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Look to Windward Hardcover – August 1, 2001

by Iain M. Banks (Author)

109 customer reviews

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Product Details

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Star Trek; First American Edition edition (August 1, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0743421914
ISBN-13: 978-0743421911
Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (109 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #694,429 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5031 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Space Opera

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Customer Reviews

109

4.4 out of 5 stars

5 star		57%
4 star		32%
3 star		6%
2 star		2%
1 star		3%

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 51 people found the following review helpful

Solid book, HORRIBLE KINDLE EDITION

By Sardan on February 8, 2010

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

First, let me say I'm a fan of Ian Banks' Culture novels. Look to Windward is solid and enjoyable, if not quite the pinnacle of Culture books. Others are better reviewers than I, so I'll leave it at that.

What I really want to focus on is the inexcusably bad editing of the Kindle edition. Be warned that if you purchase the electronic edition of this book, you'll grit your teeth every time you encounter one of the DOZENS of typos in the text. I don't consider myself a perfectionist. I've encountered the occasional typo or two in printed books and not been upset. But this book quite literally as 10 times as many typos as any other book I've ever read, and I have read many hundreds of books.

Whoever was responsible for the Kindle edition of this book should be ashamed of themselves.

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60 of 66 people found the following review helpful

Death by Water

By James D. DeWitt VINE VOICE on September 2, 2001

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

The title of Banks' latest Culture novel comes from the 4th part of T.S. Eliot's 1922 landmark poem, "The Wasteland." The full text of lines 325-326:
Gentile or jew,
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
Those familiar with Banks' work will immediately recognize the two words immediately following "look to windward" as the title of another Banks' Culture novel. What's going on here?
Not every SF author can get away with titling his books from one of the 20th century's greatest poems. A lot of them have the chutzpah, but can't bring their word craft up to their pretensions. Banks can. While _Look to Windward_ doesn't have the machine gun pacing or extraordinary violence of earlier Banks' works, it does offer remarkably good writing, generally good characterization, and a further display of Banks' astonishing imaginative powers. Masaq' Orbital and its billions of residents are seeing the supernovae from suns destroyed by the Idirans near the end of the Idiran War 800 years earlier. The Mind - the self-aware AI that runs Masaq' was a fighter in that war. Billions died, some at the hand of that Mind. More recently, Special Circumstances, The Culture's meddling, would-be uplifters of the disadvantaged, had another of their surreptitious interventions go horribly wrong, and 5 billion Chelgrians died. Look to windward, indeed. Masaq' Orbital's Mind has commissioned Ziller, an expatriate Chelgrian, to compose a symphony for the occasion of the second supernova. In the meantime, the Chelgrians have sent Major Quilan, a veteran of the civil wars triggered by The Culture, to Masaq', ostensibly to persuade Ziller to return to his home world.Read more ›

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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

Resistance is Character Forming

By Craobh Rua on February 7, 2008

Format: Paperback

Iain Banks was born in Scotland in 1954 and published his first book - "The Wasp Factory" - in 1984. He has since divided his writing career between writing 'standard' fiction - as Iain Banks - and Science Fiction, as Iain M. Banks. "Look to Windward" was first published in 2000, and was the sixth of his Sci-Fi books to feature the Culture.

The Culture is a symbiotic society - part humanoid and part artificial intelligence. The artificial intelligence element to the Culture can be sub-divided into two parts - Drones and Minds. For the most part, a Drone's intelligence will be roughly similar to a humanoids. Minds, on the other hand, are significantly more powerful than both humanoids and drones. They tend to act as the controlling intelligence behind, for example, the Culture's ships and Hubs (artificial habitats). Minds are also largely responsible for making decisions at the very highest levels of society - only a very small number of humanoid Referrers would be intelligent enough to join the process.

In the first Sci-Fi book Banks wrote, "Consider Phlebas", the Culture was at war with the Idiran Empire - a war they eventually won, though not without a great loss of life. Although 800 years have now passed, "Look to Windward" could be considered a sequel of sorts. A single battle, towards the end of the Culture - Idiran War, had brought the destruction of two stars. The loss of life was not restricted to the combatants, as both systems had supported life. The light from the first star's destruction has only now reached Masaq, a Culture Orbital. Hub, Masaq's controlling Mind, is observing a period of mourning, between the two supernovae - for reasons that become clear later in the book.Read more ›

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31 of 35 people found the following review helpful

Stylish and exciting, if not necessarily original

By Glen Engel Cox on January 5, 2004

Format: Mass Market Paperback

Look to Windward is the seventh book in Banks' science fiction universe based on a utopian society of advanced artificial intelligences and the humans (and other organic life forms) that originally created them, loosely termed the Culture. With each book, Banks has built his plots out of the interstitial area where the idea of this utopia fails, typically in its dealings with other, different societies, through its para-military/intelligence arm called Special Circumstances. This time, the Culture has interferred in the "advancement" of another society, failing miserably, and then must deal with the diplomatic fallout from their actions. That the other society, the Chelgria was a predator-based race with a rigid class structure and a warlike demeanor, makes this all the more difficult.
On this backdrop is placed several interesting characters: the Chelgrian Ziller, a composer who has ex-patriated himself because of his support for the rebels who attempted to overthrow the class structure, and wishes to have nothing to do with his old society or race; the Chelgrian emissary, Quinlan, whose despair over losing his wife in the war between the traditionalists and the rebels will drive him to commit the unthinkable; and the orbital Mind known as Masaq', who has hosted Ziller for years and asked the composer to create a new symphony based on the fading light of two suns--suns that went nova two thousand years ago when Masaq', as a warship, set off a chain reaction that destroyed them and the two orbitals around them.
As in his other novels, this one has several storylines to follow that eventually come together by the climax.Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

exploring ideas like extreme sports

This is ostensibly the story of a suicide bomber, but really the whole thing is a thematic exploration of death, and why people might seek it, or flirt with it. Read more

Published 5 days ago by Matthew Skau

The Culture series is wonderful. If you aren't a science fiction fan

Ian M. Banks is a masterful writer. I have read all of his works and would read again. The Culture series is wonderful. Read more

Published 25 days ago by Cameron Boswell

Wonderful.

This was one of my favorite books from the series. I particularly loved how he tied a bow on the plot lines at the end. Wonderful.

Published 26 days ago by Jason

Prophetic

I bought this book some years ago (pre-2002 as the price sticker was in Irish pounds (9.99 of them) and the euro came in on Jan 1st, 2002.). Read more

Published 1 month ago by P. McCLEAN

Great Starting Point to the Culture Series

I was directed to Iain Banks' work by the io9 blog community and have NOT been disappointed. That being said, I would highly recommend this Culture series novel as a starting... Read more

Published 3 months ago by InfiniDim

Richly imagined, richly told, richly reflective

Fans of Iain Banks will recognize a marvelous story with some real punch, in which mass violence and profound moral ambiguity take on human (or essentially human) dimensions. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Harry Marks

Look to Windward, indeed!

One of the best of Iain M. Banks' Culture series. It should be read last as it was written to end the series.

Published 4 months ago by JimfromVenice

Wonderful Read

This Culture book is best read in 'order' and if it is the experience may be among the most enjoyable reading experiences you'll have in SFF

The differentiation of... Read more

Published 5 months ago by S. Walton

Among Banks's best

While not quite the scale of a Stapledon, Iain M. Banks wrote on a huge scale - galactic, in fact. His tales of the Culture run into parsecs, if not megaparsecs, and involve (or... Read more

Published 5 months ago by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

gedy

It read like a grecian tragedy with a definite melancholic tone. Possibly the best Culture novel along with the Player of Games.

Published 6 months ago by Louis Le Parc