Brilliant as ever, she continued to shine in every aspect of her life.

Her intelligence was truly remarkable, allowing her to effortlessly solve complex problems and come up with innovative solutions.

Whether it was in the classroom, where she consistently achieved top grades, or in the workplace, where she was highly regarded for her expertise, she always stood out.

Her creativity knew no bounds, as she constantly explored new ideas and approaches.

She was also a kind and compassionate person, always willing to help others and make a positive difference in their lives.

With her unwavering determination and brilliant mind, there was no doubt that she would continue to achieve great things and inspire those around her.

This is a collection of short stories.

The state of the art was by far the most enjoyable among them all. It had a certain charm and appeal that made it stand out. I would毫不犹豫地 give that story in isolation a four-star rating.

However, there was a story in here titled "Scratch" that I simply could not read. It was like pages and pages of aimless rambling. The narrative seemed to lack a clear direction or purpose, and it was difficult to follow.

Overall, while the collection had its亮点 with the state of the art story, the presence of the less engaging "Scratch" story detracted from the overall experience to some extent.

The book presented an odd assortment of stories.

Each individual story was somewhat entertaining on its own. However, there was a distinct lack of clear cohesion among them.

The overall structure of the book seemed rather disjointed, as if the stories were simply thrown together without much thought or planning.

Adding to the disappointment was the fact that the book was fairly short.

It felt as though there was so much more potential that could have been explored, but due to its brevity and lack of unity, it just left a little something to be desired.

Readers were left with a sense of dissatisfaction, longing for a more coherent and fully developed collection of tales.

Despite the entertainment value of the individual stories, the book as a whole failed to make a lasting impression.

It seemed to be a missed opportunity to create something truly engaging and memorable.

Perhaps with a little more effort put into the organization and connection of the stories, and a bit more length to allow for deeper exploration, the book could have been a much more satisfying read.

As it stands, it is a decent collection of stories that falls short of its potential.

A collection is presented here, encompassing the title novella and a selection of assorted short fiction from Banks.

Road of Skulls is more of an introduction than a full-fledged story. This brief prelude is filled with references and inside jokes, effectively serving its purpose of making me exclaim, "OH YEAH! I am completely excited to begin another book by Iain Banks!"

A Gift from the Culture is set in the 'Culture' universe. As the title might suggest, most of the stories here can be assumed to take place in the same universe, although not all explicitly state it. This story introduces us to an individual who has chosen to forsake the privileges and luxuries of that advanced, space-faring environment in favor of living on a more backward and violent planet. The combination of an ill-advised love affair and a mafia-like gang leads to the narrator being pressured into committing an act of terrorism. It's a great story, but it feels as if it only skims the surface. I wouldn't have been disappointed if this were the introduction to a novel.

Odd Attachment is a bit of a one-note joke story, yet it's genuinely funny and delightfully twisted in a good way. Additionally, it has the deeper theme of different perspectives.

Descendant follows a spaceman stranded far from his base. He has thousands of miles to walk to reach an uncertain refuge. He is alone, except for his spacesuit, which is so technologically advanced that it has its own sentient intelligence. However, it is damaged.

Cleaning Up presents mysterious and confounding 'packages' containing alien technology that start arriving on Earth. The government frantically attempts to figure out how to deconstruct the technology and determine the purpose of these 'gifts'. Can they be exploited for military advantage? It's nicely ironic.

Piece is a non-sci-fi short that explores the topics of religion, science, and terrorism. It is well-crafted.

The State of the Art shares many of the same themes as "A Gift From the Culture". It features a Culture citizen who desires to 'go native' and融入 life on a backwater planet, which in this case is Earth circa 1977. The starship 'Arbitrary' is in orbit, considering whether or not to make contact. The ship insists that Diziet Sma (from 'Use of Weapons') go 'talk' to Dervley, who is on-planet and has been refusing to check in or return to the ship. The bulk of the story is really a philosophical argument between the two characters' points of view. Sma sees the benefits and privileges of living in the Culture, while Dervley has fallen in love with the 'realness' of hardship and poverty and sees 'aliveness' and beauty in the contrasts of Earth, in addition to being attracted to religious concepts. Banks, in this story, makes a genuine effort not to construct straw-man arguments and truly tries to understand Dervley's point of view and present it fairly. However, it's quite clear that at the end of the day, he sides with Sma and the Culture. I think perhaps the strongest aspect of the story is the vivid portrayal of that tragic feeling when faced with someone you love and care for who simply doesn't see things from your perspective, and you believe they are completely wrong, and moreover, that their wrongness is self-destructive and harmful.

Scratch is the final piece in the book. Another non-sci-fi piece, it offers yet another perspective on those aspects of life on Earth that Dervley found value in and Sma did not. This is an experimental-almost-poem about English poverty and the poverty of culture. It's not my typical type of thing, but it's far better executed than many writings of this kind.

Meh. Nope. This is a book of short stories that I have put aside for a while and I'm done evaluating all the small ones because they're not worth it.

And the big one, which takes up almost half the book, at the beginning it seems like it is because it presents terrestrial society from the perspective of the Culture society in a very intelligent way through the characters and their experiences. However, as it progresses, the characters matter less and they become mere puppets to express the author's discourse without them really mattering and that's where it completely loses me.

One star but of the kind that I just don't like and nothing more. No hatred or anything.

It's a bit of a disappointment really. I was hoping for more depth and character development. The initial concept was interesting but it just didn't deliver in the end. Maybe I'm being too harsh but that's how I feel about this book.

I guess everyone has different tastes when it comes to literature and this one just didn't click with me.

This anthology of Culture and non-Culture stories is illustrated, which immediately sets it apart from the start. It's impossible for it to be a one-star book. +1 for that. Each story is preceded by german-expressionist wood(or lino)cut-style drawings, even in the ebook format, something that some publishers seem to be neglecting to my dismay. (*cough* NOS4A2ebook *cough*)

The stories themselves were mostly new to me, except for A Gift From the Culture, which I read years ago and was my first encounter with Mr. Banks' work. Unfortunately, I believe it was the best story in the collection. The eponymous novella is overly preachy, with characters delivering speeches as if from a pulpit. It's too blatant, yet I found myself highlighting several passages. (Alright, only four, but that's a lot for me, even from much larger works. And it would be five if I reread A Gift from the Culture: "Money is a sign of poverty" is one of my favorite Banks quotes and also appears in an inferior form in The State of the Art.)

Most of the other stories are quite short. I enjoyed Road of Skulls:

"Tell I a story. Me would love to hear a story. Tell I a story of love and hate and death and tragedy and comedy and horror and joy and sarcasm, tell I about great deeds and tiny deeds and valiant people and huge giants and dwarfs, tell I about brave women and beautiful men and great sorcerorcerors... and about unenchanted swords and strange, archaic powers and horrible, sort of ghastly... things that, uhm... shouldn't be living, and... ahm, funny diseases and general mishaps. Yeah, me like. Tell I. Me want."

I felt the same way. There are a few humorous stories, but they didn't quite work for me. Odd Attachment, about a BEM in love, made me smile, but Cleaning Up, a Cold War satire from the perspective of aliens, didn't. It was too similar to the eponymous novella in many ways.

Overall, I would have liked to see more stories. There are only eight in total. One is a novella, but most of the others are very short, and I think the anthology could have benefited from some additional content. It's a very quick read. However, I'm being a bit greedy here. I give it four stars.

A unique short-story venture from Banks

presented a rather mixed bag. Most of these pieces seemed either a little odd and unfinished or preachy rants. Only a select few of these stories were actually part of the Culture world.

The title story, however, stood out as the largest and best thought out piece. As a voracious reader of the Culture series, I was truly delighted to meet up again with Diziet Sma and Skaffen the Drone as they recounted their visit to Earth for a historian.

Though it might initially seem to ridicule Earth thought, in all actuality, it's a profound critique of Culture society and its cleaned-up version of living. After all, if people can live ridiculously long lives and not really have to do a whole lot of work because their living and governing have been turned over to AI Minds, life seems a bit... well, not exactly sedate, as it's a little too hedonistic for that. But it's not as if any of them do anything that truly Matters, if you can follow my train of thought.

Anyway, I did thoroughly enjoy that story, and it's an important Culture reference that one should be familiar with. It offers valuable insights into the complex and often thought-provoking nature of the Culture universe.

Reviewing the novella, The State of the Art:

Storyline: 2/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 3/5
World: 3/5

Banks's name frequently appears when I encounter science fiction awards or mentions of notable series. So, I continue to read the Culture novels to understand what all the fuss is about. This particular work - too short to be a novel but too long for a short story - was as valuable to me as the deleted scenes on a DVD. Many people must love those (otherwise, why would they keep including them in the home version of the movie?), but I've found them to be more of a chore than entertainment. It must be the die-hard fans - the devotees and cult followers - that they aim for with those, and this is who will most appreciate The State of the Art.

The story isn't a bad one. It's not particularly remarkable; it's simply something to add to your Culture collection. I do feel that Banks has an overarching idea that he is working through. I don't think he had it fully formulated with the first few Culture novels (though it was more prominent in The Use of Weapons), and it's definitely not completed here. He's exploring the significance of achieving utopia and the reasons why we humans might have for rejecting it. The nature of utopia has become more and more concrete throughout the series so far, but the arguments against it are still somewhat模糊. In this novella, Banks abandons a lot of the subtlety and allegories and opts for a direct comparison between present-day Earth and the Culture. I had a hard time determining which character was expressing Banks's real opinions and concerns; perhaps it's all of them. There are many more Culture novels to come, and at present, I'm inclined to keep reading them. I'm enjoying seeing Banks consolidate, rearrange, reformulate, and articulate his ideas. Even though I haven't been overly enamored with most of what I've read so far, I respect that Banks is grappling with social theory.

I'm really not a fan of short stories, and only some of the ones included alongside the novella were related to the Culture series. Most of these exemplified exactly what I don't like about short stories (too little development, over-reliance on form over substance, a rough draft-like quality), but there were a couple that were worth reading if you're hanging around the library with nothing else to do.

Road of Skulls: 2/5 stars
A Gift from the Culture: 2/5 stars
Odd Attachment: 2/5 stars
Descendant: 4/5 stars
Cleaning Up: 4/5 stars
Piece: 1/5 stars
The State of the Art (novella): 3/5 stars
Scratch: 1/5 stars

A collection of SF short stories and a novella is presented here. Confusingly, the novella is also titled "The State of the Art". The novella truly stands out as the best piece. It narrates a mission from the Culture to observe our Earth, with the Culture observers arriving in 1977.

Two conflicts are established. One is between the narrator and the sentient AI operating the observers' ship and commanding the mission. The narrator desires the Culture to make contact with Earth to prevent humanity from self-destruction, but the ship disagrees. The other is between the narrator and a colleague who decides to forsake the pleasures of the Culture for the more arduous life of an Earth human.

I found the ending, where the dissident crewmember confronts the harsher aspects of human life, a bit too simplistic. However, overall, it is a highly atmospheric story. I'm astonished it wasn't a Hugo Awards finalist in its original eligible year. It also effectively touches on what I believe is the major issue with the Culture: are they the good guys or a group of self-righteous, decadent, interfering busybodies? I'm not certain my answer to this question aligns with that of Banks.

The other stories vary in quality. "Descendant" is an intriguingly ambiguous tale that could potentially be a science fiction ghost story. "A gift from the Culture" gives the impression of being the setup for a longer story that never developed as needed. "Odd Attachment" seems rather childish, and "Cleaning Up" is forgettable. "Piece", about a man whose journeys across the English-Scottish border are continuously disrupted by people expressing their religious views, would have been more effective if (spoiler) the Lockerbie disaster had been caused by religious extremists instead of the Libyan secret service. Nevertheless, "Piece" remains an interesting story. I was particularly struck by the section where the narrator, an academic, argues with a Muslim colleague about Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses". While the colleague is clearly incorrect, he came across to me as far more sympathetic than the narrator, who seemed to lack an understanding of why Muslims might be sensitive to perceived slights against their religion.

When I read this book, it immediately brought to my mind the profound quote from Einstein, "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world and all there will ever be to know and understand."

This book is truly a remarkable collection of short stories. Each story has the power to set your imagination free and transport you to different worlds and scenarios.

It allows you to explore the uncharted territories of your mind and envision things that you may have never thought possible before. The vivid descriptions and engaging plots draw you in and make you feel as if you are a part of the story itself.

Whether you are a fan of science fiction, fantasy, or just good storytelling, this book has something for everyone. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to expand their imagination and experience the power of words.

This collection of short stories has its ups and downs. To be honest, I think Banks' prose is more inclined towards longer form writing. However, I can surely state that I took great pleasure in the title story, "The Sate of the Art." It showcases the comeback of Alien Best Girl™ Diziet Sma and also provides a touch of historical background in the form of Earth around 1977.

Now, just like a thirty-something individual who never received their Hogwarts letter, I will anxiously anticipate the return of a Culture General Contact Unit. This unit would hopefully bring about an era of anarcho-socialist utopia on this chaotic and difficult planet. Well, a girl can always dream.

Overall, I would rate this collection 3.75 stars. It has its moments of brilliance, especially in the title story, but there are also some parts that could have been better developed. Nevertheless, it's still an interesting read for fans of Banks and science fiction in general.

9/04/2024

Paris trip by Diziet Sma:

She walked down from St. Germain. At St. Michael, she headed for the Seine. She crossed and gazed at the Notre Dame Cathedral. Then she walked along the Seine to the Memorial to the Deportation. She left the island and walked along the right bank to the Louvre. She wandered through the galleries and looked at the Gioconda. She headed out to the Tuileries to the octagonal pond and floated a model yacht. She circled back via the Pont Alexander III to the Musee D'Armee and saw the panther tanks and canons. She had lunch near Saint-Sulpice Metro station. On the way home, she picked up a book/magazine.

09/04/2024

Then she had dinner in Montmartre.

09/06/2024

The initial series of short stories were quite strange yet I liked the writing style and the descriptions. I especially enjoyed the short story "Cleaning Up" because of the funny moments of Bathos and when the two narratives joined together in a rather ridiculous way. I think Banks does a great job in constructing narratives interestingly, which can lead to some nice twists in the stories. I believe reading the previous books in the Culture series might have helped in understanding parts of this book, but it was still a good read.

I thought the main story was very good. I really liked the extremely detailed descriptions of places on earth. For example, the stroll through Vigoland in Oslo was nice as I had been there fairly recently in 2023. I would spend a lot of time on my phone researching various terms, places, items, etc. that were mentioned. I always find it impressive when authors seem to have experienced so much of the world that they know all these things and go a step further in integrating them into their writing.

The second thing I really enjoyed about the book, which I didn't think would feature after just reading the short stories, was that it explored ideas that intrigued me enough to put the book aside and think about what was being said. I already quoted something above that I was very moved by, but there were other ideas explored that seemed to center around the fight between good and evil and questions of what a world without evil is like from the point of view of the Culture. In trying to eliminate evil, has something good/beautiful been lost? I feel like the book tries to make the reader think about what makes us human and is able to put into words some ideas that can be hard to express. I think I would like to read more of the series if the books explore more questions like this, but I might try to read them in order now.