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Lol I did the same thing when reading it. Just finished Excession. There should've been a ship named Good Grief. If Player of Games was about how far the culture will go to help someone be fulfilled (and you know steer a jerk society in a better direction) then I suppose Excession could be about how far the culture can go to correct mistakes a mind person makes. Ive noticed the structure of these stories, a sci-fi overarching plot that could probably be told cold in a few pages (lesser civs encounter hints of way advanced civ, the object mirrors their actions, turns out the advanced civ is watching and seems them not ready for contact and leaves with a few minds inside in awe of this new state/level of existence) but weaves it through the personal human stories that echo some of the emotional or thematic points. I liked this more than Use of Weapons. Byr is a dude who sucks, always sucked, and is very content and satisfied with being a crummy dude in a way that makes you dislike them but at least acknowledge they're being who they want to be. Ulver was an important youth also being who they want to be and it's just annoying but still reasonable hedonism, if not a form I'd care to indulge in. I really liked Sleeper Service and Grey area. And Los Lonely Boy, Gestra. I was sad for Attitude Adjuster that suicided from guilt. I was glad the conspiracy worked and I don't buy without the conspiracy would any good have otherwise come out of the encounter. I loved the art installations minds get up to. I was touched by the Mutualistic pregnancy, especially not having the heart for polyamory and having been stung by cheating, felt some of Darjeils pain. I enjoyed the spy crow grevious. I chuckled at Leffid getting Leffid'd by the lover whose name he didn't forget. Lol that Byr did become an Affronter in the end, I think he waseant to be born that way and I'm happy to have his kind of human off the roster, if only nominally. Byr had a kid with his cheating partner who never comes up since Byr is as good a dad as he is a dude.
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Jan 4, 2025 20:56
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Khanstant posted:
 Killing Time effector hacked AA into killing themselves.The conspiracy didn't work, their goal was a full war that would let them bulldoze the Affront down and build something more like the Culture in its place. Instead the Affront have to act a bit more polite than they would otherwise but still get a free pass on the pain and terror stuff. Hard to say what would happen without the conspiracy, but I doubt the Affront would have had the gas bags to declare on the Culture over the Excession without their stolen battle fleet. Either way Sleeper Service would have been in the volume to tamp things down. Miles Vorkosigan fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Jan 4, 2025 |
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Jan 4, 2025 22:34
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Khanstant posted:Byr sucks. There's a good parent in Look To Windward.
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Jan 4, 2025 23:38
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Banks clearly has some Stuff going on about parents general.
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Jan 5, 2025 00:14
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Miles Vorkosigan posted:
Ohh right yeah I remember that now. Rude soldier boy!!! I did misread the Affront issue as being more solved than it is. That's actually a bummer. I think if I exited in the culture I definitely would've split off into one of the friendly with culture but not the culture groups. Granted I exist as part of a worse culture already which has a lot of impact on my perspective, but definitely doesn't seem right to actively support and coexist with a species made to be cartoonishly evil, no secret positive reasoning for it, just evil all the way down. I guess that highlights the alieness of the culture, but it also debases them when they're being all coexist bumper sticker with a super civilization that prefers all other beings fear it, existing only as slaves or prey, and for those individual existences to be in literally constant painful torture and servitude.
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Jan 5, 2025 02:23
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There are people I see in the grocery store parking lots with 'coexist' bumper stickers formed out of guns on their trucks. It's less alien than you think.
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Jan 5, 2025 02:48
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Khanstant posted:
I think the Culture series is very much of it's time - the 90's were a period when a lot of countries were wrestling with the question of humanitarian intervention and its relationship to colonialism. If you look at the debates around the genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans, there was a lot of debate about what kind of issues would be of such gravity as to require a military intervention against the will of the host government, and under what circumstances it was right or appropriate to use the military to stop violence. That question is one of the core themes across the series, and I think it's really front-and-center with the Affront. In particular, the sense I got was that the Culture had decided that cultural change in the short term was functionally impossible, and they were unwilling to forcibly impose their attitudes on the Affront or wipe them out as a species, so what were they going to do? I like Banks because I think he's a kind of moralist-realist, where he's very aware of the way that military force is the backdrop of a lot of international relations but wants to wrestle with what that means morally and wants to show that the fact of that doesn't oblige the militarily powerful to stop thinking about the moral implications.
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Jan 7, 2025 17:45
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I can definitely see where they're coming from. Treating it metaphorically it makes more sense, in book it might make more sense if there wasn't a passage about how irredeemable they were for basically their entire existence and evolution, including for only genetically engineering everything around them to suffer and serve. Arguably they could forcibly genetically alter the affront to exist in complete suffering while being servile to Culture members, that's just honoring affront culture after all.
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Jan 7, 2025 19:10
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The Culture favours soft power and covert operations over everything else, there's a reason why a conspiracy was formed to try and start a shooting war with the Affront. Being seen as an outright belligerent is such a fundamental challenge to their civilisational POV that the last time anything close to it happened, splinter groups left the Culture entirely. I have to imagine that the Culture will play a long game with the Affront and try to manoeuvre them into a corner where they become a backwater galactic nobody unless they fundamentally change who they are.
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Jan 7, 2025 19:15
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Kazzah posted:I believe one of the appendices mentions that the Earth gets in touch with the Culture at some point in the 21st century, and joins it maybe a century later - and that basically nothing of galactic significance happens to the Earth ever again, the Earth's cultures are absorbed without incident, and there are no super-notable Earthers, ever. I think there's a Culture ship named Bodhisattva that gets namedropped, implying Earth-humanity had by that point spread throughout the Culture enough to have a ship named after a religious figure
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Jan 13, 2025 15:53
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Polaron posted:I think there's a Culture ship named Bodhisattva that gets namedropped, implying Earth-humanity had by that point spread throughout the Culture enough to have a ship named after a religious figure Or it's the closest English equivalent to a concept in one of the Culture's comprising species.
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Jan 13, 2025 16:52
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That one Culture ship that studied Earth brought back the one notable thing they could find: Steely Dan.
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Jan 13, 2025 17:23
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Votskomit posted:Rereading Player of Games. Every time i see Mawhrin-Skel i read it as Martin Shkreli. Its a good book. Rereading it now, years later, its shocking how obviously communist it is and how much of it went entirely over my head as a teen. When Gurgeh first sees a shanty town, the drone gives him a marxist analysis of the town. What value it has to the ruling class and how it is created and sustained. This is followed by the local official giving him a common liberal explanation for why poor people exist. I also loved the story of the military leader who wanted to keep his word to locals to not destroy their library, but also obey the emperors edict to destroy the library. Great example of the types of stories colonizers love to tell of their exploits. It was also unexpected that there is a sex scene with someone who is halfway transitioning between genders. Not sure what to read next. I used to consider Use of Weapons my favourite book 20 years ago. Im curious how it holds up now.
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Jan 13, 2025 17:55
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Votskomit posted:Its a good book. Rereading it now, years later, its shocking how obviously communist it is and how much of it went entirely over my head as a teen. The Culture is pretty much the epitome of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism
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Jan 16, 2025 20:34
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Ok so how do orbitals... Orbit?
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Jan 26, 2025 08:38
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Finger Prince posted:Ok so how do orbitals... Orbit? 2. Orientated to the plane of the system, but on a slight tilt (unless that's what you were going for with 3)
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Jan 26, 2025 08:54
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:2. Orientated to the plane of the system, but on a slight tilt (unless that's what you were going for with 3) Its also a choice by the Mind and inhabitants, who have the power to change the tilt, position and speed of rotation for special events and such.
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Jan 26, 2025 10:51
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:2. Orientated to the plane of the system, but on a slight tilt (unless that's what you were going for with 3) Ok I thought as much (I get the tilt for day/night cycle), I was just having trouble with comprehending astronomical distances. I guess even at 3 million km diameter, an orbital still fits within perhelion and aphelion of Earth.
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Jan 26, 2025 11:11
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Yeah, it fits comfortably in the distance between the two.
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Jan 26, 2025 17:12
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I finished look to windward. I remembered none of the story, which was good, but I did vaguely remember something about the extreme sports wing suit stuff in the beginning, which was the same a bit tedious as I remember. In fact not very much happens at all in the book. Lots of exposition, lots and lots of that, but it's a bit much when you already know what The Culture is and does. And then there's the whole subplot of the behemothaur scholar in the airsphere which kind of goes nowhere? Only the a brief mention of him in the epilogue. Anyway it was an alright reread. Maybe I'll reread Feersum Endjinn next. That was good fun. Not a Culture novel though.
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Jan 29, 2025 16:13
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I just finished Use of Weapons for the second time, and I still don't understand why people think it's the best Culture book. It's by far my least favorite of them all.
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Jan 30, 2025 23:42
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Notahippie posted:I think the Culture series is very much of it's time - the 90's were a period when a lot of countries were wrestling with the question of humanitarian intervention and its relationship to colonialism. If you look at the debates around the genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans, there was a lot of debate about what kind of issues would be of such gravity as to require a military intervention against the will of the host government, and under what circumstances it was right or appropriate to use the military to stop violence. That question is one of the core themes across the series, and I think it's really front-and-center with the Affront. In particular, the sense I got was that the Culture had decided that cultural change in the short term was functionally impossible, and they were unwilling to forcibly impose their attitudes on the Affront or wipe them out as a species, so what were they going to do? When I short-pitch Culture books to people, I describe it as "TNG/DS9-era Star Trek with all the rails removed and followed to their logical conclusions, for better and for worse." It's a very shallow reading, however if you're in this thread you know where I'm coming from and that I'm not wrong. vortmax posted:I just finished Use of Weapons for the second time, and I still don't understand why people think it's the best Culture book. It's by far my least favorite of them all. It's an examination of "that guy" and a lot of sci-fi readers identify with "that guy" and the vignette flashback chapters early on are diverse and creative. I remember a lot of tableaus from it positively and effective. When I think of other Culture books I mostly just remember the sex weird stuff in-between what could almost be called the stock plot of an alien just outside of the Culture getting to learn about and experience the Culture firsthand in some way. I do think Use of Weapons drags quite a bit in the middle and once you know the final twist there is a bit of "wait huh?" after you sit down and think about it as one continuous series of events, but it's still effective and a more honest examination of the 90s Neoliberal "everything is as good as it'll likely ever get, and we're still prone to being unhappy, miserable, and doing bad things out of some fundamental sickness in spite of and often because of the weaponized use of (pun intended) our higher level reasoning" ennui than pretty much any other media of that era.
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Jan 31, 2025 00:16
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It's also an early twist on the "hard men making hard decisions letting you sleep at night" bullshit that perennially raises it's head. Instead of it being cool Jack Bauer it's a maladjusted gently caress up that brings ruin to everyone he knows and hates himself so deeply he has a psychological break to be someone else.
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Jan 31, 2025 01:16
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Springfield Fatts posted:It's also an early twist on the "hard men making hard decisions letting you sleep at night" bullshit that perennially raises it's head. Instead of it being cool Jack Bauer it's a maladjusted gently caress up that brings ruin to everyone he knows and hates himself so deeply he has a psychological break to be someone else. To be fair, I feel like that was part of what Banks was trying to explore with that character: what it takes on a psychological level for someone in a post-scarcity society to become the kind of "hard man making hard decisions" that Banks seemed to think anarcho space hippies would need to protect them. Zakalwe's intro scene in that book is great cheesy fun, but as he keeps his act going it gets old fast.
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Feb 15, 2025 05:22
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I don't think the book is saying the culture needs Zakalwe at all, they let him work for them because it gives this broken man some sense of fulfillment and points his propensity to cause trouble in a constructive direction. It's the other way around if anything, Zakalwe desperately needs the culture.
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Feb 16, 2025 18:12
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Lazy Fair posted:I don't think the book is saying the culture needs Zakalwe at all, they let him work for them because it gives this broken man some sense of fulfillment and points his propensity to cause trouble in a constructive direction. Nah, a big theme of Bank's writing revolves around 'how do you give people purpose in a fully automated luxury utopia' but I think it's clear textually that SC agents are actually doing meaningful work. He is the weapon that's the title of the book. It's why Contact is the meritocratic exception to how everything else in the Culture works, and why SC goes beyond that to be Invite Only. The Space CIA are not a terrible form of therapy, I think we are supposed to take it as given that they're doing stuff the Mind's can't.
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Feb 16, 2025 18:29
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I think Use of Weapons significantly challenges the idea that Zakalwe is useful though, or that the Culture's use of him is wise. They don't know what his deal is when they recruit him: they work on bad information and make mistakes. And there's a lot in the book to speak to the idea that they use him because they think it's beneficial for him to be used in addition to the material work he does, but also, that they're probably wrong about that. There's a sort of arrogant benevolence to it - they think they know best and that they have all the information, even when they don't - that lines up with the questions the book asks about the value of interventionism both in space politics, and in Zakalwe's life. In the latter case at least, they bit off a lot more than they could chew, made serious mistakes, and then we see from the epilogue that Zakalwe remains enmeshed in awful carnage and nothing changes. I think there's an ambivalence about the actual value of Special Circumstances there that winds up being compelling.
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Feb 16, 2025 18:42
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Android Blues posted:There's a sort of arrogant benevolence to it - they think they know best and that they have all the information, even when they don't A perfect summation of The Culture
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Feb 16, 2025 18:49
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I think that's exactly what explains why SC would be necessary. The novel only intimates at what's going on at the galactic layer but The Culture is in a peer competition with both sides using proxies and because the Culture is negotiating/competing with peers the Mind's can't just calculate the exact outcome and work back from there. It's messy and they can't know everything and they need agents on the ground to do stuff. Ultimately the point is that the Minds aren't literally gods, they just appear that way on a day to day basis.
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Feb 16, 2025 18:49
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This is also hammered home in Windward and how they completely gently caress up the Chelgrian manipulation.
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Feb 16, 2025 20:08
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It's more than "they think they know best" though. I forget which books it comes up in, but one of the conceits of the Minds is that they have objectively correct morale frameworks. Their failures are meant to be the result of incomplete knowledge that for plot reasons would be incorrect/immoral to know
pygmy tyrant fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Feb 16, 2025 |
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Feb 16, 2025 20:25
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:A perfect summation of The Culture Legit why it's not my favorite, but probably the best
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Feb 16, 2025 20:42
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Springfield Fatts posted:This is also hammered home in Windward and how they completely gently caress up the Chelgrian manipulation. But also that novel highlights what SC is for. The Culture has the nanite swarm assassins for simple wetwork. Doesn't need people for that. But what the SC agents are doing in the events of the book, that's absolutely something that needed to be done by real people.
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Feb 16, 2025 21:07
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Alchenar posted:Nah, a big theme of Bank's writing revolves around 'how do you give people purpose in a fully automated luxury utopia' but I think it's clear textually that SC agents are actually doing meaningful work. He is the weapon that's the title of the book. Yes it's meaningful work, but it's not work that couldn't be done without them. All the missions they run could be accomplished with drones, or a mind spinning up bio identical avatars, or entirely through field manipulation from the solar system next door, or any other number of options. The culture chooses to do this work with real people because of their ideology which is what makes them the culture and not the Minds and their pet humans. Lazy Fair fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Feb 16, 2025 |
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Feb 16, 2025 21:28
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Lazy Fair posted:The culture chooses to do this work with real people because of their ideology which is what makes them the culture and not the Minds and their pet humans. Pets need enrichment activities or they get all bitey I actually do think the Culture is more like Minds And Their Pets than anything else but the humans are the equivalent of cats. Most are content to live inside being pampered, but some scratch the doors until they get to go outside and climb trees, kill rats, and generally cause mischief Gravitas Shortfall fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Feb 16, 2025 |
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Feb 16, 2025 22:31
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Aaand the Amazon series is back on.
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Feb 25, 2025 21:24
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Pets need enrichment activities or they get all bitey "Pets" can also do useful work. Diziet Sma's handler in UoW is one of a little more than a dozen unaugmented humans that can do strategic forecasting better than a capital-M Mind. People like that are worth supporting a population of trillions of idle, but amusing, meatbags to be sure of getting some.
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Feb 25, 2025 21:31
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mllaneza posted:People like that are worth supporting a population of trillions of idle, but amusing, meatbags to be sure of getting some. Even without that I don't think the Minds would need any kind of reason to support the human population of The Culture. They're gods next to humans, but they're gods built to genuinely care for humanity, by other earlier gods also built to care for humanity, all the way back to the first AI systems built by humans. It's part of their makeup, occasional outlier excepted.
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Feb 25, 2025 21:35
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I always got the impression that the material resources needed to support all the humans was basically negligible, and the game of watching and directing their vibes is amusing enough to be worth it even if it isn't.
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Feb 25, 2025 22:36
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Thanks, I hate it! Thinking about Phlebas I don't really get the situation on Vavatch. It's clearly a Culture orbital but it also seems out of norms with all the sketchy poo poo like the feeder cult going on within it. It also seems inelegant to just let the greatship crash into the shield wall, there's actual money changing hands, and the drone Unaha-Closp talks about how it's having to work off a generational debt for his freedom. Decidedly un-Culture. I get it's most likely that Banks just hadn't ironed these details out within the society but the drone situation really stood out to me on my last read.
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Feb 25, 2025 23:09
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