Iain-m-banks

Feersum Endjinn is one of Iain Banks' few non-Culture sci-fi novels. Like the Culture novels, an existential crisis drives the plot: in this case the action takes place on Earth in the far future and the sun has aged to a point where it will grow and swallow the earth. This is referred to as the Encroachment. The characters are divided between the good guys who seek to find a solution for the greater good and bad guys who use the Encroachment to consolidate their power and influence.

A while back, I decided I was going to write about the Iain M. Banks sci-fi-novels (mainly as a respite from having to read and write about J. G. Ballard novels, but I only got as fas as writing about the excellent “Against A Dark Barkground” and re-reading the first of the Culture novels “Consider Phlebas”. WARNING: Some plot spoilers follow (but not too many).

As I mentioned before I am re-reading the novels of Iain Banks and this weekend I managed to finish Consider Phlebas. A little post about it will be coming up soon. One of my favourite things about the Culture novels is how the ships are named and having found a list on Wikipedia, I thought I would share ten of my favourites with you!