{"id":1559,"date":"2010-03-19T19:00:14","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T19:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/?p=1559"},"modified":"2012-12-07T08:41:17","modified_gmt":"2012-12-07T08:41:17","slug":"matter-ian-m-banks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/03\/matter-ian-m-banks\/","title":{"rendered":"Matter (Ian M Banks)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Sci-fi, 7\/10 &#8211; Jul\/08-Mar\/09<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/banks_matter.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/banks_matter.jpg?resize=196%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Iain M Banks, Matter\" title=\"\" width=\"196\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1560\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/banks_matter.jpg?resize=196%2C300&amp;ssl=1 196w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/banks_matter.jpg?w=327&amp;ssl=1 327w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 196px) 100vw, 196px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This story is set in a Shakespearean-like era with kings and princes and swords and battles &#8211; minus the romance. Actually, it&#8217;s more like medieval Merlin and the knights of the round table because the civilization is shrouded with myths and has the equivalence of dragons because it is semi-integrated with alien cultures and alien artefacts. I didn&#8217;t find the story all that engaging but I did find the planet the story is based on well worth reading about. Banks calls it a &#8220;Shellworld&#8221;, a ancient alien construction built up from several separate layers, each effectively a world in itself, with its own planetary conditions, civilizations and even artificial suns. The tech level of the story builds and builds and the ending is true action Sci-fi.<\/p>\n<p>My favourite bit of all the culture novels is reading about the ship minds and AI. Banks really captures my imagination and hits the Sci-fi sweet spot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sci-fi, 7\/10 &#8211; Jul\/08-Mar\/09 This story is set in a Shakespearean-like era with kings and princes and swords and battles &#8211; minus the romance. Actually, it&#8217;s more like medieval Merlin and the knights of the round table because the civilization is shrouded with myths and has the equivalence of dragons because it is semi-integrated with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[54,53],"class_list":["post-1559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-ian-m-banks","tag-sci-fi"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1559"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1606,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions\/1606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}