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 Also I want a small flying suitcase to be simultaneously protective of me and also the most sarcastic and abrasive friend I have. No threads about the Culture in here? I have to gland some calm to deal with that.
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Jun 20, 2020 17:53
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Why is it insulting to put a human mind in a drone body?
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Jun 20, 2020 17:54
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I stopped reading after the thread title thinking "This aught to be easy"
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Jun 20, 2020 17:57
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mean
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Jun 20, 2020 18:04
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Ought
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Jun 20, 2020 18:04
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In Consider Phlebas when Horza is sleeping in the tunnels and he has that dream where Xoralundra is talking to him on a table and gets the name of Horza’s old girlfriend wrong, what’s up with that? I understand the other dreams where his identity is being stolen from him or he’s feeling confused about it, since he’s a changer and is constantly being someone else.
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Jun 20, 2020 18:15
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Gurgeh stared at the space chess. He considered moving the space king over to the space rook, but then he didn't. Instead, he moved it to the right. He nodded. The robot flew over, and said something bitchy. Gurgeh chuckled, then sighed. "Robot," he said, "please fly away." The robot made a light from his head and then he flew away. Gurgeh stared at the board. He reflected that the best games were the games that were so hard. And that what this game was. Where would he move the space piece next? "Well, Gurgeh!" harrumphed the space alien. "Perhaps now you see that the game is so hard?" Gurgeh nodded. The game was so hard. That night, he thought about the space board. He glanded a drug that made the game less hard, but even then, it was still so hard. Gurgeh was immortal and rich, but still he didn't want to lose, because it would be better to win. But the game was so hard. The robot flew over. "Gurgeh!" said the robot. If you don't win, there will be a space murder, and maybe a space rape!" Gurgeh was appalled. "I must win the space game," he said. He sighed. The next day, the alien bragged: "I will win the space game! I am the best at winning the space game!" Gurgeh sighed. But then Gurgeh saw what he would do: instead of moving the space piece to the left, he would move it forward. The alien was so surprised. "But... but the game is supposed to be so hard!" But Gurgeh was very smart. He moved the piece again, and in a way that was so smart. "NOOOOO," shouted the space alien. Gurgeh had made the best move. He had made the best space move. The robot congratulated him, and the girl wanted to have sex with him. "Well," thought Gurgeh, "I will have sex with her. I am, after all... THE PLAYER OF GAMES."
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Jun 20, 2020 18:18
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I do love Use of Weapons but it's such a "I had this idea when I was 19 and held onto it for way too long" book.
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Jun 20, 2020 23:34
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That dude in the hipster art commune with the 37 dicks seemed like he knew how to party.
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Jun 22, 2020 05:47
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frogge posted:That dude in the hipster art commune with the 37 dicks seemed like he knew how to party. Guy was a bit of a prick once you got to know him.
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Jun 22, 2020 05:54
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Scope posted:"NOOOOO," shouted the space alien. Gurgeh had made the best move. He had made the best space move. The robot congratulated him, and the girl wanted to have sex with him. "Well," thought Gurgeh, "I will have sex with her. I am, after all... THE PLAYER OF GAMES." Don't bully the Chess Nerd Empire, they're just trying their best to innovate new ways to Be Gamers (by developing new realms of sexism). I got it into my head that the Chess Nerd Empire was like, wrinkly blemmyes, and so I found the pivot towards having sexy ones absolutely comical.
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Jun 22, 2020 22:19
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Scope posted:Gurgeh stared at the space chess. He considered moving the space king over to the space rook, but then he didn't. Instead, he moved it to the right. He nodded. The robot flew over, and said something bitchy. Gurgeh chuckled, then sighed. "Robot," he said, "please fly away." The robot made a light from his head and then he flew away. came here to post this
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Jun 22, 2020 23:40
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excession is good cus its about demigod artificial consciousness shitposting in space irc channels about how they have no idea whats going on
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Jun 22, 2020 23:50
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sounds like me in my work slack!
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Jun 22, 2020 23:51
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Excession is my favorite I think, but I really don’t dislike any of them. Even Consider Phlebas, which I’ve heard from several people is terrible. I still like it.
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Jun 23, 2020 03:45
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Kuvo posted:came here to post this
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Jun 23, 2020 04:01
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Do people ever have to deal with sim or glanding addiction like Star Trek apparently has holodeck addiction?
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Jun 23, 2020 04:04
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Scope posted:Do people ever have to deal with sim or glanding addiction like Star Trek apparently has holodeck addiction? Not in the books as far as I've read. Now I'm picturing a crack house except no one is offering blowjobs for more crack they're all just hanging out zombie-like getting fed grapes by servo drones in a palatial estate while they get glanded to the gills.
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Jun 23, 2020 04:54
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It's a society where they can restructure your genes for appearance, sex, relative age, and even actual age on a whim. I imagine they can engineer that poo poo out of someone.
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Jun 23, 2020 15:16
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I've never read this series but its always been on my nebulous mental List Of Stuff I Need to Read/Watch. Which is the first book in the series, and do they make fancy hardcover versions I can show off on my shelf?
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Jun 23, 2020 16:30
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Super Waffle posted:I've never read this series but its always been on my nebulous mental List Of Stuff I Need to Read/Watch. Which is the first book in the series, and do they make fancy hardcover versions I can show off on my shelf? First is Consider Phlebas, but order isn't THAT important, all the ones I've read are very much stand-alone. Apparently some people don't like Consider Phlebas, according to this thread, which is news to me I thought it ruled. No idea about hardcovers.
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Jun 23, 2020 16:57
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Tulip posted:First is Consider Phlebas, but order isn't THAT important, all the ones I've read are very much stand-alone. Apparently some people don't like Consider Phlebas, according to this thread, which is news to me I thought it ruled. No idea about hardcovers. Consider Phlebas is first and Hydrogen Sonata is last, the rest dont matter
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Jun 23, 2020 17:10
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I read the whole series in published order and enjoyed it the whole way through. I didn't know there were any fan made read order lists until after I finished and looked up stuff online about a few things I missed in my reading. I wanna say Amazon has the whole collection of the books for just over $100 in one set but I don't think they are hardcover. I got mine from a local bookstore and none of them were.
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Jun 23, 2020 17:42
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Tulip posted:First is Consider Phlebas, but order isn't THAT important, all the ones I've read are very much stand-alone. Apparently some people don't like Consider Phlebas, according to this thread, which is news to me I thought it ruled. No idea about hardcovers.
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Jun 23, 2020 17:53
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Look to Windward was the best thing Banks wrote pretty much entirely because he couldn't rely on his normal gimmicks, like the Minds or somebody exploding.
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Jun 24, 2020 01:57
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So what's with the whole thing about some drones and other companion tech like space suits being as smart or smarter than the average culture human, but they have no problems with being in permanent (until the human dies or moves on) servitude to someone? Sounds a lot like a form of slavery to me.
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Jun 25, 2020 04:45
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From memory, I think there's a difference between full AIs with sapience and personal rights, and limited AIs which are basically super-good expert systems. Those who are both fully sapient and working long-term with an individual human might be considered akin to social workers.
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Jun 25, 2020 12:18
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Scope posted:So what's with the whole thing about some drones and other companion tech like space suits being as smart or smarter than the average culture human, but they have no problems with being in permanent (until the human dies or moves on) servitude to someone? Sounds a lot like a form of slavery to me. Free association, they can always quit. You can live forever, putting in a few years of public service is something plenty of people are willing to do. It's more a product of the culture's aversion to slavery - any spacesuit that advanced could be a person, so it would be wrong to shackle them. e: Take Minds who run orbitals as an example, it's really not that much work because they can do a billion things at once. mossyfisk fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Jun 25, 2020 |
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Jun 25, 2020 15:44
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Bravest Of The Lamps was right about the culture.
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Jun 25, 2020 16:19
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StratGoatCom posted:Bravest Of The Lamps was right about the culture. GCU Feel Free To Elaborate
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Jun 28, 2020 21:45
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All I've read of Banks is Transition, which was pretty good. I'd definitely like to get into more of his stuff.
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Jun 29, 2020 04:03
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Probably Magic posted:All I've read of Banks is Transition, which was pretty good. I'd definitely like to get into more of his stuff. I really liked Excession. The Minds are basically deus ex machina in most of the books, a sometimes lot of the tension is deflated because they're nigh-omnipotent and invulnerable. Humans usually bumble about and the Minds let them make their own mistakes and then step in when things get ugly. Excession is about a civil war among the Minds so the stakes are really high, for once.
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Jun 29, 2020 13:38
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I finished Matter yesterday. Great book, might be my favorite one so far, loved the cast of supporting characters. Excission is one of the books I haven't read yet, sounds like I might make it my next one.
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Jun 29, 2020 23:14
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I've been thinking about rereading the series lately. My local library has the only books not available in digital format (because I requested them) and I have rest on my Amazon account.
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Jun 30, 2020 05:07
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Prolonged Priapism posted:GCU Feel Free To Elaborate quote:It seems to be a common notion that the Culture is a communistic entity. In truth, the Culture is a liberal utopia – affluent, open, cosmopolitan, hedonistic, concealed in its paternalism. Their fantastical technology allows them practically anything, from crafting vast interstellar habitats to changing sex on a whim, and social hierarchy and division of resources are obsolete things. It is not a society that has overcome capitalism, but a capitalistic society without capital. It’s a naďve solution: instead of liberating labour, the Culture has removed the need for labour, which is the essence of post-scarcity fantasy (it takes until the fourth novel, Excession, for Banks to even mention how Culture’s post-scarcity “capitalism without capital” may leave it unprepared for a genuine test). Even their foreign policy of incremental improvements of primitives suggests liberal-centrist leanings. The Culture’s technology renders it effectively omnipotent within its immediate reach, and on occasion Banks has conflicts arise from the distance of the characters to the Culture, which is a trivializing entity. This is most explicit in Consider Phlebas, whose anti-hero recognises accurately that the Culture effectively seeks to homogenize the entire universe into a sterile civilizational dead-end, and fights for fundamentalist imperialism simply because it represents a struggle for real principles and values, no matter how heinous they are (somewhat in the vein of the fascist in Borges’s Deutsches Requiem). https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3833655&pagenumber=6&perpage=40#post476752092 Edit: having read his contemporary fiction books, I certainly have trouble rebutting this: BravestOfTheLamps posted:As pointed out, Banks offers an ideologically biased and dishonest choice: either liberal paternalism or barbarism. The novels disclose the possibility of true justice or peace. Even read satirically, most of the text is rather pointless for a satirical purpose. Banks has absolutely no imagination, only endless cynicism that produced a series of mostly redundant and sleazily exploitative adventure fiction novels. StratGoatCom fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Jun 30, 2020 |
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Jun 30, 2020 14:21
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I read consider phlebas a year or two ago and didn't like it. I'm thinking of re-reading. Should I try another (e) culture book instead?
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Jun 30, 2020 16:00
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Musluk posted:I read consider phlebas a year or two ago and didn't like it. I'm thinking of re-reading. Should I try another (e) culture book instead? Try a different one. I really liked Player of Games.
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Jun 30, 2020 16:52
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StratGoatCom posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3833655&pagenumber=6&perpage=40#post476752092 BOTL actually being Horza IRL makes a ton of sense.
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Jun 30, 2020 18:18
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frogge posted:That dude in the hipster art commune with the 37 dicks seemed like he knew how to party. Or the specialist doctor who could rearrange peoples' bodies safely to the point where the super rich were hiring him to hold parties where their intestines were wrapped around their waists and their faces were on inside out.
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Jun 30, 2020 18:26
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StratGoatCom posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3833655&pagenumber=6&perpage=40#post476752092 Literally the only thing I have agreed with BotL about. I also love The Culture, and I think that we're supposed to realise that it's far more sketchy than it seems, but Banks does too good a job making it sound awesome (and is too in love with his own creation)
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Jul 2, 2020 14:31
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