Friday, February 10, 2012

Grind Part, Slayer Part, Garbage to the End: "Use of Weapons"

Hilarious story (sorta; to me, anyway): My boss recently gave me an Iain M. Banks book. He's an author I'd blown off for years because it turns out I had him confused with talentless hack Neal Asher, who wrote Gridlinked, source of another Chang band's nom de grind. Whoops. Turns out Banks is pretty good for a space opera kinda guy (I'm more of a bio/cyberpunk kinda dude [I can't recommend Paolo Bacigalupi's magnificent The Windup Girl enough, if that's also your thing.]). I haven't read Banks' Use of Weapons, but it's one of the influences that made The Inalienable Dreamless what it is. Here's how it goes:

11 comments:

gamefaced said...

we have that gridlinked book. haha.
never finished it...

Andrew Childers said...

i so hate that book. great concept about info overload and dependency on instant access to info and then..... does absolutely nothing with it.

Survivalist said...

i prefer Banks' non sci-fi stuff to be honest, but i'm not much of a sci-fi guy though

Bill Willingham IV, Esquire said...

I'm checking out Use of Weapons.

Are Mr. Childers's second-hand book recommendations as reliable as his first-hand music tips?

STAY TUNED

Perpetual Strife said...

Those are some good charts.

Andrew Childers said...

bill, ask miskatonic. he somehow pierced my veil of secrecy and found me on goodreads. ;)

Chris said...

I'm a huge fan of the Culture series, but also not a huge fan of 'space opera' in general. There's some amazing prose in those books, and they have a remarkable variety of stories/settings in the series.

Miskatonic said...

Bill, if you want a reminder of all the classics you've been meaning to read, check out his Goodreads. Dick, Heinlein, Clarke, Vonegut, and Thompson. Not to mention a whole bevy of folk tales.

I'd follow his recommendations if I could just keep my grubby hands off Lovecraft, King and Barker. Not to mention all the comics I read. Ellis, Ennis and Morrison (Glad to see he gave We3 5 stars. Fucking masterpiece!) keep writing them faster than I can read them.

If you're looking for some good horror, I highly recommend F. Paul Wilson's The Keep.

I can't believe you got through both Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.

Luke Oram said...

TRUE FACT: I have been where they filmed the movie version of 'The Keep'.

Also Iain Bank's non-scifi is superior I reckons.

Andrew Childers said...

english major, miskatonic. required reading. probably haven't touched them since.

Panos said...

"Use Of Weapons" is an excellent book. I didnt know it was an influence for "The Inalieble" though...