Podcast: Talking About Excession by Iain M. Banks on A Meal of Thorns

A Meal of Thorns, from the fanzine Ancillary Review of Books, is one of the most exciting new podcasts of the last few years. A bimonthly critical book club in which host Jake Casella Brookins discusses a work of science fiction, fantasy, or something harder to define with a rotating cast of guests, it's not just an opportunity to go deep into a single work and how it reflects on the genre around it, but an impetus to discover (or rediscover) some great books. In a critical landscape that tends to focus only on the most recent (I'll hold my hand up in that respect), A Meal of Thorns is a great chance to dig into the foundations of the fantastical genres, whether famous or little-known.

I was thrilled to be invited to appear on A Meal of Thorns, and after a bit of thought about what I'd like to discuss, realized that it presented a perfect opportunity to revisit a book that I've long felt deserved a second look, Iain M. Banks's Excession. Published in 1996, it represented Banks's first return to the universe of The Culture--the AI-run, techno-utopian, liberal do-gooder civilization that was the setting of his first three novels--in a decade, and in it he revealed much more than he previously had about its higher workings, as well as how its plans to export its way of life come together and fall apart. It begins with the appearance of a technologically advanced artifact from an unknown civilization that triggers an arms race between the Culture and several of its neighbors, as they seek to control and exploit it, and take advantage of the resulting upheaval to advance their own geopolitical schemes.

I read Excession in 2008 but came away feeling that I hadn't fully grasped what it was trying to do. It was incredibly rewarding to reread it and discuss it with Casella. We talk about the Culture vs. Star Trek, about Excession as a spy novel (and the presence of spy novel tropes throughout Banks's science fiction), about the role of scale in Banks's writing and how his human characters often turn out to be the least important figures in his stories, and about how those characters' frustration can read differently in 2025 than it probably did in 1996. A Meal of Thorns can be found where all podcasts are found, and you can read the episode notes (and, eventually, a transcript) on the Ancillary Review of Books website, where you can also find a list of past and upcoming episode.

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