Iain M. Banks has a new Culture novel coming out in February: “Matter”.

I couldn’t tell you today when I first heard of Iain M. Banks (the “M.” is for science fiction; he writes non-science-fiction without the “M.”) or first read one of his books, but I remember clearly that it was “Player of Games” and that I was immediately hooked.

Banks’ Culture resembled the US as I most often thought of it in the 90’s: large, powerful, its tail sometimes unaware of what its head was doing, able to do great damage simply by shrugging, sufficiently aware of itself to have a sense of guilt.

The Culture is almost an anti-Federation: no laws, machine Minds, hedonistic, guilt-ridden. Very gray.

The ships are always a hilight of Banks’ Culture books - housing great AI Minds and taking names like “Moral Gradient”, “Flexible Demeanour”, “Just Read the Instructions”, “Of Course I Still Love You” and “Frank Exchange of Views”. Wikipedia has a great list of ship names.

Usually Banks’ books have been published in the UK, and then a year or more later in the US. I’ve even ordered his books from Amazon UK in order to get them sooner. This time, Orbit Books is publishing him at the same time in both countries. They’ve provided a nice preview of the new book online at Orbit Books: Matter Extract.

You can pre-order “Matter” at Amazon.com - Amazon really wants your pre-order, too; they’ll give you a 5% discount if you order before the book is released on February 27th, and if the price drops between when you order and when it ships you’ll be charged the reduced price as well.

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