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Waffle House posted:You have piqued my curiosity. Books are as interpretable as there are people on earth; what do you take away from Iain Banks work? The Dennis System posted:I'd like to read that though. I wish you'd do it. Okay, I'll give it a go. I'll just do one paragraph at a time as my ego isn't large enough to assume you'd want to read an entire treatise quote:1. There are no good guys This is wrong on two counts: Special Circumstances agents are not 'basically assassins' - killing to attain the goal of change is simply not a process used by SC. In Look, it is explained that they tried to change the political and social paradigm by carefully and subtly influencing an election to get a reformist politician into power (rather than simply bumping off the opposition). In Use, Zakalwe explains that the Culture does not kill people, even if they commit atrocities -even if you were literally Hitler and were committing genocide, they would not not kill you (instead, remove you to a new place where people will endlessly tell you how bad you are). Inversions is an entire book about how a SC agent influences a leader for the better by leading by example and persuation and is very passive in every interaction. SC agents are extremely adept at killing people, yet they almost never do - even when it would be more expedient to. By my count, in Inversions, the Doctor is only responsible for two deaths and they are where it is clearly them or her (the torture chamber). In Player, the drone and SC agent kill 3 between them, again as a matter of life and death for the protaganist (at the protest and at the finale). In Consider, the SC agent kills only one to protect Horza (the station fight), when there were plenty of times it would have been easier to kill. In Matter, the SC agent kills 3 to protect an innocent (the rape scene). In every scenario where social change for the better is the goal, assassination is never used, though it could often be the easiest approach. Whether assassination is not used could be moral decision or it could be because it is considered clumsy and unsophisticated by the Culture and it is a view for the individual reader to take and will depend on their personal views of the Culture. The Minds 'cheerful indifference' is also wrong. It is hard to understand the motivation of a Mind as they are near-gods and by definition we cannot grasp their thought process; but I would class their actions & intentions as being 'love'. They love the humans and treat them with utmost respect - both as an entire society and on an individual basis. Time and time again we see the Mind doing all it can to protect and nuture humans: be it defending an entire Orbital from attack to indulging a 20 year bout of depression by a perpetually-pregnant individual. To Minds, intellectually, humans must seem as algae is to us, yet there is never a single case of them treating humans as anything other than equals - whether it being their interactions with them or their discussions about them with other Minds. Logically, humans are utterly insignificant to Minds, yet the care and respect they consistently demonstrate can only be attributed to their analogue of 'love'. Be it a Ship or an Orbital, the relevant Mind will only ever act in the best interest of their crew/inhabitants. Also: 'They can never quite agree on whether they should prevent humans from slaughtering each other or just ignore it' - the author seems a bit confused here- there are never any occasions of Culture citizens slaughtering each other. There are many examples of other civilisations slaughtering each other - usually not humans - but in most cases, the Culture takes the view that they should interfere for the benefit of that civilisation. When they have disagreements it is how this should be done: whether it being activity interfering (getting the right person elected) or more passively (leading by example aka 'Ambassadors') spog fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jul 24, 2018 |
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Jul 24, 2018 17:24
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Interesting takes. Thanks!
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Jul 24, 2018 17:47
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Meme Emulator posted:Hello everyone since this is now the Scifi thread how does the Uplift Saga end? I started reading Brightness Reef but it looks sorta lovely and I dont think Im gonna get through this second trilogy. I just want to know where the drat Streaker is Been a looooong time since I read it but I believe it has a quasi wet splat of an ending where the good guys win, some transcendence happens, and they go back to earth. Brin isn't a very strong plotter, the appeal of that series is seeing some interesting ideas placed into a concrete world and the implications of that, as opposed to a page turner story.
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Jul 24, 2018 18:22
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JOHN SKELETON posted:I dunno, I think it poses a lot of questions and shows the complex ethics of interventionism. Feels more than just spice to me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a Banks fanboy. The culture series is awesome for the most part.
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Jul 24, 2018 20:41
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spog posted:Special Circumstances agents are not 'basically assassins' - killing to attain the goal of change is simply not a process used by SC. Except at the end of Look to Windward, the Culture totally does? They intentionally assassinate the crap out of the people who sent the antagonist, in order to send a dontfuckwithus message
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Jul 25, 2018 00:34
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Meme Emulator posted:Hello everyone since this is now the Scifi thread how does the Uplift Saga end? I started reading Brightness Reef but it looks sorta lovely and I dont think Im gonna get through this second trilogy. I just want to know where the drat Streaker is the trilogy is bad and feels like a setup to a third trilogy that never happened. summary: the streaker meets some mysterious older races. the hyperspace network fractures cutting off galaxies from each other. the mysterious elder races have some mysterious plan tied to that that doesn't really get explained. the streaker goes home startide rising was really good but that 2nd trilogy told less story then that single book and just kinda sucked with events proceeding arbitrarily according to some unexplained plan
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Jul 25, 2018 00:51
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MRC48B posted:Except at the end of Look to Windward, the Culture totally does? That’s implied to have maybe been the work of the GFCF
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Jul 25, 2018 00:51
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MRC48B posted:Except at the end of Look to Windward, the Culture totally does? That was a... Special circumstance. 
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Jul 25, 2018 01:04
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Moridin920 posted:That was a... Special circumstance.
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Jul 25, 2018 02:34
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Torquemada posted:Same, it felt like he threw a bunch of stuff he couldn’t make fit into any of his other books and hoped for the best. All his books have problems to varying degrees, but I don’t love them because they’re perfect works of art, but because he always tried hard to express himself to the reader. I forgive his missteps because I like the way his mind worked. It reads absolutely like a roleplaying campaign.
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Jul 25, 2018 02:36
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Applewhite posted:That’s implied to have maybe been the work of the GFCF What's that again? There's an undercurrent of conspiracy I've never really understood in look to windward.
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Jul 25, 2018 02:39
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sebmojo posted:What's that again? There's an undercurrent of conspiracy I've never really understood in look to windward. In Surface Detail the Geseptian-Fardesile Cultural Federacy is a society of Culture fanboys who claim to love the Culture and everything about it, but they're really Yandere about it. At one point in Surface Detail, somebody quotes to them the old adage "don't gently caress with the Culture" and the GFCF rep intimates the GFCF is secretly partially responsible for that reputation.
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Jul 25, 2018 02:46
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no it was established early on that was a culture creation and it was the don’t gently caress with the culture thing
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Jul 25, 2018 03:00
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let it mellow posted:no it was established early on that was a culture creation and it was the don’t gently caress with the culture thing I’ll have to go back and read to be sure, but —if I remember correctly— the Chelgarian-shaped killing machine believed itself to be a Culture weapon, but at no point were we shown corroborating evidence from the perspective of who might have sent it.
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Jul 25, 2018 03:19
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Applewhite posted:I’ll have to go back and read to be sure, but —if I remember correctly— the Chelgarian-shaped killing machine believed itself to be a Culture weapon, but at no point were we shown corroborating evidence from the perspective of who might have sent it. maybe idk it’s been a while but im p sure it knew things from the culture perspective when it was introduced and was there to revenge the pending suicide of the mind unless I’m mixing books up
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Jul 25, 2018 03:21
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On a non-Culture-related sci fi topic, I made the mistake of looking up John C. Wright’s blog. lolling RN at what a trash man he is and regretting ever contributing any money to him.
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Jul 25, 2018 03:22
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let it mellow posted:maybe idk it’s been a while but im p sure it knew things from the culture perspective when it was introduced and was there to revenge the pending suicide of the mind unless I’m mixing books up No you’re remembering the right book but it wasn’t there to avenge the suicide of the Mind. It MAY have been there to avenge the attempted murder but the mind in question didn’t seem all that mad about it.
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Jul 25, 2018 03:23
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Considering how much later Surface Detail was published it'd be a hell of an esoteric retcon for the e-dust assassin to have been a GFCF job, and it'd undermine a lot of Look to Windward's exploration of the Culture's overall ethos for no real reason. I mean I could be wrong, it's been quite a few years since I read either book, but I didn't pick up on anything implying that connection at all
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Jul 25, 2018 06:56
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Applewhite posted:the GFCF rep intimates the GFCF is secretly partially responsible for that reputation.
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Jul 25, 2018 06:57
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The Big Word posted:Considering how much later Surface Detail was published it'd be a hell of an esoteric retcon for the e-dust assassin to have been a GFCF job, and it'd undermine a lot of Look to Windward's exploration of the Culture's overall ethos for no real reason. The fact that the first time we hear the phrase “don’t gently caress with the Culture” is the appearance of the e-dust weapon and the next time we hear it is the GFCF making that admission implies a pretty strong connection to me.
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Jul 25, 2018 08:21
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I figure it's just a thing people say, and the GFCF person said it because they all got a bone on for the Culture and it's a thing that people are known to say about it
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Jul 25, 2018 08:27
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The Big Word posted:I figure it's just a thing people say, and the GFCF person said it because they all got a bone on for the Culture and it's a thing that people are known to say about it In literature very little is by accident. I don’t believe Banks intended longtime readers of his books to disregard the mention as coincidence.
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Jul 25, 2018 08:30
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let it mellow posted:maybe idk it’s been a while but im p sure it knew things from the culture perspective when it was introduced and was there to revenge the pending suicide of the mind unless I’m mixing books up It's a 'Culture terror weapon'. We could debate about definitions of 'assassinate' and whether the dust woman was SC or not, but I think my original assertion that SC doesn't use it to effect changes is still true. When you are trying to surreptitiously alter the political landscape of a society by killing people, it tends to be along the lines of 'Oh no, the King is dead! I guess he was allergic to shellfish' or 'Oh no, someone has killed the King and the only clue is the blood-stained dagger with "property of the King's uncle" written on it'. The dust-tiger was a 'Special Forces helicopter on the lawn/cruise missile through the front door/warship shelling the palace/guillotines in the town square' message to anyone who was thinking of attacking the Culture. The first is what I would class as 'assassination', the second is 'extreme public relations'
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Jul 25, 2018 08:34
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Applewhite posted:In literature very little is by accident. I don’t believe Banks intended longtime readers of his books to disregard the mention as coincidence. Eh, maybe.
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Jul 25, 2018 08:43
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sebmojo posted:Eh, maybe. At the same time, I don’t believe it was meant to definitively implicate the GFCF with the e-dust weapon. I think the ambiguity is intentional and is there so readers who thought the e-dust was out of character have plausible deniability.
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Jul 25, 2018 08:49
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Excession is the best so far! Im keeping this rolling and ordering windward and hydrogen sonata today. I also want an Interesting Times Gang tag.
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Jul 25, 2018 11:07
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bitmap posted:Excession is the best so far! Im keeping this rolling and ordering windward and hydrogen sonata today. I also want an Interesting Times Gang tag. Bitmap please pitch a culture cartoon to your european masters
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Jul 25, 2018 11:10
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"We dont assassinate people to change societies but occasionally we order our proxies into preventable "them or us situations" and of course we would expect any of our agents to defend themselves"
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Jul 25, 2018 11:23
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Applewhite posted:In literature very little is by accident. I don’t believe Banks intended longtime readers of his books to disregard the mention as coincidence. I didn't make this connection before. I quite like it. I think it can be ambiguous. I mean the culture has various layers to it and what is 'core' is different depending on your view. Is it the entire culture, is it contact, is it sc or is it the myriad of commitees? With that in mind it's shown that some of the minds are very liberal with violence and consider themselves the 'core' and I wouldn't put it past them using edust to send a message. Maybe they let the gfcf do it without official penalty, I think surface detail implies they stifle civs that are being dicks.
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Jul 25, 2018 11:29
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There's no reason to belive the gfcf were responsible because itd be completely pointless. the culture is all about doing stuff like the edust assassin already, to the point where they design their drones and ships to get of on violence and also take things really personally. The Killing time, the falling outside, skaffen - amtiskaw and so on... It's like if one day Archie decided to make people think Jughead really likes burgers, lol
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Jul 25, 2018 11:54
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Crimpolioni posted:There's no reason to belive the gfcf were responsible because itd be completely pointless. the culture is all about doing stuff like the edust assassin already, to the point where they design their drones and ships to get of on violence and also take things really personally. The Killing time, the falling outside, skaffen - amtiskaw and so on... It's like if one day Archie decided to make people think Jughead really likes burgers, lol Maybe, but it also might not hurt for Archie to remind people how much Jughead likes burgers the next time some burgers mysteriously go missing. "Don't gently caress with the Culture" might be a convenient excuse for something terrible to happen to an enemy of the GFCF.
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Jul 25, 2018 12:53
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STAR WARS
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Jul 25, 2018 13:22
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ISN'T VERY GOOD
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Jul 25, 2018 13:23
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spog posted:In Use, Zakalwe explains that the Culture does not kill people, even if they commit atrocities -even if you were literally Hitler and were committing genocide, they would not not kill you (instead, remove you to a new place where people will endlessly tell you how bad you are). Zakalwe does say this, but it doesn't jive with that one scene at the end of Look to Windward. Edit: beaten like Horza
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Jul 25, 2018 14:12
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spog posted:
In the same book, like probably in the next chapter even, skaffen has the drone equivalent of an orgasm after turning half a dozen people into chunky salsa, but sure
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Jul 25, 2018 14:58
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I get a funny feeling Zakalwe isn't a reliable narrator, or something.
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Jul 25, 2018 17:29
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Scaramouche posted:Been a looooong time since I read it but I believe it has a quasi wet splat of an ending where the good guys win, some transcendence happens, and they go back to earth. Brin isn't a very strong plotter, the appeal of that series is seeing some interesting ideas placed into a concrete world and the implications of that, as opposed to a page turner story. I agree with you there which is why I was immediately dissapointed when I started Brightness Reef and it ended up taking place on a nowhere planet inhabited by a bunch of people who have been cut off from the greater galactic civilization for thousands of years. I want to know more about the politics between mature races and client races and the ways Earth was different, not watch a bunch of tree children digging around in the dirt.
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Jul 25, 2018 17:45
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Meme Emulator posted:Hello everyone since this is now the Scifi thread how does the Uplift Saga end? I started reading Brightness Reef but it looks sorta lovely and I dont think Im gonna get through this second trilogy. I just want to know where the drat Streaker is I re-read all of the Uplift books several times (except Sundiver), but I haven't read the final trilogy in quite a while. I enjoyed it, even though it wasn't taking place in the 'main' galaxies. My opinion may be different these days. Streaker is actually hiding out on the illegal colony. The kids eventually encounter the 'fins, and they fall in together. Then the Jophur, chasing Streaker, show up, and subjugate the place. The Traeki(?) are actually Jophur, but missing their domineering Command Ring, which turns them into aggressive assholes. The Streaker decides it's time to get the gently caress out, and they escape the planet, and the Jophur chase them again. Then the weird poo poo starts happening. The Streaker had gathered a shell of weird carbon by trying to hide in the wind of a carbon star, and it was slowing them down, but then some entity transforms it into a strong, but still heavy, coat of armor. They get caught up in a project some races/Institutes are doing. Turns out the 5 Galaxies used to be the 13 Galaxies, but that knowledge has been effectively wiped from civilization. As the universe continues to expand, layers of hyperspace tear apart and renders more distant galaxies unreachable through any known means. Turns out a tear is about to happen again; the Institute of Migration had set an entire galaxy to lie 'fallow', but it was really just to evacuate the galaxy since it was about to tear away. The colony the trilogy started on was technically illegal, but it was effectively planted there by the Institutes so that there'd be a seed culture of the Five Galaxies still there when it went away (and they deliberately sent humans to try and turn them away from their wacky de-uplift ideals). The Big Powers' other project was a giant signal to the 8 galaxies that used to be part of the civilization. Hundreds(?) of white dwarf stars had trillions of retirees living in structures around them; they were all sent to the surfaces of the white dwarfs in order to trigger a simultaneous, galaxy-wide burst of Type 1a supernovae. Basically just a big "We're still here, are you?" signal. The Streaker is plucked out of a line of these retiree starships and plopped at Earth. I don't recall anything afterwards; I think the Tear happens and suddenly other things are more important than Streaker to the rest of the Five Galaxies for the moment. I don't remember if the grave of starships the Streaker found ever gets full resolution. It does seem like it was setting up for more, but there's been nothing forthcoming from Brin about it.
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Jul 27, 2018 09:24
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Pyroclastic posted:It does seem like it was setting up for more, but there's been nothing forthcoming from Brin about it. There was a post from him on his blog about the time Existence came out saying he wanted to return to the universe, probably to the crew that Streaker left behind in Startide Rising but it would be the book after next. I haven't heard anything since then though.
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Jul 27, 2018 09:57
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spog posted:In Use, Zakalwe explains that the Culture does not kill people, even if they commit atrocities -even if you were literally Hitler and were committing genocide, they would not not kill you (instead, remove you to a new place where people will endlessly tell you how bad you are). They killed lots of people in the Idiran war (counting Idirans as people here, as would the Culture). They will prefer to fiddle around with soft power and moral lessons, but their warships have classifications like Torturer, Murderer, Abominator. I'm sure those names are ironic, but they're also not you know.
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Jul 27, 2018 10:08
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