Patrick Nielsen Hayden discovers that Iain Banks's forthcoming book has an unusual title:
Posted by DeLong at April 15, 2004 05:54 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postElectrolite: A spherical Iain Banks of uniform density:
SF Novel [by] Iain M. Banks List Price: £17.99 Our Price: £12.59 You Save: £5.40 (30%)
Old joke...a physicist finds himself out of work and has to turn to dairy farming. Eventually he feels he wants to share his discoveries with other dairy farmers and at the grange one day he gives a lecture which starts, "Consider a spherical cow of uniform density...."
Posted by: Satirical Cow of Unformed Destiny on April 15, 2004 06:32 PMIaian Banks... I've been thinking I ought to read him, but I'm way behind in the Classics of Sci-Fi department. I haven't even read Ender's Game yet. Well, I'll get around to it, I suppose.
Posted by: Julian Elson on April 15, 2004 10:48 PMRead Banks before Card...
Posted by: Brad DeLong on April 15, 2004 10:58 PMSatirical Cow -- I heard it as follows:
A biologist, a chemist, and a physicist are walking through a field when they come upon a cow.
The biologists confidently says, "ah, it's a mammal of species Bos Taurus, an ungulate phylogenetically closely related to oxen, buffaloes, and bison."
The chemist says, "More generally speaking, it's a carbon based life-form, approximately 70% water, the rest consisting mostly of carbon and phosphate groups, and a calcium-based framework."
The physicist looks on uncertainly, after hearing the other two, before saying: "Well, I suppose we could approximate it to a sphere."
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Posted by: Luca Lizzeri on April 16, 2004 04:58 AMPerchance, is this a sequel to the "Science Fiction" Generic Book?
(I've got that old thing around here somewhere.)
Do you know if this is a Culture novel?
I agree - Banks before Card. He's more fun, more subtle, more everything.
What's your fave, Brad? I like 'Excession' quite a bit, but I've read all of them several times. It's hard to decide.
Posted by: Mike Sankowski on April 16, 2004 06:59 AMNote that Mr. Banks writes genre-neutral books as "Iain Banks" and sci-fi novels as "Iain M. Banks."
Posted by: The Bellman on April 16, 2004 09:47 AMThis one isn't in the Culture universe and its real title is possibly The Algebraist. More details:
http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&selm=2831f46.0403170902.faaa706%40posting.google.com
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