Paul Kincaid
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041013
- eISBN:
- 9780252099564
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252041013.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This is the first book-length study of the entire oeuvre of Scottish novelist Iain Banks. While it concentrates on the science fiction as by Iain M. Banks, in particular his novels of the Culture, it ...
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This is the first book-length study of the entire oeuvre of Scottish novelist Iain Banks. While it concentrates on the science fiction as by Iain M. Banks, in particular his novels of the Culture, it demonstrates stylistic, structural, thematic and political links between these and the supposedly realist novels. It places his work in the context of contemporary Scottish literature, the Scottish fantastic, looks at his deliberate overturning of the usual cultural and political norms associated with space opera, and proposes that the Culture novels contain a counter-narrative to the usual utopian readings.Less
This is the first book-length study of the entire oeuvre of Scottish novelist Iain Banks. While it concentrates on the science fiction as by Iain M. Banks, in particular his novels of the Culture, it demonstrates stylistic, structural, thematic and political links between these and the supposedly realist novels. It places his work in the context of contemporary Scottish literature, the Scottish fantastic, looks at his deliberate overturning of the usual cultural and political norms associated with space opera, and proposes that the Culture novels contain a counter-narrative to the usual utopian readings.
Paul Kincaid
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041013
- eISBN:
- 9780252099564
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252041013.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
At the height of his career, Banks abandoned the Culture for two very different science fiction novels. Against a Dark Background presented an extreme capitalism that was a deliberate contrast to the ...
More
At the height of his career, Banks abandoned the Culture for two very different science fiction novels. Against a Dark Background presented an extreme capitalism that was a deliberate contrast to the communist character of the Culture; while Feersum Endjinn presented a structurally complex and linguistically dense account of a world in collapse. Civil war as a political manifestation of Laing’s divided self would also inform subsequent works of the Scottish fantastic, notably Whit and A Song of Stone. His return to the Culture with Excession and its companion Look to Windward were, it is proposed, intended to end the sequence by addressing the Sublime as a form of the death of civilization.Less
At the height of his career, Banks abandoned the Culture for two very different science fiction novels. Against a Dark Background presented an extreme capitalism that was a deliberate contrast to the communist character of the Culture; while Feersum Endjinn presented a structurally complex and linguistically dense account of a world in collapse. Civil war as a political manifestation of Laing’s divided self would also inform subsequent works of the Scottish fantastic, notably Whit and A Song of Stone. His return to the Culture with Excession and its companion Look to Windward were, it is proposed, intended to end the sequence by addressing the Sublime as a form of the death of civilization.
