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Gangringo posted:That's good to hear. I was worried about that one due to how much of the book is repeated lists of recipients of messages. It seems like that could get annoying after a while. I had the same concerns, but the Mind chats are pretty well executed. They don't bog down, and aside from the jargon-heavy message from the Fate Amenable to Change its pretty much like listening to a normal conversation. The other Peter Kenny narrated Culture audiobooks I've listened to were satisfactory as well.
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Apr 19, 2015 05:42
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Excession was the weakest of the first four, for me. Those are the only four I've read though. I'm expecting to enjoy Excession a lot more on a reread, for what it's worth. Consider Phlebas was really fun and served as a good introduction to the Culture, by virtue of leaving a lot of the meat about the Culture out. It made me want to know more, made me more eager to read Player of Games. I haven't started Inversions yet. I hope I like it.
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Apr 19, 2015 06:51
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Is Fate Amenable To Change the one that they tell they're going to break up and then just meet in another channel?
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Apr 19, 2015 06:55
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Its the one that discovers and monitors the Excession.
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Apr 19, 2015 07:54
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The one that gets cut out is Wisdom Like Silence
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Apr 19, 2015 23:42
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Excession is full of little details because a lot of it is told in multiple narratives that are out of sequence chronologically. Once you get a better handle on when everything's happening it's clear that the chapters on Peace Makes Plenty take place more than a month before the other chapters start. There are a lot of details you can miss where people in largely unrelated narratives talk to each other about people in the other narrative. For example, I think when Genar Hofoen meets that SC agent on Tier Orbital and thinks she's been altered to become his ideal woman, some celebrity, an SC Mind mentions a few chapters later that they couldn't get an SC operative to Tier, but had to contact the celebrity who happened to be on Tier herself. So he turned down an offer to sleep with his celebrity crush for real. There's a ton of little details in there like that. It's a good reread. I'm still confused about the Xanatos Pileup but I'm only halfway through my reread. I'm not sure who's part of which conspiracy. I don't know who Attitude Adjuster is working with.
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Apr 22, 2015 03:52
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Apparently Peter Kenny did several more Culture audiobooks than I realized—Audible just can't sell them in the US. Someone in here mentioned getting around this sort of problem with Kindle titles by temporarily changing their address to make the purchase. Has anyone here tried this with Audible? Does it cause problems with previously purchased titles?
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Apr 22, 2015 04:53
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I just finished Use of Weapons for the first time. I think I saw the final twist about Zakalwe's identity coming, but I was simply not prepared at all for the description of the chair.
Max fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Apr 26, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 11:24
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Max posted:I just finished Use of Weapons for the first time. I think I saw the final twist about Zakalwe's identity coming, but I was simply not prepared at all for the description of the chair. Man, that got under my skin. It's been years since I read it, and I still shudder when thinking of that scene.
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Apr 24, 2015 11:39
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ZekeNY posted:Man, that got under my skin. It's been years since I read it, and I still shudder when thinking of that scene. It was the description of the skin as the cushion that pushed it over the edge for me. Max fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Apr 26, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 16:33
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I know it's a pain, but it might be worth spoiler tagging those. It's too horrible and brilliant a moment to know about in advance.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:48
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Max posted:It was the description of the skin as the cushion that pushed it over the edge for me. Same, but then it got worse! It was specifically the fringe of public hair that was mentioned in the description that had me feeling like I might need to puke. Nope nope nope nope...
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Apr 24, 2015 22:03
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Barry Foster posted:I know it's a pain, but it might be worth spoiler tagging those. It's too horrible and brilliant a moment to know about in advance. I tried to keep it vague, but you're right.
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Apr 26, 2015 01:40
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I was actually underwhelmed with that.
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Apr 28, 2015 03:04
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I've been reading the Culture novels myself over the past year or so in order (skipping State of the Art, but maybe I'll go back to it). Will probably pick up Inversions next, having just finished Excession. I feel a little embarrassed that while I mostly liked Excession as a story, having to memorise the ship names and who was involved with who got a little tedious to the point where I stopped caring about their conversations at some points, especially when it was a two-ship conversation and I forgot which was supposed to be which. It didn't affect my overall understanding of the story, though... maybe? Did the Interesting Times Gang fail? My impression was that they were supposed to start a Culture-Affront war, but the various other players exposed it and so the Affront are humbled but are generally just chilling being their icky selves, and Genar-Hofoen is happy to chill with them. Attitude Adjuster commits suicide when it realises it hosed up, but I don't know what happened to the other members of the gang. Overall I think I enjoyed it a little less than Player of Games and Use of Weapons. I didn't like Consider Phlebas very much, but since it was the first book before later details were hammered out I don't hold it in distaste.
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Apr 28, 2015 04:17
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bewilderment posted:Attitude Adjuster commits suicide when it realises it hosed up Attitude Adjuster got brain-hacked. Late model Culture Warships can weaponize guilt.
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Apr 28, 2015 04:44
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I'm actually stuck on Excession. I'm almost exactly halfway through and I cannot for the life of me keep track of all the ships. Is there a reliable who's-who sort of guide that doesn't spoil too much? gently caress  It doesn't help that Alastair Reynolds' new book comes out like tomorrow or Thursday, and I'm way more hyped up about that and I haven't touched Excession in weeks. :\
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Apr 28, 2015 05:08
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I feel like I need to re-read Excession sometime. But the Culture books that are really essential reads are Use of Weapons and Look to Windward. Then Player of Games or Consider Phlebas. After that it's debatable. It's been mentioned a bunch of times, but I love the idea that you can view Excession, Inversions and Look to Windward as a sort of loose trilogy where you get to see The Culture from, respectively, above, below, and straight on from a roughly equal civilization.
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Apr 28, 2015 06:03
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bewilderment posted:I feel a little embarrassed that while I mostly liked Excession as a story, having to memorise the ship names and who was involved with who got a little tedious to the point where I stopped caring about their conversations at some points, especially when it was a two-ship conversation and I forgot which was supposed to be which. It didn't affect my overall understanding of the story, though... maybe? The Attitude Adjuster was brain hacked, but maybe you were thinking of Not Invented Here? NIH committed suicide at the end of the book. The Interesting Times Gang was just a bunch of high level ships that tended to get together during times of crisis, legends with huge amounts of experience that took over and had made contingency plans for things. The conspiracy was being done by a subset of ITG ships led by Not Invented Here and Steely Glint, who'd set things up so that the Affront would be in a position to do something that'd force the Culture to declare war on them - like steal the Pittance ships - and the Culture would be in a position to crush them via the Sleeper Service fleet. All they were waiting for was an event they could use to instigate it and shove the Affront towards taking that action. The Excession turned up and they used that. Some other members of the ITG, including Serious Callers Only and Shoot Them Later, had figured out that something was up and were trying to get a grasp on what was going on and stop it, and some other ships had no idea what was going on and were trapped in between, and the whole thing was a clusterfuck. In the end, the Sleeper Service had enough information - a lot of it had been transmitted to it by other members of the ITG who'd been trying to get ahold of it - that it could ferret out the conspiracy and expose it, so the conspiracy failed. NIH committed suicide, Steely Glint surrendered. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 09:59 on Apr 28, 2015 |
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Apr 28, 2015 09:53
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Hedrigall posted:I'm actually stuck on Excession. I'm almost exactly halfway through and I cannot for the life of me keep track of all the ships. Is there a reliable who's-who sort of guide that doesn't spoil too much? gently caress The thing that might help as you go is to keep in mind that Serious Callers Only and Shoot Them Later are the core of the anti-conspiracy-conspiracy trying to get to the bottom of everything.
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Apr 28, 2015 10:05
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One day I'll format all the ship conversations in Excession as an SA thread, complete with avatars. I think it'd make the whole thing a lot more readable.
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Apr 28, 2015 13:36
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:One day I'll format all the ship conversations in Excession as an SA thread, complete with avatars. Complete with probations and bannings? I like to think Grey Area would have a big red title.
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Apr 28, 2015 14:04
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Entropic posted:Complete with probations and bannings? I AM A HUGE IDIOT MEATFUCKER WHO MIND RAPES PEOPLE DISREGARD ALL OF THIS poo poo HERE ----------------------------------------------------------------------------->
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Apr 28, 2015 14:15
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Entropic posted:Complete with probations and bannings? Otisburg posted:I AM A HUGE IDIOT MEATFUCKER WHO MIND RAPES Ahahaha, amazing. I would love this.
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Apr 28, 2015 15:04
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MikeJF posted:
Okay, so here's something I've always wondered about Excession. The initial Mind-hack takeover of the Zetetic Elench vessel seems so out of character. Later on the Sleeper Service posits that the Excession acts like a mirror, showing the same face you present to it, so the ever-absorbing Elench were absorbed, the ships that stayed at a safe distance and did nothing had nothing happen to them, and its own rapid approach with a giant gently caress-off fleet was greeted with overwhelming force. Okay, fine. And later, the Grey Area basically just says "Hey, buddy, what's up?" and gets invited on in. But the Elench takeover was messy, there was flat-out hostility. poo poo blew up and people/drones died. The Elench ships and the people on them are the actors in this book most likely to say "Hey, buddy, what's up?" and eagerly await an invitation, so why didn't it go down that way? And later on, when the Elench vessel's sister ship makes contact with the Excession, bang, it's mind-hacked as well and it turns around and instantly tries to co-opt the Culture vessel by sending it the same meme-weapon it just got taken over by. These are flat-out hostile and invasive acts and don't seem to fit well at all with the Excession's own POV section at the end of the book.
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Apr 28, 2015 16:17
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Phanatic posted:Okay, so here's something I've always wondered about Excession. I agree, those scenes almost feel like they're from an earlier draft of the story or something. I wish those bits had led somewhere.
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Apr 28, 2015 17:36
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I agree, that never really meshed well. There's meant to be some context given by the conversation between the drone and the excession, and keep in mind that nobody actually died, they were all scanned and stored for later revival, and it's clear the excession doesn't consider that death... but still.
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Apr 28, 2015 17:43
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Yeah I think the whole "You insisted upon invasionary contact, not us" line was supposed to imply that the first Elench ship was actually being a lot more than just chatty. Even the later duo that ignores the Fate Amenable to Change's protests against contact tried to fly a drone inside the Excession via hyperspace or something like that. And don't forget that the Fate Amenable to Change actually exchanged 'hellos' with the Excession, and it said as much in its messages to its home ship. In fact, I think the Grey Area is the only entity that actually attempted to just have a conversation with the Excession. I don't know, you guys could be right and maybe I'm just rationalizing the problems away.
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Apr 28, 2015 19:57
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The Excession wasn't there to make friends, in was just passing through the area on Very Important Business when a bunch of weird looking You can understand and communicate with a stray dog, that doesn't mean you're going to be nice to it when it tries to take a playful bite out of your hand/cat/child. Avulsion fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Apr 28, 2015 |
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Apr 28, 2015 20:50
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The Elencher ships didn't understand what they were trying to communicate with. Peace Makes Plenty and Break Even both attempted to send a drone inside the Excession through infraspace, sort of the equivalent of finding a tower locked and trying to tunnel under it to get in. The thing is, the Excession may have interpreted that as hostile, or it may indeed have been a really dumb and harmful thing to do. Friendly but weirdly persistent neighbors trying to dig through your gas and electric lines to get to you because you wouldn't open the door, that sort of thing. The Elench just didn't know what they were doing.
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Apr 28, 2015 23:17
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Just started Matter and when the people inside the shell world fighting a war with gunpowder knew about the Culture, my mind was loving blown. This is gonna be good.
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Jun 9, 2015 15:19
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Just finished Look to Windward. That was excellent, definitely my favorite Culture book so far. As usual there were a few parts I didn't understand. What was the deal with the behemothaur scholar? When he's revived after a "galactic cycle" is that supposed to mean a year passed, or a huge amount of time? I was also pretty disappointed that Banks never went into detail on how the Chelgrians killed the Sansemin. Also, was the Chelgrian terminator supposed to be modeled on Quilan's wife? Oh, and why didn't the behemothaur's guardians wipe out the Chelgrians for killing the Sansemin? Eschatos fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Jun 9, 2015 |
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Jun 9, 2015 20:57
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Eschatos posted:Just finished Look to Windward. That was excellent, definitely my favorite Culture book so far. As usual there were a few parts I didn't understand. What was the deal with the behemothaur scholar? When he's revived after a "galactic cycle" is that supposed to mean a year passed, or a huge amount of time? I was also pretty disappointed that Banks never went into detail on how the Chelgrians killed the Sansemin. Also, was the Chelgrian terminator supposed to be modeled on Quilan's wife? A ridiculous amount of time has passed. Enough time for the airsphere to complete an orbit of the entire galaxy, basically. Enough time that the Culture and the Chelgrians and other civilizations of the era assuredly no longer exist. And if you pay attention to what's said when they're reviving him, it's implied that the Chelgrians were punished for their interference, just maybe not quickly or directly. The behemothaurs and whatever actually controls their little ecosystem are implied to have links to the Sublimed, who are nothing if not patient. If you mess with them they won't shoot you, they'll make sure your whole civilization declines over millennia and loses whatever power it had.
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Jun 9, 2015 21:11
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Eschatos posted:Just finished Look to Windward. That was excellent, definitely my favorite Culture book so far. As usual there were a few parts I didn't understand. What was the deal with the behemothaur scholar? When he's revived after a "galactic cycle" is that supposed to mean a year passed, or a huge amount of time? I was also pretty disappointed that Banks never went into detail on how the Chelgrians killed the Sansemin. Also, was the Chelgrian terminator supposed to be modeled on Quilan's wife? A galactic cycle is a full rotation of the galactic disk. So like 250 million years? So yeah, a 'huge amount' sounds like an apt description.
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Jun 9, 2015 21:13
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Eschatos posted:Just finished Look to Windward. That was excellent, definitely my favorite Culture book so far. As usual there were a few parts I didn't understand. What was the deal with the behemothaur scholar? When he's revived after a "galactic cycle" is that supposed to mean a year passed, or a huge amount of time? He was drifting in space so long that the airsphere lapped him in its orbit of the Milky Way. He'd been dead for hundreds of millions of years.
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Jun 9, 2015 21:19
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door Door door posted:Just started Matter and when the people inside the shell world fighting a war with gunpowder knew about the Culture, my mind was loving blown. This is gonna be good. I'm a minority, but Matter is one of my favourites. Think of the title as a shell world itself, with endlessly layered stacks of meaning.
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Jun 11, 2015 02:30
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Just watched guardians of the Galaxy again and man, the proto knife missile scene with Yandu is the best.
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Jun 22, 2015 17:54
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Just noticed this line in Inversions. Oh, Banks.
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Jun 22, 2015 20:46
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I know it's a classic Banks question, but where the hell is my successor to the mantle, world? Where is my author I can just delight in as much? I mean, I've never tried it but I'm reaching the point where I think I'm going to have to do it myself at this rate.* (*Obviously, this is said incredibly tongue in cheek; I have no illusions towards actually achieving this.)
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Jun 23, 2015 13:22
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Until she proves herself with a different fictional universe from her first, bland trilogy, don't believe anyone who says Ann Leckie.
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Jun 23, 2015 14:09
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