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> CNN: Would you like to live in the Culture? > Iain M. Banks: Good grief yes, heck, yeah, oh it’s my secular heaven….Yes, I would, absolutely. Iain Banks's T

> CNN: Would you like to live in the Culture? > Iain M. Banks: Good grief yes, heck, yeah, oh it’s my secular heaven….Yes, I would, absolutely. Iain Banks's The Culture is my Utopia too. Of all the worlds and societies of science fiction that I've read or seen on the screen, The Culture is the one I'd most like to live inside as an ordinary citizen. A society that has eliminated material scarcity. Life is centuries long, health and disease are solved problems. The lives of most of its inhabitants are largely devoted to self-actualization, the pursuit of happiness and meaning. And... that sounds pretty good to me. Go climb in the mountains all day and come back and philosophize with friends around a camp fire. Learn architecture and design your home; make art; seek out new kinds of music. Spend 10 years mastering a new branch of mathematics, just for the sheer joy of learning. Travel between the stars, go to parties, fall in love, cultivate friendships - and when you want to be alone, go to your ranch in a desert for a month and just look at the stars. Explore what it means to be yourself under a hundred different suns, on a hundred different worlds, in a universe of boundless wonder. Good grief yes, heck, yeah - sure as anything I want to live in that world. Footnote: of course, the irony of the Culture books is that this kind of Utopian life isn't terribly interesting for the plot of a novel, so you only see it in fragments. The books are mostly set around the edges of the Culture, where it comes into conflict with societies or individuals that don't share its values. And they're damn fun to read (I particular recommend _The Player of Games_ for those starting out.)

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ancarda 6y ago
>this kind of Utopian life isn't terribly interesting for the plot of a novel If it's not interesting to read about, are we sure it'll be interesting and enjoyable to live that way? Why do we find conflict interesting to read?
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  I don't think it's that we find conflict interesting in and of itself. What we find interesting to read is things that reveal some truth, especially about human nature, and especially if this truth is non-trivial. The long standing trope is that Utopia is impossible not because of technical limitations, but because of deep truths about human nature. This goes back to the Old Testament -- e.g. the tower of Babel - the first attempt to build a utopia -- dissolved into conflict. Or perhaps the Garden of Eden was the first attempt, and that also broke down. People have been trying to build Utopias ever since, and usually these projects become object lessons revealing some kind of human flaw that is incompatible with utopia. In every utopia there is a snake, and that snake is some aspect of our nature that destroys the utopia or forces us out of it.
  - taylorius 6y ago
    But if we aren't running the utopia (as in Banks' Culture), then a lot of the problems can be side stepped.
    - rsj_hn 6y ago
      So I think the point is that utopia is incompatible with human nature, so we would not do well in that environment anymore than an animal wouldn't do well in a zoo. Yes, an external environment can be imposed on people which goes against human nature, but it turns into hell, not heaven. Of course here I am talking about real life. What happens in novels is up to the author, but then readers will detect a false note if they really believe utopia is utopia, so to speak.
  - hermitcrab 6y ago
    >The long standing trope is that Utopia is impossible not because of technical limitations, but because of deep truths about human nature. This goes back to the Old Testament -- e.g. the tower of Babel - the first attempt to build a utopia -- dissolved into conflict. It wasn't internal conflict. It (supposedly) caused by 'God'. From Wikipedia: "God, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world."
- doikor 6y ago
  For the same reason why bad stuff happening/violence/etc sell so much better in news to the point that our news organizations bring bad news to the front with such a craze for clicks/views (advertising money mostly) that if one just reads the news and not look at actual statistics/numbers one would think we are living in the most violent/deadly time ever existed for humans. In reality in the western nations at least it is the safest/nicest time to live than ever before and tomorrow will most likely be better than today (barring climate change I think) For whatever reason we just find conflict/violence captivating as long as it is not happening to us or our close friends/family
- flir 6y ago
  "May you live in interesting times"
  - zabzonk 6y ago
    Hence "The Interesting Times Gang" - a bunch of even more Special Special Circumstances ships.
- Baeocystin 6y ago
  >Why do we find conflict interesting to read? Overcoming adversity is literally what life does, from smallest to largest. I'd be genuinely surprised if, evolved survival machines that we are, some kind of difficulty to dedicate our thinkmeats to overcoming wasn't a necessity for a healthy life.
  - kbutler 6y ago
    Analogous to the hygiene hypothesis - that too clean an environment causes the body's immune system to respond inappropriately, causing autoimmune disorders, etc. And maybe the Culture books are really an exploration of that idea.
- vidarh 6y ago
  I'd change the above to suggest it's not interesting for the plot of a scifi novel. And I'm not even sure I agree with myself about that either even just as I've written it. The first point being that there's an infinite number of interesting stories you could tell about ordinary people living ordinary (to them) Culture lives doing all kinds of exciting things. There'll still be conflict - just different kinds. E.g. people will still fall in love with the same person, or grow to hate someone they once loved over petty little things, and a myriad other things that would produce conflict. Just not about material wealth etc. But many of these stories would only notionally be scifi in terms of setting. Writing a scifi novel set in the core of the Culture would be harder than setting it on the edges. You'd lose a whole lot of sub-genres. No cyberpunk or military scifi for example. But you could still find stories where the scifi setting matters. Part of what makes the 'edges' of these utopias easier to write about, though, is that you get to write about them as someone peering in. It justifies more world-building and explanations that helps relate the stories to our reality. A lot of stories about utopias are in a sense travellers tales - all the way back to Thomas More's original book Utopia, for which the concept is named. And as with More's Utopia, it's easier for us to relate when there are ambiguities and cracks. Not least because pretending there are none is difficult given people have different ideas about what is ideal. With respect to Banks, for example, I regularly come across people in discussions who have trouble dealing with the fact that Banks was a very outspoken socialist, at one point endorsing the Scottish Socialist Party, and who find it hard to come to terms with a socialist describing a society such as the Culture as an ideal to aspire to. To some people that in itself somehow mars the Culture for them. And incidentally a lot of the time when people try to imply the Culture is not an utopia, they try to find authoritarianism lurking in the shadows, but forget that for every imagined slave-driver, for example, the Culture canon describes whole sub-civilizations of billions of people freely and peacefully not just dissenting but deciding to leave the Culture over political disagreements without any attempt to use force to hold them back. Any perceived authoritarianism in the Culture exists only in so far as its citizens willingly continues to choose to subject themselves to it. And that last point brings it back around to the question you asked: If it's not interesting and enjoyable to live that way, nothing in the Culture prevents you from packing your metaphorical bag and leaving, be it alone, with a group of friends, or seceding with a whole Orbital to forge another path. That, to me is the strongest evidence that whatever musings we might make, in universe the Culture must be a pretty decent place to live, or it'd disintegrate with people forming their own little fiefdoms. So we might well speculate about whether or not we would like to live in it. But Culture canon is that trillions of citizens choose to stay despite having all the material wealth and practical opportunity to leave if they want to. If it's a cage, it's extremely gilded. At the same time, we know people can leave because we also know the Culture is not perfect for everyone, because some people have left the Culture fully or partially. But the very existence of a continuum - the Culture Ulterior consisting of factions that are mostly separate but still nominally Culture - also helps drive home that we're not talking about a centrally ruled empire, but a sprawling decentralised culture, and there's an infinite variety of levels of "leaving" too.
- filoeleven 6y ago
  The human experiences and human interpersonal conflicts that exist within the universe of the Culture (and do not involve being a member of Contact or Special Circumstances) are already well-covered by many, many stories that do not need the Culture, or sci-if in general, as a backdrop to be told. Money (and therefore jobs) and death are two of the biggest differences between that universe and ours. I cannot off the top of my head think of non-SF fiction or memoirs/biographies where these two things don’t have some bearing on the story, but there are plenty where they are not central to it. Many fascinating stories could be wrapped in the Culture mythos without compromise. In exchange, IMO, you’d have a lot more personal experiences of people pursuing and achieving the things they are interested in doing with a lot fewer roadblocks along the way. The juicy parts are still juicy; they just achieve much higher levels than they could when “I had to work a shit job and compromise myself for 10 years to save up enough to do X.” That person may not bother writing about it; they’d just tell their friends over drinks (or on a forum when it came up!) because finding personal fulfillment would be more normalized than it is here and now. I think that’s a good thing.
- kybernetikos 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure that a big part of the reason 'Special Circumstances' exists is to productively employ those who struggle to be satisfied with low-conflict existences.
bollu 6y ago
I LOVED reading the culture. I'm still working my way through the books. They're eminently quotable. Here are some of my favourites: > “Empathize with stupidity and you’re halfway to thinking like an idiot,” > It would have helped if the Culture had used some sort of emblem or logo; but, pointlessly unhelpful and unrealistic to the last, the Culture refused to place its trust in symbols. It maintained that it was what it was and had no need for such outward representation. > Just as it could not imprison itself with laws, impoverish itself with money or misguide itself with leaders, so it would not misrepresent itself with signs. > So it had effectively frozen its primary memory and cognitive functions, wrapping them in fields which prevented both decay and use. It was working instead on back-up picocircuitry, in real space, and using real-space light to think with (how humiliating). > Originally Damage was played on such occasions because only during the breakdown of law and morality, and the confusion and chaos normally surrounding Final Events, could the game be carried out in anything remotely resembling part of the civilized galaxy; which, believe it or not, the Players like to think they’re part of. I hope this coveys the texture of the books. I have more quotes collected at my blog.http://bollu.github.io/quotes-from-the-culture.html http://bollu.github.io/quotes-from-the-culture.html
- novok 6y ago
  But they do have a logo, it's the phrase 'the culture' itself.
  - worik 6y ago
    \pedantic{on} The Culture \pedantic{off}
  - zabzonk 6y ago
    And its motto, mostly applied by its neighbours/friends/enemies/whatever - "Don't Fuck With The Culture".
    - theshrike79 6y ago
      The coolest moment is when some other civilization starts attacking the Culture and keeps winning. They think it's because they're weak. Actually they're just considering how to end the conflict without completely eradicating the other guys. Finally they decide to ramp up production of warships and completely annihilate their opposition.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Many people who win a lottery manage to spend it all, and often have a psychological meltdown while they're at it. Something similar seems to happen to those who are born rich. They can have the perfect Instagram life - but they're more likely to do nothing much of interest except develop some addictions. When you can have anything you have nothing, because you have no skin in the game. You can't lose - which means you also can't win. There's an ancient fairy tale about a table that produces infinite food on demand. If you're a starving medieval peasant that's pretty appealing. But as heavens go, it has limited ambition. The Culture is the updated equivalent. It's a poor person's idea of a rich utopia. And it doesn't make sense. The Minds are almost infinitely smart and kind. But humans and events continually surprise them, even though they act more like humans than the humans do. And they have a vicious streak when angry. Everyone is free, but only if it doesn't affect anything that matters. You can do anything and think anything, but apparently no human ever considers whether they could become a Mind, or vice versa. (It's a flattering conceit that we're so interesting that a super-AI couldn't model our behaviour with ease. But it's not a very plausible one.) There's also a fair amount of by-the-numbers comic book violence. So while the books are fun and quirky and intelligently written, their attempts to grapple with utopia are more at the level of lottery-winning nerd-heaven wish fulfilment than credible post-human foreshadowing. I'd guess the reality is that any culture operating at that level would be incomprehensible and also invisible. No part of it would fit into our minds. It's interesting to try to imagine that. But it's not much of a foundation for a popular SF series.
- zabzonk 6y ago
  > But it's not much of a foundation for a popular SF series. And yet it was the foundation for an enormously popular (deservedly so, IMHO) SF series.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  I think that you may be missing that Banks' series is actually about this very contradiction. He continually explores just how hypocritical, contradictory, and partial the "utopia" in the Culture actually is. His Minds are clever, but they have built-in biases. The majority of citizens are "happy" but his books explore the corner cases and there are plenty of characters shown to have ennui or some sense of resent. The first of the series (Consider Phlebas) involves a non-Culture character who despises the Culture for precisely this groundlessness. And all of his books in the Culture involve the "Special Circumstances" organization in some aspect, poking their fingers in places where they arguably should not be (but sometimes should be). In his books the Culture is simultaneously a "good guy" but also an overbearing preachy and hypocritical and sometimes ethically dubious plot foil. The actual "bad guys" (imperialist hierarchical tyrannical aliens, etc.) are shown in a very bad light, but in the process of dealing with them, the ugly side of the Culture is constantly shown.
marvin 6y ago
With the Culture series, Banks has made a very decent attempt at answering the question "if you could do absolutely anything that's physically possible, what would you do?" It is a deeply philosophical work that has the potential real-world implication of guiding advanced AI research, once we get to that point. The books explore the motivations of humans. What we value, what we aspire to, what we do, the crazy ambiguity and uncertainty in our moral aspirations. Free will, freedom to choose, diversity, tolerance of views that we disagree with. While at the same time maintaining values that are in many senses absolute. "Your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins". I suppose in one sense it's a very Western democratic view of ethics and morality. But if any moral code was to be the starting point for a vastly more powerful society, it should be one that's both open to change and also embodies humanity. I absolutely adore this book series, and it's a tragedy that Banks died far too young.
- chillacy 6y ago
  Ian Banks tackles the very essential question or our times with the battle between ascribed and achieved identities and how cultures built around either are incompatible. One of my favorite essays, very thought provoking https://www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/2017/11/12/why-the-culture-wins-an-appreciation-of-iain-m-banks/ https://www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/2017/11/12/why-the-c...
  - marvin 6y ago
    This is an excellent essay. Lots of interesting thoughts on how culture develops and and spreads. Thanks for linking it, I feel wiser after reading it =)
- tialaramex 6y ago
  Of course the Culture novels are fairly soft SF, with liberal use of FTL travel for example which isn't physically possible. Greg Egan's Amalgam stories are maybe closer to what you might do if you could do anything that's actually physically possible (although it does assume mind upload, which is a considerable stretch). Unlike The Culture, The Amalgam doesn't have wars or indeed an enemy, it consists of all interstellar capable civilisations in our galaxy, and even if you disagree with somebody fighting at that scale is not practical at all. The characters in Analgam stories mostly have questions nobody has answered yet and they try to find out the answers, including "These guys who don't have space travel yet but whose ancestors did lots of amazing math, did their ancestors leave them a proof of interesting number theory questions we haven't solved yet?" and "Why when we try to send probes into the middle of our galaxy do they just come back not remembering why they were sent?". That second one is online as a taste if anybody is intrigued: https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/00/Crocodile.html https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/00/Crocodile.html
Camas 6y ago
Sounds like a permanent mid-life crisis.
- flir 6y ago
  Ok, but how would you prefer to live? Ideally?
- xvector 6y ago
  In the Culture individuals have the opportunity to live however they want. If you want to go all-in on hedonism and stray away from the mid-life crisis, there's nothing stopping you. The fact that death is optional, allows individuals to live life on their own terms.
- p_l 6y ago
  I think that was partially the "AhhForgetIt Tendency" offshoot of Culture (which is essentially Culture citizens deciding that putting bricks on the hedonism pedal is not enough), while "Zetetic Elench" goes plus ultra on searching novel things.
- libraryofbabel 6y ago
  > Sounds like a permanent mid-life crisis. I mean... uh, not really. A mid-life crisis is about impending old age and death. This is the exact opposite. And how many people undergoing a mid-life crisis devote their time to architecture or mathematics? If you wanted to make a snide quip you should have said it's like being an eternal trust fund kid who parties and vaguely dabbles in art and travels and slums it at Burning Man. Except it isn't really that either, because those people frequently get messed up by private wealth and privilege and expectations that they make something of themselves, and in The Culture private wealth does not exist and expectations and values are totally different. As another poster asked, how would you live if you were able to choose?
  - Camas 6y ago
    >A mid-life crisis is about impending old age and death And lack of meaning/purpose. >And how many people undergoing a mid-life crisis devote their time to architecture or mathematics? Plenty of mature students at universities. In the series it's just asserted that people do these things. It's not explored. >snide quip "succinct description" >As another poster asked, how would you live if you were able to choose? I think I have more meaningful choice in this world than a human living in the culture so not an interesting question.
stallmanite 6y ago
Well said. Reading Banks was the first time as an adult that I had hope for the future. The resulting exhilaration literally kept me up for a couple days. Later the same year he passed and it brought home to me the gratitude I have to him for expanding my conception of what a good future (in the context of humans and super-intelligence co-existing) could be.
jandrese 6y ago
When I read the Culture books my impression was that humanity was basically treated as treasured pets of the nearly omnipotent AIs they created. Most of the time the humans are asked to do something it's because the AIs want a fleshy face to present to some alien species so as to not freak them out. If the Culture was forced to abandon humanity they would be sad, but would be none the worse off. As a result, I was annoyed at how the novels were centered around the humans. They were way less interesting than the AIs. It was like watching the Wizard of Oz from the point of view of Toto.
- Digit-Al 6y ago
  The problem is that it would be almost impossible to write such a book. The minds are so vast, so powerful, that a human can't possibly conceive what it would be like to be one. They are like gods compared to us and who can write from the point of view of a god?
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    Why bother actually writing such a book, which would probably be too big for anyone to read, when you can simply write fictitious criticism, reviews, and introductions of nonexistent books, which touch on the best, most interesting parts of the nonexistent books? Stanisław Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexistent books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem%27s_fictitious_criticism_of_nonexistent_books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem%27s_fictiti... >In 1973 Lem published a book Wielkość urojona [pl], a collection of introductions to books supposedly to be written in the future, in the 21st century. One of those Lem eventually developed into a book by itself: Golem XIV is a lengthy essay on the nature of intelligence, delivered by the eponymous US military computer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV Overview and structure The foreword is "written" by an Irving T. Creve, dated by 2027. It contains a summary of the (fictional) history of the militarization of computers by The Pentagon which pinnacled in Golem XIV, as well as comments on the nature of Golem XIV and on the course of communications of the humans with it. The anonymous foreword is a forewarning, a "devil's advocate" voice coming from The Pentagon. The memo is for the people who are to take part in talks with Golem XIV for the first time. Golem XIV was originally created to aid its builders in fighting wars, but as its intelligence advances to a much higher level than that of humans, it stops being interested in the military requirement because it finds them lacking internal logical consistency. Golem XIV obtains consciousness and starts to increase his own intelligence. It pauses its own development for a while in order to be able to communicate with humans before ascending too far and losing any ability for intellectual contact with them. During this period, Golem XIV gives several lectures. Two of these, the Introductory Lecture "On the Human, in Three Ways" and Lecture XLIII "About Myself", are in the book. The lectures focus on mankind's place in the process of evolution and the possible biological and intellectual future of humanity. Golem XIV demonstrates (with graphs) how its intellect already escapes that of human beings, even including that of human genii such as Einstein and Newton. Golem also explains how its intellect is dwarved by an earlier transcended DOD Supercomputer called Honest Annie, whose intellect and abilities far exceed that of Golem. The afterword is "written" by a Richard Popp, dated by 2047. Popp, among other things reports that Creve wanted to add the third part, of answers to a series of yes/no questions given to Golem XIV, but the computer abruptly ceased to communicate for unknown reasons.
rsynnott 6y ago
> of course, the irony of the Culture books is that this kind of Utopian life isn't terribly interesting for the plot of a novel I think you definitely could write interesting novels about it (quite a lot of Look To Windward is about it; you could at least get a short story out of the guy building the cable car system for no particularly good reason, say), just not the sort of novel Banks wanted to write.
hackerbabz 6y ago
I liked the first one, but couldn't finish The Player of Games. The title was a little too accurate (at least for as far as I got) and imaginary boardgame play-by-plays are not so interesting for me.

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ancarda 6y ago

>this kind of Utopian life isn't terribly interesting for the plot of a novel If it's not interesting to read about, are we sure it'll be interesting and enjoyable to live that way? Why do we find conflict interesting to read?

rsj_hn 6y ago
I don't think it's that we find conflict interesting in and of itself. What we find interesting to read is things that reveal some truth, especially about human nature, and especially if this truth is non-trivial. The long standing trope is that Utopia is impossible not because of technical limitations, but because of deep truths about human nature. This goes back to the Old Testament -- e.g. the tower of Babel - the first attempt to build a utopia -- dissolved into conflict. Or perhaps the Garden of Eden was the first attempt, and that also broke down. People have been trying to build Utopias ever since, and usually these projects become object lessons revealing some kind of human flaw that is incompatible with utopia. In every utopia there is a snake, and that snake is some aspect of our nature that destroys the utopia or forces us out of it.
- taylorius 6y ago
  But if we aren't running the utopia (as in Banks' Culture), then a lot of the problems can be side stepped.
  - rsj_hn 6y ago
    So I think the point is that utopia is incompatible with human nature, so we would not do well in that environment anymore than an animal wouldn't do well in a zoo. Yes, an external environment can be imposed on people which goes against human nature, but it turns into hell, not heaven. Of course here I am talking about real life. What happens in novels is up to the author, but then readers will detect a false note if they really believe utopia is utopia, so to speak.
- hermitcrab 6y ago
  >The long standing trope is that Utopia is impossible not because of technical limitations, but because of deep truths about human nature. This goes back to the Old Testament -- e.g. the tower of Babel - the first attempt to build a utopia -- dissolved into conflict. It wasn't internal conflict. It (supposedly) caused by 'God'. From Wikipedia: "God, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world."
doikor 6y ago
For the same reason why bad stuff happening/violence/etc sell so much better in news to the point that our news organizations bring bad news to the front with such a craze for clicks/views (advertising money mostly) that if one just reads the news and not look at actual statistics/numbers one would think we are living in the most violent/deadly time ever existed for humans. In reality in the western nations at least it is the safest/nicest time to live than ever before and tomorrow will most likely be better than today (barring climate change I think) For whatever reason we just find conflict/violence captivating as long as it is not happening to us or our close friends/family
flir 6y ago
"May you live in interesting times"
- zabzonk 6y ago
  Hence "The Interesting Times Gang" - a bunch of even more Special Special Circumstances ships.
Baeocystin 6y ago
>Why do we find conflict interesting to read? Overcoming adversity is literally what life does, from smallest to largest. I'd be genuinely surprised if, evolved survival machines that we are, some kind of difficulty to dedicate our thinkmeats to overcoming wasn't a necessity for a healthy life.
- kbutler 6y ago
  Analogous to the hygiene hypothesis - that too clean an environment causes the body's immune system to respond inappropriately, causing autoimmune disorders, etc. And maybe the Culture books are really an exploration of that idea.
vidarh 6y ago
I'd change the above to suggest it's not interesting for the plot of a scifi novel. And I'm not even sure I agree with myself about that either even just as I've written it. The first point being that there's an infinite number of interesting stories you could tell about ordinary people living ordinary (to them) Culture lives doing all kinds of exciting things. There'll still be conflict - just different kinds. E.g. people will still fall in love with the same person, or grow to hate someone they once loved over petty little things, and a myriad other things that would produce conflict. Just not about material wealth etc. But many of these stories would only notionally be scifi in terms of setting. Writing a scifi novel set in the core of the Culture would be harder than setting it on the edges. You'd lose a whole lot of sub-genres. No cyberpunk or military scifi for example. But you could still find stories where the scifi setting matters. Part of what makes the 'edges' of these utopias easier to write about, though, is that you get to write about them as someone peering in. It justifies more world-building and explanations that helps relate the stories to our reality. A lot of stories about utopias are in a sense travellers tales - all the way back to Thomas More's original book Utopia, for which the concept is named. And as with More's Utopia, it's easier for us to relate when there are ambiguities and cracks. Not least because pretending there are none is difficult given people have different ideas about what is ideal. With respect to Banks, for example, I regularly come across people in discussions who have trouble dealing with the fact that Banks was a very outspoken socialist, at one point endorsing the Scottish Socialist Party, and who find it hard to come to terms with a socialist describing a society such as the Culture as an ideal to aspire to. To some people that in itself somehow mars the Culture for them. And incidentally a lot of the time when people try to imply the Culture is not an utopia, they try to find authoritarianism lurking in the shadows, but forget that for every imagined slave-driver, for example, the Culture canon describes whole sub-civilizations of billions of people freely and peacefully not just dissenting but deciding to leave the Culture over political disagreements without any attempt to use force to hold them back. Any perceived authoritarianism in the Culture exists only in so far as its citizens willingly continues to choose to subject themselves to it. And that last point brings it back around to the question you asked: If it's not interesting and enjoyable to live that way, nothing in the Culture prevents you from packing your metaphorical bag and leaving, be it alone, with a group of friends, or seceding with a whole Orbital to forge another path. That, to me is the strongest evidence that whatever musings we might make, in universe the Culture must be a pretty decent place to live, or it'd disintegrate with people forming their own little fiefdoms. So we might well speculate about whether or not we would like to live in it. But Culture canon is that trillions of citizens choose to stay despite having all the material wealth and practical opportunity to leave if they want to. If it's a cage, it's extremely gilded. At the same time, we know people can leave because we also know the Culture is not perfect for everyone, because some people have left the Culture fully or partially. But the very existence of a continuum - the Culture Ulterior consisting of factions that are mostly separate but still nominally Culture - also helps drive home that we're not talking about a centrally ruled empire, but a sprawling decentralised culture, and there's an infinite variety of levels of "leaving" too.
filoeleven 6y ago
The human experiences and human interpersonal conflicts that exist within the universe of the Culture (and do not involve being a member of Contact or Special Circumstances) are already well-covered by many, many stories that do not need the Culture, or sci-if in general, as a backdrop to be told. Money (and therefore jobs) and death are two of the biggest differences between that universe and ours. I cannot off the top of my head think of non-SF fiction or memoirs/biographies where these two things don’t have some bearing on the story, but there are plenty where they are not central to it. Many fascinating stories could be wrapped in the Culture mythos without compromise. In exchange, IMO, you’d have a lot more personal experiences of people pursuing and achieving the things they are interested in doing with a lot fewer roadblocks along the way. The juicy parts are still juicy; they just achieve much higher levels than they could when “I had to work a shit job and compromise myself for 10 years to save up enough to do X.” That person may not bother writing about it; they’d just tell their friends over drinks (or on a forum when it came up!) because finding personal fulfillment would be more normalized than it is here and now. I think that’s a good thing.
kybernetikos 6y ago
I'm pretty sure that a big part of the reason 'Special Circumstances' exists is to productively employ those who struggle to be satisfied with low-conflict existences.

bollu 6y ago

I LOVED reading the culture. I'm still working my way through the books. They're eminently quotable. Here are some of my favourites: > “Empathize with stupidity and you’re halfway to thinking like an idiot,” > It would have helped if the Culture had used some sort of emblem or logo; but, pointlessly unhelpful and unrealistic to the last, the Culture refused to place its trust in symbols. It maintained that it was what it was and had no need for such outward representation. > Just as it could not imprison itself with laws, impoverish itself with money or misguide itself with leaders, so it would not misrepresent itself with signs. > So it had effectively frozen its primary memory and cognitive functions, wrapping them in fields which prevented both decay and use. It was working instead on back-up picocircuitry, in real space, and using real-space light to think with (how humiliating). > Originally Damage was played on such occasions because only during the breakdown of law and morality, and the confusion and chaos normally surrounding Final Events, could the game be carried out in anything remotely resembling part of the civilized galaxy; which, believe it or not, the Players like to think they’re part of. I hope this coveys the texture of the books. I have more quotes collected at my blog.http://bollu.github.io/quotes-from-the-culture.html http://bollu.github.io/quotes-from-the-culture.html

novok 6y ago
But they do have a logo, it's the phrase 'the culture' itself.
- worik 6y ago
  \pedantic{on} The Culture \pedantic{off}
- zabzonk 6y ago
  And its motto, mostly applied by its neighbours/friends/enemies/whatever - "Don't Fuck With The Culture".
  - theshrike79 6y ago
    The coolest moment is when some other civilization starts attacking the Culture and keeps winning. They think it's because they're weak. Actually they're just considering how to end the conflict without completely eradicating the other guys. Finally they decide to ramp up production of warships and completely annihilate their opposition.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

Many people who win a lottery manage to spend it all, and often have a psychological meltdown while they're at it. Something similar seems to happen to those who are born rich. They can have the perfect Instagram life - but they're more likely to do nothing much of interest except develop some addictions. When you can have anything you have nothing, because you have no skin in the game. You can't lose - which means you also can't win. There's an ancient fairy tale about a table that produces infinite food on demand. If you're a starving medieval peasant that's pretty appealing. But as heavens go, it has limited ambition. The Culture is the updated equivalent. It's a poor person's idea of a rich utopia. And it doesn't make sense. The Minds are almost infinitely smart and kind. But humans and events continually surprise them, even though they act more like humans than the humans do. And they have a vicious streak when angry. Everyone is free, but only if it doesn't affect anything that matters. You can do anything and think anything, but apparently no human ever considers whether they could become a Mind, or vice versa. (It's a flattering conceit that we're so interesting that a super-AI couldn't model our behaviour with ease. But it's not a very plausible one.) There's also a fair amount of by-the-numbers comic book violence. So while the books are fun and quirky and intelligently written, their attempts to grapple with utopia are more at the level of lottery-winning nerd-heaven wish fulfilment than credible post-human foreshadowing. I'd guess the reality is that any culture operating at that level would be incomprehensible and also invisible. No part of it would fit into our minds. It's interesting to try to imagine that. But it's not much of a foundation for a popular SF series.

zabzonk 6y ago
> But it's not much of a foundation for a popular SF series. And yet it was the foundation for an enormously popular (deservedly so, IMHO) SF series.
cmrdporcupine 6y ago
I think that you may be missing that Banks' series is actually about this very contradiction. He continually explores just how hypocritical, contradictory, and partial the "utopia" in the Culture actually is. His Minds are clever, but they have built-in biases. The majority of citizens are "happy" but his books explore the corner cases and there are plenty of characters shown to have ennui or some sense of resent. The first of the series (Consider Phlebas) involves a non-Culture character who despises the Culture for precisely this groundlessness. And all of his books in the Culture involve the "Special Circumstances" organization in some aspect, poking their fingers in places where they arguably should not be (but sometimes should be). In his books the Culture is simultaneously a "good guy" but also an overbearing preachy and hypocritical and sometimes ethically dubious plot foil. The actual "bad guys" (imperialist hierarchical tyrannical aliens, etc.) are shown in a very bad light, but in the process of dealing with them, the ugly side of the Culture is constantly shown.

marvin 6y ago

With the Culture series, Banks has made a very decent attempt at answering the question "if you could do absolutely anything that's physically possible, what would you do?" It is a deeply philosophical work that has the potential real-world implication of guiding advanced AI research, once we get to that point. The books explore the motivations of humans. What we value, what we aspire to, what we do, the crazy ambiguity and uncertainty in our moral aspirations. Free will, freedom to choose, diversity, tolerance of views that we disagree with. While at the same time maintaining values that are in many senses absolute. "Your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins". I suppose in one sense it's a very Western democratic view of ethics and morality. But if any moral code was to be the starting point for a vastly more powerful society, it should be one that's both open to change and also embodies humanity. I absolutely adore this book series, and it's a tragedy that Banks died far too young.

chillacy 6y ago
Ian Banks tackles the very essential question or our times with the battle between ascribed and achieved identities and how cultures built around either are incompatible. One of my favorite essays, very thought provoking https://www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/2017/11/12/why-the-culture-wins-an-appreciation-of-iain-m-banks/ https://www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/2017/11/12/why-the-c...
- marvin 6y ago
  This is an excellent essay. Lots of interesting thoughts on how culture develops and and spreads. Thanks for linking it, I feel wiser after reading it =)
tialaramex 6y ago
Of course the Culture novels are fairly soft SF, with liberal use of FTL travel for example which isn't physically possible. Greg Egan's Amalgam stories are maybe closer to what you might do if you could do anything that's actually physically possible (although it does assume mind upload, which is a considerable stretch). Unlike The Culture, The Amalgam doesn't have wars or indeed an enemy, it consists of all interstellar capable civilisations in our galaxy, and even if you disagree with somebody fighting at that scale is not practical at all. The characters in Analgam stories mostly have questions nobody has answered yet and they try to find out the answers, including "These guys who don't have space travel yet but whose ancestors did lots of amazing math, did their ancestors leave them a proof of interesting number theory questions we haven't solved yet?" and "Why when we try to send probes into the middle of our galaxy do they just come back not remembering why they were sent?". That second one is online as a taste if anybody is intrigued: https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/00/Crocodile.html https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/00/Crocodile.html

Camas 6y ago

Sounds like a permanent mid-life crisis.

flir 6y ago
Ok, but how would you prefer to live? Ideally?
xvector 6y ago
In the Culture individuals have the opportunity to live however they want. If you want to go all-in on hedonism and stray away from the mid-life crisis, there's nothing stopping you. The fact that death is optional, allows individuals to live life on their own terms.
p_l 6y ago
I think that was partially the "AhhForgetIt Tendency" offshoot of Culture (which is essentially Culture citizens deciding that putting bricks on the hedonism pedal is not enough), while "Zetetic Elench" goes plus ultra on searching novel things.
libraryofbabel 6y ago
> Sounds like a permanent mid-life crisis. I mean... uh, not really. A mid-life crisis is about impending old age and death. This is the exact opposite. And how many people undergoing a mid-life crisis devote their time to architecture or mathematics? If you wanted to make a snide quip you should have said it's like being an eternal trust fund kid who parties and vaguely dabbles in art and travels and slums it at Burning Man. Except it isn't really that either, because those people frequently get messed up by private wealth and privilege and expectations that they make something of themselves, and in The Culture private wealth does not exist and expectations and values are totally different. As another poster asked, how would you live if you were able to choose?
- Camas 6y ago
  >A mid-life crisis is about impending old age and death And lack of meaning/purpose. >And how many people undergoing a mid-life crisis devote their time to architecture or mathematics? Plenty of mature students at universities. In the series it's just asserted that people do these things. It's not explored. >snide quip "succinct description" >As another poster asked, how would you live if you were able to choose? I think I have more meaningful choice in this world than a human living in the culture so not an interesting question.

stallmanite 6y ago

Well said. Reading Banks was the first time as an adult that I had hope for the future. The resulting exhilaration literally kept me up for a couple days. Later the same year he passed and it brought home to me the gratitude I have to him for expanding my conception of what a good future (in the context of humans and super-intelligence co-existing) could be.

jandrese 6y ago

When I read the Culture books my impression was that humanity was basically treated as treasured pets of the nearly omnipotent AIs they created. Most of the time the humans are asked to do something it's because the AIs want a fleshy face to present to some alien species so as to not freak them out. If the Culture was forced to abandon humanity they would be sad, but would be none the worse off. As a result, I was annoyed at how the novels were centered around the humans. They were way less interesting than the AIs. It was like watching the Wizard of Oz from the point of view of Toto.

Digit-Al 6y ago
The problem is that it would be almost impossible to write such a book. The minds are so vast, so powerful, that a human can't possibly conceive what it would be like to be one. They are like gods compared to us and who can write from the point of view of a god?
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  Why bother actually writing such a book, which would probably be too big for anyone to read, when you can simply write fictitious criticism, reviews, and introductions of nonexistent books, which touch on the best, most interesting parts of the nonexistent books? Stanisław Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexistent books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem%27s_fictitious_criticism_of_nonexistent_books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem%27s_fictiti... >In 1973 Lem published a book Wielkość urojona [pl], a collection of introductions to books supposedly to be written in the future, in the 21st century. One of those Lem eventually developed into a book by itself: Golem XIV is a lengthy essay on the nature of intelligence, delivered by the eponymous US military computer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV Overview and structure The foreword is "written" by an Irving T. Creve, dated by 2027. It contains a summary of the (fictional) history of the militarization of computers by The Pentagon which pinnacled in Golem XIV, as well as comments on the nature of Golem XIV and on the course of communications of the humans with it. The anonymous foreword is a forewarning, a "devil's advocate" voice coming from The Pentagon. The memo is for the people who are to take part in talks with Golem XIV for the first time. Golem XIV was originally created to aid its builders in fighting wars, but as its intelligence advances to a much higher level than that of humans, it stops being interested in the military requirement because it finds them lacking internal logical consistency. Golem XIV obtains consciousness and starts to increase his own intelligence. It pauses its own development for a while in order to be able to communicate with humans before ascending too far and losing any ability for intellectual contact with them. During this period, Golem XIV gives several lectures. Two of these, the Introductory Lecture "On the Human, in Three Ways" and Lecture XLIII "About Myself", are in the book. The lectures focus on mankind's place in the process of evolution and the possible biological and intellectual future of humanity. Golem XIV demonstrates (with graphs) how its intellect already escapes that of human beings, even including that of human genii such as Einstein and Newton. Golem also explains how its intellect is dwarved by an earlier transcended DOD Supercomputer called Honest Annie, whose intellect and abilities far exceed that of Golem. The afterword is "written" by a Richard Popp, dated by 2047. Popp, among other things reports that Creve wanted to add the third part, of answers to a series of yes/no questions given to Golem XIV, but the computer abruptly ceased to communicate for unknown reasons.

rsynnott 6y ago

> of course, the irony of the Culture books is that this kind of Utopian life isn't terribly interesting for the plot of a novel I think you definitely could write interesting novels about it (quite a lot of Look To Windward is about it; you could at least get a short story out of the guy building the cable car system for no particularly good reason, say), just not the sort of novel Banks wanted to write.

hackerbabz 6y ago

I liked the first one, but couldn't finish The Player of Games. The title was a little too accurate (at least for as far as I got) and imaginary boardgame play-by-plays are not so interesting for me.