Tag Archives: literary science fiction

Iain M. Banks’ Surface Detail

Posted on 26th December 2012 by Gary Whitehouse

Iain M. Banks’s Culture series began in 1987 in the midst of a galaxy-spanning war. By the time of Banks’s 2010 Culture novel Surface Detail (released in trade paper in 2011) the war is long over. The series seems to … Continue reading →

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Iain M. Banks’ The Hydrogen Sonata

Posted on 26th December 2012 by Gary Whitehouse

The Gzilt, a humanoid civilization at the galaxy’s highest levels of development, are about to Sublime — to leave corporeal reality and join a higher realm, a heavenly, information-dense parallel universe to which most civilizations eventually retire. It’s a time that … Continue reading →

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William Gibson’s Spook Country

Posted on 9th September 2007 by Gary Whitehouse

One of the characters in William Gibson’s new book Spook Country is addicted to a particular kind of tranquilizer. During the book’s course he takes two slightly different versions of it, with different brand names. I was curious about just … Continue reading →

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William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition

Posted on 12th January 2003 by Gary Whitehouse

Folklore used to be songs, dances and tales told around the fire, in the inns, before the hearth, that connected us with our past. The first mass media, radio and television, put the hearth in an electrical box that we … Continue reading →

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