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MikeJF posted:I survived an I would buy this t-shirt.
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Nov 8, 2014 17:27
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I probably would not. But, I would tell you it was an awesome shirt if I saw you wearing it. 
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Nov 8, 2014 17:28
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Vavatch Orbital Damage "Eve Of Destruction" Grand Championship Runner-Up
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Nov 8, 2014 17:38
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I don't really wear graphic tees, but these two Luke Frost illustrations would be pretty neat wrapped around a tee:  If we're talking accessories too, a replica of Gurgeh's Orbital bracelet would be nice and subtle, especially while it's worn.
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Nov 8, 2014 19:27
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Have a couple long flights coming up. Thinking Look to Windward, Hydrogen Sonata, and Inversions (the three I haven't read, and state of the Art) Has anyone read Transition? Are there any other 'no m in the middle' books I should be checking?
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Nov 9, 2014 18:02
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Complicity and Whit are both fun. A bit the-kind-of-book-you-buy-before-a-long-flight-ish, but they've got some substance. Substances, too 
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Nov 9, 2014 18:35
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Transition was okay. Not great but a good read, pretty much what you'd like on a long flight, I think. I haven't read any other non-M novels (they're on my list, I swear, I just have too much to read) but from what I hear it's not his greatest work but entertaining none the less. e: Also, Wasp Factory is supposed to be amazing, which is first on my to read list and something I've thankfully been able to avoid spoiling for myself so far.
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Nov 9, 2014 19:43
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xian posted:Have a couple long flights coming up. Thinking Look to Windward, Hydrogen Sonata, and Inversions (the three I haven't read, and state of the Art) The Crow Road is one of Banks' best books, for my money. M or no M.
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Nov 10, 2014 00:29
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xian posted:Have a couple long flights coming up. Thinking Look to Windward, Hydrogen Sonata, and Inversions (the three I haven't read, and state of the Art) I liked Transition, and some versions of it have an M on the front too! Whit and Complicity are both fine (Complicity is better) but didn't really stick with me. Dead Air is decent along similar lines to Complicity, if you like one you'll probably like the other. To me The Business is somehow like Banks' addition to Gibson's Blue Ant trilogy, make of that what you will. The Crow Road is great, and Stonemouth is probably my favourite of his non M works.
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Nov 10, 2014 00:43
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I think that Transition, like The Steep Approach to Garbadale, works a lot better if you read it early. I just couldn't shake the thought "I liked this a lot better when it was simpler and easier to follow and called 'The Business'."
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Nov 10, 2014 03:03
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Crow road, steep approach and stonemouth form a bit of an informal trilogy I like to call the "teenagers are stupid" trilogy. They're all great. Whit is good as well, it's quite funny too.
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Nov 10, 2014 12:50
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I always liked the idea that Excession, Inversions and Look to Windward form a sort of informal trilogy of "The Culture seen from above, The Culture seen from below, The Culture seen head-on".
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Nov 10, 2014 15:28
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lenoon posted:Crow road, steep approach and stonemouth form a bit of an informal trilogy I like to call the "teenagers are stupid" trilogy. They're all great. Whit is good as well, it's quite funny too. Whit is my second favourite of the non-M books, and that's only because nothing touches The Wasp Factory. I didn't really like Transition at all, I remember thinking it was like Banks was writing Moorcock fan-fiction. Might give it another go sometime.
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Nov 10, 2014 17:14
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Entropic posted:I always liked the idea that Excession, Inversions and Look to Windward form a sort of informal trilogy of "The Culture seen from above, The Culture seen from below, The Culture seen head-on". I've heard similar said Excession, Phlebas and Windward. Perspectives on The Culture trilogy.
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Nov 10, 2014 17:55
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While I like the wasp factory an awful lot, it's probably tied with Crow Road for my favourite. There's something about the Crow Road that really gets to me, even though Wasp Factory is by far a better book.
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Nov 11, 2014 22:57
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Just so that others know. The Wasp Factory is quite a bit more of a mindfuck than the Culture books. I was not expecting that at all after reading his M. stuff. It was great, but wholly unexpected especially since I went in blind I guess sort of expecting a Culture book type of setup without the scifi, or something almost I dunno. Like a happy, clever, Scottish version of James Joyce or something.
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Nov 15, 2014 22:07
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Reading Look To Windward in Iceland, which is an amazing place to read it given the snow in the beginning etc. Only a few chapters in, but the pacing in the beginning feels a lot more languid than other Banks books.
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Nov 18, 2014 19:09
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sinking belle posted:I think I like Matter the most. I don't think many people think that they like Matter the most. Matter is great, because 1. it is Banks doing Shakespeare and 2. the title has like 14 meanings, which you can peel back like ... levels in a shell world. (and the fact that ultimately almost nothing any of the characters do actually matters is the last and most sublime of them)
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Nov 19, 2014 01:31
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sebmojo posted:(and the fact that ultimately almost nothing any of the characters do actually matters is the last and most sublime of them) What are you talking about? Everything they did mattered.
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Nov 19, 2014 03:46
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Can someone speak some words to me about Excession? I just finished it this afternoon and ended up feeling a little underwhelmed. The first half of it felt almost completely pointless, even though a lot of the little vignettes were cool and interesting. There was a I guess acknowledgement to this about halfway through by a couple of the Minds in one of their little Instant Messaging chapters "I wish something would happen! I remember being like "Yeah! Come on!" Generally I guess I liked the story, but it felt hidden by a bunch of other stuff that probably could have been entirely different books. I feel like if I ever get around to rereading it I'll probably enjoy it much more. Either I missed the point entirely or I got it and am left unimpressed. Maybe the crazy Mind shenanigans isn't for me.
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Dec 1, 2014 23:04
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The important bit is that Anticipation of a new lovers arrival, The is the best drat spaceship and its panic over the ITG is the saddest bit in the book
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Dec 2, 2014 17:37
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apophenium posted:Can someone speak some words to me about Excession? I just finished it this afternoon and ended up feeling a little underwhelmed. The first half of it felt almost completely pointless, even though a lot of the little vignettes were cool and interesting. There was a I guess acknowledgement to this about halfway through by a couple of the Minds in one of their little Instant Messaging chapters "I wish something would happen! I remember being like "Yeah! Come on!" Phone posting so this won't be as much as I might normally write. The thing about excession for me was that how it showed how the minds were not as great as they think they are. Despite being ahead of the meat people, they are still as petty at heart as their creators which is why they aren't deemed worthy by the OCP.
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Dec 3, 2014 02:33
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Seldom Posts posted:Phone posting so this won't be as much as I might normally write. The thing about excession for me was that how it showed how the minds were not as great as they think they are. Despite being ahead of the meat people, they are still as petty at heart as their creators which is why they aren't deemed worthy by the OCP. Of course, they have to retain some aspect of their creators because Perfect AIs always Sublime.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:41
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:The most powerful thing about Surface Detail is that it really makes you examine just how hosed up the idea of "hell" is, and immediately throws into suspicion any belief structure that includes the concept of unending torment as punishment. Late to the party but I'm quoting this because it is absolutely right and I think it is this that makes Surface Detail in some sense Banks' most compelling book. I've been an atheist for decades but reading this book really hit me hard. Somehow I had never thought about it before this book but hell is sick as gently caress and Banks is making his readers question hard. Not a great story, in my opinion, but a great book nevertheless.
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Dec 11, 2014 12:01
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I re-read Surface Detail the other day, and there's a lot of rape in it. Like, that's the point, Veppers is awful, Hell is awful but still... it's really rapey.
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Dec 11, 2014 13:06
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I re-read Surface Detail the other day, and there's a lot of rape in it. The villain of The Algebraist was that way, too. A little too graphically so for me.
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Dec 11, 2014 15:57
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I re-read Surface Detail the other day, and there's a lot of rape in it. Rape is just the domination of a fellow human. The horror of that hell goes beyond rape. Feeling humans in agony made in to statues. Dying over and over and over. Like was said above the concept of a Hell is just wrong. Rape is the least of the lovely things there. I hope the book changed some minds. :Edit ok that kind of sounds wrong. I'm just trying to say the horrors in that book go beyond any of the experiences of rape victims I know. Rape is awful. Hell as imagined by humans just seems way worse. Fragmented fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Dec 11, 2014 |
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Dec 11, 2014 17:09
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Player of Games got pretty rapey in places as well. Only so many ways to show depravity in alien civilizations, I guess!
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Dec 11, 2014 19:31
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It's a form of violence that provides immediate physical gratification to the attacker, which makes it appealing to both the sadistic and the selfish. It also translates easily to fictional aliens if you make some basic assumptions about their evolution.
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Dec 11, 2014 21:51
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Can someone who likes Inversions tell me what the point of all that was? At least Canal Dreams had a heroine I could cheer for. I mean, I get what he was trying to do, mostly, but there had to be a better way...
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Dec 17, 2014 23:28
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Inversions basically only works if you consider it in relation to the other Culture books. On its own its pretty weak, but as a viewpoint into the fact that Contact/SC treats the civilizations it interferes in as no more than ethological petri dishes it does a lot to dispel the notion of the Culture as a post-scarcity utopia.
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Dec 18, 2014 14:50
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Eau de MacGowan posted:...it does a lot to dispel the notion of the Culture as a post-scarcity utopia. No it doesn't. Post-scarcity inside the Culture. Not outside it. So, SC acts to circumvent outside influences that would destabilize the system.
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Dec 18, 2014 20:28
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Murgos posted:No it doesn't. Post-scarcity inside the Culture. Not outside it. So, SC acts to circumvent outside influences that would destabilize the system. No, it seeks to bring them into the circle of influence.
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Dec 18, 2014 22:00
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The two of you have just basically summarised Inversions. One of the characters advocates direct intervention and the other advocates letting them evolve on their own (IIRC, been a few years since I read it), so basically Contact is messing about with this civilization at best without any clear goal or purpose, or at worst simply as a personal ethics pissing match between the two agents and their disagreement. No answer is put forth as either morally correct or the Culture's true imperative in the novel. I used a poor choice of words when I said 'post-scarcity utopia', I should have probably said 'anarchist utopia'. It's not. Citizens have complete autonomy, but by the virtue of their society even existing on the scale it does, the Culture is driven to behave like any other 'nation-state' and meddle with other such 'states'. It's one of the subtle political digs Banks puts into the series, and I like it a lot.
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Dec 19, 2014 09:49
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I always got the impression that Vosill was an actual SC agent working to their plan, and DeWar was an independant actor, almost an SC agent gone rogue. I think it's backed up by the story DeWar tells, and also why his role is more passive rather than active, and he doesn't have a knife-missile backing him up.
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Dec 19, 2014 12:15
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I always got the impression that Vosill was an actual SC agent working to their plan, and DeWar was an independant actor, almost an SC agent gone rogue. I think it's backed up by the story DeWar tells, and also why his role is more passive rather than active, and he doesn't have a knife-missile backing him up. That's how I read it. You get the local population's view of both the sanctioned and unsanctioned forms of Contact intervention.
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Dec 19, 2014 14:47
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ZekeNY posted:That's how I read it. You get the local population's view of both the sanctioned and unsanctioned forms of Contact intervention. I read it the same way. Also my recollection is that Vasill's king was behind the plot against Dewar's, but I can't remember if Vasill played a role in it.
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Dec 19, 2014 17:06
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Seldom Posts posted:I read it the same way. Also my recollection is that Vasill's king was behind the plot against Dewar's, but I can't remember if Vasill played a role in it. Yeah this is mentioned in the text, they're arming and funding the Barons to use as proxies against the upstart republican forces. Seems unlikely that Vasill played an overt role in it, but she had the ear of the king and was influencing him in domestic matters for sure
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Dec 19, 2014 17:52
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Yeah this is mentioned in the text, they're arming and funding the Barons to use as proxies against the upstart republican forces. Seems unlikely that Vasill played an overt role in it, but she had the ear of the king and was influencing him in domestic matters for sure I never got the impression that UrLeyn was republican. It really seemed like he just swapped out the name of King for Protector, looking at how his government ran. Not to mention what you find out later in the novel...
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Dec 19, 2014 21:23
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Yeah Man posted:I never got the impression that UrLeyn was republican. It really seemed like he just swapped out the name of King for Protector, looking at how his government ran. Not to mention what you find out later in the novel... UrLeyn is a Cromwell like figure. While his generals seem prepared to essentially give him a crown, Ur Leyn himself seems very much against the Divine Right Of Kings - something that on first glance you'd expect the Culture to be on board with. However he's also a rapist so gently caress him, he gets the stabs. One of the themes of Inversions is that it's your actions that define you, not your abstract principles. We don't really get a sense for his domestic policies, but you're probably right, he's more a military dictator than a republican.
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Dec 20, 2014 01:27
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