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The Culture: The Drawings
This extraordinary collection celebrates the dazzling worldbuilding of Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.
Banks created many original drawings detailing the universe of his bestselling Culture novels. Now these illustrations are being published for the very first time in a book that celebrates Banks' grand vision.
Faithfully reproduced from notebooks kept in the 1970s and 80s, these annotated original illustrations depict the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.
This is an essential addition to the collection of any Iain M. Banks fan.
"Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future'" - Guardian The Culture series :
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
The State of the Art
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata
Banks created many original drawings detailing the universe of his bestselling Culture novels. Now these illustrations are being published for the very first time in a book that celebrates Banks' grand vision.
Faithfully reproduced from notebooks kept in the 1970s and 80s, these annotated original illustrations depict the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.
This is an essential addition to the collection of any Iain M. Banks fan.
"Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future'" - Guardian The Culture series :
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
The State of the Art
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata
146 pages, Hardcover
Published November 7, 2023
6 people are currently reading
230 people want to read
About the author
Iain M. Banks
59 books6,558 followersIain M. Banks is a pseudonym of Iain Banks which he used to publish his Science Fiction.
Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edinburgh and then Fife.
Banks met his wife Annie in London, before the release of his first book. They married in Hawaii in 1992. However, he announced in early 2007 that, after 25 years together, they had separated. He lived most recently in North Queensferry, a town on the north side of the Firth of Forth near the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge.
As with his friend Ken MacLeod (another Scottish writer of technical and social science fiction) a strong awareness of left-wing history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence.
In late 2004, Banks was a prominent member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Prime Minister Tony Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In protest he cut up his passport and posted it to 10 Downing Street. In an interview in Socialist Review he claimed he did this after he "abandoned the idea of crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns." He related his concerns about the invasion of Iraq in his book Raw Spirit, and the principal protagonist (Alban McGill) in the novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale confronts another character with arguments in a similar vein.
Interviewed on Mark Lawson's BBC Four series, first broadcast in the UK on 14 November 2006, Banks explained why his novels are published under two different names. His parents wished to name him Iain Menzies Banks but his father made a mistake when registering the birth and he was officially registered as Iain Banks. Despite this he continued to use his unofficial middle name and it was as Iain M. Banks that he submitted The Wasp Factory for publication. However, his editor asked if he would mind dropping the 'M' as it appeared "too fussy". The editor was also concerned about possible confusion with Rosie M. Banks, a minor character in some of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels who is a romantic novelist. After his first three mainstream novels his publishers agreed to publish his first SF novel, Consider Phlebas. To distinguish between the mainstream and SF novels, Banks suggested the return of the 'M', although at one stage he considered John B. Macallan as his SF pseudonym, the name deriving from his favourite whiskies: Johnnie Walker Black Label and The Macallan single malt.
His latest book was a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012.
Author Iain M. Banks revealed in April 2013 that he had late-stage cancer. He died the following June.
The Scottish writer posted a message on his official website saying his next novel The Quarry, due to be published later this year*, would be his last.
*The Quarry was published in June 2013.
Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edinburgh and then Fife.
Banks met his wife Annie in London, before the release of his first book. They married in Hawaii in 1992. However, he announced in early 2007 that, after 25 years together, they had separated. He lived most recently in North Queensferry, a town on the north side of the Firth of Forth near the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge.
As with his friend Ken MacLeod (another Scottish writer of technical and social science fiction) a strong awareness of left-wing history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence.
In late 2004, Banks was a prominent member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Prime Minister Tony Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In protest he cut up his passport and posted it to 10 Downing Street. In an interview in Socialist Review he claimed he did this after he "abandoned the idea of crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns." He related his concerns about the invasion of Iraq in his book Raw Spirit, and the principal protagonist (Alban McGill) in the novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale confronts another character with arguments in a similar vein.
Interviewed on Mark Lawson's BBC Four series, first broadcast in the UK on 14 November 2006, Banks explained why his novels are published under two different names. His parents wished to name him Iain Menzies Banks but his father made a mistake when registering the birth and he was officially registered as Iain Banks. Despite this he continued to use his unofficial middle name and it was as Iain M. Banks that he submitted The Wasp Factory for publication. However, his editor asked if he would mind dropping the 'M' as it appeared "too fussy". The editor was also concerned about possible confusion with Rosie M. Banks, a minor character in some of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels who is a romantic novelist. After his first three mainstream novels his publishers agreed to publish his first SF novel, Consider Phlebas. To distinguish between the mainstream and SF novels, Banks suggested the return of the 'M', although at one stage he considered John B. Macallan as his SF pseudonym, the name deriving from his favourite whiskies: Johnnie Walker Black Label and The Macallan single malt.
His latest book was a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012.
Author Iain M. Banks revealed in April 2013 that he had late-stage cancer. He died the following June.
The Scottish writer posted a message on his official website saying his next novel The Quarry, due to be published later this year*, would be his last.
*The Quarry was published in June 2013.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
February 16, 2024
This is an incredibly well put-together collection of drawings, diagrams, notes and schematics from one of the all-time greats of Science Fiction and Space Opera.
This book looks absolutely stunning and the quality is extraordinarily high.
It was well worth the wait.
This undoubtedly well-earned praise aside momentarily, I think it best to mention early on that, despite being a "coffee-table" book, I would say this is only the most hardcore fans of the Culture universe. I promise that I am not saying this to gatekeep anyone from anything, but I want to make it clear to those considering this hefty purchase that the pieces found here are unannotated and are given no context-clues.
I'll admit, even for a huge Culture nut such as myself, some of what's here was pretty impenetrable.
I can understand the curators wanting the work to speak for itself, and applaud them for not "imposing their voice" on Iain's projects, but unfortunately I would imagine that to many potential readers, a sizeable chunk of this book would mean very little.
The book is broken down into very clear and well displayed sections, and the size of the pages allows the work room to breathe, but I really think a little bit of description or annotation from someone particularly knowledgeable, would have gone a long way.
That minor note aside, for those that are familiar with the Culture on a slightly deeper and more intimate level, this collection is a veritable goldmine of fascinating (and often times very amusing) details.
It features well thought-out ship schematics, very cool weaponry designs, brilliant world building sketches and, what surprised me most - a handwritten lexicon and pronunciation guide for the universal language of the Culture; Marian.
There really is so much good stuff here.
We already knew Iain was an incredibly intelligent man - his ideas and writings have inspired so many, but to see his thoughts and concepts manifested and presented in this way is very special and inspiring.
This book looks absolutely stunning and the quality is extraordinarily high.
It was well worth the wait.
This undoubtedly well-earned praise aside momentarily, I think it best to mention early on that, despite being a "coffee-table" book, I would say this is only the most hardcore fans of the Culture universe. I promise that I am not saying this to gatekeep anyone from anything, but I want to make it clear to those considering this hefty purchase that the pieces found here are unannotated and are given no context-clues.
I'll admit, even for a huge Culture nut such as myself, some of what's here was pretty impenetrable.
I can understand the curators wanting the work to speak for itself, and applaud them for not "imposing their voice" on Iain's projects, but unfortunately I would imagine that to many potential readers, a sizeable chunk of this book would mean very little.
The book is broken down into very clear and well displayed sections, and the size of the pages allows the work room to breathe, but I really think a little bit of description or annotation from someone particularly knowledgeable, would have gone a long way.
That minor note aside, for those that are familiar with the Culture on a slightly deeper and more intimate level, this collection is a veritable goldmine of fascinating (and often times very amusing) details.
It features well thought-out ship schematics, very cool weaponry designs, brilliant world building sketches and, what surprised me most - a handwritten lexicon and pronunciation guide for the universal language of the Culture; Marian.
There really is so much good stuff here.
We already knew Iain was an incredibly intelligent man - his ideas and writings have inspired so many, but to see his thoughts and concepts manifested and presented in this way is very special and inspiring.
November 8, 2023
I'm giving this 4 stars because it's Iain M. Fuckin' Banks. First, it's a gorgeous book, printed on heavy paper and clearly intended to be left out on a table for people to thumb through and ooh/ahh over. There are also short anecdotes before each section which are gems.
However,
This could have been so much better. Many of the drawings, which it appears he drew in pencil, are scanned so lightly as to be very hard to read. And though the book claims to be annotated, it is in no way annotated. It would have been a delight for a Banks expert or scholar to place notes on each page elaborating what we're seeing.
In my brain, it's a 3/5. In my heart, it's a 4/5.
However,
This could have been so much better. Many of the drawings, which it appears he drew in pencil, are scanned so lightly as to be very hard to read. And though the book claims to be annotated, it is in no way annotated. It would have been a delight for a Banks expert or scholar to place notes on each page elaborating what we're seeing.
In my brain, it's a 3/5. In my heart, it's a 4/5.
December 3, 2023
I miss Banks.
May 8, 2024
I'll admit that as someone who has routinely avoided hard sci-fi and only picked this up because it was nominated as a Related Work for the 2024 Hugo Awards, I'm going to be coming to this review with a more uninformed viewpoint. I have heard of Banks' Culture series but honestly always assumed it wouldn't be my particular cup of tea and avoided it.
Having read through The Culture: The Drawings, I really can only recommend this for hard-core fans of the Culture series. This gathers together the drawings from Banks and separates them into different categories but intentionally does not provide context or information about what is depicted. In the introduction, it's mentioned that they want to let the work stand for itself and not interject their own thoughts but this severely limits the value to anyone except hard-core fans.
As someone who isn't a hard-core fan, it was an interesting to see the level of detail and thought that Banks put into them. And the quotes included at the beginning of each section actually made me curious to check out the Culture series. But I really wish there had been more information so I could place the context without having to read the entire series first.
I honestly wasn't sure if I should even rate this but ended up landing on 3 stars because I think that it was interesting and appreciate the project but it felt like a missed opportunity to create interest to me and I'll let my rating reflect that.
Having read through The Culture: The Drawings, I really can only recommend this for hard-core fans of the Culture series. This gathers together the drawings from Banks and separates them into different categories but intentionally does not provide context or information about what is depicted. In the introduction, it's mentioned that they want to let the work stand for itself and not interject their own thoughts but this severely limits the value to anyone except hard-core fans.
As someone who isn't a hard-core fan, it was an interesting to see the level of detail and thought that Banks put into them. And the quotes included at the beginning of each section actually made me curious to check out the Culture series. But I really wish there had been more information so I could place the context without having to read the entire series first.
I honestly wasn't sure if I should even rate this but ended up landing on 3 stars because I think that it was interesting and appreciate the project but it felt like a missed opportunity to create interest to me and I'll let my rating reflect that.
January 2, 2025
Como fan de Banks y los libros de La Cultura este libro ha sido un buen regalo de cumpleaños. Permite apreciar los dibujos que utilizaba para representar la geografía de un planeta, las naves, las armas y cachivaches, las macroestructuras (orbitales), los alienígenas... Los planos y bocetos son muy muy muy amateurs, pero para el fan son una delicia, sobre todo cuando te pones a mirar la información con la que los acompañaba (tamaños, velocidades, aceleraciones).
Sin embargo, hubiera molado más si en la edición le hubieran incorporado contexto, especialmente para los que no tenemos todo reciente. Es material de las tres primeras novelas, que precisamente son las que hace más tiempo que leí, por lo cual gran parte ha requerido un estrujarme las meninges a ver de dónde procedían esas imágenes. Sobre el tema del dibujo a lápiz y su reproducción, la mayoría se ven muy bien. Sí que alguna página en concreto aparece más apagada, pero esto apenas me molesta. El volumen transmite bastante verosimilitud y cercanía al material de partida. Un poco aquellas libretas de papel cuadriculado que utilizábamos a finales de los 80 y principios de los 90 para preparar las partidas de rol. Pero estas son de Banks y este libro soma para sus seguidores más entregados.
Sin embargo, hubiera molado más si en la edición le hubieran incorporado contexto, especialmente para los que no tenemos todo reciente. Es material de las tres primeras novelas, que precisamente son las que hace más tiempo que leí, por lo cual gran parte ha requerido un estrujarme las meninges a ver de dónde procedían esas imágenes. Sobre el tema del dibujo a lápiz y su reproducción, la mayoría se ven muy bien. Sí que alguna página en concreto aparece más apagada, pero esto apenas me molesta. El volumen transmite bastante verosimilitud y cercanía al material de partida. Un poco aquellas libretas de papel cuadriculado que utilizábamos a finales de los 80 y principios de los 90 para preparar las partidas de rol. Pero estas son de Banks y este libro soma para sus seguidores más entregados.
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April 4, 2024How? Going through a Banks/Culture project.
What? This is a collection of Banks's drawings for his books, broken down into several chapters: locales, ships, transport, weaponry, drones, world-building, Marain (the language of the culture).
Yeah, so? This is designed as a coffee table book, and I can see it sparking some conversation; it is also fascinating to me to see how Banks designed some of this world, even down to the language of the Culture which is... not something represented in the books. Like maybe someone describes the letters of Marain, but there's no long passages in the language. Also: I come to the Culture books for the wonderful weirdness of a civilization of humans and machines where the machines do a lot of the technical thinking and people are left to their projects and arts; I do not come to the books expecting a rigorous breakdown of different types of weapons. And yet, maybe having that foundation let Banks go off in his own directions. So: an interesting coffee table book that might spark conversations, but which probably isn't going to be read and reread.
What? This is a collection of Banks's drawings for his books, broken down into several chapters: locales, ships, transport, weaponry, drones, world-building, Marain (the language of the culture).
Yeah, so? This is designed as a coffee table book, and I can see it sparking some conversation; it is also fascinating to me to see how Banks designed some of this world, even down to the language of the Culture which is... not something represented in the books. Like maybe someone describes the letters of Marain, but there's no long passages in the language. Also: I come to the Culture books for the wonderful weirdness of a civilization of humans and machines where the machines do a lot of the technical thinking and people are left to their projects and arts; I do not come to the books expecting a rigorous breakdown of different types of weapons. And yet, maybe having that foundation let Banks go off in his own directions. So: an interesting coffee table book that might spark conversations, but which probably isn't going to be read and reread.
February 18, 2024
This is possibly the most self-indulgent 5-Star review I have ever written on this site. This book features almost no explanatory text and is composed of about 140 pages of amateurish drawings reproduced on really nice paper from their literal “back-of-an-envelope” origins. You really have to be a fan of Banks’s Culture novels to appreciate this to the fullest extent. When you see his original drawings of what the spacecraft and drones look like you will weep with recognition. The translation from drawing to page adds an infinite amount of elegance and style to them but to see the raw imagination of these sketches is fantastic. I adored his maps of places from within the Culture as well: I recognise the style from painstakingly putting together my own D&D campaigns as a teenager as well as from my own writing later.
An utter joy.
An utter joy.
November 2, 2025
Not interesting or fun to browse.
Basically just of a bunch of napkin drawings and work sketches, grouped by category. Never meant for public consumptions. It’s not “artistic” or esthetically appealing in any way. Basically no annotations or notes by an editor, so you have no idea of what things actually mean or why it might be interesting. No stories or history. Technically many pencil scans are so light they are even hard to make out at all.
Boring, really. It’s unfortunately a wasted opportunity. With better scans and editorial notes for depth and context, it could have been great.
If you want to buy something just to honor the memory, maybe purchase some other merchandise.
Basically just of a bunch of napkin drawings and work sketches, grouped by category. Never meant for public consumptions. It’s not “artistic” or esthetically appealing in any way. Basically no annotations or notes by an editor, so you have no idea of what things actually mean or why it might be interesting. No stories or history. Technically many pencil scans are so light they are even hard to make out at all.
Boring, really. It’s unfortunately a wasted opportunity. With better scans and editorial notes for depth and context, it could have been great.
If you want to buy something just to honor the memory, maybe purchase some other merchandise.
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November 12, 2023Hmmm, not quite sure how to rate this. On the one hand, quite fascinating to see that IMB did all this world building and calculating. And I'm amused that it also looks remarkably like the notes for a Traveler campaign.
I think it needed much more context and commentary - what books they link to, etc.
I think it needed much more context and commentary - what books they link to, etc.
March 18, 2025
Exorbitantly priced (at least on release), but a meaningful relic and captured heart of someone who isn't around anymore.
January 12, 2025
Unbelievable book and a fascinating insight into the mind of an author - like the notations of a mad genius. Strangely I went from mocking this book, to ecstatically sharing it with others.
I came across this book at a Chapters, and while being unable to see inside due to the plastic wrap, I was able to find an image leaked on reddit. My first impression was that, instead of colorful and detailed drawings as I had hoped, the starship drawing featured was instead something of a featureless rectangular prism. Just pencil lines delineating the edges. No details, color, or any sense of artistic design; just mathematical and austere shapes accompanied by piles of barely-legible notes. I couldn't imagine spending $70 on it and forwarded the image to a couple friends for a laugh.
Fast forward several months of Culture reading, and I suddenly found myself intrigued by the idea of having not just a visual reference to the Culture, but to get a solid glimpse inside of the mind of this fascinating author - especially in the absence of any form of visual adaptation of Banks' work. I also felt that after reading several art concept books that were a bit too polished and didn't offer enough insight into the design process (notable Art and Soul of Dune), I was fully open to reading something a bit more raw and conceptual. Raw it is; these pages are the scans of tattered, folded and faded pencil drawings on flimsy paper, however their preservation and presentation is beyond reproach.
Banks' imagination and sense of scale is nothing short of astounding. The sheer scale of the ships is almost as noteworthy as the incredible amount of notations and arithmetic that he's calculated for each ship - crew complement, shield strength, engine power, range of displacers, scanners, weapons, effector fields, and so on. Absolutely amazing. While most are somewhat generic Culture designs and not necessarily anything identifiable from any particular book, there are a few recognizable names and designs. What was more fascinating was the level of in-universe consistency, that after reading of details around a particular ship's capabilities in Excession I was able to find corresponding details on the ship's drawings.
I'll note that this method of calculating the logistics of his universe gives the Culture a level of believability or immersion that is often missing from grand sci-fi stories - authors often throw out population numbers that have no relation to the size of ships or number of planets that they're supposedly located upon. The constant re-use of characters and locations in other sci-fi IPs (looking at you Star Wars) also diminishes their sense of scale, which is not the case in the Culture series where characters and locations never seem to be repeated outside the book they're found in - something that feels perfectly suitable for a universe where 7 billion people can comfortably reside on a single GSV.
While it wasn't clear which of the Culture stories most of the drawings and designs come from, I did pick up on a few specific references, particularly a few details from Excession that I was reading alongside this book. I can't wait to read back over the drawings after finishing further Culture stories to see if I'm able to pick up on any further details.
If anything, I hope that this book sells well so that publishers will consider releasing more raw material, straight from the mind and hand of the author. I can't help but think of the famed lock-box of Dune 7 notes that Frank Herbert famously left behind, which Brian Herbert has prevented from ever being published. Release the Dune Notes!
I came across this book at a Chapters, and while being unable to see inside due to the plastic wrap, I was able to find an image leaked on reddit. My first impression was that, instead of colorful and detailed drawings as I had hoped, the starship drawing featured was instead something of a featureless rectangular prism. Just pencil lines delineating the edges. No details, color, or any sense of artistic design; just mathematical and austere shapes accompanied by piles of barely-legible notes. I couldn't imagine spending $70 on it and forwarded the image to a couple friends for a laugh.
Fast forward several months of Culture reading, and I suddenly found myself intrigued by the idea of having not just a visual reference to the Culture, but to get a solid glimpse inside of the mind of this fascinating author - especially in the absence of any form of visual adaptation of Banks' work. I also felt that after reading several art concept books that were a bit too polished and didn't offer enough insight into the design process (notable Art and Soul of Dune), I was fully open to reading something a bit more raw and conceptual. Raw it is; these pages are the scans of tattered, folded and faded pencil drawings on flimsy paper, however their preservation and presentation is beyond reproach.
Banks' imagination and sense of scale is nothing short of astounding. The sheer scale of the ships is almost as noteworthy as the incredible amount of notations and arithmetic that he's calculated for each ship - crew complement, shield strength, engine power, range of displacers, scanners, weapons, effector fields, and so on. Absolutely amazing. While most are somewhat generic Culture designs and not necessarily anything identifiable from any particular book, there are a few recognizable names and designs. What was more fascinating was the level of in-universe consistency, that after reading of details around a particular ship's capabilities in Excession I was able to find corresponding details on the ship's drawings.
I'll note that this method of calculating the logistics of his universe gives the Culture a level of believability or immersion that is often missing from grand sci-fi stories - authors often throw out population numbers that have no relation to the size of ships or number of planets that they're supposedly located upon. The constant re-use of characters and locations in other sci-fi IPs (looking at you Star Wars) also diminishes their sense of scale, which is not the case in the Culture series where characters and locations never seem to be repeated outside the book they're found in - something that feels perfectly suitable for a universe where 7 billion people can comfortably reside on a single GSV.
While it wasn't clear which of the Culture stories most of the drawings and designs come from, I did pick up on a few specific references, particularly a few details from Excession that I was reading alongside this book. I can't wait to read back over the drawings after finishing further Culture stories to see if I'm able to pick up on any further details.
If anything, I hope that this book sells well so that publishers will consider releasing more raw material, straight from the mind and hand of the author. I can't help but think of the famed lock-box of Dune 7 notes that Frank Herbert famously left behind, which Brian Herbert has prevented from ever being published. Release the Dune Notes!
Read
July 21, 2024The Culture novels have a special place in my heart, and it was a foregone conclusion that I would buy this. I’m delighted this material was released so that we can get an extra little glimpse into Banks’s mind.
These drawings aren’t vivid renderings, but rather more like blueprints. Banks drew things to scale and annotated his pages with copious quantitative details about sizes, speeds, capacities, etc.
There are some amusing comments buried here and there. Banks expressed his dissatisfaction with one of his vehicle designs thusly: “no good! looks like a goddamned cash-till!”[1] Alongside a bunch of estimates regarding the number of beings in and around the Culture, he wrote: “all going to look silly if planets around stars are a rarity”.[2] I guess he can rest easy on that front.
I always imagined that the ships, drones, and devices of the Culture would, because of their practically magical level of technology, be designed entirely around aesthetics, unhindered by any practical constraints. Banks’s designs are very angular and utilitarian, quite different than I might have expected.
[1] Iain M. Banks, The Culture: The Drawings, 1st ed. (New York: Orbit, 2023), 71.
[2] Ibid., 126.
(crosspost)
These drawings aren’t vivid renderings, but rather more like blueprints. Banks drew things to scale and annotated his pages with copious quantitative details about sizes, speeds, capacities, etc.
There are some amusing comments buried here and there. Banks expressed his dissatisfaction with one of his vehicle designs thusly: “no good! looks like a goddamned cash-till!”[1] Alongside a bunch of estimates regarding the number of beings in and around the Culture, he wrote: “all going to look silly if planets around stars are a rarity”.[2] I guess he can rest easy on that front.
I always imagined that the ships, drones, and devices of the Culture would, because of their practically magical level of technology, be designed entirely around aesthetics, unhindered by any practical constraints. Banks’s designs are very angular and utilitarian, quite different than I might have expected.
[1] Iain M. Banks, The Culture: The Drawings, 1st ed. (New York: Orbit, 2023), 71.
[2] Ibid., 126.
(crosspost)
December 31, 2024
This is a compilation and publication of unannotated drawings and doodles. Because they are assembled from his estate there's no explanation or dating information from them. Based on the similar style throughout and occasional references to early works, I suspect that these are all from the 70s and 80s.
There's definitely some interesting stuff here, but I would suggest this is one for hardcore fans only.
My only complaint is that the quotations that begin each section are uncited. It would be cool to know where the various quotes came from.
There's definitely some interesting stuff here, but I would suggest this is one for hardcore fans only.
My only complaint is that the quotations that begin each section are uncited. It would be cool to know where the various quotes came from.
December 3, 2023
Slightly underwhelmed and I'm not entirely sure why!
Perhaps I expected too much, it is certainly facinating but not all of the diagrams have been reproduced well, and there was insufficient data attached to many in order to easily associate them with novels and stories.
I am glad I bought a copy, but ........
Perhaps I expected too much, it is certainly facinating but not all of the diagrams have been reproduced well, and there was insufficient data attached to many in order to easily associate them with novels and stories.
I am glad I bought a copy, but ........
May 19, 2024
Anyone who loves the Culture books will geek out over this stunning book. This is a journey through the brilliant mind of Iain M. Banks, featuring concept drawings of Culture ships, weapons, locales, unique architecture, and most fascinatingly, his development of the Marain language. It helps readers vividly imagine the world as the author envisioned it.
January 7, 2025
Disappointed in this. The drawings and annotations in Banks' own hand are very nice and it's good to know how much he really thought about elements of the stories. But it completely lacks and context so what could have been a fascinating deep dive into ships and Minds and all sorts of tech is just a load of scribbled picture. A bit of a waste of the opportunity.
December 3, 2023
A treasure trove which reflects Banks’ unselfconscious dedication to doodling and maths-ing the physical aspects of the Culture in to existence. It’s all valuable - the decision to reproduce all the material at life size was exactly the right one. I eagerly await the Notes volume.
December 23, 2023
Recent Reads: The Culture - The Drawings. Carefully scanned from Iain M Banks' fragile pencil sketches, these drawings show his vision of the Culture, from its ships and drones, letting us dive into Banks' comprehensive notes and understand what makes a universe feel real.
July 7, 2024
not as interesting as I thought it would be, much of what I was hoping for wasn't there, like individual named ships or elements from "Player of Games". Banks' notes on the drawings are really difficult to read.
December 12, 2023
See Todd's review on November 8, 2023. I concur fully with his review.
October 19, 2024
I felt some curating and narration might have helped. Some pictures interesting, others left me unsure what I was looking at. Maybe I should look again after a reread!
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July 28, 2024Every so often, and more so lately, you run into little landmines of cognitive dissonance, consumer opportunities that fundamentally contradict what they're supposedly selling. Pulp gigs with VIP tickets for the loaded were a prime example, but even those might be surpassed by the Special Circumstances version of this volume, a limited edition which goes for £250, and comes with assorted bells and whistles including 3D printing instructions for a replica microdrone. Just as I once nursed hopes that the whole Culture series was a way of preparing Earth for contact with that spacefaring, post-scarcity utopia (and seriously, lads, I'm not sure how much longer we've got as a useful control group), so there was an outside chance that, once constructed, those replicas might then zap the sort of tech bro who claims to be devoted to the Culture books while somehow remaining oblivious to the bit where the Culture sees money as an indicator of a poor society. Alas, I was once more disappointed.
Obviously I didn't buy that edition, or even drop the £50 RRP on this regular one; I waited for a serious discount to come up. A purchase which somehow required the publisher to send me a total of eight emails regarding acknowledgement, invoice, delivery...you get the idea (and I'm still nervously expecting at least one more asking me to rate the whole unwieldy experience). If I'd been insane enough to read all of them in full, I think it might have taken me as long as it did to read the book. Where, granted, I can't claim to have read each figure religiously (even though, like Banks, I do think of the Culture as a sort of secular Heaven). Partly because some of them aren't entirely legible; as the foreword explains, no attempt at transcription has been made, let alone the commentary by Ken MacLeod we were promised when the book was first announced. Sellotape marks have been removed, but otherwise this is pure facsimile of assorted jotters &c in which Banks, before even getting properly underway, worked out the practicalities of a society that had moved beyond having to worry about practicality. And to be fair, he was a pretty good draughtsman - but one of the constants of the setting was that, visually, the ships weren't that fancy. The vast GSVs look impressive fully rendered, hanging over a planet; as pencilled blueprints, they're innocuous enough to pass for public art. True, some of the smaller ships are fancier - the offensive units in particular look, shall we say, as if they're particularly adept at rear assaults. There are a couple of extremely good castles, and one absolutely gorgeous SF pistol fit to leave a Lawgiver with doohickey envy. But for the most part, what you've got here is abstract geometries with tables of measurements next to them - important for Banks to have clear ahead of time, but not really something to recall even a little of the magic he would weave from these base materials. In any sane economy, it would be available as bonus material; in ours, even half price is not really worth it.
Obviously I didn't buy that edition, or even drop the £50 RRP on this regular one; I waited for a serious discount to come up. A purchase which somehow required the publisher to send me a total of eight emails regarding acknowledgement, invoice, delivery...you get the idea (and I'm still nervously expecting at least one more asking me to rate the whole unwieldy experience). If I'd been insane enough to read all of them in full, I think it might have taken me as long as it did to read the book. Where, granted, I can't claim to have read each figure religiously (even though, like Banks, I do think of the Culture as a sort of secular Heaven). Partly because some of them aren't entirely legible; as the foreword explains, no attempt at transcription has been made, let alone the commentary by Ken MacLeod we were promised when the book was first announced. Sellotape marks have been removed, but otherwise this is pure facsimile of assorted jotters &c in which Banks, before even getting properly underway, worked out the practicalities of a society that had moved beyond having to worry about practicality. And to be fair, he was a pretty good draughtsman - but one of the constants of the setting was that, visually, the ships weren't that fancy. The vast GSVs look impressive fully rendered, hanging over a planet; as pencilled blueprints, they're innocuous enough to pass for public art. True, some of the smaller ships are fancier - the offensive units in particular look, shall we say, as if they're particularly adept at rear assaults. There are a couple of extremely good castles, and one absolutely gorgeous SF pistol fit to leave a Lawgiver with doohickey envy. But for the most part, what you've got here is abstract geometries with tables of measurements next to them - important for Banks to have clear ahead of time, but not really something to recall even a little of the magic he would weave from these base materials. In any sane economy, it would be available as bonus material; in ours, even half price is not really worth it.
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