This collection of stories is a small yet significant addition to Iain M. Banks’ unique Culture Series. I had a rather neutral reaction to the few Culture-based short stories, so this review will focus solely on the book’s eponymous novella. “The State of the Art” presents a brief but striking contrast between Banks’ highly advanced Culture civilization and Earth in 1977. When a Culture ship and some members of Contact arrive to study humanity’s home planet in the late 20th century, they set out to record all present and past human knowledge and must ultimately decide whether to reveal themselves to the oblivious Earthlings. Sma, the protagonist, develops a tense friendship with Linter, another Contact member who, charmed by Earth and its primitive inhabitants, decides to become human and stay on Earth permanently.

I think Banks would have acknowledged that some of the symbolism and ethical discussions in “The State of the Art” are a bit heavy-handed, and I believe that was his intention. Avoiding his tendency for narrative sprawl, which sometimes overshadows Culture novels, Banks offers a series of straightforward, incisive, and heartfelt critiques of Earth as seen through the eyes of a far more advanced civilization. During her time on Earth, Sma comes to understand humanity as a rather simple but potentially capable mix of curiosity, ingenuity, virtue, ignorance, and cruelty. Linter, on the other hand, becomes completely enamored with humanity’s lack of post-scarcity technology, our entanglement in material and spiritual uncertainty, and our devotion to Christianity. It’s a clever setup in which most readers will likely conclude, along with Sma, that despite his occasionally persuasive arguments, Linter is a fool for wanting to abandon the Culture for a life on Earth.

I won’t disclose any more about the story, but I do want to share a few quotes that should give potential readers a good idea of the thought-provoking ideas within this delightful tale.
Sma imploring Linter not to stay on Earth:
\\"How long do you think this place is going to stay the way it is now? Ten years? Twenty? Can’t you see how much this place has to change…in just the next century? We’re so used to things staying much the same, to society and technology––at least immediately available technology––hardly changing over our lifetimes that…I don’t know any of us could cope for long down here. I think it’ll affect you a lot more than the locals. They’re used to change, used to it all happening fast. All right, you like the way it is now, but what happens later? What if 2077 is as different from now as this is from 1877? This might be the end of a Golden Age, world war or not. What chance do you think the West has of keeping the status quo with the Third World? I’m telling you; end of the century and you’ll feel lonely and afraid and wonder why they’ve deserted you.\\" (133)
Sma reflecting on Linter’s love for humanity and her own desire for Culture intervention:
\\"Here we are with our fabulous GCU, our supreme machine; capable of outgenerating their entire civilization and taking in Proxima Centauri on a day trip…here we are with our ship and our modules and platforms, satellites and scooters and drones and bugs, sieving their planet for its most precious art, its most sensitive secrets, its finest thoughts and greatest achievements…and for all that, for all our power and our superiority in scale, science, technology, thought and behaviour, here was this poor sucker, besotted with them when they didn’t even know he existed, spellbound with them, adoring them; and powerless. An immoral victory for the barbarians.
Not that I was in a much better position myself. I may have wanted the exact opposite of Dervley Linter, but I very much doubted I was going to get my way, either. I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t want to keep them safe from us and let them devour themselves; I wanted maximum interference…I wanted to see the junta generals fill their pants when they realized that the future is––in Earth terms––bright, bright red.
Naturally the ship thought I was crazy too. Perhaps it imagined Linter and I would cancel each other out somehow, and we’d both be restored to sanity.\\" (136-7)
Linter justifying his decision and critiquing the Culture lifestyle:
\\"I have to do what feels right. This is very important to me; more important than anything else I’ve ever done before. I don’t want to upset anybody, but…look, I’m sorry…We’re the ones who’re different, we’re the self-mutilated, the self-mutated. This is the mainstream; we’re just like very smart kids; infants with a brilliant construction kit. They’re real because they live the way they have to. We aren’t because we live the way we want to.\\" (156)
The ship’s Mind chiding Sma for questioning its decision to help Linter fulfill his desire to stay on Earth:
\\"What is the Culture? What do we believe in, even if it hardly ever is expressed, even if we are embarrassed about talking about it? Surely in freedom, more than anything else. A relativistic, changing sort of freedom, unbounded by laws or laid-down moral codes, but––in the end––just because it is so hard to pin down and express, a freedom of a far higher quality than anything to be found on a relevant scale on the planet beneath us at the moment.
The same technological expertise, the same productive surplus which, in pervading our society, first allows us to be here at all and after that allows us the degree of choice we have over what happens to Earth, long ago also allowed us to live exactly as we wish to live, limited only by being expected to respect the same principle applied to others. And that’s so basic that not only does every religion on Earth have some similar form of words in its literature, but almost every religion, philosophy or other belief system ever discovered anywhere else contains the same concept. It is the embedded achievement of that oft-expressed ideal that our society is––perversely––rather embarrassed about. We live with, use, simply get on with our freedom much as the good people of Earth talk about it; and we talk about it as often as genuine examples of this shy concept can be found down there.
Dervley Linter is as much a product of our society as I am, and as such, or at least until he can be proved to be in some real sense ‘mad,’ he’s perfectly correct in expecting to have his wishes fulfilled. Indeed the very fact he asked for such an alteration––and accepted it from me––may prove his thinking is still more Culture- than Earth-influenced.
In short, even if I had thought that I had sound tactical reasons for refusing his request, I’d have just as difficult a job justifying such an action as I would have had I just snapped the guy off-planet the instant I realized what he was thinking. I can only be sure in myself that I am in the right in trying to get Linter to come back if I am positive that my own behaviour––as the most sophisticated entity involved––is beyond reproach, and in as close accord with the basic principles of our society as it is within my power to make it.\\" (161-2, emphasis his)
Sma’s final thoughts about the contrast between the Culture and Earth:
\\"It strikes me that although we occasionally carp about Having To Suffer, and moan about never producing real Art, and become despondent or try too hard to compensate, we are indulging in our usual trick of synthesizing something to worry about, and should really be thanking ourselves that we live the life we do. We may think ourselves parasites, complain about Mind-generated tales, and long for ‘genuine’ feelings, ‘real’ emotion, but we are missing the point, and indeed making a work of art ourselves in imagining such an uncomplicated existence is even possible. We have the best of it. The alternative is something like Earth, where as much as they suffer, for all that they burn with pain and confused, bewildered angst, they produce more dross than anything else; soap operas and quiz programmes, junk papers and pulp romances.
Worse than that, there is an osmosis from fiction to reality, a constant contamination which distorts the truth behind both and fuzzes the telling distinctions in life itself, categorizing real situations and feelings by a set of rules largely culled from the most hoary fictional clichés, the most familiar and received nonsense. Hence the soap operas, and those who try to live their lives as soap operas, while believing the stories to be true; hence the quizzes where the ideal is to think as close to the mean as possible, and the one who conforms utterly is the one who stands above the rest; the Winner…
They always had too many stories, I believe; they were too free with their acclaim and their loyalty, too easily impressed by simple strength or a cunning word. They worshipped at too many altars.\\" (201-2, emphasis his)
Banks’ keen understanding of humanity, along with his skillful use of Culture concepts to expose our blind spots and inspire better futures, surpasses that of most thinkers and looms large in the world of science fiction. Although not a full exploration of the Culture Universe in all its strange glory, The State of the Art is a valuable addition to Banks’ imaginative collection.
This review was originally published on my blog, words&dirt.

These stories were rather uneven, yet all shared a fairly pessimistic and dark tone.

I had a particular preference for those set in the Culture universe, especially the title story. The Sma character from "Use of Weapons" was truly captivating, and I was delighted to encounter her again here. Her lines were remarkable, as seen in the quote: "Naturalness? I said, loudly. This lot'll tell you anything is natural; they'll tell you greed and hate and jealousy and paranoia and unthinking religious awe and fear of God and hating anybody who's another colour or thinks different is natural. Hating blacks or hating whites or hating women or hating men or hating gays; that's natural. Dog-eat-dog, looking out for number one, no lame ducks... Shit, they're so convinced about what's natural it's the more sophisticated ones that'll tell you suffering and evil are natural and necessary because otherwise you can't have pleasure and goodness. They'll tell you any one of their rotten stupid systems is the natural and right one, the one true way, what's natural to them is whatever they can use to fight their own grimy corner and fuck everybody else. They're no more natural than us than an amoeba is more natural than them just because it's cruder."

Linter was also a great protagonist. His thoughts and actions added depth to the story, as shown in this excerpt: "I wanted to go. I wanted to get out of this city and off this continent and up from this planet and onto the ship and out of this system... but something kept me walking with him, walking and stopping, stepping down and out, across and up, like another obedient part of the machine, designed to move, to function, to keep going regardless, to keep pressing on and plugging away, warming up or falling down but always always moving, down to the drug store or up to company president or just to stay a moving target, hugging the rails on a course you hardly needed to see so could stay blinkered on, missing the fallers and the lame around you and the trampled ones behind. Perhaps he was right and any one of us could stay here with him, just vanish into the city-space and disappear forever and never be thought of again, never think again, just obey orders and ordinances and do what the place demands, start falling and never stop, never find any other purchase, and our twistings and turnings and writhings as we fall, exactly what the city expects, just what the doctor ordered..."

One final quote that truly showcases Banks' amazing writing skills is: "I mentioned the Arbitrary collected snowflakes. Actually it was searching for a pair of identical ice crystals. It had - has - a collection; not holos or figure break-downs, but actual samples of ice crystals from every part of the galaxy it has ever visited where it found frozen water. It only ever collects a few flakes each time, of course; a saturation pick-up would be... inelegant. I suppose it must still be looking. What it will do if it ever does find two identical crystals, it has never said. I don't know that it really wants to find them, anyway: But I thought of that, as I left the glittering, grumbling city beneath me. I thought - and I still dream about this, maybe once or twice a year - of some drone, its flat back star-dappled, quietly in the steppes or at the edge of a polynya oft Antarctica, gently lifting a single flake of snow, teasing it away from the rest, and hesitating perhaps, before going, displaced or rising, taking its tiny, perfect cargo to the orbiting starship, and leaving the frozen plains, or the waste of ice, once more at peace."

The central idea of whether the Culture would interfere with Earth or not was truly fascinating. It was a refreshing change to see Earth portrayed as a violent backwater rather than the typical lost homeland. Overall, it was an impressive read.

Fino Reviews Iain M Banks Sci-Fi and Culture series
Culture Series
... (list of books and reviews as before)
Non-Culture Sci-Fi
... (list of books and reviews as before)

Just generally not very good writing, to me at least.

Short stories:

Road of Skulls: It is short and rather flimsy. Only the very ending holds a bit of interest.

A Gift from the Culture: It is pretty decent. It has an interesting premise. However, it's hard to sympathize with someone who leaves utopia in general, given it's far beyond our own experience.

Odd Attachment: It is vaguely amusing, yet pretty gross and a little confusing. Eh.

Descendant: This is the best story of the book. It's about a human and their sentient spacesuit. It's not perfect, but it's interesting with a well-done ending and a rather unusual perspective.

Cleaning Up: It reminds me of some 50s/60s pulp story. There's some humor that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. It has a cold war theme and a generic giant bad corporation. It's okay, but written a bit confusingly and not that interesting.

Piece: I rolled my eyes hard at the end. It's pretty incoherent with some bad poetry stuck in for some reason. It has neither a clear "point" nor a decent plot, mood, setting, or anything.

Scratch: It's "experimental" writing that's like an expression of anger over the Thatcher era and politics/economy in general. Alright, but it's pretty hard to read and you get the point pretty quick (luckily it's short).

The main novella (State of the Art) itself kind of sucks because it's from the perspective of the Culture looking at Earth and it just feels... wrong. It sort of does an "Earth is unique" thing and tries to justify why we haven't been contacted (which is always a bad idea for a sci-fi thing to do imo), but it's just not convincing. And a lot of the speeches and stuff that go on don't really make sense - they don't fit with what you'd expect from the culture and they just seem silly. I dunno. It felt like another expression of anger, but what's cathartic to one person generally isn't cathartic to another. Oh well.

**"YouTube Review"**

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YouTube Review

Short stories that are set within the Culture universe offer a fascinating exploration of various themes.
One particular piece, "The State of the Art" which is really a novella, delves into fanaticism and appropriation in a captivating and interesting manner.
While some of the stories may resonate more strongly with readers than others, overall, it makes for a solid and engaging read.
Among them, the story about the zombie suit stands out as my personal favorite.
It presents a unique and imaginative concept that keeps the reader hooked from start to finish.
The detailed descriptions and well-developed characters add to the overall appeal of the story.
Whether you are a die-hard fan of the Culture universe or simply enjoy reading thought-provoking short stories, this collection is definitely worth checking out.

It's extremely challenging to rate a short story collection due to the diverse range of emotions that each individual story elicits. Banks clearly has a great deal of enjoyment when it comes to his short fiction, and one can easily discern that he utilizes it to venture off an already highly unconventional path. The stories within this collection are a fascinating blend of the playful and the morbid.

A significant portion of this book is occupied by "The State of the Art," which is set within the Culture universe. I truly relished this story, despite it being the most blatant expression of his worldview. I'm not entirely certain that I concur with some of his conclusions. However, "The State of the Art" offers a remarkable exploration of mortality, privilege, and the search for the essence and enjoyment in life. It delves deep into these profound themes, presenting a thought-provoking perspective that leaves the reader with much to contemplate.

Overall, this short story collection is a captivating read that showcases Banks' unique storytelling abilities and his willingness to explore the boundaries of fiction. Each story has its own charm and allure, making it a worthwhile addition to any reader's collection.

Disclaimer: I am solely delving into the Culture-related stories within this book, namely A Gift from the Culture and The State of the Art.

A Gift from the Culture boasted that high-tech, low-life cyberpunk juxtaposition, which was rather appealing. However, it seemed to lack an essential element that is typically present in most other short stories I have perused. I struggle to precisely identify it, but it felt like a straightforward retelling devoid of a clear point or purpose. While short stories don't necessarily have to possess a distinct point or purpose, this one somehow seemed incomplete. It's rather strange to make such a claim about a short story, yet it undeniably lacked something fundamental.

The State of the Art, on the other hand, was captivating. Despite being a novella, it encompassed all the major aspects I have come to anticipate from a full-length Banks novel. It began slowly - check. It featured some exquisitely beautiful prose (The suspended bridge, big as it was, responded to my stepping feet, moving up and down at my like some monstrous and clumsy lover.) - check. It had several thought-provoking passages (The Earth has more than enough to feed all its inhabitants every day already! A truth so seemingly world-shattering one wonders that the oppressed of Earth don't rise up in flames and anger yesterday! But they don't, because they are so infected with the myth of self-interested advancement, or the poison of religious acceptance, they either only want to make their own way up the pile so they can shit upon everybody else, or actually feel grateful for the attention when their so-called betters shit on them!) - check. It also had some moments of shock for the sake of shock (\\n  \\"If they could see us now,\\" Roghres giggled. \\"Cannibals from outer space!\\"\\n) - check.

This novella gave me a strong Brave New World vibe, especially with the kid from an arguable utopia choosing to live in a world of pain and misery. Nevertheless, in the end, I had to push myself to finish reading this one, just like the previous few novels. I've heard that Excession might be more to my liking. Only time will tell.

The title story was truly excellent. It had a captivating charm that held the reader's attention from start to finish.

The rest of the stories were equally intriguing, funny, and weird in their own ways. They were just the right length, not overstaying their welcome and keeping the reader entertained throughout.

With three Culture stories in one book, each offering a very different perspective, I am beginning to realize that my favorite aspect of these books is the ambiguity that Banks presents regarding his view of the Culture. He can't seem to make up his mind whether he holds the Culture in awe or contempt.

This uncertainty adds an extra layer of depth and complexity to the stories, making them even more engaging and thought-provoking. It forces the reader to question their own beliefs and assumptions about the fictional society that Banks has created.

Overall, this book is a great read for anyone who enjoys science fiction with a touch of mystery and philosophical exploration.

Definitely more of a fan of the long form Iain M Banks stuff. However, this particular collection wasn't bad at all.

The titular novella is actually pretty decent. It has its own charm and manages to draw the reader in.

I also really enjoyed the nonsense tabloid fever dream that is Scratch. It's a wild and crazy ride that keeps you entertained from start to finish.

And I'll be damned if there isn't some itch.io sad mech jam rpg based on Descendant. The concept is just so unique and interesting that I can't help but think it would make a great game.

Overall, while it may not be my favorite Iain M Banks work, this collection has its moments and is definitely worth checking out.

I got the book for the Culture short stories and the novella, and I can safely say that I wasn't disappointed.

A Gift From the Culture was good. It had an interesting premise and kept me engaged throughout.

Descendant was OK, but it didn't really blow me away. It was a decent story, but it didn't have that something extra that would make it truly great.

The State of the Art was the standout out of the three. It was a thought-provoking and engaging story that really made me think about the nature of our society and our place in the universe. It was a little preachy maybe, as Banks is really mad at us humans, but it was still a great read.

The rest of the stories that I've read, such as Road of Skulls and Piece, were nothing special. They were just average stories that didn't really leave much of an impression on me.

Overall, I would say that the book was a good read, but it wasn't perfect. There were some great stories in there, but there were also some that were just average. However, I would still recommend it to fans of science fiction and the Culture series.

It took me a rather long time to truly immerse myself in this collection. You'll probably laugh when I tell you that I didn't actually realize it was a collection of short stories when I picked it up from the library. I only noticed the author, the title, and the fact that it was "Culture #4".

So, the first chapter leads us along a road paved with the skulls of defeated enemies in a cart. However, it has no resemblance to the second chapter, which is about a culture citizen who has covertly joined another civilization. Well, perhaps it was a prologue? That's what I thought. I was already on about the fourth story when I finally googled and realized that the book was a collection of short stories. Once I understood that and stopped trying to force them to fit together, my reading experience improved significantly.

As a book of short stories, with some being excellent and others being mildly enjoyable, this book functions beautifully. Even though it's up to the #4 in the Culture series, I didn't feel like I really knew much about the culture because most of the books are told from the perspectives of non-culture individuals. But after reading this book, I feel like I have a much better understanding of what the civilization of the Culture is truly about and how the individuals within it view their own empire and the surrounding ones.

Many of the short stories in this collection either lack a significant connection to Culture or have only the most tenuous link. While this doesn't overly concern me, it seems worthy of mention since the book is categorized as a Culture book. Despite their brevity, I found "A Gift from the Culture" and "Odd Attachment" enjoyable. "Cleaning Up" had an interesting concept but was poorly executed. "Descendant" was rather gloomy and desolate, although it was well-written and some may appreciate it. "Scratch" read like something penned by someone under the influence of bad drugs, and by the time I reached it, I had no inclination to attempt to decipher it. "Piece", with its meanderings about religion, nearly made me abandon the book entirely, and even the very brief intro "Road of Skulls" gave me cause for hesitation. I mean, what a unfocused and bleak beginning to a collection!

As for the main novella "The State of the Art", there were the usual enjoyable Culture tidbits, and I did appreciate encountering Sma and Skaffen-Amtiskaw again. There are some interesting ideas hidden within, but they have an overwhelmingly negative slant and none were new to me at this stage. Oh, and all the chapter and sub-chapter titles are purportedly ship names, many of which are quite good. Unfortunately, the story is slow-paced, fairly predictable, and I repeatedly wanted to shake a central character and ask "What on earth is wrong with you?!" The plot device that the story truly revolves around is a source of frustration that precluded overall enjoyment of the story.

I cannot recommend this book, aside from the first two short stories mentioned. When my main thought upon finishing a book is 'Thank goodness that's over!', I can't envision advocating for it.