For all the starships, artificial intelligences and galactic politics, Ian (M) Banks often returned to surprisingly human questions.

This is one of my favourites:

‘We are what we do, not what we think.’

It suggests identity is something we create, not something we possess, or assume.

One step at a time.

One choice at a time.

What is the trail we’ve left behind us?

When reading Banks, in Science Fiction mode or his more contemporary novels, characters often find they cannot escape the trail they’ve left. Starting afresh with a clean slate is much, much harder than it looks.

Over to you: what’s YOUR favourite story about a character trying to start again?

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Reading makes us see what we’ve stopped noticing.