The State of the Art

Banks has this unique ability to unflinchingly drop you into disorienting contexts and let you make sense of the alien where most authors would just bombard you with exposition.

I picked up this book a couple years ago, looking for a science fiction story from the late twentieth century to teach in a college survey of British literature from 1800 to the present; I assigned my students the Culture novella "The State of the Art." I had actually never read a Culture story before. I've been reading Banks's literary fiction on-and-off for a few years, and I harbored a sort of compulsion that I ought to read all his literary fiction, and then move onto his sf. "The State of the Art" is a great tale: funny and thought-provoking, it both questions our cultural narratives, and the idea that questioning our cultural narratives is enough to then just readopt them: "there is an osmosis from fiction to reality, a constant show more contamination which distorts the truth behind both and fuzzes the telling distinctions in life itself [...]. They always had too many stories, I believe" (201-2). This is a story about being seduced by the nobility of suffering when in fact suffering is completely nonessential. If you exist in a perfect world, there might be no hope, but that's because things are so good you don't need hope. I would happily lose hope in exchange for living in a world that was literally perfect. Sadly, I failed to convince a single student of this. But it remains a provocative and interesting story.

So this month I finally read the rest of the volume (and reread "State of the Art": it's still good). The stories are eclectic. Two or three more seem to be about the Culture, from what I know of it. "Descendant," about a crash victim who has a difficult relationship with his spacesuit was neat, but I particularly enjoyed "Cleaning Up," a fun story where the very technologically advanced trash of an alien civilization is accidentally being deposited on Earth. There are lots of funny bits, some good black comedy, and an ending I didn't see coming. (If the advanced civilization here is the Culture, though, this book is definitely not in continuity with "State of the Art.")

There was some non-sf, too, most notably "Piece," which is about religious radicalism. It also had an unexpected ending, though I think I would have seen it coming if I was less ignorant. I'm not sure what to think about it, to be honest: it feels a very earnest and off-the-cuff response to tragedy, with all the positives and negatives that implies.

I should say there were a couple tales I bounced off. "A Gift from the Culture" sort of meandered and didn't say much of interest, while "Odd Attachment" was just baffling. But you could have just put "The State of the Art" in here and this book would have been worth it, so I'm glad for the chance to experience the Culture for the first time, and to see this snapshot of the early Iain M. Banks. show less

The jacket copy boasts that The State of the Art is "the only collection of Iain Banks' short fiction," and it appears that it does account for most of the short fiction that he ever published. Three of the eight stories, including the novella that makes up about half of the eponymous book, are explicitly Culture tales, and several of the others seem to sit comfortably in the Culture's universe. It is thus figured as the fourth book of the Culture series, and I read it as such.

The novella brings the Culture's exploratory agency Contact to 1970s Earth, thus linking Banks' science fiction to the hardly sfnal "Piece"--a meditation on censorship and violence with an arch irony--and to the quite terrestrial prose poem "Scratch." The show more narrator of "The State of the Art" is even Diziet Sma, the Special Circumstances operative from Use of Weapons.

I had wondered before about the genealogical relationship of the Culture's posthumans to our own population. Banks clearly implies that we are a not-especially-remarkable instance of a galactically ubiquitous pan-humanity, products of parallel evolution it appears. The differences between the Culture's phenotype and ours are briefly described in what Sma needs in order to pass for Earth-human: "I got a couple of extra toes, a joint removed from each finger, and a rather generalized ear, nose, and cheekbone job. The ship insisted on teaching me to walk differently as well" (106-7).

"Cleaning Up" involved an extraterrestrial influence that was almost certainly not the Culture. The story seemed like Banks' take on the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic, playing up the comical elements of that work. The comedy in all of these stories tends towards the decidedly dark.

There is a full-page illustration by Nick Day for the frontispiece and one for each story. These are all in black-and-white and seem to be linocuts. The style is more diagrammatic than representational. By refusing to offer more eidetic images, these made me conscious of their lack in the larger Culture corpus, where the cover art tends to be abstract and symbolic. A quick 'net search for art depicting the Culture revealed that just last week saw the posthumous publication of The Culture: The Drawings reproducing Banks' own diagrams and sketches of Culture environments and technology.

Despite The State of the Art being a quick read, I think I'll likely take a breather from the Culture for a little while, since I don't have a copy of Excession, and I am also engaged with a couple of other series that seem to have more urgent plot continuity between volumes. show less

I don't much care for Banks' short stories. They lack the flair of character that I enjoy in his novels, and as such failed to suck me in. Best in collection goes to Descendant, in which the survivor of a downed module must walk across a desolate planet in his sentient spacesuit. State of the Art (a play on words here, as a Contact agent muses on whether the Culture can create great Art without the inspiration of sickness, pain and tragedy) is practically polemic as a GCU observes life on Earth for a year and contends with the mixed reaction of its human crew. Sadly this is less effective than it could have been, as it feels like cardboard cut outs reading speeches rather than characters having real conversations - and Earth is so much show more less awful than other unContacted planets in the Culture's sphere that the arguments all fall a bit flat. Yes, we could be a better planet. No, we're really not as bad as it gets. There's hope for us yet.
[NB plenty of non-Culture short stories here too - I just didn't enjoy them] show less

It's hard to rate a short story collection because of all the different feelings each story provokes. Banks has a lot of fun with his short fiction and you can tell he used it to wander off (what was already) a very unusual path. Stories both playful and morbid.

The chunk of this book is taken up by The State of the Art which is set in the Culture universe. I really enjoyed the story even though it's the most blatant statement of his worldview. I'm not sure I agree with his some of his conclusions, but The State of the Art is a fantastic look at mortality, privilege, and finding the savor in life.

A fine collection of stories, but not a perfect one! Road of Skulls is funny. A Gift From the Culture is dark and depressing. Odd Attachment is silly. Descendant is dark and beautiful. Cleaning Up is silly and funny. Piece is noteworthy only for the punchline. The State of the Art is a good piece but situating Earth within the Culture universe so early in the Culture's run meant that he lost the chance to make better points later on. Finally Scratch is nonsense and that's the point.

Short stories set in the Culture universe. The title novella follows an alien federation debating whether to intervene in Earth's troubles, or let our planet be a control group—or maybe even a lesson for the galaxy. It winks at Star Trek IV and Close Encounters. The tone shifts from serious to absurdist across the collection, which made it feel uneven. Not my favorite Culture book.