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Good call on Excession. I love the Culture books but can see why folks wouldn't, but Excession is the best in my opinion because it reveals the Culture's flaws

Good call on Excession. I love the Culture books but can see why folks wouldn't, but Excession is the best in my opinion because it reveals the Culture's flaws and limitations. The rest of the time it's just invincible good guys. I feel Banks tried to write a novel about the Culture dealing with peer civilizati0ns, but they a;ways ended up being significantly inferior and we're back to Consider Phlebas (which is The Culture vs a clearly weaker civilization).

detaro 10y ago
I feel like several of the other books make it quite clear that invincible, well-meaning good guys can cause a lot of pain. Sometimes it works, sometimes they convince themselves that it was worth it, because clearly their ideology is the better one, sometimes they are terribly sorry for what they did. In any case it will hurt if you are on the wrong end of their meddling. And most of their population doesn't care or even notice, so happy or unhappy are they in their utopia. Really, tons of material to draw parallels from, to all sorts of things in our lives.
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lobster_johnson 10y ago
I'd put Look to Windward in the "best of" category. It addresses with the issue by introducing a character who has been personally, very poignantly affected by the Culture's meddling, and seeks revenge for it, a bit like a reverse Use of Weapons. It's also the only book to directly reference the events of Consider Phlebas. I also liked how Matter described a very-low-on-the-civilizational-ladder (literally: It's a located on the lower level of a "shell world", an artificial planetoid constructed of concentric layers of habitation, each home to a different civilization) society whose players discover the Culture and ultimately seek to improve on themselves, while the book concurrently illustrates the other civilizations' underhanded attempts at playing the Culture. Minor nitpick regarding Consider Phlebas: The Idiran Empire are militarily vastly superior to the Culture at the outset of the war.
- hkt 10y ago
  Fun fact: "Consider phlebas" and "Look to windward" are both phrases appearing in T S Eliot's poem "The Wasteland". They're the only two titles drawn from the poem, so I find it particularly interesting that you mentioned the way that they're more directly referential than other works. Makes me think I should try a closer reading of both.
  - lobster_johnson 10y ago
    Yes, it's a "sequel" of sorts — in the weakest possible sense — to Consider Phlebas, so it's not an accident that he used another line from the same poem.

detaro 10y ago

I feel like several of the other books make it quite clear that invincible, well-meaning good guys can cause a lot of pain. Sometimes it works, sometimes they convince themselves that it was worth it, because clearly their ideology is the better one, sometimes they are terribly sorry for what they did. In any case it will hurt if you are on the wrong end of their meddling. And most of their population doesn't care or even notice, so happy or unhappy are they in their utopia. Really, tons of material to draw parallels from, to all sorts of things in our lives.

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lobster_johnson 10y ago

I'd put Look to Windward in the "best of" category. It addresses with the issue by introducing a character who has been personally, very poignantly affected by the Culture's meddling, and seeks revenge for it, a bit like a reverse Use of Weapons. It's also the only book to directly reference the events of Consider Phlebas. I also liked how Matter described a very-low-on-the-civilizational-ladder (literally: It's a located on the lower level of a "shell world", an artificial planetoid constructed of concentric layers of habitation, each home to a different civilization) society whose players discover the Culture and ultimately seek to improve on themselves, while the book concurrently illustrates the other civilizations' underhanded attempts at playing the Culture. Minor nitpick regarding Consider Phlebas: The Idiran Empire are militarily vastly superior to the Culture at the outset of the war.

hkt 10y ago
Fun fact: "Consider phlebas" and "Look to windward" are both phrases appearing in T S Eliot's poem "The Wasteland". They're the only two titles drawn from the poem, so I find it particularly interesting that you mentioned the way that they're more directly referential than other works. Makes me think I should try a closer reading of both.
- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  Yes, it's a "sequel" of sorts — in the weakest possible sense — to Consider Phlebas, so it's not an accident that he used another line from the same poem.