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I think that Ian Banks' "Culture" series is pretty utopian. The AI Minds are clearly in charge, but they generally treat their human pets well, and with respect
by mirimir 8y ago
I think that Ian Banks' "Culture" series is pretty utopian. The AI Minds are clearly in charge, but they generally treat their human pets well, and with respect. There are effectively no limitations on what people can be, do or have. Except perhaps meaning, and that's a major theme.
But there is a novella, State of the Art, which features contact between the Culture and 1980s Earth. And that is very dystopian. As are his treatments of various other civilizations that the Culture manipulates.
Edit: grammar
Also, many of those novels feature messaging threads among ship Minds. And some of them are mind-boggling.
- nreilly 8y agoThanks. I've got a couple of Ian Banks books in my to read list, but this will bump it up.
- arethuza 8y agoWorth noting that the dystopian part of State of the Art is the Culture's view of Earth! One detail from the story that I love is the ship Mind's hobby of collecting individual snowflakes from the worlds it visits with a desire to find two identical snowflakes....
- mirimir 8y agoWell, yes, it's the Culture's Minds' view of Earth. But arguably that's also Banks' view. Plus of course his view of the Culture. Also, some Culture citizens quite liked the Earth. However, they came off as rather crazy ;) There's a Mind in another novel who collects recordings of human minds, and experiments with them. Other Minds strongly disapprove. But then, the Culture overall experiments with other civilizations that it encounters. Also, it wasn't until I read State of the Art that I realized that the Culture is not part of Earth human future. I gather than he assumes humanoid panspermia and/or convergent evolution.