The Algebraist

Last Thursday’s Guardian included a brief excerpt from Iain M Banks’ new novel, The Algebraist. I like his Culture novels quite a bit so it’s a shame that after a longer-than-usual gap between SF novels he’s decided to write a novel in a different setting, but I suppose I can live with the disappointment if I must.

The extract appears to be a prologue, serving to set the scene for the main story rather than introduce any of the characters we’ll be following, but I’m happy to trust Banks to deliver a story worth buying in hardback when it’s published in October. (Of course, knowing the way he plays around with his stories’ timelines it could just as well be that the Guardian extract is actually from somewhere in the middle, or it could even be the novel’s closing passage.)