I really enjoyed this book..even if it was a bit convoluted...some parts should have been expanded on..guess he tried to keep the pages down..fairly long book I would recommend it to sci fi fans.. summary via wiki.. The Algebraist, a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first appeared in print in 2004. It was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2005. starting next on ..The Windup Girl...by Bacigalupi, Paolo
i hear good things about this book. and iain banks. can you tell me a little about how he writes cuz im legitimately interested.
about how he writes..hmm.. you may need a thesaurus and a dictionary....he describes things in fantastical ways..but then he is describing very fantastical scenes and beings. I like to think of myself as fairly well read for an uneducated person....many of the words he used...I imagined he must have made up..kidding....but I did need to look up many of them. some you wont find in a common dictionary
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/oct/23/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.iainbanks sounds kinda cool. but my favorite quote from the review was a negative one. im not saying i agree with it, because i haven't read the book: It can get so hard to avoid this in SF. Or in fiction. I guess i see detecting it as a sign of acumen. edit: i just realized i totally contradicted myself with that previous statement. point is it sounds like hes got a great imagination, and id read him for that. i think its a very difficult thing to achieve breadth and depth at the same time and to the same degree.
I know what he refers too here...he can use two pages too describe something ..where they are..the weather maybe...the being...but after reading a chaptor or two,it really helped flesh out the world in my imagination. The places are soooo otherworldly..you could not imagine.
Yea i read several authors sort of like this. Their stories are less plot driven then driven by atmosphere, or understanding the story as an experience that can be interpreted in various ways (i.e. other than purely temporally or "plot"-driven). Again im not assuming how he writes. But i like otherworldly stuff a great deal, and i havent really comes across that many interstellar books of this breadth so it could be great. i like fantasy/sci-fi alot. but i dont like how commercialized it is today. i read it for the bizarre, for the ride, the uncomfortable, even the painful. i hate tolkien's whole concept of fantasy, or the "myth" as actually creating another world to escape to (not saying i dislike his work entirely). I think there is a big difference, though, between that and creating atmosphere. In other words, i think using words to test the limits of meaning is much different from believing they physically construct - a conceit i think a lot of authors who write commercial fantasy subconsciously maintain. Then you get 7-12 700-page-book trilogies that all cover one war but in the end you haven't really learned squat about yourself. Oops? I'll put this book on my list to read. Its good to know there are some xoobies out there that are into books too.