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Sorry for the double post, this wasn't there when I wrote the last one.mossyfisk posted:I always figured the "botched intervention" was utter bollocks. It seemed far more plausible that SC just took the blame in order to stop the Chelgrians exterminating themselves. I don't know, an occasional gently caress-up fits with what we know about Contact/SC. Statistically, they usually have a positive effect, but they're not infallible. Unless that whole line of argument is some kind of carefully crafted humility for whatever games within games the Minds are playing.
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Apr 30, 2016 00:33
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Toast Museum posted:Sorry for the double post, this wasn't there when I wrote the last one. It's much more interesting if Minds are occasionally fallible. Also, a "perfect" AI always sublimes. Minds are subtly flawed by design .
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Apr 30, 2016 00:49
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Max posted:That's fine and I think that reading works if you don't know that the Culture end up being the "good guys" of the rest of the books. If you've read of few already, and then go into Phlebas, you just see him as kinda . . . I don't know a good word but he wasn't as engaging. I didn't like Horza either, no doubt. I actually started reading Consider Phlebas on an old palm pilot my friend unloaded on me in i guess 2000, but it was too much of a hassle to read it. I remember the act of reading Player of Games sometime in the 1990s, but it was a Danish translation & I didn't recall any of it. So I guess in '05 I just started all over in English with Phlabas, Player, order of publication. I never did mind unsympatheic narrators though, as long as the writer is good. My biggest issue with Phlebas is its episodic nature. It feels like it goes from set piece to set piece without any real development for a while in the middle.
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Apr 30, 2016 01:01
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Snapchat A Titty posted:I didn't like Horza either, no doubt. I actually started reading Consider Phlebas on an old palm pilot my friend unloaded on me in i guess 2000, but it was too much of a hassle to read it. I remember the act of reading Player of Games sometime in the 1990s, but it was a Danish translation & I didn't recall any of it. So I guess in '05 I just started all over in English with Phlabas, Player, order of publication. The amount of time it takes Horza to take over that ship is really waaaaaaay too long.
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Apr 30, 2016 01:15
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Max posted:The amount of time it takes Horza to take over that ship is really waaaaaaay too long. Yeah could've used some hard editing there. Which is weird cause most of his novels aren't crazy-long. Strictly speaking, Hydrogen Sonata & Matter were a bit long for me, but not nearly in as bad a way as Phlebas. I guess he got a freebie based on Wasp Factory & Walking on Glass.
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Apr 30, 2016 01:21
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General Battuta posted:I don't like recommending Phlebas first because, while awesome, it is also ugly and quite mean. There's a thread of this in all his books.
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Apr 30, 2016 01:23
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Matter was long by necessity to support the bait + switch, IMO.
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Apr 30, 2016 01:44
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sebmojo posted:There's a thread of this in all his books. Yeah. There's meanness and horror and grossness in all of Banks' books, the sans-M ones too. If someone who never heard of Banks came up to me and said, I wanna read one Culture book and no more, I'd probably recommend Player of Games. It has no references to events in other books, it puts you in the position of an insider who becomes an outsider (alright more than one does that), and it has a really good intense showdown with emergency displacement & all
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Apr 30, 2016 02:08
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sebmojo posted:There's a thread of this in all his books. Definitely, but it's a big pulsing ugly vein right up front in Phlebas, and I think it misrepresents the general interests of the Culture books by putting that ugliness and futility up front without whimsy or compassion or grandeur as contrast. Okay, definitely some grandeur!
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Apr 30, 2016 05:12
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General Battuta posted:Definitely, but it's a big pulsing ugly vein right up front in Phlebas, and I think it misrepresents the general interests of the Culture books by putting that ugliness and futility up front without whimsy or compassion or grandeur as contrast. Okay, definitely some grandeur! Well, consider that it's all an uptick into niceness after Wasp Factory. Despite that opening scene where Horza is literally about to drown in piss and poo poo.
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Apr 30, 2016 16:20
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Snapchat A Titty posted:Horza is an idealist who believes so much in his cause that any means justify the cause. The cause being of course the destruction or at least alteration of the Culture. So he's aligned with their enemy even though they're at the very least equally bad, just in other, different ways. He's a single issue voter who doesn't care if his world burns, as long as he gets to have his say if only for a moment. Horza lives in a civilized society which he despises for it's materialism so he decides to tag along with the Iridan State of Milky Way and Magellan because "those guys are keeping it real". Nobody is the villain of their own story so we see that from his point of view he thinks he's doing good. But he's just like all other deluded idiots that want to force everyone around them to "keep it real" and "go back to our roots".
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Apr 30, 2016 22:14
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Same for the dude from Excession but he's even more of a hypocrite.
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Apr 30, 2016 22:40
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Horza has basically made a choice for fundamentalism over perfected liberal democracy. Kind of like narrator of Notes from the Underground, he's making an irrational choice to prove the insufficiency of utopia, which makes him an irreconcilable figure. I also liked how he was kidnapped by a tribe of poo poo-eaters. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Apr 30, 2016 |
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Apr 30, 2016 22:44
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The Culture is not a liberal democracy and I wouldn't be surprised if suggesting that it is means that you start hearing a ghostly Scottish voice singing the Internationale for a while (leave out a few drams of Islay and it should go away again) http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Apr 30, 2016 |
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Apr 30, 2016 23:29
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I know the backstory, but that's how it comes off across in the books. It's not a perfect match-up, obviously.
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Apr 30, 2016 23:43
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:I also liked how he was kidnapped by a tribe of poo poo-eaters. I really like Phelbas. EXCEPT for the stupid shiteating episode.
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May 1, 2016 00:29
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Even if Horza was right about everything, I wouldn't forgive him for what he did to the shuttle.
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May 1, 2016 03:28
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The Dark One posted:Even if Horza was right about everything, I wouldn't forgive him for what he did to the shuttle. Yeah, the carbon chauvinists, at least the ones with enough information that they should know better, really come off as assholes to me. It could hardly be more obvious that practically every remotely complicated device in and around the Culture is sentient, and it seems like mean-spirited willful ignorance to deny it.
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May 1, 2016 04:36
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I think another interesting aspect of Phlebas is that it's a view of the Culture in a somewhat nascent state. It's not until after the crucible that it becomes the benign hegemonizing swarm that we remember and the challenge of the Idrians drives out a big chunk of Culture citizens who couldn't stomach the fight. It was, explicitly, a somewhat irrational war of choice and ideals that the Culture fought to establish their ideological purity. Something a bit like a certain assassin? All I'm saying is that Banks loves his dark mirrors.
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May 1, 2016 09:59
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Toast Museum posted:The impression I got was that the whole concept doesn't exactly make sense in the Culture. They have the sort of virtual environments that would constitute another society's heaven, but as far as I can tell they have no interest in restricting people from passing in and out of them, so it ends up being more of a change of address or body mod than an afterlife. Didn't they say in Look to Windwards that the majority of causalities of the plan would actually be virtualised culture citizens running inside Hub? Or is that my imagination. So it seems the virtualised population is fairly substantial and it wouldn't surprise me if there was a large set specifically designed to operate as kind of heavenly retirement communities in some way for citizens tired of regular existence. You're right that they'd be able to pop out at any time, though. Not enforced retirement from life like heavens. What I recall of post-life options for Culture citizens tended to be: oblivion (often with your memories being donated to some database or Mind), merging into a groupmind, or storage, either physical or virtual, until the Culture's sublimation. Also, choosing to live more than 400 years is considered kinda gauche. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 14:15 on May 1, 2016 |
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May 1, 2016 14:07
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xian posted:Matter was long by necessity to support the bait + switch, IMO. Matter is a weird one where the narrative meanders along for most of the book going nowhere in particular, then falls off a cliff in the last 100 pages when poo poo actually starts to go down. But by the time there was the reveal of The Iln I had completely forgot what an Iln was and why we were supposed to be afraid of it.
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May 1, 2016 15:02
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Trin Tragula posted:The Culture is not a liberal democracy and I wouldn't be surprised if suggesting that it is means that you start hearing a ghostly Scottish voice singing the Internationale for a while (leave out a few drams of Islay and it should go away again) To be fair it's kind of difficult to politically or economically categorize a society with 50 trillion entities, no laws, and no scarcity, run by god-like machines with a thing for helping people be happy and enabling instantaneous, ad hoc local referenda. Talk about an out-of-context situation by the standards of anything on Earth. On a vaguely related note, one of my favorite things about the Culture is that Banks recognizes that people who crave structure, importance, and opportunities to be as stuck-up and egotistical as always will still exist despite so many radical changes, like the Orbital Defense/military-obsessed rules-follower Yime Nsokyi from Surface Detail or the theoretical egomaniac, and that the Culture sets up up things like Quietus (or even Contact as a whole for that matter) or permanent VR simulations to keep them happy and preoccupied if they so choose. EDIT: Ahahahahah. I forgot how things ended for Yime and went back and looked. I love Banks' sense of humor. Combed Thunderclap fucked around with this message at 07:22 on May 2, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 05:37
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It's been a while since I read it and I confess I no longer remember which book it was in, but I like the gal who's whole thing was that she signed up to fight hegemonizing swarms in basically an X-Wing and IIRC dies bravely doing it, in spite of there being no practical need in the Culture for any carbon meat creature to "man" any kind of craft for pretty much any reason.
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May 2, 2016 06:27
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Otisburg posted:It's been a while since I read it and I confess I no longer remember which book it was in, but I like the gal who's whole thing was that she signed up to fight hegemonizing swarms in basically an X-Wing and IIRC dies bravely doing it, in spite of there being no practical need in the Culture for any carbon meat creature to "man" any kind of craft for pretty much any reason. Auppi Unstril, also in Surface Detail! I really did like how that book gave Culture citizens yet more totally unnecessary fun, death-defying/creating hobbies. ...I still want to go lava surfing without having to worry about permanently dying 
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May 2, 2016 07:25
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xian posted:Matter was long by necessity to support the bait + switch, IMO. What was it? Been years since I read it.
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May 2, 2016 08:49
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Combed Thunderclap posted:To be fair it's kind of difficult to politically or economically categorize a society with 50 trillion entities, no laws, and no scarcity, run by god-like machines with a thing for helping people be happy and enabling instantaneous, ad hoc local referenda. Talk about an out-of-context situation by the standards of anything on Earth. The culture is a benevolent oligarchal authoritarian regime which was designed and operates by deliberately creating dictators who are benevolent and good and permissive of personal liberty and passing the authority to them. And where the rest of the designed oligarchs would reign in any who failed to live up to those principles. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 14:25 on May 2, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 14:19
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Combed Thunderclap posted:Auppi Unstril, also in Surface Detail! I really did like how that book gave Culture citizens yet more totally unnecessary fun, death-defying/creating hobbies. I liked how Banks left things vague as to whether Auppi dumped of her boyfriend because she'd matured past the "dying for funsies" attitude or for because she'd stayed immature despite her experiences.
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May 2, 2016 14:40
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MikeJF posted:The culture is a benevolent oligarchal authoritarian regime which was designed and operates by deliberately creating dictators who are benevolent and good and permissive of personal liberty and passing the authority to them. And where the rest of the designed oligarchs would reign in any who failed to live up to those principles. it's magical despotism
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May 3, 2016 08:45
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What better way to escape the political system than to become completely irrelevant to the political system?
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May 3, 2016 13:28
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MikeJF posted:The culture is a benevolent oligarchal authoritarian regime which was designed and operates by deliberately creating dictators who are benevolent and good and permissive of personal liberty and passing the authority to them. And where the rest of the designed oligarchs would reign in any who failed to live up to those principles. The Minds aren't dictators though, they're just vastly more capable citizens of The Culture. They don't tell their citizens what to do and as far as they have laws, they can't, no matter what else The Minds may be they're not authoritarians in any sense of the word. I think a more interesting and accurate way to approach the subject is to think of The Culture as a post-human society, whilst they give some flavour and meaning to the lives of Minds they do not and cannot meaningfully control the means of production of their society due to the sheer scale and complexity of their environment. It feels a little perverse given in real life oligarchs and tyrants are the cause of so many of the world's problems and numerous contemporary disputes are over the public ownership of the means of production, but the central concept behind the series is they're a literal utopia and basically the end-state of biological human society so the state having 'withered away to nothing' to the point where ownership of means of production is irrelevant is kind of the point.
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May 3, 2016 14:41
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The Minds are like people ladies that like to have a bunch of pets around because they are cute and do funny antics and go out of their way to keep the pets happy in any way they can. When they want to do something because they do know best they go to the trouble of convincing the pets of the merit of their actions. They didn't have to put up with any of this if they were authoritarian, their word would be law and they could wipe us out in the blink of an eye if they felt like it. We're nowhere near the power dynamic that would be needed for an authoritarian relationship, it's like humans being authoritarian with rats. It's like the Culture created their own cat ladies and made toxoplasmosis part of their DNA from the get-go. They created gods as they would wish gods would be. MeLKoR fucked around with this message at 16:17 on May 3, 2016 |
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May 3, 2016 16:13
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Also, and this really annoys some of the Minds, sometimes an otherwise average Culture citizen is just plain better at task X than all the Minds are. Sure, it's not very often or anything, but out of trillions and trillions of people you're going to have at least one who is the greatest interior decorator/political scientist/whatever that's ever been or ever will be and part of the Culture's thing is that those people will actually have the opportunity to find that out instead of filing papers in a cubical.
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May 3, 2016 19:24
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I wonder if annoyance is the right word. There was that one character in Phlebas who's mind was on par with the Minds of the Culture, and by all accounts they viewed her as something that was intensely intriguing and worth further study, rather than something to be worried about.
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May 3, 2016 19:56
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Max posted:I wonder if annoyance is the right word. There was that one character in Phlebas who's mind was on par with the Minds of the Culture, and by all accounts they viewed her as something that was intensely intriguing and worth further study, rather than something to be worried about. You're right, a few of the Minds can be awfully snooty but they're not about to do anything other than crack jokes about getting outsmarted by humans from time to time. (And the Culture is not above suffering losses or getting outsmarted by other species of course.) On a totally unrelated note, I recently re-read Surface Detail and enjoyed it a lot more than when it first came out. I especially love the GFCF, what with their total obsession with being like the Culture to the point of throwing tantrums and acting very un-Culture like. Can't help but feel like this is one potential version of our own Trek-obsessed civilization and/or a very playful dig at some Culture fans and every scene the little hypocrites appear in makes me laugh.
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May 3, 2016 20:15
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Max posted:I wonder if annoyance is the right word. There was that one character in Phlebas who's mind was on par with the Minds of the Culture, and by all accounts they viewed her as something that was intensely intriguing and worth further study, rather than something to be worried about. "On par" is overstating it, I think. She's incredibly good at making certain types of predictions through some sort of intuition. In other respects, mentally, she's got nothing on a Mind.
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May 3, 2016 21:03
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Annoy/Intrigue seems pretty arguable, to me. Certainly they're not threatened by her, but they're not really threatened by much unless they choose to be. I like the Minds, but the trick is that they're basically just really smart people rather than truly alien, because the alien ones either Sublime or never get finished being born/built/sculpted in the first place. So some arrogance is pretty much built in. I feel like the way they treated Zakalwe wasn't the way you'd treat someone you considered an equal.
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May 4, 2016 08:46
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I'm not sure all or even most minds hold humans in the kind of benevolent contempt that we would have for a pet. Lots seem to cultivate genuine friendships with human and drones. There's even the one from Look to Windward who more or less begs a primitive human-equivalent to keep it company as it dies, from one old soldier to another. It kind of reminds me a bit of an AI in Embassytown by China Mieville. It spends most of the book as a pretty uniquely close friend of the main character. Then, towards the end, it turns out that the AI has the same sort of relationship with dozens of people, and they part ways feeling fairly betrayed by each other. Ultimately, it's not like the AI was faking the whole time, it's just a question of how could something with that much extra intelligence not do everything bigger and faster and more often? Peztopiary posted:Annoy/Intrigue seems pretty arguable, to me. Certainly they're not threatened by her, but they're not really threatened by much unless they choose to be. I like the Minds, but the trick is that they're basically just really smart people rather than truly alien, because the alien ones either Sublime or never get finished being born/built/sculpted in the first place. So some arrogance is pretty much built in. I feel like the way they treated Zakalwe wasn't the way you'd treat someone you considered an equal. I dunno, is it so different to how any intelligence agency would treat a useful outsider? After you factor in that a) zakalwe seems uniquely capabale and b) they're space gods and it's an Iain M Banks novel?
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May 4, 2016 20:51
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Strategic Tea posted:I'm not sure all or even most minds hold humans in the kind of benevolent contempt that we would have for a pet. Lots seem to cultivate genuine friendships with human and drones. There's even the one from Look to Windward who more or less begs a primitive human-equivalent to keep it company as it dies, from one old soldier to another. I mentioned a cats/pets relationship due to the power imbalance, there is a fundamental difference in that cats/pets aren't sentient so you won't get the same treatment you give a cat. I have no doubt that the Minds enjoy the friendship of humans and drones but even so we aren't equals in any sense. They are literally gods, much more powerful that any gods ancient humans invented. The fact that they cultivate our friendship despite our limitations is what I think Banks did best with the Minds. If you were a god why wouldn't you surround yourself by a horde of fragile mortal creatures and try to help them out? It would cost you nothing, time would not be an issue to you, you would have all the power in the relationship if you had to exert it and you would get a legion of creatures looking up to you. If even us humans can derive so much enjoyment and love interacting with non-sentient creatures with our limited powers imagine if we had the power of Minds. At the very least we'd uplift them a la David Brin.
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May 5, 2016 00:38
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I like to think that Humans are chaotic in a way that the Minds can't predict, which is why they keep them around. Like a Mind can figure out what the likely outcome to some situation would be, but they don't know how to specifically make that happen, but they know which human would be perfect for that role. I mean, Zakalwe Was in a position to win a war that no one in the culture thought was possible. That must have completely confounded them when they heard he was one button press away from killing the leadership of the other side.
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May 5, 2016 00:49
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Max posted:I like to think that Humans are chaotic in a way that the Minds can't predict, which is why they keep them around. The "no non-consensual mind-reading" rule helps in this department too, I'd imagine. Which I like to pretend at least some Minds obey in part because they know it would spoil a lot of the fun, in addition to the lengthy moral/ethical reasons.
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May 5, 2016 01:45
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