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lodidah posted:I'm still going through the series. I really like everything I have read, definitely my kind of sci-fi. I finished Excession and I'm reading Look to Windward now. The Chel, basically, are kinda like tigers that have a sort of flappy limb in their middle, so their front limbs are like hands. The Homomdans are a little harder to pin down, but seem to be very large and solidly constructed pyramidical shaped creatures on three limbs. Banks is very imaginative and unique in many respects, especially with regards to the Minds, but his aliens do tend to be vague analogues of terrestrial species. So, the Oct are basically crabs, the Affronters are basically jellyfish, the Chel are basically tigers, the Pavuleans are basically two trunked elephants... Then again, it is very, very difficult, by its very nature, to imagine truly alien species. Peter Watts' 'Blindsight' is one of the few, off hand, I can think of that presents creatures utterly different to anything we have ever encountered.
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Sep 21, 2011 23:35
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General Battuta posted:Yeah, I would say that Blindsight and The Mote in God's Eye are the only two books I can think of purely off the top of my head that did really alien aliens without resorting to 'goo!' or 'energy field!'. Blindsight's critters may seem analogous to certain terrestrial marine organisms but it's purely superficial body-plan stuff. (Fire Upon the Deep had some pretty creative aliens but they were psychologically very human.) I'd say even the Moties are pretty relatable. But you're right, Banks shines when he presents hyper-intelligent, god-like AIs as a sort of human-ish ideal. I like the idea, no matter how far-fetched, that true personalities can emerge just as easily from non-organic materials as they can from squishy meat stuff, and that they might even be miles better at being charming, funny, humane and clever than we are.
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Sep 22, 2011 00:30
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General Battuta posted:Well, some of the mediators certainly are, but as I recall it drives them insane in the long run if they emulate human psychology (the whole fyunch-click deal). True enough - again, you could argue that there's a certain semi-chinese room situation going on there, that they're just trying to model human relations without truly grasping them. It's not made completely explicit in the book, but you're right, there's probably a lot of leeway as to how much understanding there actually is there.
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Sep 22, 2011 00:41
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Also, the rest of 'em are a bunch of boring stuffy arseholes. I imagine you might be able to embarrass parts of the Culture, but the rest are under no compulsion to give a drat. Short of all out war, you can't really strike a political body blow to an almost completely anarchist collective.
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Mar 2, 2012 16:36
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We gonna do this again? GSV Space for Rent GOU Now Look What You Made Me Do
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Mar 2, 2012 17:57
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Prolonged Priapism posted:That's already one! It's mentioned in Look to Windward. Ah bollocks, you're right. Think I'm gonna have to cheat a bit on the next one. ROU Mostly Harmless a kitten posted:It's really hard to beat Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The for ship names. Frank Exchange of Views is my favourite euphemism for horrible, bloody combat ever. Barry Foster fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Mar 3, 2012 |
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Mar 3, 2012 13:21
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Moeru posted:I appreciate the thread. You've got my interest. I added to my ever-growing mass of books to read. While Consider Phlebas is in no way the best of the Culture books, it's worth getting through. It's a good introduction to the Culture from an outsider's perspective. Also, as far as I can tell, the series runs in chronological order - it doesn't generally make too much difference, but there's a definite progression of technology and various references to Culture history throughout. Also, GCU Oh, There Goes Gravitas
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Mar 9, 2012 21:23
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Flipswitch posted:If Excession was anything to judge, Culture Minds seem to be something to be very wary of. Oh, I dunno. Like all the Culture books, we only see the lunatic fringe, and most of them are still pretty level headed for the most part. Absolutely, you'd never want to even be in the same galactic quarter as Falling Outside of Normal Moral Constraints or Grey Area, but I'd imagine most of the Orbital Minds to be totally amiable. I'd much rather live in a world run by Minds, frankly.
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Mar 15, 2012 10:54
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andrew smash posted:To each their own I guess. I read ringworld as a teenager and thought it was awesome, then reread it a couple years ago and thought it was garbage. In comparison I've been reading the culture books for about a decade and things i've really enjoyed about them have shifted over the years but my experiences with them have always been very positive. I'm reading Ringworld right now, actually, because I needed a new fix of not too complicated sci-fi to get me to sleep at night. I very, very nearly gave up right at the beginning. The concept is cool and all, but his prose is atrocious, and his characters read like the creations of an autistic teenager. Teela in particular makes me cringe constantly. I'll be done with it soon, but having read The Mote in God's Eye awhile ago, I get the impression it was Jerry Pournelle, of the two of them, who could actually write passable dialogue and characters.
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Apr 4, 2012 11:38
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Prolonged Priapism posted:Maybe it was just me, but I also find Banks' treatment of drones/AI (especially in CP, which I read first) to be somewhat fresh. I was waiting for the drone that got dragged along with the gang in to the tunnels to turn out to be a Culture spy, or backstab Horza/the whole gang, give them up to the Idirans, desert them, or something other than just be, well, a person who happens to be an advanced computer. Most other sci fi I've read deals with androids/AIs/robots/drones as 'other,' and a lot of the time this means they end up the antagonists, mysterious, unsympathetic, or at least filling some sort of plot device role. In the CP, the drone is just... a grumpy person who gets dragged along but tries to help. I though that was kind of cool. They're just (way faster with cooler senses/abilities) people. Banks' treatment of AI has always been my favourite feature of his books, and I imagine that's the same for a lot of people. It's an inherently egalitarian concept - he basically makes no distinction between whether a conscious intelligence is running on organic or inorganic hardware. Intelligence is intelligence, and that's it. It's the kind of social model I'd hope we could adopt if we were ever to create strong AI (we won't, of course, we'll treat them as subhuman slaves). I particularly like that he completely subverted the skynet 'super computer gets out of control, begins to improve itself spontaneously, wipes out creators' trope. The Minds may or may not have been an accident thousands of years ago, but when they started learning exponentially they just decided that being cool to their creators was the rational and humane thing to do. 'AI takes over humanity' is usually presented as horrifying - with the Culture, it made perfect sense. As I've said before, I'd sure as hell prefer the world to be run by a Mind.
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Apr 5, 2012 08:47
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Neurosis posted:What is ethical with respect to AI will depend a lot on how it is developed, I think. If it is based on a model of the human brain then anything less than full rights would be a great crime. If it's a purely artificial creation, with behavioural parameters completely within our control then it is conceivable we might be able to create an AI for which different standards could be applicable. Surely that's where things become a bit sticky, though? I agree completely on the human brain model, but why would creating an intelligence that didn't closely resemble ours necessitate different standards and/or rights? If we could control its behavioural parameters (presumably after the initial design process), then could we say it's an actual AI? Then again, we can control human behavioural parameters quite easily, which I'd argue further muddies the waters. Banks, it must be said, pretty much writes his AIs as humans with amazing abilities, so it's hard to go to him for a model of a truly different form of intelligence. Still, I feel leery about 'not like us, therefore without rights' arguments - though if I've misunderstood your argument, that's cool.
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Apr 5, 2012 09:26
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Neurosis posted:I agree that the default position should be a full set of equal rights because of the moral dangers of applying different sets of standards. But in some cases it might be not be a problem of ethics if the AI did not possess certain rights. Perhaps a given right might be a meaningless right to them if they are truly an alien intelligence, I don't know. Probably a redundant argument since for the sake of safety, as I said above, equal status is preferable. I think we're definitely in agreement, then, with regards to a general 'better safe than sorry' attitude on AI rights. Not that, as with your second point, we are often particularly given to that kind of outlook. I've no problem with giving a human model AI rights, but I sure as hell wouldn't want it anywhere near the 'fire all nukes' button. Then again, I don't really want an organic human near it either (or for one to exist). If we eventually decide to make our own gods, they should be as little in our image as possible, I think. EDIT Tuxedo Catfish posted:Dwellers are the worst though, I reread the description he gives the first time they're introduced in The Algebraist three times and I still couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be imagining. It's not perfect (a bit cartoonish, but then again, so are the Dwellers), but I think this chap's drawing is a pretty good way to visualise them. He certainly includes all the disparate features Banks mentions, though who knows if it matches up correctly. http://wunderbear.deviantart.com/art/The-Algebraist-Dweller-Study-138198515 Barry Foster fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Apr 5, 2012 |
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Apr 5, 2012 09:54
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Seldom Posts posted:These are the reasons I remember now, and I don't think of them as being particularly silly. To me, one of the big themes of Bank's Culture books is the post-scarcity society. One his Big Questions is: why go on living if everything is provided for you? Or what do you do with your life if you don't have to do anything? Not to get too political because this isn't D&D, but the idea that the only way to find meaning in life is through a daily struggle for existence is by no means a true one. Many (me included) would argue that it's a dominant ideology of our current, (somewhat artificially) scarcity-based society, and one predicated on exploitation and authority. Not having anyone starving to death, having to work for 15 hours a day, or even spend their lives having to pay off debt (ie, the Culture) wouldn't suddenly and inevitably make everyone brainless, hedonistic blobs. Sure, it may make some people brainless, hedonistic blobs, but it'd also leave a lot of other people free to pursue whatever they want to pursue. Hell, if they want to live miserable lives, they're free to do that as well - but I think that's a fair price to pay for an egalitarian society where no-one is forced to suffer. I'm not having a go at you, and I do see where you're coming from, because it's hard for us, in the society we live in, to imagine what it'd be like to live in a post-scarcity society. We're inevitably culturally conditioned to think that certain things make life meaningful.
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Apr 5, 2012 16:33
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Seldom Posts posted:If you're suggesting that I'm arguing that, then you've misread my post. I think that Banks raises that question and leaves the answer ambiguous. You're quite right, sorry about that. Certainly Banks has said that he personally considers the Culture the closest possible thing to a perfect utopia, and that any ambiguity stems from the fact that writing about perfectly happy lives isn't interesting - but let's forget the author's intentions, because I get where you're coming from now. Seldom Posts posted:You're assuming this is a good thing, and I'm saying that Banks is asking you to question that assumption. As an example, what do you think of the way Gurgeh chose to live his life and what happened to him? The Culture allowed him to choose the life he wanted, and then manipulated him into destroying another culture that reflected the values he had chosen. Was the Culture right to do that? This is where it gets very tricky, and it really stems from the wider interventionist issues of the Culture. In any normal, real world (or more realistic) situation, the intervening party would have no right to do that - when the decision comes from supposedly near omniscient Minds, it becomes more ambiguous. I suppose the problem with liberalism, like many other things, is that it tends to fall apart in anything less than perfect circumstances. SC doing whatever the gently caress it wants throughout the books is an illustration of that, because, good as the Culture is, it certainly isn't perfect. But I'd still say that a post-scarcity society doesn't necessarily entail interventionism. Seldom Posts posted:I am saying that the question of 'meaning' for most people depends on the extent to which the scarcity problem is solved for them. So when Banks raises it, he's really talking about the rich and the poor. I was pretty much saying the same thing, may not have come across.
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Apr 5, 2012 17:58
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Then Matter, then Surface Detail. You've already read most of the absolute best the Culture series has to offer, and the two latest books suffer a bit from bloat and a few narrative blips, but they're still fun reads, and full of Culture-y goodness.
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Apr 7, 2012 21:53
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The Dark One posted:No love for Inversions? Still haven't read it, but as I understand it's not a Culture Culture novel, right? I'll probably get round to it, but I'm hamstrung by an inevitable bias, which is 'no drones or ships? Don't care' 
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Apr 8, 2012 08:59
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Red Crown posted:Anyway, I just finished Excession. Like most people, I found the machines very interesting and only skimmed the parts of the epilogue that concerned the human characters. I want to save Look to Windward for a special occasion, is there any reason I shouldn't read Matter first? Absolutely none I can think of, I read Matter before Use of Weapons and Look to Windward. The latter, in particular, is in many ways a very self-contained, 'personal' story. It's got all the big Banks set-pieces you might expect, but the core narrative is far from game changing. Also, doing it this way, you get to save the best 'til last. I found Matter agonisingly slow and bloated at the beginning, but it does get a lot better as it goes along. It's still no LtW.
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Apr 15, 2012 18:01
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Prolonged Priapism posted:I guess loving Infinite Fun Space (and spending a lot of time there) and caring deeply about the real universe, even down to the level of individual humans, aren't mutually exclusive for a Mind. It does sort of make sense: what self respecting hyperbeing with godlike powers would neglect any aspect of its life, internal or external? If you could do anything almost flawlessly, why wouldn't you? I'd say you've hit the nail exactly on the head, there. They're close to gods, and on the far side. I'd imagine they're perfectly capable of dealing with and caring about the internal and external universe at the same time.
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Apr 20, 2012 12:41
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Coriolis posted:It probably is an exceptional case, but I like the idea that Minds can be that concerned for a single individual. It makes them seem a little less godlike. I think it makes them seem a lot more godlike, seeing as we know they can be intimately concerned with billions of individuals at a time.
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Jun 1, 2012 22:38
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pseudorandom name posted:The first incident committee chair-ship in Excession was a triad, yet it operated and communicated as a single entity. Ulver Seich guesses it was a triad based on it (the ship) saying everything in triplicate, and her drone friend confirms this. God, Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The was such a boring old arse. Totally didn't deserve to be in the Interesting Times Gang.
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Jun 13, 2012 14:10
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Yeah, but that's what makes it perfect. Who'd suspect a Mind like that to be involved in a totally sweet secret club? I love how the highest tiers of Culture organisation (such as it is) more or less boil down to club house mentality. pseudorandom name posted:I was talking about the ship that was immediately shoved out of the way by the Interesting Times Gang. Yeah, that was the one I was thinking of, I'd just gotten the names mixed up. As awesome as the Mind parts of Excession are, there are a lot of names to keep up with.
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Jun 14, 2012 10:18
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andrew smash posted:I enjoyed the first part of the book despite all that. The main character's manservant was very amusing. The plot was pretty shaky though, that much I'll agree with. I'd agree with this. Matter basically strikes me as Banks doing a sci-fi version of Don Quixote, and just as Sancho Panza is the best of that book, Choubris Holse is the best part of Matter. There're a few good Culture bits, and the end, even though it's rushed, is at least quite exciting, but generally I think the book's a lot more enjoyable when you take it as the meandering adventures of Sir Vain Dumbass and his long suffering manservant. Its ridiculous length is also at least partly justified by looking at it that way.
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Jun 26, 2012 08:33
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Well that's much better. I've always preferred that UK style though. Also, although artistically I know that it's being the longest Culture novel yet will mean it'll be a bit of a flabby mess (like the last two), I can't deny that I'm still kinda pleased about it. Iain M. Banks was my go-to 'reading for fun' author for quite awhile, so the more he crams in there (preferably about Minds and Drones), the longer it'll hold me out.
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Jun 28, 2012 11:09
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The Algebraist was absolutely fantastic whenever it was dealing with the Dwellers. The scene where the main bad guy is trying to force them to co-operate by killing hostages is one of the best he's ever written. But overall there's just so much stuff that doesn't need to be in there. It also starts abominably slowly. It's the only one of Banks' books I've read so far that I nearly put down.
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Jun 28, 2012 15:58
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Pound_Coin posted:I thought it was like offal? various unidentifyable bits of gore? That'd be sweetbreads. General Battuta posted:They're great characters, but part of that greatness is the seductive bonhomie of their jovially psychopathic screen presence counterposed against the fact that they're severely hosed up. I'm not totally sure what it says about that guy from Excession that he wanted to be one of them. Banks excels at making utterly reprehensible species/societies seem like they're just a bit of knock-about laddy fun. The same thing could be said of the Dwellers (and interestingly, they're both floating jellyfish things). And it says that he's also a pretty awful person - but much less entertaining. Actually, thinking about it, most of Banks' main characters are pretty unpleasant and/or uncharismatic.
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Jul 3, 2012 15:56
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Krinkle posted:I like how all these minds, computers so large they exist largely in hyperspace, name themselves these weird little phrases. I like the huge conversations and the personalization of all the different names. Like it just cracks me up, the idea of this brain the size of a planet wanting to be taken seriously after naming itself the HMS wait til your father gets home. Frankly, this is my big problem with the Culture. I really think entities of such astounding power should comport themselves with a little more gravitas.
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Jul 11, 2012 09:19
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General Battuta posted:But the ships name themselves, Mr. Banks! Yeah, exactly. The way I figured, it works better as it being one of the occasional fads that sweep through the Culture - in this case, intentionally trolling whichever stuck up Involved species said that (I'd thought it was the Homonda for some reason, but it looks like he doesn't specify). MeLKoR posted:It would be quite easy to slide into a "god emperor" type of situation where the humans are little more than ants. Not that they aren't, but I kind of like the idea that these incredibly powered entities are above that sort of thing and just want to chill and interact with lesser creatures. Kind of like herding sapient cats and laughing at their antics. I think the names are reflective of the kind of relativistic attitude most of the Minds take - when you're that godlike, you can be as interested in the lives of your sentient wards as you can be in a supernova. You don't have to focus on one or the other. They're also wise enough to recognise that existence shouldn't really be taken seriously a lot of the time.
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Jul 11, 2012 18:41
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sdfvnre posted:I read all the culture novels at once last year, but didn't recognize that at all. It seems like too minor a name/nickname/character to be immediately recognizable. Not that it isn't adequate! The Algebraist is an uneven book, but the Dwellers are wonderful. They're kind of like the Affront, though way more eccentric and a little less viciously unpleasant.
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Jul 25, 2012 11:58
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sdfvnre posted:Yeah, I'm not opposed to more comic-book style space opera, it's just a slightly different style to the culture books I'm used to. The first couple of chapters were slow, but it's picking up now. I wonder if writing a non-culture space opera was a stylistic choice, or if he just couldn't reconcile cartoony Bad Guys with the culture Minds hanging around. Stick with it. It's meant to feel pulpy, I think, at least to start with. Everything gets so much better once the Dwellers get involved, especially once they really get involved.
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Jul 30, 2012 02:11
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They are, however, chronological, so while there are no direct links between the books, you can still generally track the Culture's tech progression over the 1000 years or so between Consider Phlebas and Surface Detail. It's definitely in no way essential, but if you're planning on reading them all anyway, it's fun to do so like that. This also means you get to jump straight to Player of Games next, which is easily one of the best Culture novels.
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Aug 4, 2012 21:57
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Pope Guilty posted:I can never tell if the Culture's supposed to be getting better tech or if the advancement of real-world technology and time are simply giving Banks bigger and better ideas. Like how in Shadowrun, wireless internet is apparently not a thing until the edition published after the real-world got wifi. I definitely think there's an element of that - stuff like how everyone starts getting neural laces, whereas before they had to use pen terminals and things like that. Everything (inevitably) feels a bit more '80s' in the early books - so more hands on and 'chunky'. I've also noticed that the Minds seem to use human avatars more and more as the series goes along, and they become more and more 'human' in the biological sense. But I think sometimes it is meant to be pretty clear that they're progressing quite rapidly. The Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints is presented throughout as being something preposterously overpowered by Idiran War-era standards.
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Aug 5, 2012 10:13
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big scary monsters posted:I don't know, I seem to remember it's mentioned a few times that technological advances within the Culture are generally pretty slow - they basically already have everything they could possibly need or want so where's the impetus for advances? Though this probably doesn't apply to SC. And while everyone has access to limitless technomagic, that doesn't necessarily mean that every person (or ship/Mind/world) chooses to be at the cutting edge; it's pretty likely that in some places it's fashionable to only use thousand year old tech. I'd imagine that if you were an average Culture citizen, you wouldn't notice any difference beyond your day to day needs, but I think there's definitely a lot of room for progression on the cutting edge. If only because of the various other Civs that are equiv-tech or better, it's likely the Culture aren't at the zenith of technical advancement. Again, the Offensive Units produced during the Idiran War were cutting edge at that point (why wouldn't they be?), but in Surface Detail the Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints cuts through an entire fleet of Torturer Class-esque GFCF ships like butter. Ditto Killing Time in Excession.
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Aug 5, 2012 14:14
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Banks also mentions other body forms that are common across space and time. Matter mentions a "Pan-hopper" species in the same way "pan-human" is used, and all Gas Giant species seem to be very similar. Most of it is just convergent evolution in terms of efficient body types. He also freaking loves his dirigible behemothaurs - which he confusingly refers to as 'avians', even though they're nothing like birds.
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Sep 13, 2012 16:19
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MikeJF posted:Pithy. You've got to admit that in a book called 'Matter', however, it's thematically pretty appropriate.
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Sep 14, 2012 11:33
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I'd still say read Player of Games beforehand - you're right that Look to Windward offers more insight into the day to day life of the Culture, but I think I enjoyed it a lot more for having read most of the other novels beforehand. My main recommendation would be to read all the 'early' Culture novels - Player of Games, Excession, Look to Windward - before heading on to Matter, Surface Detail and The Hydrogen Sonata, though. Stuff doesn't progress very quickly in the Culture, but there are noticeable differences. Incidentally, finished The Hydrogen Sonata yesterday. It's pretty much the definition of a shaggy dog story, isn't it? Not bad, but not particularly interesting either.
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Oct 10, 2012 13:50
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Blaminator posted:I don't know if people form outside of the UK can watch this but here's a 5 minute interview with the man himself! Not an in-depth or hugely interesting interview (considering the time limit and the boring questions), but hot drat, he's articulate. It's almost as if he memorised his answers beforehand. He must be a great conversationalist.
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Nov 3, 2012 12:55
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Here's everyone's favourite cuddly physicist Carl Sagan providing a very approachable demonstration of that very concept! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0WjV6MmCyM
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Nov 23, 2012 17:55
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This is the worst. Why do the good die young
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Apr 3, 2013 17:47
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Ataru13 posted:You know, I've always felt Bowie's Starman would have been a more appropriate request. And relatedly, the Dwellers' reaction to Lusiferous trying to strong-arm them in negotiations later on - "Hmm," Peripule said thoughtfully. "I do hope you have enough people."
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Apr 4, 2013 23:06
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Banks always freely admitted he wrote Consider Phlebas as if it were a massive-scale sci-fi film. The Culture universe as a whole is absolutely ripe for a visual medium, but I can't help but feel incredibly precious about it.
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May 26, 2013 10:53
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