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Flipswitch posted:Look to Windward is still my favourite of the Culture series, with Kabe being the best character by far. I think I may go read it again. I wish there were more chapters with just Kabe, Ziller, Hub and E. H Tersono talking, the cable car chapter is one of my favourites. Do we have any news on a possible next Culture novel? http://io9.com/5510972/iain-m-banks-has-finished-his-new-culture-novel-surface-detail Looks like a new Culture novel is coming! Funny that you mention Look to Windward, as the blurb mentions cyber-consciousnesses and life after death, which reminds me of the Soulkeepers that the Chelgrians had in that book. Yeah, the cable car chapter was probably my favorite scene too, especially when the Hub reveals its actions during the Idiran-Culture War and it describes its emotions as it killed. parsleyc fucked around with this message at 01:37 on May 1, 2010 |
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May 1, 2010 01:35
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Entropic posted:Yeah, I didn't hate it that much, but it took me quite a while to get into it. It does pick up a lot in the back half. But by the time I got to the end I just had this tremendous sense of "so what?" It probably didn't help that I finished it around the same time as I read Charles Stross's loving amazing novella Palimpsest, which isn't strictly-speaking a many-worlds story, but has some similar ideas executed far, far better. Thank you so much for linking to that free copy of Palimpsest. I just finished reading it, what an amazing book. It gets far, far better toward the ending too, the opposite of so many other books that weakly peter out.
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May 3, 2010 19:37
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Kire posted:Thank you so much for linking to that free copy of Palimpsest. I just finished reading it, what an amazing book. Should we have a Charles Stross thread in here? I've read most of his stuff and it tends to be pretty good, with the occasional misstep here or there. Not sure if he's big enough to have his own discussion, though.
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May 3, 2010 21:04
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NmareBfly posted:Should we have a Charles Stross thread in here? I've read most of his stuff and it tends to be pretty good, with the occasional misstep here or there. Not sure if he's big enough to have his own discussion, though.
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May 3, 2010 21:18
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NmareBfly posted:Should we have a Charles Stross thread in here? I've read most of his stuff and it tends to be pretty good, with the occasional misstep here or there. Not sure if he's big enough to have his own discussion, though. I second this. Stross has had a couple duds, but I find most of his books pretty drat good. Also, that Palimpsest short story just linked was great. Made my afternoon at work just fly by. Back on topic, I got the Algebraeist last year and really liked it, especially the way he described the alien civilization in the gas giant. I gave Banks another try with Agaist a Dark Background recently, which was also excellent (if you don't mind the fact it gets very dark and depressing). Just finished Consider Phlebas, which I thought was only average. I guess it was one of his earlier works, and I did seem to like the whole concept of the Culture, and this thread says the rest of the books are much better, so I've got the next 5 Culture books coming to me in my latest Amazon order right now. You guys better be right, or I'm gonna have to slog through a lot of words!
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May 4, 2010 23:37
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Kire posted:Thank you so much for linking to that free copy of Palimpsest. I just finished reading it, what an amazing book. It gets far, far better toward the ending too, the opposite of so many other books that weakly peter out. he's got quite a few bits and pieces scattered around the net. foremost is accelerando, but my favourite is this short story: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm e: and a stross thread would be great
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May 5, 2010 00:04
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All I've really read of Stross is Halting State, Glasshouse, and some of his short fiction. I gather he's best known for his huge sprawling 6-part or whatever Merchant Princes series. Is that any good? I was never really into fantasy/space opera.CannedMeat posted:Just finished Consider Phlebas, which I thought was only average. I guess it was one of his earlier works, and I did seem to like the whole concept of the Culture, and this thread says the rest of the books are much better, so I've got the next 5 Culture books coming to me in my latest Amazon order right now. You guys better be right, or I'm gonna have to slog through a lot of words! It's worth noting that Use of Weapons and (I think) The Player of Games actually predate CP, in terms of when he wrote them but not order of publication. Banks had written a bunch of SF that he totally failed to sell to any publisher, then decided to try his hand at "regular" fiction, whereupon he wrote The Wasp Factory, Walking on Glass and The Bridge (all of which definitely read like an SF author trying to pass himself off as non-SF) before finally getting a publisher interested in his SF backlog. AFAIK, the first three culture books were all at least first drafts before The Wasp Factory was even written, and they weren't written in the order published. Use of Weapons, Look to Windward, and the short story collection State of the Art are the cream of the Culture crop. Lots of people love Excession but it's a bit weird and consequently divisive. Matter is good, but long and rambling as hell so not for the impatient. Inversions is an odd case, being as it is a Culture story as seen from the other side: the viewpoint characters are all members of a more "primitive" civilization that's the target of a Special Circumstances operation but who aren't really even aware of the existence of The Culture, so I wouldn't recommend reading it first if you want to catch everything.
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May 5, 2010 00:08
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CannedMeat posted:I gave Banks another try with Agaist a Dark Background recently, which was also excellent (if you don't mind the fact it gets very dark and depressing). I started Against a Dark Background earlier today, so I've got something to look forward to, the description of the ship-city is really interesting, Log Jam I think it was called? That said, the Culture novels get a lot better onwards from Consider Phlebas, which I feel stands out somewhat as a more action based novel, and I immensely preferred The Player of Games over it. But I guess that's my preference for non-action plots shining through. Although I loved the ending of Matter, so I guess I just prefer them more fast paced.  That said, one of my lecturers today spotted me reading Against a Dark Background and recommend The Wasp Factory and Espedair Street. Would anyone else recommend them? as I have literally no idea what to expect from the non 'M' titles.
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May 5, 2010 00:16
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Flipswitch posted:That said, one of my lecturers today spotted me reading Against a Dark Background and recommend The Wasp Factory and Espedair Street. Would anyone else recommend them? as I have literally no idea what to expect from the non 'M' titles. The Wasp Factory is amazing, and short, just don't let anyone spoil it for you!
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May 5, 2010 00:21
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Entropic posted:The Wasp Factory is amazing, and short, just don't let anyone spoil it for you! My two remaining shelves are rapidly running out of space though with the combination of Banks and Pratchett, drat.
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May 5, 2010 00:30
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Entropic posted:Use of Weapons, Look to Windward, and the short story collection State of the Art are the cream of the Culture crop. Oh god, I absolutely hated State of the Art, to me it read like bad fan fiction, specially the one about Earth that gave me such a strong "Galactica Discovers Earth" vibe that I almost expected Boxey to show up at some point. MeLKoR fucked around with this message at 00:48 on May 5, 2010 |
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May 5, 2010 00:44
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Well, whatever you think of the title story, it's got "A Gift From The Culture" and "Descendant" too.
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May 5, 2010 00:51
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coffeetable posted:http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm Read this. It's the Cold War with weaponized Mythos creatures. Read the gently caress out of this, it has the XB-36 nuclear powered bombers, 300 megatons aimed right at Cthulhu. Like that'd help. Seriously, read that.
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May 5, 2010 08:33
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mllaneza posted:Read this. It's the Cold War with weaponized Mythos creatures. Read the gently caress out of this, it has the XB-36 nuclear powered bombers, 300 megatons aimed right at Cthulhu. He's done two full-length novels around similar ideas - look into the Laundry series, the first book of which is "The Atrocity Archive". e: no-one post what atrocity archive is about because it's one of those books that's spoilt by knowing even fragments of the plot
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May 5, 2010 09:30
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I'm working on an OP for a Stross thread, trying to include all of his online stuff. So far, it's Scratch Monkey (Early, unpublished work. Haven't read it.) Toast, the short story collection which includes A Colder War. Palimpsest Accelerando (The full book, Creative Commons!) And the Laundry novelettes, Concrete Jungle, Down on the Farm, and Overtime. And some random links to stories o his blog, which is quite robust. Have I missed anything in particular? Oh, and I'm open to title suggestions. "The Work of Charles Stross: Living with the Singularity"? NmareBfly fucked around with this message at 18:27 on May 5, 2010 |
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May 5, 2010 17:48
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NmareBfly posted:Oh, and I'm open to title suggestions. "The Work of Charles Stross: Living with the Singularity"? Charles Stross's 101 Raptures Of The Nerds
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May 5, 2010 19:29
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I'm reading more of the culture novels and I am getting really irritated at Banks' insistence on having suits which "had to be sentient by the rules of the Culture" (which isn't true at all, there's no reason a simple spacesuit has to have sentience, they have non-sentient ships for example) and then giving them an extremely nagging personality so he can have pages of lame attempts at comedy. I think he's done this in each of the three Culture books I've read so far, I look forward to skipping over any future sections that include this cliche.mllaneza posted:Read this. It's the Cold War with weaponized Mythos creatures. Read the gently caress out of this, it has the XB-36 nuclear powered bombers, 300 megatons aimed right at Cthulhu. _______/  Entropic posted:The Wasp Factory is amazing, and short, just don't let anyone spoil it for you! To counter this, I hated that book and was terribly offended (yes i know writing that makes me sound like an old lady) and I actually boycotted Banks for many years because of that book. I would tell you what specifically offended me, beyond the awful torture of children and animals which happens on nearly every page, but I don't want to spoil anything for you.
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May 10, 2010 20:39
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 quote:It starts with a young woman being murdered. Miraculously, a secret deal means she lives again within the Culture. Now, she vows to return and kill her own murderer. Meanwhile, a war in heaven is brewing. Or rather a war between the Heavens. Heavens are the network of uploaded consciousnesses - a cyber life after death. But where there are Heavens, Hells soon follow. Wars between these realms are formal digital affairs, but now there are rumors of secret factories building warships and all signs point to the factions of the long-dead and digitized. One man holds the key to making this war manifest in the Real. And a young woman wants her revenge on him.
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May 10, 2010 21:39
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Kire posted:I'm reading more of the culture novels and I am getting really irritated at Banks' insistence on having suits which "had to be sentient by the rules of the Culture" (which isn't true at all, there's no reason a simple spacesuit has to have sentience, they have non-sentient ships for example) and then giving them an extremely nagging personality so he can have pages of lame attempts at comedy. I think he's done this in each of the three Culture books I've read so far, I look forward to skipping over any future sections that include this cliche.  The only "sentient suit" example I can think of was the short story based on the concept in State of the Art. There were smart-suits in Matter but they were explicitly non-sentient. Mind you it's been a while since I read Use of Weapons...?As for The Wasp Factory being "offensive", really? The protagonist does all sorts of nasty things, but you're not really supposed to sympathize with him.
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May 10, 2010 21:46
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Entropic posted:
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May 10, 2010 21:51
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Flipswitch posted:Excession had one, but that was it as far as I can recall. Yeah I'm thinking of Excession, Consider Phlebas (but I read that quite a while ago, maybe I'm thinking of an annoying drone?) and Player of Games. It's a minor nitpick, it just bugs me so much that the smarty-pants Culture would design a suit like that. Excession has been my favorite so far just for the detailed hardware analysis of the drones and Minds. Edit: You know what I'm thinking? It would be really amazing to have a few other authors take a stab at setting a story in the Culture universe. But I can't think of anyone else who writes utopian sci-fi, as opposed to dystopian or steampunk/cyberpunk. Maybe Dan Simmons (the Hyperion/Endymion/Olympos author). Entropic posted:
I don't mean offensive like "How dare that character do that!" I mean 'offensive' as in, it turns my stomach and makes me sick to even think about. I think I would have had a much different opinion of the book if I had known it is a horror novel or read it as such. Kire fucked around with this message at 22:27 on May 10, 2010 |
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May 10, 2010 22:21
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Kire posted:Yeah I'm thinking of Excession, Consider Phlebas (but I read that quite a while ago, maybe I'm thinking of an annoying drone?) and Player of Games.
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May 11, 2010 01:23
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There is a tendency for Drone characters to be slightly annoying, but more annoying to other characters than to the reader, I always thought. Like Mawhrin-Skel in TPOG or Tersono in LTW. I love how annoyed Cr. Ziller gets with Tersono, constantly blowing it off and suspecting it of being an SC agent.
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May 11, 2010 01:45
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Speaking of drones, someone tried to compile a list of what all their field colours mean: http://stp.lingfil.uu.se/~zrajm/nerd/drone_colours.html
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May 11, 2010 02:10
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Kire posted:Excession has been my favorite so far just for the detailed hardware analysis of the drones and Minds. Edit: You know what I'm thinking? It would be really amazing to have a few other authors take a stab at setting a story in the Culture universe. But I can't think of anyone else who writes utopian sci-fi, as opposed to dystopian or steampunk/cyberpunk. Maybe Dan Simmons (the Hyperion/Endymion/Olympos author). Is The Culture a utopia? I think the fact that it's somewhat ambiguous is one of the more interesting facets of the books. I didn't get to Endymion yet, but giving Simmons as another example of utopian SF is interesting. Not to derail, but he seems similar to Banks in that his futuristic setting isn't entirely black or white.
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May 11, 2010 05:25
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Pompous Rhombus posted:Is The Culture a utopia?
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May 11, 2010 05:39
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Pompous Rhombus posted:Is The Culture a utopia? quote:Interviewer: "Would you like to live in the Culture?"
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May 11, 2010 06:33
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Kire posted:I don't mean offensive like "How dare that character do that!" I mean 'offensive' as in, it turns my stomach and makes me sick to even think about. Sounds like an apt description of That Moment in Use of Weapons.
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May 11, 2010 10:17
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Entropic posted:I really liked the "Afterlife" stuff hinted at in Look to Windward, so this sounds like it could be awesome.
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May 11, 2010 10:46
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alkanphel posted:I would to see a book which involved the Sublimed. That could be pretty cool. I don't think you can really base a meaningful story about beings who have absconded to a higher plane of existence for unfathomable reasons to do unknowable, unimaginable, inexpressible things. The whole point of the Sublimed is that they're a mystery. I think their level of involvement in LTW is about as much as we'll ever see of them.
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May 11, 2010 12:46
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Pompous Rhombus posted:Is The Culture a utopia? I think the fact that it's somewhat ambiguous is one of the more interesting facets of the books. I didn't get to Endymion yet, but giving Simmons as another example of utopian SF is interesting. Not to derail, but he seems similar to Banks in that his futuristic setting isn't entirely black or white. Simmon's books obviously are not utopias, but wow I don't know how you think the Culture isn't the greatest thing ever. Can you think of something more utopic than the Culture? I can't. I was going to say "maybe a hedonistic VR" but you can do that in the Culture anytime you want. What makes you think it's ambiguous? Even Greg Egan's "Diaspora" is pretty utopic but not anywhere near the Culture and actually kind of sucks in comparison.
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May 11, 2010 15:10
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I just finished Look To Windward, and I have to say that it's the first Banks novel I've read without being left with a sense of... ennui, maybe? The rest of his stuff always ends on a sad note, it seems -- and don't get me wrong, the stuff with Quil and Hub were pretty sad -- but overall the story ends happily. And I like that because I'm a schmuck.  Starting Matter today.
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May 11, 2010 15:16
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Kire posted:Simmon's books obviously are not utopias, but wow I don't know how you think the Culture isn't the greatest thing ever. Can you think of something more utopic than the Culture? I can't. I was going to say "maybe a hedonistic VR" but you can do that in the Culture anytime you want. What makes you think it's ambiguous? The Culture is certainly a utopia to live in but SC certainly does some seriously questionable poo poo. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that. This isn't to say that the final result isn't a net positive but from the glimpses we are given it sure seems that a lot of eggs get broken spreading this utopian omelet.
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May 11, 2010 16:33
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MeLKoR posted:The Culture is certainly a utopia to live in but SC certainly does some seriously questionable poo poo. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.
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May 11, 2010 16:43
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Mudlark posted:I just finished Look To Windward, and I have to say that it's the first Banks novel I've read without being left with a sense of... ennui, maybe? The rest of his stuff always ends on a sad note, it seems -- and don't get me wrong, the stuff with Quil and Hub were pretty sad -- but overall the story ends happily. And I like that because I'm a schmuck. Oh boy, I'm waiting for your post when you finish it.
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May 12, 2010 00:42
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I have a theory that shields and certain effector technologies block sublimed and semi-sublimed civilisations from looking into and altering what we think of as normal space/time. The Airspheres in Look to Windward don't allow field technology afaik, and I think there's a similar artifact/location that has the same ban.
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May 12, 2010 16:13
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Looks like the "Odds" faction of the Jupter Dwellers have finished a formal war. From New Scientist quote:Jupiter has lost one of its prominent stripes, leaving its southern half looking unusually blank. Scientists are not sure what triggered the disappearance of the band.
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May 13, 2010 03:22
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Jupiter is considered a desert planet and therefore terribly unfashionable by the dwellers and they basically never go there because it sucks so much dick and they would lose cred This point is explicitly addressed
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May 15, 2010 04:08
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And also aHumans are basically Uncle Toms.
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May 15, 2010 04:42
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*wipes brow* just finished Look to Windward, that is definitely the best Culture novel I've read so far. Very fun. I'm starting on Use of Weapons right now.
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May 18, 2010 19:55
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