Use of Weapons

Both Player of Games and Use of Weapons are incredible good books. I was actually surprised when I finished UoW regarding how different it was from PoG, while maintaining the quality (If not better, but PoG IS THAT GOOD anyway). For the record, the series was recommended to be by Claude of all things, and it told me that Phlebas was not up to quality but I gave it a shot just for the sake of completeness of the series. Nop, not worth it.

Adam Hall's Quiller series. Good to revisit every few years and the mechanism of building to a crisis, then starting after the resolution and backing up is fun. Not for everyone though as it's cold war vintage spy stuff. Feels real though, not like Hollywood versin of Bond. Banks of course, Use of Weapons is great. Just hit 51 and finally reading Dune now, so keep that in mind, but would also suggest Cryptonomicon as i have started it several times, put it down and then come back and had to start again several times.... but i find it interesting enough to keep trying!

>"Consider Phlebas," and maybe the rest of The Culture series of novels, by Iain Banks Oh man, this will start a shitstorm, because it's so subjective, but Consider Phlebas isn't the best intro to the culture series. I would start with Either Player of Games or Use of Weapons. Now let's hear from everyone who disagrees with me.

"Use of Weapons" by Iain M. Banks. Edit: Overlooked the "fun" and "lighthearted" part. Let me change my answer to "Excession", same author.

Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham - everyone goes blind and a bunch of sentient plants start eating people. one of the first science fiction books I ever read, and the one that introduced me to post apocalyptic fiction. Giant plants might sound silly, but its no more silly than walking corpses. And in fact the walking dead and 28 days later owe a lot to this book. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke - beautifully inventive fantasy novel about two magicians bringing magic back to Britain during the Napoleonic wars. Fab read. Gateway - Frederick Pohl - pulp sf at its best. Humans discover a hollowed out asteroid worth ftl ships preprogrammed with unknown destinations. Prospectors pack as much food as they can and hit 'launch' in the hopes that they'll discover something valuable and not land on a star or starve to death. The Forever War - Joe Haldeman - more great pulp sci-fi about the first interstellar war. Old man's war by John Scalzi is very similar and almost as good. Most things by Iain (m) banks. Crow Road, Wasp Factory, The Bridge, Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons, Player of Games etc. Song of stone was awful though, they're not all winners

Hofstadter - GEB - for sure The Malazan Book of the Fallen (10 volumes) - Stephen Erikson - redefines impenetrable Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks - master of the interwoven narrative

Lord of the Light Dune Neuromancer Hyperion Snow Crash Use of Weapons Pandora's Star / Judas Unchained

I've just finished the first three Culture novels. Consider Phlebas starts great, but loses a lot during the rest of the book. The Player of Games is okay, but by far not as good as people told me. Use of Weapons is excellent. I'll have to re-read it in a few months.

Neal Stephenson, Anathem Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons Greg Egan, Diaspora and Permutation City Frank Herbert, Dune Kim Stanley Robinson, the Mars trilogy Vernon Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky [Note to Hollywood: can we please have a Culture movie?]

I've always enjoyed fiction in situations like yours. Iain M. Banks has some accessible but interesting sci-fi (recommendations: Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons), and it's hard to go wrong with anything Jose Saramago wrote (recommendations: All the Names, Blindness, Death With Interruptions).

I've read Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy and the Commonwealth Saga - the latter is much better but still suffers a lot, in my view, from poor characterization - something that Banks can be very good at (his bad guys can occasionally come from central casting though). Banks is in a different class from Hamilton - in general I think the quality of his work has dropped off a bit but some of his earlier writing is exceptional: Use of Weapons is particularly strong.

Good stuff in the SciFi section there! The culture novels in particular are great! My favorite Culture novel so far is 'Use of Weapons'...

- use of weapons (ian m banks) - surely you are joking mr feynman (rpf) - origin of order (stuart kauffman) - slaughter house five (kurt vonnegut) - goedel escher bach (douglas hofstadter) - theta-magical memas errr metamagical themas (dogulas hofsta)