Just finished the Restoration Game, liked it a lot. I definitely get a Banksy vibe from it. If I say the prose isn't *quite* as explosively brilliant, I hope you'll take that as the great praise it's meant as, not criticism. At a sentence level, I don't think there's anyone writing today who is as good as Iain.

I love your books, have preordered every single one since The Stone Canal. This is one of your best, definitely.

(spoilers)

Personally, I think the prologue gives the game away (ho ho ho) too soon, then you come back to it too soon before the end. You get to the joke - the real world being the unrealistic one - too soon, and don't have quite as much fun with it as it deserves, and it's not quite the twist it feels like it ought to be.

(end spoilers)

I really enjoyed it. Re-reading what I just typed, it sounds snarky and like I'm damning you with faint praise. 'It's like Iain Banks' is not faint praise. Thank you.

By  Anonymous, at Wednesday, July 21, 2010 11:25:00 am  

Anon, I take that as high praise! Thank you.

By  Ken, at Wednesday, July 21, 2010 1:02:00 pm  

Is there a US release planned? If not, I'll order it, but I hate to pay that much for a book and have most of it go to the post instead of the author...

By  CS Norman, at Wednesday, July 21, 2010 1:17:00 pm  

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By  Live News, at Wednesday, July 21, 2010 2:28:00 pm  

My agent is showing it around US publishers, but there's nothing planned as yet. If you want to read it in the next year or so, then ordering it from the UK (or Canada?) is your best bet.

By  Ken, at Wednesday, July 21, 2010 2:30:00 pm  

So what's up with that, anyhow? You seem so established - it's hard to imagine there isn't a reliable bunch of yanks who like your work (granted, I hang out with nerds, but nerds are a decent market share).

Anyhow, will order, loved the last one, thanks for all the fun times over the years.

By  CS Norman, at Wednesday, July 21, 2010 2:59:00 pm  

Book Depository offer free worldwide shipping and half price on preorders, so I my copy arrived in the States last week for $14.24. The only time I had a problem with them was volcano related.

Just checked - now it's out, it's $23.59 on the site, free shipping. This is still less than cover price in the UK.

http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781841496474/

(I don't work for Book Depository!).

By  Anonymous, at Wednesday, July 21, 2010 3:42:00 pm  

The other thing to note ... Iain Banks is not all that well known in the States.

Iain *M* Banks has seen his stuff printed here, but only in the last few years. Transition was published here in the US as a M book.

I really don't understand the problem. To me, Banks and Macleod represent that promised land, the place where the SF books *are* actually full of big ideas and good writing. Jesus, it's not as though the market's flooded with those, is it? Anyway ... I pass around copies of Player of Games or The Cassini Division, and every time I do the person who reads it loves it, SF fan or not. I hope Ken appreciates that image - with such grass roots beginnings, the Tartan Revolution is surely inevitable.

By  Anonymous, at Wednesday, July 21, 2010 3:53:00 pm  

...and I can usually find Stone Canal era MacLeod in regular non-specialist bookstores here, so they must continue to sell. I don't think my SF tastes are all that kooky and KM is pretty much my favorite writer working today. The publishing industry has gotten pretty inscrutable in recent years.

By  CS Norman, at Wednesday, July 21, 2010 5:00:00 pm  

Yes, Tor are still backing the Fall Revo books, with the two recent republications as Fractions and Divisions. They just weren't so keen on my two most recent ones.

Thanks for the encouraging words, though!

By  Ken, at Wednesday, July 21, 2010 5:18:00 pm  

"They just weren't so keen on my two most recent ones."

US publishing is like US TV - very into narrowcasting. In the UK you can have something like Doctor Who that kids like and teenagers, and SF geeks and parents. In the US you have to pick one. Most SF is cult viewing that everyone I know watches but no one else does.

I guess it's the same with books. The last three KMs haven't been so much *SF* as being set now (ish) at a point where we live in SF. Science fiction has become science fact, to coin a phrase. Lucy does things with her iPhone in Restoration Game that Spock couldn't do with his tricorder.

Either that, or it's because you don't write books where a NYPD detective learns she's queen of the vampires.

By  Anonymous, at Wednesday, July 21, 2010 8:57:00 pm  

Dunno, I would have thought _Night Sessions_ more obviously interesting to Americans who live in a culture where religion is such a big deal than some of the earlier stuff that requires you to have read all three volumes of Deutcher's Trotsky to get the jokes...

The fact remains that to my mind no one else combines such excellent worldbuilding with really good, fascinating people and wit and depth. But then I am, as noted, biased.

By  CS Norman, at Wednesday, July 21, 2010 9:18:00 pm  

Either that, or it's because you don't write books where a NYPD detective learns she's queen of the vampires.

Nothing intrinsically wrong with vampire novels: look at "Blindsight".
Can I just say that I would read (and might even buy) a Ken MacLeod vampire novel.
"Battening on the blood of the proletariat: it's not just a metaphor any more!"

By  ajay, at Thursday, July 22, 2010 1:33:00 pm  

Like science fiction, but less exciting

Reading this (via here) I note:

Paul Krugman became an economist because he had fallen in love with science fiction as a child.

By  ejh, at Friday, July 23, 2010 4:54:00 pm  

Also via dsquared, this is space elevator muzak, if ever I heard it.

By  TJ, at Friday, July 23, 2010 10:47:00 pm  

Krugman has written about the economics of interstellar trade and about Charles Stross's Merchant Princes series (on Crooked Timber). He's also been on a panel with Charlie. It must be an absolute thrill to be taken so seriously by science fiction fans.

By  Ken, at Saturday, July 24, 2010 11:19:00 am  

Ken, sorry I wasn't very positive. I hope it came across as at least logically reasonable.

Maybe my expectations were misaligned? Sorry.

Love most of your stuff though ;-)

By  James Bloomer, at Sunday, July 25, 2010 11:45:00 am  

James, you have nothing to apologise for about your review, which makes perfectly reasonable points.

By  Ken, at Sunday, July 25, 2010 12:10:00 pm  

Paul Krugman became an economist because he had fallen in love with science fiction as a child.

Indeed he did, and his paper "The Theory of Interstellar Trade" is well worth a read.
http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf

By  ajay, at Monday, July 26, 2010 3:41:00 pm  

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

By  Dissertation Writing service, at Tuesday, July 27, 2010 7:34:00 am  

I've also been frustrated with the lack of US publisher support for your books! Although since I've been living in Germany for nearly a near now, I suppose I should have just gotten 'em shipped (and as I write this, I realize Amaz.de has, e.g., Night Sessions in english paperback). Except that I'm also in love with my Irex ereader, so I'm also frustrated with the lack of DRM-free digital editions! Boo.

Anyway, love your work! Would love to buy you a beer if you ever did any author signing things in the area.

By  X.Trapnel, at Thursday, July 29, 2010 3:48:00 pm  

As a SF fan in the religiously oppressive USA, I did indeed, I did find Night Sessions especially appropriate and enjoyable.

I was delighted to actually find it on the shelf at the University Bookstore in Seattle last week. A year or so late, but still, better late than never.

Hoping, for the sake of other MacLeod readers here, that Restoration Game will show up a little sooner -- also for the sake of my own two copies, which I don't want to see too beat up by being loaned out to all my friends. ',:^D

By  M. Huw Evans, at Friday, July 30, 2010 12:42:00 am  

Well, if you thought getting Ken's books was difficult, try living in Spain! I got the Fall Revolution series from Amazon US and have re-read them 3-4 times (and still find them surprising and fresh each time I go through them once again). It's frustrating not being able to share them with non-English speaking friends, though. Some chance you'll get translated into Spanish anytime soon, Ken?

Totally unrelated: today I was sifting through the Bradley Manning/Afghan War Diary mess (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-chat/), and generally thinking how very FallRev-ish the whole affair was, when I came across a line where Manning is asked why he leaked them, and he says "information wants to be free". I had a flash of Moh Kohn's martyrdom in the first book.

It made my day, in some odd and twisted way. ;)

[Which is a longish way to say: Thanks for your writing, Ken. You can't imagine how many enjoyable hours it has given me :) ]

By  AntiAlias, at Monday, August 02, 2010 2:28:00 pm  

Thanks for the kind words, AntiAlias.

My Engines of Light trilogy is translated into Spanish and the three books are available here.

By  Ken, at Tuesday, August 03, 2010 10:06:00 am