action sequences and some of us love to read them. If you want to read "brainy" sci-fi you can always someone else like, like... Olaf Stapledon? Or Alfred Bester?

But the Culutre has drones armed with knife missiles armed with micromissiles armed with miniature jedi ninjas with chainswords shooting death rays from their eyes. So there.

That's funny. I found the cult stuff so unnecessarily unpleasant (the phrase "torture p*rn" comes to mind) that I haven't read any of the other books.

A lot of Banks's non-sci-fi fiction is... well, I wouldn't describe it as torture porn, but it's graphic and violent.

Have you read the other books in the Culture series? If so, is the island a particular low point violence-wise, or is that the norm for most of them?

I've read most (all of them? Except Feersum Endjinn, it was just too hard to read to enjoy it - but that's me) and I do think Banks has a lot of violent and sometimes gruesome parts. The Archimandrite Luseferous springs to mind (not part of the culture series, more an anti-culture book, it feels like the mirror universe in Star Trek, E.g. in DS9, but it's so culture-like, I include it).

Yes. Interesting question. I’d say that in terms of the goriness of the writing, the island is particularly bad.

Thematically though, in terms of the series overall, violence, oppression, genocide, torture, are all fairly common, although not as gruesomely depicted for the most part.

I felt it a good introduction for the same reason as it was the first written book: Banks didn't know how to tell a story about the Culture without trying to attack the Culture and find its flaws and outsiders. The edition I read even had a foreword to that effect. Obviously, he found far more interesting outsiders and flaws as the series progressed, but it is still interesting to see that "bootstrap moment" in Consider Phlebas as he works to find the right hooks in a way that feels almost like "in real time".

Your comment makes me wonder if I should give the series another chance. I only read Consider Phlebas and didn't continue with the series because I found the book so frustrating. It felt like there was a ton of context missing. I kept expecting it to provide some details about the culture that would justify the protagonist's antipathy towards it, but a coherent explanation for his world view never materialized.

Excession is spectacular. The focus is on the machine intelligence as opposed to the people.

Totally. I've re-read excession multiple times and it's still my favorite.

That’s where I started and it’s still my favorite. Hooked me hard.

That was my experience, but I am glad that I tried again. Player of Games is much more explicit in the world building (almost too much), and then a good balance is found in Use of Weapons. So I always recommend reading those two first before circling back to really understand the value of Consider Phlebas as an outside view on the Culture (and really, The West).

Please do - Consider Phlebas is good in its own way, but it's a lot different from the rest of the series.

Player of Games is a great entry point, but I think Surface Detail might be my favorite. It might be my favorite sci-fi book I've ever read, in fact.

I hope you will try other entries in the series! Player of Games and Excession are big favorites of mine, but they're quick reads and if you have the time I would really encourage all of them in order of release!

Yeah, I would pick up another book in the series. Consider Phlebas is set in the same universe but almost seems like a different genre.

There are books which are fully juiced on their first reading. All of Banks' novels have additional liquid to savor after several pressings.

I like your analogy, but I need help seeing how it applies to Consider Phlebas. From my perspective, the story is pretty arbitrary. The aliens have arbitrary features that have no internal reason for they must inevitably be that and not something else. Similarly for characters and plot points. There's a ringworld, but with none of Niven's exploration into the nature of a ringworld. (Fair enough, just borrow from Niven, it just doesn't add any juice.) The gambling game and island cult are interesting, but both are deeply grotesque and kind of counter-examples of treating people well. The Culture seems like Progressivism plus American self-assured knowledge that their system of life is obviously the only right way to behave. (Not arrogance, which is putting down others, or cockiness which has naivite, but just the lack of introspection to even see other perspectives. It reminds me of the smart bombs the US talked about in the Iraq War, as if a "righteous" war with weapons that only killed hostiles and not innocents is morally acceptable. I'm somewhat sympathetic to that idea [assuming it were implementable], but I can also see how that is not terribly compatible with the idea of a peaceful nation promoting democracy, but the messaging did not seem to have any cognitive dissonance.) I do think managing to make the Culture feel like modern America, but two or three decades prior is pretty impressive, but I don't see what extra juice there is. There is no critique of the Culture as far as I can tell (or any justification, for that matter), it just IS and everyone else has to deal with it.

I guess I just don't see where any extra juice is going to come from. Canticle for Leibowitz has a beautiful meditation on human nature. Diaspora shows several very non-arbitrary forms of life, discusses disobeying a person's expressly stated values to save their life, and touches on the consequences of immortality and immortality alone. In comparison, I struggle to see how Consider Phlebas is anything other than solid C-grade sci-fi.

You seem to be doing what movie critics do to movies.

Does everything need to be a criticism, play on or comparative or something? Does everything need some deeper meaning?

It's a fun action sci-fi book. Do you question the motivations of Sam-I-Am in Green Eggs and Ham? Why does he insist so much? Where did this food come from? Does he have an ulterior motivation? Is this a reflection on 1970s conservatism in the UK and societies inability to adventure and explore?

It was literally a story about space pirates. You seem to be expecting Walden.

What a weird way to describe it, but it is true that his writing is something you stop to admire on its own from time to time.

> Culture series

They’re not really sequential stories. You wouldn’t miss much by reading Surface Detail before Use of Weapons, except for a couple of callbacks.

I just finished reading Consider Phlebas, and am starting Player of Games now! I tried to find reading order lists online and most just recommended publication order. I hope I didn’t ruin anything.

There are _largely_ no spoilers. I think Look to Windward might have very minor ones for Phlebas, but largely the novels are all set in the same universe, but more or less standalone.

It's true that it's an awkward entry point, but it's not necessarily a bad one. It's the worst book of the series imo, so if I wanted someone to read the whole series I wouldn't start them there.

But it also covers events that are directly or indirectly significant to the plot or setting of... most... of the other books. So if you are going to read them all, you get more out of the rest for having read it first.

Good to hear you think its one of the weaker ones, I didn't love it personally. (I thought the setting was awesome but struggled a little bit with the motivations of most of the characters). I've heard enough good things about the series however to know I am going to read most/all of them! Which book if your favorite?

I remember liking Look to Windward and Excession a lot, I think because they're centrally about the lives and motivations of the minds. For that reason though they may be better later, once you've got more exposure to and questions about their actions and experiences.

Surface Detail also really stuck with me for its unique conflict & setting. It's about a war over the fates of people unwillingly uploaded into a simulation of hell after their deaths. With the soldiers being continually "reincarnated" back into different iterations of the same fight. Banks has a really unsettling edge to a lot of his stuff that is just barely kept out of view in a lot of the culture books, but this one he just lets it rip and it's very effective.

I started recently with Consider Phlebas and loved it. I then read Surface Detail (not sure why I read that next) and found it pretty disappointing and disjointed comparatively. I'm hoping more of the books are closer to Consider Phlebas as I read onwards.

A few months ago I did the same thing you did, and I enjoyed Player of Games a lot more.

The ending of Consider Phlebas was a bit of a trainwreck in my opinion :)

If you like high quality books, Folio Society editions are difficult to beat. I some recent releases bought direct and some older ones from Ebay at home. Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Anansi Boys are particularly lovely, great feeling paper, amazing illustrations, the cover design is incredible, and of course the typography is top notch. From the older releases, I have a few history books - like the history of Enigma machine, 700 year old biography Chenghiz Khan, and a book about Silk Road.

From some of the more recent books, check out the Strugatsky brothers famous https://www.foliosociety.com/row/roadside-picnic.html, also available in 500 copies limited edition for a lot more. So want!

I need more book shelf space.

I can't think of an author I miss more but 155CAD for a book with 6 illustrations seems crazy, especially when Banks isn't exactly making profit from this.

You can buy a print of a single image from Susan Kare's original Macintosh iconography for USD 160, and it doesn't come with any words! This edition gives you five more prints and a whole book.

I think it really is a matter of this being a "collectible," or "personal treasure" rather than some kind of exercise in market economics. If the six illustrations speak to you and the presentation speaks to you and $155 is affordable for you, great. If not, no problemo, it's a niche product and you are not in the niche.

The other thing you bring up—the author getting paid—is a different matter, and one that I take seriously as well.

Wait 'till you see how much Centipede Press' recent copies of Dune and Dune Messiah are selling for.

https://www.centipedepress.com/sf/dune.html

Yes, but you'd be incentivizing Banks' successors in interest to create more content in The Culture universe. Can't be bad!

the binding and paper quality is very high. but it's solidly a splurge buy.

I like reading and I own probably too many books, but I don't understand the Folio society. If you want art then go by art, if you want a book then get a paperback. These aren't coffee table books. It's just words.

They make nice gifts, like an even more expensive version of the penguin cloth bound classics:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/series/CLOTBO/penguin-clothbound-c...

I'd actually really recommend against the Penguin clothbound classics. Unless they changed something recently, the designs on the cover wear off very easily from the sweat/oil on your hands and you end up with an ugly book after one reading.

If you want less expensive high-quality classic books I'd recommend Library of America (for American authors), Modern Library, or Everyman's Library.

LOA's great if you don't mind bible-type thin paper and smallish type. Wonderful for saving space on a bookshelf, solid binding. I often wish they did British authors, too. Modern Library and Everyman are excellent mid-range readers' hardbacks, not fancy but solid and reliable, often (though not always) exhibiting excellent taste in selection of translations and introductions and other extras. Penguin Classics paperbacks are my go-to if I'm not shooting for a hardcover (though they recently and inexplicably changed what had been maybe the single best cover design in all of publishing to make it worse, which is irritating—at least it's still not as bad as the old yellow-cover design they used years back, god those were ugly).

The French version of LOA is La Pléiade. Similar deal, smallish print, thin paper, focus on classics and important works.

There are several mostly-kinda-shitty "fancy" series (Folio's not one of them) often in fake leather binding, but among the "fancy" sorts, one that really delivers is the (defunct) Limited Editions Club (LEC to book nerds). The name's awful, but if you want an edition you could put on a lectern in the library of a 15th century French chateau and have it look like it belongs, short of springing for real-leather binding, they're a good candidate. HUGE—seriously, big—often bound in heavy-duty cloth, well-selected illustrations, thick, nice paper. Not a lot of other extras, though. But if you want a book to feel like Serious Business, they're a good choice. Heritage Press is (well, was) the "budget" version of them, reprinting LEC in usually somewhat scaled down (though still large) and less crazy-good (but still good) binding. Much friendlier to normal shelf heights, and easier on the wallet.

About the only paperback publisher I have an opinion on, other than Penguin Classics, is Dover. If you're going budget, might as well go all the way. Plus, hell, half the time I prefer theirs to slightly-more-expensive offerings. Love 'em.

There's something to be said for presentation. Preaching's preaching, but a stone cathedral sure feels different than a strip-mall church.

People act like books are just words to read, but the fact is that handling a well-made artefact of any kind stimulates different neural pathways into your brain than just looking at it.

Books can have heft. They can be pleasing to touch. The feel of each page as you turn it is part of the book's user experience, and different choices of paper, binding, and finish all affect that.

Reading a physical book generates more "input" to your brain, and if you're going to go to the trouble, it can be stimulating and pleasurable to pick a book that adds physical joy to the experience of reading.

I "collect" books in that I sometimes buy physical copies of books when I only read e-books, but when I purchase something it's usually because I've found an paperback in a used bookstore and can't resist the fantastic cover art and old book smell.

Whatever one may think looking at my overflowing bookshelves, a new pretty print edition doesn't do much for me.

a well bound hardback will be more comfortable to read, even compared to a properly broken in paperback spine

Sad i dont have more of his books signed. I did go to a signing, but the only books of his i had to hand were from the library.. so i got them signed and didnt say anything when i returned them incase i was charged for damaging the book.

He just chuckled and did the dedication to the library directly.

I'm still disappointed that Subterranean Press only published Use of Weapons.

It's a fantastic publication, fwiw.

https://subterraneanpress.com/use-of-weapons/

Possibly my favourite. My dog-eared copy is signed... twice... too. He used to come and read in Windsor, UK on occasion...

Have a chair. No, sit. We must talk about the Player of Games and your lack of gravitas.

my least favorite. The Player of Games, Excession and the Hydrogen Sonata for me.

I'd agree with that - the out of order story line always put me off in Use of Weapons. Seemed unnecessary. As for his best, I'd add Look to Windward to your list. That's a beautiful, moving book.

a remarkable number of books I've read recently are basically: a present day chapter, then a flashback chapter, eventually leading up to a tense moment in the present day that only makes sense once you have the flashback context.

Gets boring quickly!

Yes, it is. The couple going into the sunsets.

Surface Detail for me after Player of Games, though I've read all of his Culture series. The Mind of picket ship has got to be one of my favorite characters in the series.

All by audiobook, which honestly is a completely different experience than a physical read - perhaps I should check out one of his books and re-experience via text?

The ship AIs in the culture are clearly the most interesting characters. The exchanges between the AIs in Excession (the Interesting Times Gang) are absolutely hilarious.

My favourite plot twist in the entire series is our friend wih a need for speed in Excession. That book is one of my all time favourite reads.

Those are like a pleasant stroll in the park. Use of weapons is more like being chased through the park after dark by a madman.

Use of Weapons horrific big moment made it particularly memorable to me and definitely not unusual for Ian M Banks.

Feersum Endjinn differently horrifying with its core premise of an actual hell and heaven existence for beings.

And finally The Wasp Factory is all about a very disturbed individual.

Use of Weapons is my favorite book, and this edition may be well made, but I could not get past its cover - a Soviet submarine from the fifties, why? What does this have to do with the story? This seems like the publisher just did not care. Or is there some explanation in the foreword?

What was special / good about that publication?

It's signed by somebody I can best understand as "Not Ian M. Banks", and the description doesn't really tell me anything about "hardware", nor do they have a photo of the product :-/

Ken is a lifelong friend of Iain's, and wrote many prefaces and seems to be his kind of literary executor, publishing e.g. early poems as well as sketches related to The Culture:

https://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/news/14019050.friend-kee...

Yeah, I mean, Ken McLeod is a decent enough writer, but he's not in the same league as Banks. Can't imagine why I'd want to pay that much for a copy of a Banks book signed by him.

I wouldn't mind an edition of H.P. Lovecraft writings signed by August Derleth, or a Tolkien book signed by C.S. Lewis (or vice versa), and so on. A Discworld novel signed by Neil Gaiman.

If you like Gaiman there are some very nice copies of his works from some smaller fine press publishers.

https://www.arete-editions.com/artists-edition

https://www.lyrasbooks.com/shop/coraline/coraline-lettered-e...

SubPress make very good, high quality books. Sometimes it's just quite nice to own a nicely made physical object for something you deeply enjoy.

Right, but at $250, can anybody provide any details of how good these high quality books are?

I don't know if I came off antagonistic, but I'm actually coming from position of genuine curiosity; the webpage linked describes plot of the book (I love Mr. Banks to death and have gifted use of weapons to more than one person, so I'm interested in a good copy:), but it doesn't have a photo of the product, and doesn't tell me where my $250 go to - what is the binding? What is the paper? Is there special typeset? Are there some bespoke illustrations? What is, actually, good about it? (to other people's points, I'm sure Mr. McLeod is a fine writer and a splendid human being, and to some his signature on Iain M. Banks' book adds value, sentimental or otherwise; it does not to me but that's subjective:).

Yeah the product page is quite lacking, normally subpress do a much better job of highlighting what makes one of their editions special

I do most of my reading on a high end eink device these days and I still get excited when I can buy sub press epubs. Even their digital releases are great quality.

One of my favorite books of all time.

I always found it funny that the hero of the first Culture novel is a guy who hates the Culture and wants to destroy them.

I liked Horza btw. I guess I have a thing for lost causes.

Consider Phlebas is probably my favorite Culture book. Arguably not the best intro to the Culture universe, but as a standalone space opera it's hard to put down.

Slightly odd that they went for possibly the least-beloved Culture novel. I suppose it's the first published (though not the first written, IIRC), but it's not a _great_ representation of the series.

Amazon is theoretically making an adaptation of it Any Day Now (tm). So perhaps it has marginally more name recognition than Player of Games.

Unfortunately, it was cancelled in 2020.

https://archive.ph/o9ZmR (Amazon cancels TV adaptation of Iain M. Banks’ sci-fi Culture series, The Verge)

It's for the best, really.

Yeah, it's just really hard to imagine it not being extremely disappointing.

Consider Phelbas is good but as the first culture book it would have been the introduction of the culture/ship ai ideas for people which would have made a big impact.

unfortunately I read it after going through a lot of Iain Banks' books such as The State of the Art, The Crow Road, The Bridge and Feersum Endjinn, and found it to be just ok.

As a massive fan of the Culture series, does anyone have recommendations for other excellent sci-fi books?

Ok, for an Ian M Banks fan specifically.

Alistair Reynolds has a number of good books which can capture some of the same darkness you'd find in part's of Banks's work. The Revelation Space books are great in their gothic way, and House of Suns has a lot of the galactic wonder aspects of the Culture books.

Ken MacLeod as a friend of Bank's and a good writer. His Fall Revolution books are probably the best known and explore various radical leftish ideas for organizing society across the nearish future.

And this last is a bit of an oddball but Leonard Richardson's Constellation Games was a book I really enjoyed that starts with aliens coming to Earth looking to help out and our protagonist, a video game reviewer, asking for alien games to review but ends up in a place that resonated with The Culture very strongly.

Neal Asher's Polity Universe will probably ring a lot of the same bells (realpolitik, AIs in charge, a dash of horror).

Probably the biggest difference between the milieus is that in the Polity, machines are just as likely to be suffering from PTSD as organic intelligences.

I just finished reading A Deepness in The Sky by Vernor Vinge which I totally enjoyed and as I read it reminded me of the scale and depth of Banks' Culture novels.

Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

For those who loved Iain M. Banks culture books, what else did you find compelling?

Such a weird choice. I'd love a copy of Use of Weapons or maybe Excession.

"Set in Garamond with Scene as display"

Does anyone know which Garamond?

Meh. Non-consensual cannibalism. Meh.

...It's NOT the Polio Society...?

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