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Feersum Endjinn

Feersum Endjinn

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Set on an almost unrecognizable far future Earth, this book is Iain. M. Banks' second non-Culture SF endevour. Earth is past it's golden hour, and technology has fallen into the realm of mysticism and ritual. The story follows four different people living in the remains of what can only be described as an disproportionately scaled super-city as they are reluctantly dragged into a plot involving a threat against the entire Earth. They face a conspiracy of powerful individuals with their own agenda, not necessarily interested in averting the looming threat.

Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks | Waterstones

It was the end of an era in more ways than one. In the years since Banks was first published, cyberpunk had taken the science fiction world by storm and eventually given way to post-cyberpunk with Snow Crash in 1992, Neal Stephenson’s deconstruction, reinvention, and nail in the coffin of the genre as it existed in the eighties. By 1994, the cyberpunk literature bubble had mostly burst and wouldn't see a real resurgence for another twenty years. If I may speculate a bit, I think that Banks looked at cyberpunk—a genre he missed out on participating in while working in the mainstream and rewriting his earlier work—and thought, hmm… I wonder what I could do with that? A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. As with his friend Ken MacLeod (another Scottish writer of technical and social science fiction) a strong awareness of left-wing history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence.Banks' finest and most challenging achievement in Feersum Endjin comes whenever he shifts his narrative to Bascule, the dyslexic Teller who writes his story phonetically because he can't write it any other way. His accent, which feels a little North London and a little Glasgow, makes the phonetic spelling just a touch more challenging for the reader (particularly if the reader is from North America), but if one takes one's time, and even reads it aloud, the pay off is worth the work it takes to read. My daughter's Audi A1 has damp in the driver's footwell but the door seals seem fine, what could be the cause? Feersum Endjinn is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1994. It won a British Science Fiction Association Award in 1994.

‎Feersum Endjinn on Apple Books

Let’s have a diversion into names. In one of Banks’ last novels, The Hydrogen Sonata, there’s a Culture Eccentric ship called Mistake Not…. We don’t find out what the ellipsis hides until the end. It’s worth the wait. In Feersum Endjinn, he describes the the fastness Serehfa, a colossal space elevator once called Acsets built to resemble a mediæval castle on the scale of kilometres and mountains, as something where the massiveness we are first confronted by is the bare outskirts, behind which its true scale is like the ship’s full name: “Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath.” Man, this book was hard to get through... about a third of it is written from the point of view of young Bascule, who uses an idiosyncratic orthography that is part cellphone text and l33tspeak, and part Charlie Gordon in his pre-savant phase. In its way, this is quite a sustained achievement, but having to sound out the narrative for those parts word by word does rather interrupt the flow. When I finished this novel I wasn't sure if I liked it. With a good portion of the book written in the vernacular of our grammar-challenged hero, and a whole lot of heady stuff like cyber regions and vast settings, Iain Banks isn't giving the reader an easy go of it. I even had to seach the Internet for The novel takes place in 4034. With the assistance of other species, humans have spread across the galaxy, The writing, when the story goes to another POV, is as remarkable as anything else Banks as ever written: descriptive without ever being boring, tense, thrilling and slightly humourous when it has to be, and always very evocative.Asura is a mysterious woman reborn into the Fastness, who has amnesia but knows she needs to deliver a message, without knowing the content or recipient. Her existence becomes a threat to the ruling powers, forcing her to go on the run as she makes her way further into the inner regions of the Fastness. Readers who’ve read Russell Hoban’s classic post-apocalyptic tale Riddley Walker will find this literary technique familiar, and it will either draw you in over time or turn you off completely. He seems to be speaking in a Scottish (or North London?) accent, and it’s very distinctive and charming if you can understand it. Count Alandre Sessine VII has already died seven times. He has only one life left – one last chance to catch his killer. His only clues point to a conspiracy beyond his own murder. For a catastrophe is fast approaching the earth from which there is no escape – until a loophole through apocalypse is discovered. And a chosen few will do anything to keep it a secret.

FEERSUM ENDJINN | Kirkus Reviews

What an oddball s-f novel. My first I. M. Banks. Instead of venturing down any paths eventually leading to me reading his other standalone novels, I will probably just revert to my original plan and start the Culture series. Although it is not a Culture books, there are some winks to Banks' preferred technologies. Here he takes the well used subject of humankind on earth at the end of time and gives it a spin. I thought I saw a couple of winks to Gene Wolfe, but may be it is in my eyes. Want to help us defray the cost of domains, hosting, software, and postage for giveaways? Donate here: There is one more key character that looms throughout the story – the unimaginably vast Fastness itself, known as Serehfa. It is a massive castle-like structure that is built to a scale far beyond that of humans, and it is inextricably linked to the Cryptosphere itself. Here is a brief image: I'm a huge fan of Banks's Culture novels (see my blog post on all of them: http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/20...). I also enjoyed The Algebraist and The Wasp Factory. I really wanted to give this five stars, but despite heavy doses of Banksian brilliance, I can't say it quite measures up to his other work.

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This is the first book I have change the grade after re-reading. It is still a great book, but I no longer think it is grand. The book was well received and won a BSFA award in 1994, however I have only read it once and with great difficulty. Thayr r meny protaguniss in Feersum Endjin but Bascule iz reely the dryvin chayractr. Hez the regyoolar gi we can idennify wif. Hez the unliklee hero frust in2 sercumstansis beyond hiz understandin or cuntrol and givin the oportoonity 2 mayk brav deesishins wif the fayt uv hyoomanity in the balans. Hiz brayvry leedz him 2 perform acts uv grayt consikwens, even if he cant c thos consikwensis frum hiz limitd perzpektiv. Bascule playz an eesentil rol in helping the gud giz win the day and he duznt even no it (until the end, enwayz). Hez juss dooin whot seemz ryt to him. At one end of the vast C bitten from the castle a single great bastion-tower stood, almost intact, five kilometres high, and casting a kilometre-wide shadow across the rumpled ground in front of the convoy. The walls had tumbled down around the tower, vanishing completely on one side and leaving only a ridge of fractured material barely five hundred metres high on the other. The plant-mass babilia, unique to the fastness and ubiquitous within it, coated all but the smoothest of vertical surfaces with tumescent hanging forests of lime-green, royal blue and pale, rusty orange; only the heights of scarred wall closest to the more actively venting fissures and fumaroles remained untouched by the tenacious vegetation. This isn't a bad book—I don't think Banks is capable of writing a bad book, from the evidence to date—and it does contain memorable lines, such as this one: "In my experience those who are most sincere are also the most morally suspect, as well as being incapable of producing or appreciating wit."



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