Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?

1) I have seen the movie, and read the post, and his opening claim that "there aren't any spoilers", is kind of not true. While there aren't any explicit, blatant spoilers, he does kind of rub up against the plot a lot, in a way that gives a lot of hints that people might not want to know, before seeing it.

2) Was no one else bothered by his "Pioneer" faux pas? He's obviously extremely advanced, scientifically -- light years beyond my level -- and yet, he erroneously states that Pioneer 10 is the furthest human object in interstellar space ... which stopped being true when Voyager 1 passed it back in the 1990s ... and, strictly speaking, Pioneer hasn't even reached interstellar space, yet.

I know it shouldn't bother me as much as it does ... but of all the science he talks about in this post, this is the one thing I know about -- and he got it wrong, so now I have doubts about everything else he said.

I've never seen rot 13 spoiler format before, so thanks for that :)

Yes, I've read almost all his books, there's still a couple sitting on my Kindle.

I disagree with seeing these books as bleak, or indeed anything by Banks (it could be because our definitions of bleak differ, since I agree with you on the other values). The SF part is simply a setting for his strength, which is to detail and praise human character. For example, he continuously breaks the "rules of good writing" such as having dei ex machina (or more properly, dei in machina with some exceptions like The Algebraist) conclude most books but he is an example where it is done in a way that augments the story.

In most Banks stories, characters (including the Minds, for example in Excession) are put in difficult situations made believable by well structured suspension of disbelief ("great craftsmanship"). They get out of these situations using their intelligence and demonstrating courage and a well defined hierarchy of values (including appropriate self-sacrifice for something they value higher than their life). This is philosophically the opposite of Story of My Life and Ubik. Even if the ending is a downer, even if major characters suffer enormously (I'm still marked by Surface Detail years after reading it... truly harrowing), reading Banks had me walk away with my mind augmented somehow.

That being said, on the First contact/alien civilisation front I always got the feeling that Banks' aliens species are always very human, representing different facets of human nature, including the Minds. I think it is on purpose, like Asimov in most of his work he was not setting out to represent truly alien species as Charlie Stross, Peter Watts or Cixin Liu have done but writing novels about human characters and values that happened to be framed by SF.

It was a very strong tradition on Usenet!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROT13#Usage

I think I should be more specific with my definition of bleak.

It's possible to write a novel where the setting, and the story lead to dark places, and finish badly for the heroes, but without the heroes giving up on life or thinking. There are many instances in history of people standing their ground in hopeless circumstances.

In fiction, I think the best depiction of what I mean might be Letters from Iwo Jima (the movie, not the actual letters which are relatively sparse). Kuribayashi's character goes through hell consciously but his extraordinary resistance - down to refusing to banzai charge as is customary in those situations and instead patiently drawing out the fight to maximise enemy casualties, drawing out the pain for himself and his troops in the process - is a phenomenal description of character. It is specifically in Eastwood's depiction that this comes through although the real Kuribayashi was every bit the depicted one. So I do not consider the movie or the book "bleak" but incredibly awe-inspiring despite its content and ending for the protagonist.

Meanwhile, the main character in Ubik and most of PKD's novels is continuously failing to have any agency, thwarted by unknown and unbeatable forces until he just accepts his fate and stops moving. I always thought that this book in particular and PKD's work in general were close to depictions of depression, which is where the bleakness is. I'm in a rush right now so can't immediately come up with a good example but many modern works of fiction depict wonderful conditions and stories with very bleak characters incapable of appreciating their luck.