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door Door door posted:So do people buy that the Chelgrien-Puen are actually sublimed, or that they are just files on servers somewhere and their 'heaven' is just a simulation like all the afterlives in Surface Detail? Their use of soulkeepers to allow the souls to enter heaven makes me think it's the latter. This theory had never in fact occurred to me, but it's obvious in retrospect.
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Jan 11, 2016 13:35
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I dunno, the Culture seems to believe they have sublimed, I took that at face value to mean that when they sublimed they used their new power to create (or take over) a virtual afterlife for their species.
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Jan 11, 2016 13:46
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Yeah. I mean, the Culture mentions they have contacts - some, small contact - among the sublime, I think we can take the idea that the Chelgrien-Puen sublimed at face value.
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Jan 11, 2016 13:56
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MikeJF posted:Yeah. I mean, the Culture mentions they have contacts - some, small contact - among the sublime, I think we can take the idea that the Chelgrien-Puen sublimed at face value. I've just finished a re-read of The Hydrogen Sonata, and the Caconym and it's weird relationship with the returned-from-the-sublime Zoologist is such a great and weird bit of worldbuilding.
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Jan 11, 2016 14:24
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I have a new favourite twitter account. https://twitter.com/cultureshipname/status/685041962798419968 https://twitter.com/cultureshipname/status/682210817354395648 https://twitter.com/cultureshipname/status/648504131104153600
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Jan 16, 2016 14:39
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hatesfreedom posted:I can't think off hand of any part of the plot that would have been better served by gender pronouns. Hmm. All I can really say is it annoyed me for Seivarden to constantly be referred to as a "she". It's entirely likely that's on me though, as I really found Seivarden boring, tedious, unbelievable, and I wish he'd go away. I'm pretty sure Seivarden is never explicitly said to be male. I liked the pronouns. The only time the feminist social critique in the Justice series gets a bit hamfisted is when Breq is on the ice-planet interacting with the ice-people who do have a gendered society, complete with gendered pronouns, and Breq keeps getting annoyed at it.
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Feb 1, 2016 13:41
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GCU Just Go Home and Put on Pants and Come Back
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Feb 2, 2016 01:16
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Geisladisk posted:I'm pretty sure Seivarden is never explicitly said to be male. Early in Ancillary Justice, Breq literally says "I knew Seivarden was male, that was an easy one" when she's trying to decide what pronouns to use for people.
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Feb 2, 2016 01:34
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rejutka posted:GCU Just Go Home and Put on Pants and Come Back Of course if Banks had written that it would mean something different. What with pants being slang for underwear in the UK.
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Feb 2, 2016 21:37
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It's not really slang, just what the word means.
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Feb 2, 2016 23:29
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I have a new favourite twitter account. You missed the best one! (d)ROU Local Forces On The Ground
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Feb 2, 2016 23:50
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Small update for those of you that are interested: I just sent out my BA thesis proposal. After discussing it with my likely supervisor I decided to shift the focus of my thesis a bit because it needed a bit more... I don't know, relevance? So instead of just looking at the various ways Banks misdirects the reader in Use of Weapons I will be examining several of his works to show that he, the author, is truly the 'player of games' on many, many levels. In doing so he (dare I say it?) elevates the space opera genre, generally associated with entertaining adventures of daring heroes travelling through space, to something culturally significant and enters into an almost Platonic dialogue with the reader, forcing us to ask ourselves difficult questions on many, many contemporary issues. I'll illustrate various theories, techniques and modes of writing using examples from his works, which will culminate into a more in depth analysis of Use of Weapons, considered by many to be his masterpiece. (At least of the M. books. My proposal is just that, a proposal, so anything and everything is subject to change once I start developing it all more thoroughly with my supervisor, but my preliminary plan is as follows: I'll start with a short biography of Banks and his oeuvre, describe the Culture and it's implication/relevance to my area of interest, and then introduce the key concepts and theories on which I'll build my argument. (Huizinga, Bakhtin, Barthes, Kant, Gadamer, Caillois, etc.) I'll follow that with a brief examination of the space opera genre and Banks's fascination with play and games, probably using Player of Games to illustrate this. This will be followed by a discussion of morality and war in this context, using Surface Detail. I'll take a short detour outside of the Culture and discuss Feersum Endjinn to illustrate and examine his love for playing with language and finish my groundwork by showing his manipulation/subversion of genre and narrative in Inversions. This will all come together in a discussion of Use of Weapons, in which he does it all. He fucks around with language, narrative, structure, morality, war, expectations, whatever, and is basically having one hell of a good time manipulating everything, resulting in a novel that is just so, so good. So yeah, like I said, it's only the proposal so nothing is set in stone, but I thought some of you might be interested.
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Mar 4, 2016 20:10
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I do enjoy that he didn't just do the same thing for each Culture novel. Each one has it's own unique spin on it story wise and structurally.
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Mar 4, 2016 20:24
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Curious as to whether you're gonna use Excession or, probably more accessibly, Look to Windward?
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Mar 4, 2016 20:34
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If you want examples from his non-SF stuff, Complicity has some interesting themes along those lines. In short, the narrator is a journalist who once wrote a list of people he thought should be killed. A serial killer starts doing this, with detailed descriptions of the murders. One could argue that the reader is complicit in the murders by reading and enjoying the book. It also has second-person narrative, re playing with language.
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Mar 4, 2016 20:36
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Taeke posted:I'll take a short detour outside of the Culture and discuss Feersum Endjinn to illustrate and examine his love for playing with language According to Ken MacLeod, Banks had a great appreciation for the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid who, it's fair to say, sometimes pushed the use of Scots to breaking point. quote:The Watergaw MacDiarmid was also a life-long communist and Scottish nationalist, albeit one who at one stage thought that for wider political reasons it might be better that the Nazis win WWII (he was complicated). He was also keenly interested in the language and images to be drawn from science and engineering, I think in the way that Banks himself did, certainly they shared a taste for a devastating last line. quote:Crystals Like Blood
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Mar 5, 2016 01:52
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xian posted:Curious as to whether you're gonna use Excession or, probably more accessibly, Look to Windward? I'll probably mention Excession for it's use of formatting and the chats between ships. Look to Windward is a bit less relevant to my area of interest, I think, although it is of course powerful in its own right. Initially I was aiming for a trauma/war/identity angle which it fit perfectly, but now that I'm focusing on the ludic (play) elements in his writing it probably won't make the cut. Snapchat A Titty posted:If you want examples from his non-SF stuff, Complicity has some interesting themes along those lines. Thanks, I'll definitely check it out. It reminds me of parts of Transition (one of the few non-M. novels I've read). My focus will be on the M. books, though, so aside from the introduction of Banks and his oeuvre his other works won't really be discussed, I think. TheHoodedClaw posted:According to Ken MacLeod, Banks had a great appreciation for the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid who, it's fair to say, sometimes pushed the use of Scots to breaking point. I came across these in some other papers, and its definitely something I'll investigate further. Thanks. Remember, though, this is a BA Thesis. I don't have to do anything ground breaking or add to the literary sciences in any significant way. It's merely an exercise to prove that I can do independent research, develop my own arguments and formulate them appropriately. In all likelihood, aside from my supervisor, the second reader and maybe some friends and family nobody will read this. I also have only 10k-11k words to work with, so I have to be selective, which is one of the main challenges, of course. I'm thinking around 1k words for the introduction and conclusion each, 1k for an overview/discussion of the relevant theories, plus another 1k for each novel where I apply those theories, with around 3k or 4k left for the the analysis of Use of Weapons proper. One last thing: Lukejfrost, I don't know your username on the forums but I saved the link to your artwork a long time ago. Mind if I use a couple of them for a powerpoint I have to give next week? Nobody other than some classmates and my supervisor will see them, but I thought it'd be nice to ask anyway. After I get my diploma, I'm definitely buying a print (or two, three) and framing it as a present to myself. They're awesome.
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Mar 10, 2016 13:30
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Taeke posted:My focus will be on the M. books, though, so aside from the introduction of Banks and his oeuvre his other works won't really be discussed, I think. Even so, perhaps check out The Steep Approach To Garbadale. It's centered around the drama and machinations of a family that made its fortune through developing a world-famous board game (basically a Risk stand-in).
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Mar 13, 2016 11:22
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Decided to finally delve into his non-Culture stuff starting with The Algebraist, the setting is so amazingly notCulture that it trips me up sometimes. No AI? No hyperspace? No crazy force fields? Madness. I'm really enjoying it so far, just now met some Dwellers for the first time and I think I love them.
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Mar 15, 2016 05:40
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Even so, perhaps check out The Steep Approach To Garbadale. It's centered around the drama and machinations of a family that made its fortune through developing a world-famous board game (basically a Risk stand-in). Thanks, I'll check it out. My thesis proposal was approved so now I'm waiting for my supervisor to get back to me so we can hash things out. I'm having some difficulty both finding the appropriate theories to use (there's just so much, so I'll need her help to narrow things down) as well as deciding which examples are most relevant/applicable. It should work itself out, though. a kitten posted:Decided to finally delve into his non-Culture stuff starting with The Algebraist, the setting is so amazingly notCulture that it trips me up sometimes. No AI? No hyperspace? No crazy force fields? Madness. Oh yeah, the Dwellers were awesome. If you want a darker non-Culture book try Against a Dark Background next. It gets loving grim. Feersum Endjinn is a bit tough to get through until you adjust to the language, but it's one hell of a ride too. "Woak up. Got dresd. Had brekfast. Spoke wif Ergates thi ant who sed itz juss been wurk wurk wurk 4 u lately master Bascule, Y dont u ½ a holiday? & I agreed & that woz how we decided we otter go 2 c Mr Zoliparia in thi I-ball ov thi gargoyle Rosbrith.” Only a a third or so is written like this, but it really takes some getting used to.
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Mar 15, 2016 09:32
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The Algebraist I always feel gets a bum deal. Plot wise, it just dawdles about too much, which is a shame, because the main story is actually really quite excellent. It needed to be 'sharper' in general, because it's such a good book in the final third.
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Mar 15, 2016 10:12
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Taeke posted:
Just if you read Against a Dark Background, don't forget that he released epilogue online after it was published. Director's cut ending.
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Mar 15, 2016 10:20
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Shockeh posted:The Algebraist I always feel gets a bum deal. Plot wise, it just dawdles about too much, which is a shame, because the main story is actually really quite excellent. It needed to be 'sharper' in general, because it's such a good book in the final third. The Algebraist is my go-to insomnia book for exactly this reason. As a novel, it's a bloated mess and could do with some serious editing. As something to just sink into for hours while trying to go to sleep, it's pretty perfect.
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Mar 15, 2016 10:47
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Feersum Endjinn is by far the least restrained thing he ever did and it's brilliant for it. A lot of its ideas make the Culture seem sorta pedestrian and grounded in comparison. The setting definitely has more than a few strands of Culture DNA though; there's plenty in the way of unlikely protagonists, virtual reality, consciousness digitisation, genetic engineering, time compression, megastructures, lost ancient technologies, gender-blurring, impending disasters, political scheming, airships... The thing I am trying to communicate is that reading Feersum Endjinn is a good thing to do and you will feel good when you do it
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Mar 15, 2016 12:03
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You have to be able to cope with lukn @ reel wurd nat-Ingels rittin 2 b abel 2 njoi Feersumm Endjinn, myn u; wic i kant reely du so t woz 1/2 interesting and 1/2 dull paynfull slog (I had exactly the same problem with Riddley Walker.)
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Mar 15, 2016 12:38
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sinking belle posted:Feersum Endjinn is by far the least restrained thing he ever did and it's brilliant for it. A lot of its ideas make the Culture seem sorta pedestrian and grounded in comparison. The setting definitely has more than a few strands of Culture DNA though; there's plenty in the way of unlikely protagonists, virtual reality, consciousness digitisation, genetic engineering, time compression, megastructures, lost ancient technologies, gender-blurring, impending disasters, political scheming, airships... It was my first Banks book and I didn't find Bascule's stuff that hard to read. Love that story. Like you say, so much going on in it.
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Mar 15, 2016 22:50
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Ergates is the best character Banks wrote. Fight me.
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Mar 16, 2016 23:15
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I like that Feersum Endjinn isn't explicitly a Culture-universe book, and isn't much like those books, but it isn't explicitly not in the Culture universe.
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Mar 16, 2016 23:51
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I just couldn't do Feersum Endjinn. It was just too hard to read those chapters. Maybe I'll cheat. I wonder if there's an audiobook?
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Mar 17, 2016 01:13
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MikeJF posted:I just couldn't do Feersum Endjinn. It was just too hard to read those chapters. There is, and it's read by Peter Kenny, who did most of the Culture audiobooks, but it's not available in the US (through Audible, at least). I'm assuming it's unavailable because of Hachette's pricing dispute with Amazon.
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Mar 17, 2016 01:28
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Speaking of audiobooks, I haven't listened to any of the recent audiobook versions, but I used to have the audiobook version of Look to Windward read by Robert Lister. I was looking for it again recently since that was a great one to listen to when I wanted background noise since I've read the book so many times I could just hop in wherever. But all I can find now is the Peter Kenny version, since he seems to be the official Banks reader on Audible and such sites these days. Listening to the sample, it just doesn't match up to the Lister version for me. (He pronounces all the names wrong!) Does anyone know where I can purchase the Robert Lister narrated version of Look to Windward? I can't seem to track it down anywhere. I think it was recorded as one of those big-box-of-10-cassettes deals back before you could just buy audiobooks as digital downloads. I used to have a version of it ripped to mp3 by my file is corrupt.
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Mar 17, 2016 02:36
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If you're able to "hear" words as you read them feersumm endjinn is not super difficult.
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Mar 19, 2016 18:58
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andrew smash posted:If you're able to "hear" words as you read them feersumm endjinn is not super difficult. That's slow reading, most people try to unlearn it as soon as they can
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Mar 19, 2016 19:25
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mallamp posted:That's slow reading, most people try to unlearn it as soon as they can Yes, because doing it all the time is both a good idea and what i suggested.
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Mar 21, 2016 04:33
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I really like books like Feersum Endjinn and Riddley Walker. They force you to slow your reading right down, take your time, decode, and generally immerse yourself in what's going on. You absolutely have to read them on their own terms, and the cognitive estrangement the practice can produce can really help make familiar things momentarily unfamiliar again. It's a neat trick.
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Mar 21, 2016 08:26
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andrew smash posted:Yes, because doing it all the time is both a good idea and what i suggested. I'm not attacking you, I'm just saying that it's hard to re-learn it for one book, especially without messing up your rhythm with other things you are reading same time
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Mar 21, 2016 09:20
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Just read those parts out loud.
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Mar 21, 2016 10:02
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mallamp posted:I'm not attacking you, I'm just saying that it's hard to re-learn it for one book, especially without messing up your rhythm with other things you are reading same time Or go read Trainspotting after you've re-learned the trick to get more use out of it.
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Mar 21, 2016 13:33
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Slightly different because it's mostly new vocabulary, but you can add A Clockwork Orange to that list. It's never been much of an issue for me and usually only takes me a couple of pages to make the switch, but I can see why it would be an obstacle for most people.
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Mar 21, 2016 13:42
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Taeke posted:Slightly different because it's mostly new vocabulary, but you can add A Clockwork Orange to that list. If you are at all familiar with Russian, then that book is extremely easy to parse.
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Mar 21, 2016 14:40
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