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Nektu posted:Unrelated: What do we know about the other elder civilizations? Are they also utopias? I think it's pretty heavily implied in Matter, Surface Detail, and the Hydrogen Sonata that most species equivalent to the culture either have their own version of Utopia going on, are on the path to becoming something that the Culture approves of, or are simply preparing to sublime. There's no reason for the Culture to interfere with their societies (at least not overtly) since the potential risks far outweigh the potential benefits. At the same time, every equivalent tech civilization in the setting is shown to be involved in some kind of effort to uplift younger races. The Morthenveld run a feudal system where they mentor younger races who mentor others in turn. The Homomda saved the Idirans from extinction and helped them found the empire that would eventually challenge the Culture. There was an equivalent tech race helping the Pro-hell faction in Surface Detail, which lead to the Cultures involvement. Even the Gzilt were making deals to determine who had the right to loot their civilization once they sublimed. It seems that since the Idirian war, most of the Involved civilizations are content to settle their philosophical differences and prove their moral superiority through proxies.
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Sep 25, 2014 19:27
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Lasting Damage posted:If the Chelgrian terrorists got help from their Sublimed sister race or an equivalent tech civilization, its possible they're beyond reproach of the Culture. At least, not without provoking a much worse response. The point that SC would be foolish to kill any leads is a good one, but I'm not convinced that the Chelgrian terrorists actually knew anything they didn't already know. I mean, SC had a double agent in their midst from the start. I have my doubts that the Chelgrian sublimed were really involved. Quillan seems shocked that the Chelgrian-Puen would both bar the gates to heaven and take enough of an interest in the "real world" to demand that sort of retribution. Additionally, if the Sublimed wanted to open a wormhole in Masaq Hub, their ability to enter and exit even well-protected spaces at will suggests they wouldn't have had much trouble doing it. For them to be both 'beyond reproach' and incapable of carrying out a successful attack would seem an odd combination. However, if someone wanted to dupe the Chelgrians into carrying out a risky plot, imitating their dearly departed ancestors would seem a clever way to do it. Nektu posted:Regarding the .01% thing - it is a fact that while the Culture is the biggest player among the GenVec fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Sep 25, 2014 21:24
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GenVec posted:Yeah, it's clear that the Culture has a missionary zeal towards remaking the universe in its own image. I think in Surface Detail they go so far as to mention that some people compare them unfavorably to a hegemonic swarm. But it also raises questions on how utilitarian you think their philosophy is: do you believe the minds are engaging in Ozymandias-like calculations, where killing a billion people is worth it if they save a billion and one? Why don't they run Hells and skin people regularly, if they genuinely believe that terror can keep their enemies in line? Lasting Damage described it as splitting hairs, but I'd say it's more like a slippery slope of civilizational descent. Because terror weapons are extreme outliers and most Minds find that kind of solution a) abhorrent, b) barbaric, and c) inelegant. SC does some horrible things, but it really does try to keep the doing of said things to a minimum. Killing billions? Running Hells? Not only would most of the Culture immediately condemn that poo poo, but the rest of the Involved (and possibly some of the Elder) civilizations would have a few things to say too. Remember, the gently caress up with the Chel was speculated to have come about because the Minds responsible were trying to be as neat and efficient as possible. Still, sometimes you find events Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints, and then it's No More Mister Nice Guy. I'm sure most of the Culture would probably agree that this is Unacceptable Behaviour and an Inappropriate Response, but when it's Killing Time you need individuals with Questionable Ethics. But remember, there's no "just following orders" in the Culture. Everyone is ultimately responsible for their own actions, even when pressured or manipulated. The e-dust assassin knew it was a terror weapon, but chose to perform its duties in that way. It was intelligent enough to refuse, should it have wished to.
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Sep 25, 2014 23:47
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GenVec posted:For them to be both 'beyond reproach' and incapable of carrying out a successful attack would seem an odd combination.
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Sep 26, 2014 05:25
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GenVec posted:But it also raises questions on how utilitarian you think their philosophy is: do you believe the minds are engaging in Ozymandias-like calculations, where killing a billion people is worth it if they save a billion and one? I think a calculation like that would be too simple (again: thats somehting a human came up with, minds should be better), but... Let me think about this for a little while longer, maybe I can come up with a position. GenVec posted:Why don't they run Hells and skin people regularly, if they genuinely believe that terror can keep their enemies in line? Lasting Damage described it as splitting hairs, but I'd say it's more like a slippery slope of civilizational descent. Putting them all into hell/the gulac/concentration camps is the end of the slope when humans try to weed out the bad apples. Minds dont fall that low. Their judgement is not clouded by fear/greed/whatever drives humans towards genocide. They do not need to employ the coping mechanisms that humans developed to not go crazy during mass-killings (like de-humanizing your enemy). They do not fall into the trap that the closer you look for the bad apples, the more you will find (regardless of the real number). They are simply much less flawed than humans in nearly every way.
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Sep 26, 2014 07:12
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General Battuta posted:Yeah those were me. There's a auto-rifle that has text that says it can fly your spaceship for you. There is the 'Use of Weapons' thing. The OCP text noted above. There is also another auto-rifle that has 'slightly intoxicating' logic circuitry. Which may not be a direct quote but sounds like Banks.
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Sep 26, 2014 15:52
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And a patrol quest called 'The Helium Cantata.' I should've named one of the ships Staberinde 
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Sep 26, 2014 16:11
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I've been getting pretty big into Banks recently. I've read Use of Weapons and Surface Detail so far, and I accidentally happened to read them in the right order so that the final sentence of surface detail had the intended effect. "Your table is ready, Mr. Zakalwe" I was wondering if any of the other books have little tie-ins like that. Reoccurring characters and such. I've been picking his stuff up any time I see it at the local book store, but it's a used book store so the selection is limited and I'm grabbing them in a a jumbled order. Are there any books you would recommend reading before other certain books? Right now I've got The Algebraist and The Player of Games sitting here in my lap and I can't decide which to devour first.
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Oct 8, 2014 22:13
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Someone might correct me, but the reveal in Surface Detail is the big linker. There's a few other little things that might make you go "huh", but nothing plot-shattering
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Oct 8, 2014 22:34
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There are a few minor mentions of elements of Excession in some of the later books, but nothing major like that. I'd say, just don't vary too far from publishing order and make sure Hydrogen Sonata is last. (Just for thematic purposes)
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Oct 9, 2014 03:12
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Pokeylope posted:I was wondering if any of the other books have little tie-ins like that. While not quite the same thing, the Idiran-Culture war, which we see the tail end of in Consider Phlebas has fallout that drives the plot (or parts of the plot) of a number of the later Culture books.
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Oct 9, 2014 05:43
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Quinton posted:While not quite the same thing, the Idiran-Culture war, which we see the tail end of in Consider Phlebas has fallout that drives the plot (or parts of the plot) of a number of the later Culture books. There was actually a lot of reference to that in Surface Detail. I was hoping one of the other books would take a closer look. Are there any books with an artificial intelligence as one of the main points of view? I find them to be one of the most interesting aspects of series, but I can see how writing from that point of view for an extended period could pose certain challenges.
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Oct 9, 2014 06:24
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Pokeylope posted:There was actually a lot of reference to that in Surface Detail. I was hoping one of the other books would take a closer look. Excession. It's all about Minds plotting and scheming and meddling. Oh and there's the manifestation of an extra-dimensional entity that threatens to suborn all sentient life in a large part of the universe for some incomprehensible and unknowable purpose, but it's not really important. Avulsion fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 06:37
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Avulsion posted:Excession. It's all about Minds plotting and scheming and meddling. Oh and there's the manifestation of an extra-dimensional entity that threatens to suborn all sentient life in a large part of the universe for some incomprehensible and unknowable purpose, but it's not really important. Yeah, if you like the Minds you'll love Excession. Look to Windward also gives some insight into how\why the Minds view their relationship with humans.
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Oct 9, 2014 12:35
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R.I.P. Iain M. Banks. I am sorry for his loss. "Sperm Wars" by Robin Baker is similar philosophically to his work, but is much more weighty.. i understand some ppl might like that sort of thing here. It is well worth the read & I recommend it to everybody.
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Oct 9, 2014 20:33
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Pokeylope posted:There was actually a lot of reference to that in Surface Detail. I was hoping one of the other books would take a closer look. Hydrogen Sonata also has a fair chunk that follows a couple of ships. Not in the same league as Excession though.
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Oct 10, 2014 04:00
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I love Excession so much. Just starting Look To Windward for the first time myself.
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Oct 10, 2014 04:26
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I am delighted to be explicitly allowed to post in this thread. I really have to read some Banks books one day. Because I haven't read a single one yet. Which book is most lacking in Gravitas?
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Oct 10, 2014 07:26
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Against a Dark Background isn't a Culture book, but it features a gun with a sense of humour... Um, are you looking for sci-fi, or not? Only he wrote both, and all other things being equal I'd suggest starting with The Wasp Factory, which is an amazing achievement.
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Oct 10, 2014 11:12
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No Gravitas posted:I am delighted to be explicitly allowed to post in this thread. Use of Weapons, Excession, Look to Windward and Matter all have at least some gravitas so any of the others?
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Oct 10, 2014 15:57
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Dude start with Consideer Phlebas. Its like a cooler Star Wars. It (and Excession) would be the stories I would love to see on screen.
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Oct 11, 2014 03:18
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Don't start with Consider Phlebas because it's kind of an ugly unpleasant book and it's tonally disconnected from the rest of the series.
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Oct 11, 2014 03:24
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Agreed, go with Player of Games first and take a look at Consider Phlebas only after you've exhausted the other recommendations.
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Oct 11, 2014 04:09
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Yeah, I really did not like Consider Phlebas at all when I finished it, or more precisely its ending really pissed me off. it just seemed so pointless and futile and awful. ...and yet I was intrigued enough to warily pick up Player of Games from my roommate's shelf a few days later and I'm really glad that I did because since then Banks became one of my favorite writers and the Culture universe one of my favorites in all of fiction. I should really re-read that first one again, since I already view it differently after reading the following books. a kitten fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Oct 11, 2014 |
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Oct 11, 2014 05:26
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Player of Games is a great intro to the Culture. Probably one of the most narratively conventional, too.
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Oct 11, 2014 05:36
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a kitten posted:Yeah, I really did not like Consider Phlebas at all when I finished it, or more precisely its ending really pissed me off. it just seemed so pointless and futile and awful. Isn't that sort of the point? The entire war itself is a footnote to a footnote, Horza's slight involvement is radically less impactful, the death of trillions rates this as a minor skirmish. But for all the non-effect the war had, it was the moral side that motivated the players - from the Culture to Horza. They did what they thought was right even though it hardly meant anything in the very wide view. But the events echo through the future timeline in big ways and small ways, from the ship renaming itself to setting up the Culture becoming a serious Involved. It's an even-handed take on history - Yes, individual actions meant almost nothing, the universe grinds along mostly statistically, you and your people will be forgotten. But since all you'll ever be is an individual, make peace with your insignificance, and then act as if you'll have an impact. What else can you do? Consider the source of the title: Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell And the profit and loss. A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. Look your insignificance and mortality full in the face, accept that you'll be forgotten, you won't be a hero, you probably won't change anything. And then turn that wheel and do what you know you have to do anyway. Banks basically comes out and says it, in an interview (https://web.archive.org/web/20071223184232/http://homepages.compuserve.de/Mostral/interviews/starlog94.htm) "I've read so many SF books where the action is terribly, terribly important to the fate of everyone and everything. That fate of a whole planet can hang on the outcome of a protagonist's actions. Sometimes, the fate of the entire universe! Well, if you look at history, this is very unusual indeed. What usually happens is that people suffer and die and get involved in all sorts of mayhem and catastrophe and it doesn't make that much difference in the end. "That was one of the idea behind Consider Phlebas. There's a big war going on in that novel, and various individuals and groups manage to influence its outcome. But even being able to do that doesn't ultimately change things very much. At the book's end, I have a section pointing this out by telling what happened after the war, which was an attempt to pose the question, `What was it all for?' I guess this approach has to do with my reacting to the cliche of SF's `lone protagonist.' You know, this idea that a single individual can determine the direction of entire civilizations. It's very, very hard for a lone person to do that. And it sets you thinking what difference, if any, it would have made if Jesus Christ, or Karl Marx or Charles Darwin had never been. We just don't know." ... "I mean, when you come down to it, that was a story about a shipwrecked sailor falling in with a gang of pirates and going in search of buried treasure."
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Oct 11, 2014 18:42
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I love the ending but I still wouldn't pitch it as an introduction to the Culture. It's kinda cool how opposed that thesis is compared to Use of Weapons. Neat dialog there.
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Oct 11, 2014 18:48
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Prolonged Priapism posted:Isn't that sort of the point? It's completely the point! But, I had no idea what I was getting into when I first read it (literally just grabbed it off my roomie's shelf when trying to find something new to read) That's why I need to re-read it now that I've completed the rest of the books, like I said I already view it very, very differently.
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Oct 11, 2014 18:50
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Staberinde is my go to ship name, much like Zakalwe tends to be my PC's name in RPGs and poo poo when it fits. Also, while this is about a page ago, I believe that the culture is the oldest involved civilization. They've had the ability to sublime whenever they like, more or less, but they're too busy having fun and going on adventures to go all the way yet.
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Oct 11, 2014 19:06
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SpookyLizard posted:Also, while this is about a page ago, I believe that the culture is the oldest involved civilization. They've had the ability to sublime whenever they like, more or less, but they're too busy having fun and going on adventures to go all the way yet. They can sublime whenever, but they're far from the oldest Involveds. The Homomda, for one, have been around "many tens of thousands of years" longer.
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Oct 11, 2014 19:11
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Edit: quote is not edit.
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Oct 11, 2014 19:12
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a kitten posted:Yeah, I really did not like Consider Phlebas at all when I finished it, or more precisely its ending really pissed me off. it just seemed so pointless and futile and awful. My favourite part of Phlebas is how everybody dies really badly. Loads of war stories make a big deal out of a few horrible deaths, but not a single person from the Clear Air Turbulance dies quickly, or cleanly, or honorably. They bleed out begging for help, kill themselves through grief or stupidity, get side swiped by bullets, splattered with plasma and then crushed by a train. This is despite the Culture's best efforts to pretend that war is clean and noble - the way they constantly shift civilians, the strange gravitas of the Eschatologist, the beauty of grid-fire - it's like the Culture are trying to strip away all the blood and guts and make war as clean and sterile as the Epilogue makes it out to be. It's not quite "war is hell", it's not quite an unironic Dulce et Decorum Est, it's somewhere in between. And this is in a book that I find really hard to describe without the word "swashbuckling"
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Oct 12, 2014 12:15
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Toast Museum posted:They can sublime whenever, but they're far from the oldest Involveds. The Homomda, for one, have been around "many tens of thousands of years" longer. I always got the impression that the Homomda are slipping away from being Involved. Possibly because of how badly they hosed up the whole Idiran situation. That might just be me wrongly projecting from Kabe's rather subdued characterisation. Just finished a reread of Hydrogen Sonata, definitely better the second time. It's sad that it's as close as we're ever going to get to a "formation of the Culture" book. 
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Oct 12, 2014 14:09
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GOU What's a Little Gridfire Among Friends?
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Oct 12, 2014 20:11
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Otisburg posted:GOU What's a Little Gridfire Among Friends? ROU Gone Fission
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Oct 12, 2014 23:32
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:ROU Gone Fission ROU Fission: Impossible
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Oct 13, 2014 05:08
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ROU [/i]Fission Mailed[/i]
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Oct 13, 2014 07:50
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:ROU Gone Fission This one actually made me laugh, bravo. I always had a fondness for the ROU I'm Travelling Light, because it works in the same way as Sleeper Service, in it varies depending on where you emphasise the name. Oh, and the GSV Original Pseudonym or the dGOU Look, A Ploughshare, because you can have a whole world of fun playing with names off the (d) tag. Shockeh fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 11:07
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Reading Excession for the first time and they work in a little distopian nugget into our Utopian culture with the guy who was born SHY! and how basically he was constantly hounded by humans and drones and minds with helpful ways to "treat his condition (alter his personality to make him normal)" until finally a sympathetic drone found a suitable hermitage post for him. Don't get me wrong I still totally want to live in the Culture, but I like the little warts we see like this coercive conformity. Makes Bank's secular heaven feel a little more real. E: I guess my take-away was "ultimately there was a place for him, but this guy was a total misfit born in a fluke when they try to breed that stuff out of the population and had to endure all kinds of overbearing attempts to 'fix' him first.." I mean on a scale of death camps and stuff it's still touchy-feely that they found a spot for the dude, but it sort of speaks to the observation IIRC made in one of the books that the Culture could be chided as a bit of a "HegSwarm with a sense of proportion." VVV Owlbear Camus fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 19:21
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Someone whose first Culture book was Excession said the shy dude showed that there's room in the communist AI utopia for people like that, not only for people who enjoy partying 24/7 while lecturing in important fields in various space universities and shepherding lesser civilizations towards enlightenment, and that it's one aspect that makes the Culture feel a lot more like a respectable utopia and not just some heroic-anarcho-primitivists-with-godmachines jerkoff fantasy. ymmv v v
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Oct 14, 2014 22:12
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