Recommendations from our site
“I read all of the Culture novels back-to-back, and this was the one that I had the most vivid and guttural reaction to. I found it really intense. It’s an extraordinary novel: absolutely terrifying, and really upsetting in many ways. The story that Surface Detail tells is about a war taking place in virtual reality, the outcome of which will decide whether societies within the Culture are allowed to create their own hell. It’s a story about how meaningful religion still is in a technological universe, and abut cultural difference, and it’s also definitely about capital punishment – and there’s never really any doubt as to which side Banks is on. And it’s also just a ludicrously readable story, because it’s constantly opening up kind of new vistas of ideas and worlds.” Read more...
The Best Science Fiction Worlds
Tom Huddleston, Novelist
