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A Few Notes on the Culture by Iain M Banks (1994)
- snitch182 2y agoOne of the best series of science fiction ever.
- Bluestein 2y agoThat's very categorical. Full stop :) Must be really good.-
- squigz 2y agoI have to second GP in saying it is, by far, the best scifi I've ever read.
- mpalmer 2y agoI read them all in the last year and have since been searching dejectedly for something that comes close. Indeed, it's excellent. Banks created something singular with the Culture, and he brings it to life with wit, energy and impressive imagination.
- adeeshaek 2y agoThe polity novels by Neal Asher scratch a similar itch - the polity is much less utopian than the culture, but the world building is quite similar. I would recommend the Transformation arc as a good starting point!
- lucubratory 2y agoWhat order would you recommend reading the polity novels? I'm thinking about starting them
- gerikson 2y agoJust decided today to re-read the entire series.
- karaterobot 2y ago> Succinctly; socialism within, anarchy without. Great essay. I feel like I read this 20 years ago, which is the last time I read the Culture novels. My impression at the time, which remains true on reread now, is that the idea that a post-singularity, post-scarcity society would organize itself along something like socialist lines makes no sense to me, and isn't well-supported (by my recollection) in the novels I read. This is a universe where, if you want, you can just fuck off and have your own planet. It's a place where everything is taken care of for you, not through the thoughtful allocation of resources for mutual benefit, but because it's trivially easy for a machine to just give you everything you ask for. There is no need to even think about who owns what, because everyone can usually have what they want, go where they want, do what they want. I see the anarchy, I don't see the socialism.
- notahacker 2y agoIt's socialist in the sense that the Minds could just fuck off and have their own corner of the galaxy, but instead devote processor cycles and physical presence to ensuring helpless little oxygen-breathers have everything they need
- matthewdgreen 2y agoIn one of the books Banks explains that the Minds were created with a bias to be helpful to humans, and that whenever they did try to create a “neutral” Mind that didn’t specifically care about this, the first thing it would do is fuck right off (to another plane of existence.)
- gpderetta 2y agoIn fact in-universe the Culture is considered deviant as a whole by similarly advanced civilizations because, instead of focusing on collectively ascending as a civilization as it is proper, they meddle in the affairs of other civilizations.
- squigz 2y agoIt's funny to call Subliming "fucking right off." Not inaccurate, but doesn't really have the same ring to it :P
- aklemm 2y agoRead the essay and then the series, or hold the essay for after reading?
- navbaker 2y agoI found the second book in the series, The Player of Games, much more explanatory about what the Culture is than the first book, Consider Phelbas. I enjoyed Consider Phelbas much more upon re-reading after I did an initial read through of the rest of the series than I did having that be the first book I read from him.
- stavros 2y agoConsider Phlebas was my first book too, I liked it enough to read another, but I neither remember much from it nor loved it. I really liked Player of Games, and I'd like to read a few more books in the series. I also read the Wasp Factory, and while his writing is brilliant, I wasn't too captivated by the story itself.
- arethuza 2y agoSome paperback editions of The Wasp Factory had quotes from reviews included at the start alternating between very positive and very negative reviews. His non-Culture non-SF works as Iain Banks deserve more attention I think - mind you perhaps that because I frequently travel across the Forth Bridge (The Bridge) and, as I write this, I can see Inchmickery out of the window (Complicity). However, my favourite has to be Espedair Street - which is simply sublime.
- Bluestein 2y ago> between very positive and very negative reviews. Funny that they would put negative reviews on the paperback itself. How honest ...
- arethuza 2y agoThe Irish Time described it as "a work of unparalleled depravity". - though I've forgotten if that is one of the positive or negative reviews ;-)
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- swdunlop 2y agoIt's hard for me to read the Culture novels and not hear Porno for Pyros' "Pets" on loop in my head. It is amusing that this essay starts with "Government" and does not get down to the intelligences until halfway through -- in my mind, it's all just the intelligences watching the funny monkeys play at still having meaningful role in the Culture and the surprising things they do at the edges of its influence.
- mpalmer 2y agoPlenty of Culture Minds value humans/pan-humans in the books. They get involved, too, just look at the effort expended by the Sleeper Service in Excession for such a personal agenda. Not to say that there isn't a good deal of joking at humans' expense by Culture ships, but in the end, all are Culture citizens.
- lazide 2y agoPeople also like their pets?
- snapplebobapple 2y agospeak for yourself, my pet is an eh hole.
- n4r9 2y ago> it's all just the intelligences watching the funny monkeys play at still having meaningful role Is this not inevitable, once AI reaches a certain threshold?
- austinl 2y agoIf you enjoyed this essay, I would recommend reading Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks by Prof. Joseph Heath (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...) Among other things, it compares the Idirans—who have what we consider a more traditional, modern-day culture—with the Culture. For example: "The war between the Idirans and the Culture is peculiarly asymmetrical, since the Culture is not an empire, or even a “polity” in any traditional sense of the term, it is simply a culture. It has no capital city, or even any “territory” in the conventional sense." I also love Heath's criticism of Dune (I appreciate the series, but now can't help but notice how often sci-fi series use regressive social structures). "In fact, modern science fiction writers have had so little to say about the evolution of culture and society that it has become a standard trope of the genre to imagine a technologically advanced future that contains archaic social structures. The most influential example of this is undoubtedly Frank Herbert’s Dune, which imagines an advanced galactic civilization, but where society is dominated by warring “houses,” organized as extended clans, all under the nominal authority of an “emperor.”"
- Bluestein 2y agoFrom the essay: > Indeed, Banks distinguishes himself in having thought carefully about the social and political consequences of technological development. This we need more of. In any way shape or form.-
- arethuza 2y agoOf the spectrum of possibilities of how (if) we end up co-existing with AIs then anything like the Culture is definitely towards the positive end. Yes it can look like the humans in the Culture are being kept like pets - but if any group or individuals want to leave the Culture then they get support and encouragement - which isn't very pet like?
- Ekaros 2y agoDon't some people let their cats and dogs roam free? Same people would probably give them some resources or tools if they were capable of asking.
- dash2 2y agoI don't think Iain M. Banks is a good writer. (You can see it in this piece, which falls into the trap of using long words to sound clever.) His sci-fi has a serious flaw: it's static. Nothing changes, everything is inevitable, the baddies are predestined to lose. His characters and dialogue are bland. The books do have a strength, which is the completeness of their picture of the world. The concept of the Culture is interesting. I think it has less to do with the third dimension of space, and more to do with the 1990s. The Culture looks a lot like confident liberal democracy, pitting its advanced tech and cultural openness against its various (doomed) rivals. That's why a lot of the books seem a bit colonial: travel to a small annoying planet, knock some sense into the primitive authorities holding sway. And it also has that 1990s vibe that one side is in the right, and that side is always going to win. For a contrast, think of The Three Body Problem. It's set on an equally epic scale - but so much more happens!
- exe34 2y agocould you give some examples of which words you found long? if you prefer shorter words, and moral relativism, you might like Neal Asher's polity series.
- disparate_dan 2y agoI’m a veteran SF reader but I only read The Culture books for the first time recently, and I agree with you, albeit you have to acknowledge their massive influence on contemporary SF. The Three Body Problem, though, I struggled to finish the first book at all, because I found the prose excruciatingly bad (or more properly I guess, the translation).
- arethuza 2y agoBanks admits that the Culture itself is kind of boring because it is too perfect - so for most of its teeming trillions living their hedonistic lives on their orbitals life is nice and safe and a bit boring to write about. So the stories have to deal with the edges of the Culture and the mission of Contact and Special Circumstances to try and make the galaxy that bit nicer by direct interference.
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- VagabundoP 2y agoI need to finish off the last few Culture books. He is missed. It was a shock to hear he was sick. Too young.
- DrMiaow 2y agoI was sad that Amazon did not follow through on producing the TV series. Also.. rather relieved, because remaining unrealised also means it remains untainted.
- squigz 2y agoMovies would be a better medium for Culture stories, I think. And any studio but Amazon...
- snapplebobapple 2y agoIt's a bit of a mixed bag at Amazon. I think They did a great job on the boys, the wheel of time, and fallout. TLOTR's content basically cancels those out though.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- euroderf 2y agoI've been reading sci-fi for decades and among it all, the Culture novels have left the greatest single lasting impression. Among galaxies, across time, somewhere a maybe-boring hedonism but free of oppression and want - dwarfing the piddling amateurish nonsense that passes for civilization in our neck of the woods in the here & now. Purraps to be considered as an admittedly fanciful but not wholly impractical set of goals for the next hundred years here. BTW note that based on one of his short stories, the Culture does exist "now" in our galactic region. A ship visits us at some point in the 1970s, and as it departs its Mind mischievously creates an EM signature crafted to baffle us.
- n4r9 2y ago> A ship visits us at some point in the 1970s, and as it departs its Mind mischievously creates an EM signature crafted to baffle us. The short story is "State of the Art", and is contained in a collection of short stories (some Culture, some not) of the same name. One of the final paragraphs in the story is a lovely testament to the prowess of Culture ships: > The Arbitrary held its darkfield for a few minutes, then dropped it just past Mars (so there was just a chance it left an image on an Earth telescope). Meanwhile it was snapping all its various remote drones and sats away from the other planets in the system. It stayed in real space right up till the last moment (making it possible that its rapidly increasing mass produced a blip on a terrestrial gravity-wave experiment, deep in some mountain-mine), then totalled as it dispatched Linter's body into the stellar core, sucked a last few drones of Pluto and a couple of outlying comets, and slung Li's diamond at Neptune (where it's probably still in orbit).
- remon 2y agoContent is great but boy that site is not helping getting that content across.
- decafninja 2y agoI picked up Player of Games on Kindle a few months ago after seeing all these threads on the Culture series here. I just couldn’t get into it. I made it through about…a third? into the book. The whole setting just feels so bizarre and exotic. I couldn’t relate or empathize with any of the characters. I might get back into it someday but for now it’s languishing. Should I try Consider Phlebas or Use of Weapons first?
- itishappy 2y agoWorth a shot! He does have a bit of an odd way of writing characters. I preferred the setting and culture of Player of Games, but I do think Use of Weapons and Consider Phlebas have stronger characters.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago(1994)
- morgango 2y agoOn a related note ... the ship names in the Culture always gave me a laugh. Here is a complete list: https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_spacecraft https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_spacecraft