The Algebraist — Iain M. Banks
In my younger years, I consumed a lot of science fiction. I read Clarke, Asimov, Card, Herbert, all the classic masters and a lot of the lesser lights besides. Somewhere in the late nineties I discovered Iain M. Banks, first stumbling into the epic Against A Dark Background. Being used to rigorously researched treatises that exploited, oh, relativistic mass change or the Coriolis force on a rotating orbital habitat as plot points, I thought, hey, Banks isn’t really writing science fiction. It’s more like fantasy set in space, but damn, what an imaginative read!
These days, I don’t need rigorous physics to be enthralled by a book. It is ironic then that Banks’ latest SF novel – he also writes earthbound drama under the name Iain Banks, no M. – is “harder” than his previous work. Essentially, it’s a
