The State of the Art is a short fiction collection by Iain M. Banks, which includes stories set in the universe of The Culture. The collection includes the following stories.
- Road of Skulls: A drifter is napping a cart towards a faraway city on a road made of the skulls of The Empire's enemies
- A Gift from the Culture: An exile from the culture is forced to perform a terrorist act since the weapon required will only work with a Culture citizen
- Odd Attachment: A shepherd of a species of plant people plays a darkly humorous game of "loves me, loves me not"
- Descendant A soldier and his sentient suit walk through an inhospitable desert after crash landing.
- Cleaning Up: Strange artifacts start inexplicably appearing around the world, which seem to be a technological gift to the receivers.
- Piece A professor relates some encounters where he discusses science and science fiction in contraposition to faith.
- The State of the Art: By far the longest piece, it's an account of Diziet Sma's time as a Contact agent visiting Earth, and her relationship with another agent, who is deeply affected by our species.
- Scratch OR: The Present and Future of Species HS (sic) Considered as The Contents of a Contemporary Popular Record (qv). Report Abstract/Extract Version 4.2 Begins (after this break)
The short stories contain examples of the following tropes:
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: In A Gift from the Culture, the main character is given the option of committing a terrorist act for a couple of mobsters in exchange for a complete forgiveness of his debts plus a hefty sum or be killed as an example for others.
- Black Comedy:
- A hilarious moment in Cleaning Up is a general plummeting to his death.
- Odd Attachment is about a Plant Person innocently tearing off a human's toes and fingers. The punchline at the end is him finding out one last "petal": the penis.
- Discount Lesbians: The sexuality if the protagonist in A Gift From The Culture is complex: He was born a heterosexual cisgender female, with no problem whatsoever about her identity as a woman. Since citizens of The Culture are able to switch genders at will, she tried being male expecting to be attracted to females, but the sexual orientation didn't change. While male, he decided to turn his back on The Culture and refuses to switch back to female not because he is happier as a male but because he refuses to put to use nearly every advantage his enhance biology provides, up to and including his ability to transition. While outside of The Culture he enters a relationship with a local male.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes:
- In Odd Attachment the alien just barely recognizes the astronaut as alive.
- One of the main themes in The State of the Art is how humans look to people from The Culture.
- Ironic Name: The ship in The State of the Art is called Arbitrary. When confronted with a hard choice, it decides to stick to The Culture's principle of freedom instead of forcing a human to do what it believes would be best.
- Mobile City: "The Road of Skulls" features a pair of pilgrims trying to reach a city. The city is actually on huge wheels and is perpetually moving away from them, laying the road they're traveling on.
- Motor Mouth: The unnamed companion in Road of Skulls.
- No Ending: A Gift From The Culture ends right after the main character shoots down the ship. We never find out the consequences of this.
- Sanity Slippage: In Descendant the human starts going mad as the days and weeks go by. Funnily enough, a sign of this is that he stops hearing voices, specifically the voice of his sentient suit, who is his only companion.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Played with in Descendant, the human dies, but the suit, who is sentient and therefore arguably alive as well, is rescued.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Explored in Descendant. Since the suit is sentient, it could ditch the human to save himself. The human ponders if he would do the same if their roles were reversed.
- When Trees Attack: The Plant Person protagonist of Odd Attachment does not take well to being shot.
