Iain M. Banks, an especial favorite author of mine and someone on whom I‘ve written before, published a new novel earlier this Fall: The Hydrogen Sonata, the latest installment in his ongoing series of novels about The Culture, a post-scarcity pan-human civilization largely controlled by hyper-advanced artificial intelligences called Minds. I invited four other scholars — Dan Nexon, Iver Neuman, Chris Brown, and Gerard van der Ree — to write short critical essays on the novel, and sent the package to Iain for his comments. I now have all of the pieces in hand, and over the next few days I’ll post them here. Happy holidays. You’re welcome.

That’s all, folks. Once the pieces are posted I’ll put link to all of them here.