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The State of the Art
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
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Publisher's summary
From New York Times bestselling and modern master of science fiction, Iain M. Banks, The State of the Art is the acclaimed collection of Banks's short fiction.
“Banks is a phenomenon...writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance.”–William Gibson
This is a striking addition to the body of Culture lore, and adds definition and scale to the previous works by using the Earth of 1977 as contrast. The stories in the collection range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks's staggering talent.
“Few of us have been exposed to a talent so manifest and of such extraordinary breadth.”–New York Review of Science Fiction
“[Banks] can summon up sense-of-wonder Big Concepts you've never seen before and display them with narration as deft as a conjuror's fingers."–scifi.com
The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
The State of the Art
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata
Critic reviews
“Banks writes with a sophistication that will surprise anyone unfamiliar with modern science fiction.”—The New York Times
“Banks never lets up in a dizzying array of characters, mind-bending ideas, and dazzling action.”—Booklist
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The Bridge
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
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Sci-fi fans might skip, but it’s fantastic and well crafted
- By Moore Creative on 07-25-18
By: Iain Banks
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The Steep Approach to Garbadale
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The Wopuld family built their fortune on a board game called Empire, now a wildly successful computer game. So successful, in fact, that the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the Wopulds out. Alban, who has been evading the family tentacles for the last few years, thinks Spraint should be treated with suspicion, but he also has other things on his mind. What, for example, drove his mother to take her own life?
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Entirely enjoyable. More AudioBooks by Iain Banks?
- By Daniel on 08-23-09
By: Iain Banks
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Raw Spirit
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Tom Cotcher
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In a bid to uncover the unique spirit of the single malt whisky, author lain Banks has decided to undertake a tour of the distilleries of his homeland. His tour of Scotland combines history, literature and landscape in an entertaining and informative account.
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I miss this guy!
- By Marcos Ibarguen on 07-28-22
By: Iain Banks
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The Algebraist
- Culture
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 19 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year.
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Surprisingly meh
- By Ryan on 05-19-24
By: Iain M. Banks
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Transition
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?
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Finally an Iain M. Banks book on audible...
- By Kurt on 10-29-09
By: Iain M. Banks
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The Quarry
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Eighteen-year-old Kit is weird: big, strange, odd, socially disabled, on a spectrum that stretches from "highly gifted" at one end, to "nutter" at the other. At least Kit knows who his father is; he and Guy live together in a decaying country house on the unstable brink of a vast quarry. His mother's identity is another matter. Now, though, his father's dying, and old friends are gathering for one last time.
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By Iain Banks, not Iain M. Banks
- By Reader X on 05-19-18
By: Iain M. Banks
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The Bridge
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
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Sci-fi fans might skip, but it’s fantastic and well crafted
- By Moore Creative on 07-25-18
By: Iain Banks
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The Steep Approach to Garbadale
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
The Wopuld family built their fortune on a board game called Empire, now a wildly successful computer game. So successful, in fact, that the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the Wopulds out. Alban, who has been evading the family tentacles for the last few years, thinks Spraint should be treated with suspicion, but he also has other things on his mind. What, for example, drove his mother to take her own life?
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Entirely enjoyable. More AudioBooks by Iain Banks?
- By Daniel on 08-23-09
By: Iain Banks
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Raw Spirit
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Tom Cotcher
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
In a bid to uncover the unique spirit of the single malt whisky, author lain Banks has decided to undertake a tour of the distilleries of his homeland. His tour of Scotland combines history, literature and landscape in an entertaining and informative account.
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I miss this guy!
- By Marcos Ibarguen on 07-28-22
By: Iain Banks
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The Wasp Factory
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The Wasp Factory is a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath - one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels.
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A history of a young psychopath
- By Eduardo on 03-11-13
By: Iain Banks
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Matter
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Toby Longworth
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Abridged
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In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever.
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Don't Buy this Abominable Abridgement
- By Jim Sabshin on 05-06-12
By: Iain M. Banks
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The Violent Century
- By: Lavie Tidhar
- Narrated by: Alex Wyndham
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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A bold experiment has mutated a small fraction of humanity. Nations race to harness the gifted, putting them to increasingly dark ends. At the dawn of global war, flashy American superheroes square off against sinister Germans and dissolute Russians. Increasingly depraved scientists conduct despicable research in the name of victory. British agents Fogg and Oblivion, recalled to the Retirement Bureau, have kept a treacherous secret for over 40 years. But all heroes must choose when to join the fray, and to whom their allegiance is owed - even for just one perfect summer's day.
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A good story, well-narrated
- By Ian Thomas Healy on 05-11-21
By: Lavie Tidhar
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The Medusa Chronicles
- By: Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Howard Falcon almost lost his life in an accident as the first human astronaut to explore the atmosphere of Jupiter - and a combination of human ingenuity and technical expertise brought him back. But he is no longer himself. Instead he has been changed into an augmented human: part man, part machine, and exceptionally capable.
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Almost stopped listening. Glad I didn't.
- By cek on 08-21-16
By: Stephen Baxter, and others
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The Clockwork Rocket
- By: Greg Egan
- Narrated by: Adam Epstein
- Length: 15 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In Yalda's universe, light has mass, no universal speed, and its creation generates energy. On Yalda's world, plants make food by emitting light into the dark night sky. And time is different: An astronaut might measure decades passing while visiting another star, only to return and find that just weeks have elapsed for her friends. On the farm where she lives, Yalda sees strange meteors that are entering the planetary system at an immense, unprecedented speed...
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Good Egan Hard SF story near ruined by the narator
- By James on 09-08-16
By: Greg Egan
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Metrophage
- By: Richard Kadrey
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to Los Angeles - where anger, hunger and disease run rampant. Jonny is a black-market dealer in drugs that heal the body and cool the mind. All he cares about is his own survival. Until a strange new plague turns L.A. into a city of death, and Jonny is forced to put everything on the line to find the cure... if it can be found on Earth.
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This is how Cyberpunk should be done!
- By Cliff on 09-09-13
By: Richard Kadrey
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Exodus: The Archimedes Engine
- By: Peter F. Hamilton
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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Forty thousand years ago, humanity fled a dying Earth. Traveling in massive arkships, these brave pioneers spread out across the galaxy to find a new home. After traveling thousands of light-years, one fleet of arkships arrived at Centauri, a dense cluster of stars with a vast array of potentially habitable planets. The survivors of Earth signaled to the remaining arkships that humanity had finally found its new home among the stars.
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Dichronauts
- By: Greg Egan
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Seth is a surveyor, along with his friend Theo, a leech-like creature running through his skull who tells Seth what lies to his left and right.
In the universe containing Seth's world, light cannot travel in all directions: there is a "dark cone" to the north and south. Seth can only face to the east (or the west, if he tips his head backwards). Every living thing in Seth's world is in a state of perpetual migration as they follow the sun's shifting orbit and the narrow habitable zone it creates.
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It's not an easy book
- By Amazon Customer on 05-13-18
By: Greg Egan
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Schild's Ladder
- By: Greg Egan
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The Age of Death ended countless millennia ago. No longer burdened by limited lifespans, the immortal humans who populate inhabited space now have the luxury to travel vast distances effortlessly and to tinker with the intricate mechanics of space time. But one such experiment in quantum physics has had a catastrophic and unanticipated result, creating an enormous, rapidly expanding vacuum - a region of new physics - with the frightening potential to devour countless inhabited solar systems.
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Hard science fiction - no kiddin'
- By Michael Linehan on 01-06-14
By: Greg Egan
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The Prefect
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the multifaceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds. His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that left 900 people dead, a crime that appalls even a hardened cop like Dreyfus.
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Best yet of the Revelation Space series
- By Michael G Kurilla on 04-03-11
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And Put Away Childish Things
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Harry Bodie has a famous grandmother, who wrote beloved children's books set in the delightful world of Underhill. Harry himself is a failing kids' television presenter whose every attempt to advance his career ends in self-sabotage. His family history seems to be nothing but an impediment. An impediment . . . or worse. What if Underhill is real? What if it has been waiting decades for a promised child to visit? What if it isn't delightful at all? And what if its denizens have run out of patience and are taking matters into their own hands?
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Quarantine
- By: Greg Egan
- Narrated by: Adam Epstein
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2034, the stars went out. An unknown agency surrounded the solar system with an impenetrable barrier, concealing the universe from humanity’s gaze. In 2067, Nick Stavrianos is hired to investigate the disappearance of a mentally disabled woman, Laura Andrews, from the institution where she was being cared for. Aided by a skull full of neural modifications, he follows her trail to the Republic of New Hong Kong, where an organization known as the Ensemble has uncovered Laura’s extraordinary secret: An ability that could transform the world.
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Fantastic Story Let Down by Narration
- By Michael Oberhardt on 12-09-13
By: Greg Egan
What listeners say about The State of the Art
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Rob
- 04-29-24
not the best of the culture novels.
read the other ones over this this entry in b the series. ok, but eh.
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- Scott
- 04-19-24
Great(but missing final chapter)
Great reading of a fantastic collection of short stories.. BUT the final chapter of the book is left out - which is a huge oversight as the final chapter is probably the most important offering in the whole book... it is in fact the whole reason I had pre ordered this when they announced it on Audible, so that is really unfortunate.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Mule
- 04-06-24
Great read by a great narrator
I’ve always enjoyed this book and can’t thank Peter Kenny enough for the spot on narration - the Drone
ps. can’t wait to hear The Algebraist all over again!!
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- Aaron Hill
- 04-13-24
Audio is too quiet
For some reason this book seems like it’s half as loud as normal. Even with my volume up all the way it’s hard to hear sometimes and sounds like the reader is practically whispering
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1 person found this helpful
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- Will
- 04-19-24
Finally
Can we get the rest of the Culture series now? The work itself is great, a short story collection.
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- paris1230
- 05-24-24
Brilliant
What can’t the imagination of Mr Banks encompass and expose? Superb narration as always by Mr Kenny.
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- Vicente Buritica
- 06-08-24
Short story format was great!
I wasn't sure i was going to like it, but definitely at the top with Banks other books.
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- Anonymous User
- 04-11-24
Where is the return button
If you like science fiction that has no science fiction you need to it. And just a bunch of gay or trans people doing boring things in space. This is your book
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- Deane Morris
- 04-29-24
Worst banks book ever.
Tedious. Absolutely awful. Full of redundant, endless babble and religious Christian BS. Take this book and shove it.
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