Novelist Misses Deadline, Blames Civ4

[Lemur]

This made the lemur laugh. Iain Banks, a respectable author if there ever was one, missed his publisher's deadline for his next novel, and he blames Civ.

"I played it for three months and then realised I hadn't done any work. In the end, I had to delete all the saved files and smash the CD. It is very unprofessional of me. I had to ask for an extension for the first time, which made me feel just like I was a student again."

So ... anybody else in the Rome Total War forum (*cough*) miss an important deadline due to video games?

[Samurai Waki]

I missed a monthly calculus exam because Europa Barbarorum was released the day before. I woke up in a sleepy haze, realizing that I was 3 hours late for the test. Long Story short, my grade dipped from a B+ to a D

[drone]

That's pretty funny, because in his book Complicity, the main character played a Civ-like game that required vast amounts of attention and was very addicting. Guess he saw a pattern to his personality.

[Spino]

My goodness this brings back memories...

Armed with my upgraded Amiga 500 upon entering college I soon became enticed by the splendor of such titles as Targhan, Conan, Persian Gulf Inferno, Turrican, Populous I & II, SimCity, Birds of Prey, 4D Boxing, any title by Psygnosis, the Bitmap Brothers, Bullfrog or Cinemaware, the list goes on and on and on. During my sophomore year I made a good friend who had a similar setup thus increasing the influx of games and poof, my study habits were transformed from sad to pathetic. The worst offender? Earl Weaver Baseball and the Commissioner's expansion pack... pure evil. I drafted and ran fictional leagues while my grades were sent down to the minors...

Between partying, socializing and computer games I hardly had time for my assignments. I went from being a straight A student in high school to an academic probation, Yukon Jack swilling nutcase in college. Not a total loss though, I recovered in time to save my GPA and graduate with honors.

[Banquo's Ghost]

I've come very close to missing a deadline - close enough to scare myself - and at present Civ IV on my Mac is the culprit. I can understand entirely how Mr Banks felt and why he would smash up the CD.

I have Mrs Ghost to remind me of time-wasting however.

The Backroom is worse for distractions though. Does it count as a video game?

[Andres]

Two years ago I combined my full-time job with a year at the university to obtain a master degree in Notariaat, sort of a postgraduate.

One should think you can't permit to waste your time on videogames then.



Carl Johnson aka CJ...

GTA: San Andreas!

Almost ruined it all.

There I was, a few weeks before me exams, only the evenings and the saturday-afternoon could be used as study time. But no, Mister TheCunning felt obliged to spend his precious time on gaming.

I still succeeded though, I passed the exams, because, hey! Who needs sleep? Sleeping is for whimps who don't like GTA! No honoris causae though, just the minimum minimorum...

After my last exam, I was a wreck, I had nothing left. My eyes were invisible...

And what did I do after my last exam?

Yep, playing GTA till 5 o' clock in the morning

Luckily I finally finished the main quest that morning, because miss TheCunning, soon to be my wife, felt a bit neglected in those days

[English assassin]

OT, but, with a few exceptions (the Wasp Factory, the Bridge, and to be honest I'm not sure how even they would stand up to re-reading) can anyone tell me why Bank's books are considered anything other than bog standard potboiling tripe?

The writing is so-so, the plotting, well, ok the plotting is a bit above average but not much, but the thing that really gets me is the blatant beardie scottish communist wish fulfilment. In EVERY book, more or less. Can we have interesting characters we care about, responding in a nuanced way to difficult challenges? No, because the right answer is the one that would be most likely to be approved of by a beardie scottish communist.

Complicity was a good case in point, because the vigilante character was in every way as unpleasant as the people he attacked, (in fact rather more so), and I really don't think Banks noticed that his (Bank's) violent revenge fantasies were as bad as the two dimensional capitalist hate figures he set up for his characters to attack. If he did, the main character's decision to let the vigilante go at the end is inexplicable.

And although he deserves some credit for the central conceit of the Culture (ie the machines are in charge) he then pretty much ducks the central problem that that throws up (ie that no one wants to read a novel about robots, which is no doubt why sci fi futures generally are surprisingly light on machines). Why the actions of any human are remotely important in the culture universe is not dealt with. Isn't it the same as writing a novel about 20th century earth and having ants as the main characters?

Oh and the more fantastical novels are incredibly repetitious. OK, someone like JG Ballard repeats himself too, but Ballard is a genius and Banks is, not.

IMHO for sci fi read Banks back to back with anything by Ken MacLeod or Peter Hamilton and you'll never read another Banks again, for the other stuff, same point but with Ballard or, I don't know, Russell Hoban.

[Husar]

The Backroom is worse for distractions though. Does it count as a video game?

Well, sometimes I treat the backroom like a game, trying out some new ideas.

[Captain Fishpants]

In Iain Banks' Complicity, the lead character is addicted to a Civ-like game, and spends quite a big chunk of the novel worrying about his empire rather than the murders happening around him.