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The muscular imagination of Iain M. Banks: a future you might want

• ethbr1 2y ago
  Curious question for HN re: Banks/culture -- how do Culture-esque civilizations dominate technologically and economically over civilizations with less Culture-like attributes?^ That respect of Banks always felt a bit handwavey as to the specifics. (I.e. good/freedom triumphs over evil/tyranny, because it's a superior philosophy) At galactic-scale, across civilization timespans, it's not as apparent why that should hold true. Would have hoped that Banks, had he lived longer, would have delved into this in detail. Granted, Vinge takes a similar approach, constructing his big bad from an obviously-not-equivalent antagonist, sidestepping the direct comparison. The closest I got from either of them was that they posited that civilizations that tolerate and encourage diversity and individual autonomy persist for longer, are thus older, and that older counts for a lot at galactic scale. ^ Note: I'm asking more about the Idiran Empire than an OCP.
  • bloopernova 2y ago
    I always assumed that Infinite Fun Space was used by the Minds to pre-emptively model any potential conflict.
    • mattmanser 2y ago
      He's explicit about that in Excession, and other books.
      • Vecr 2y ago
        How does he deal with the trillions of people tortured in infinite fun space? Wars don't tend to be suffering free, especially when they are the really nasty worst-case scenario ones you want to simulate. Did he reject the substrate invariance argument? It sounds like that, but if you want the culture to be our future (as in the future of actual humans), you can't do that, because... It's not true.
    • ethbr1 2y ago
      But the Minds are something of a turtles-all-the-way-down solution. If the Culture has Minds, why wouldn't other civilizations? And why would Culture-esque Minds be superior to less-Culture-y Minds?
      • AlotOfReading 2y ago
        Other civilizations do have minds, constructed differently. The Gzilt in Hydrogen Sonata have minds constructed by humans after they've passed, with personalities from those people.
        • Vecr 2y ago
          1) Not humans, Banks just calls them that in the text of the books, and 2) Any mind derived from a "human like" (even to a very small degree, really human like civilization and evolved) is at a massive disadvantage to a very highly optimized result of recursive self improvement.
          • AlotOfReading 2y ago
            Actual earth humans are in the books and noted to be of the same general body plan. Close enough. The Gzilt minds are specifically compared to culture minds and deemed to be comparable in capabilities.
            • Vecr 2y ago
              > The Gzilt minds are specifically compared to culture minds and deemed to be comparable in capabilities. Well, that's not really realistic. Maybe they are only pretending to be based on organics, but really aren't, and just put up a facade.
              • AlotOfReading 2y ago
                They're not based on organics, but that's missing the larger point that realism isn't the point of sci fi like the culture series. It's an imaginary setting the author is using to look at society.
    • swayvil 2y ago
      I figured that it was simply a flavor of fun that only Minds can appreciate (tho it could have practical uses too of course).
    • satori99 2y ago
      I'm not sure that Infinite Fun Space is used to simulate the real. I got the impression that IFS is where Minds go to unwind and play in synthetic universes with rules of their own imagining. And that humans cannot really even properly conceive them. The Culture is also very cautious about running high fidelity simulations for ethical reasons. Useful simulations approach the real in fidelity which makes them problematic to delete -- But they still do it.
  • sxp 2y ago
    Excession deals with this. It involves the Culture and "The Affront" which is a spacefaring but savage civilization that some people in the Culture dislike. Player of Games is a similar story about a civilization that the Culture dislikes. Those are my two favorite Culture books among my favorite books in general. The Wikipedia articles about the books goes into spoiler-heavy details about the Culture's interaction with those civilizations.
  • AlotOfReading 2y ago
    That's a big part of the stories. Special Circumstances nudges other civilizations towards the Culture's leanings (see player of games, surface detail) as they're climbing the technology ladder.
    • ItCouldBeWorse 2y ago
      Some day, the ambassador just travels upriver to the bad lands and starts a revolution- and wins. The lessons to learn here- always offer them a chair and kill them if they react badly..
    • ethbr1 2y ago
      See my comment below, re: Minds though. "Anything unique to Culture" as a solution begs the question "Why is that unique to the Culture?" It isn't clear why super-spy-diplomat-warriors would only be produced by the Culture. As soon as both sides have a thing, it ceases to be a competitive advantage. So SC as a solution implies that no other civilizations have their version of SC. Why not?
      • idontwantthis 2y ago
        In the first book it seemed like they confronted an enemy that actually got pretty close to beating them. Plus I really liked the epilogue where it briefly put the Culture in it’s proper scale and talked about completely unrelated goings on in the Galaxy that were so far away the Culture would never have anything to do with them. It’s conceivable there are several same level civilizations in the galaxy that would compete with the Culture if they ever met.
        • shawn_w 2y ago
          >It’s conceivable there are several same level civilizations in the galaxy that would compete with the Culture if they ever met. More than conceivable, we see them in some of the books.
        • hermitcrab 2y ago
          The galaxy is so old that different civilizations could easily be millions or even billions of years apart in development. And look what happens when human civilizations only a few hundred years apart meet. So it seems unlikely that 2 civilization would be closely matched.
  • wcarss 2y ago
    I think answers in response to your post will differ depending on whether or not you've read many of the Culture books -- to me it kind of sounds like you have, but it also kind of sounds like you haven't. If you haven't, I would recommend Player of Games, which is one of the few culture novels I have read, but which I think deals with this topic directly as the main idea of the book. If you have read it, it's possible your criticism is running deeper and you feel the way it's handled in that book is handwavey. I can't really address that criticism, it's perfectly valid! I'm not sure if other books do any better of a job, but it felt on par to Asimov writing political/military intrigue in Foundation: entertaining and a little cute, if somewhat shallow.
    • ethbr1 2y ago
      It's been a minute since I read Games, but from memory the target civilization there is of a scale far smaller than the Culture. Which is to say, if they both mobilized for brute force total war, the Culture could steamroll them. Which makes it a "send the Terminator back time to kill Sarah Connor" solution -- strangle a potential future competitor in the womb. That makes for an interesting book on the ruthless realpolitik behavior of otherwise moral and ethical superior civilizations, and how they actually maintain their superiority. (Probably Banks' point) But less-so on the hot tech-vogue generalization of "Isn't the Culture so dreamy? They've evolved beyond our ignorance."
      • n4r9 2y ago
        I'd note a couple of points here: - Yes, the Culture is way more technologically advanced than the Azadians. But the point is that a basic Culture human of standard intelligence (albeit extensive knowledge of strategy games) can - after a relatively small amount of training - defeat an Azadian who has devoted their entire life to Azad. And the reason is that the Culture humans's strategies reflect the values and philosophy of the Culture. The subtext is that the non-heirarchical nature of the Culture leads to a more effective use of resources. - The Culture-Idiran war is an example of them confronting an enemy that is of comparable technological development. Again, it's implied that the Culture wins because their decentralised and non-hierarchical existence let them move rapidly throughout the galaxy while switching quickly to a full war-footing. - It sounds like you have the impression that the Culture dominates all other civilisations. This is not true. For example, in Excession they discover that they're being observed by a vastly superior civilization that has some ability to hop between dimensions in a way that they cannot. There are civilisations like the Gzilt or Homomdans who are on a level with the Culture, and ancient Elder species like the Involucra who also give Culture ships a run for their money on combat.
  • YawningAngel 2y ago
    The fact that the Culture was not only willing to use very powerful general AI but allow it to run the entire civilisation, whereas the Idirans banned it, might have been a factor. No matter how smart Idirans might be presumably Minds would have a significant edge
  • nazgulnarsil 2y ago
    the mechanics of cooperation probably scale better than those of defection, by their nature. Defectors need to pay higher costs guarding themselves against the other defectors, and always trying to figure out how they are going to pick the right defections for themselves to win.
    • Vecr 2y ago
      That's not known for sure. The game theory simulations go one way or the other depending on what assumptions you use. I'm not sure you can say "probably" there.
      • nazgulnarsil 2y ago
        Highly recommend Statistical Physics of Human Cooperation.
        • Vecr 2y ago
          I'm thinking of slightly more esoteric concerns, in recent simulations I've seen some evidence that something like the All Defector from The Fractal Prince, a book in a series recommended in this thread, might be possible.
  • lxe 2y ago
    I don't think Culture's philosophy has been the driving factor behind its dominance and military advantage. I think the anarchy utopia is the side effect of the Culture minds being at the developmental peak over other civilizations.
    • Rzor 2y ago
      It's explicitly said in the novels (or by Banks, I can't remember exactly) that while civilizations sublime when they reach a certain point of development, the Culture seems hellbent on staying there venturing around the universe.
  • elihu 2y ago
    I think the reason is that the Culture has been around long enough to attain a level of technological development at which most civilizations sublime and simply stop participating in what we call material existence. The Culture could do so but has chosen not to do so (at least not collectively; individual people and minds sublime on a regular basis). A lot of the civilizations that would be militarily or economically more powerful than the culture aren't a problem because they've already sublimed.
    • ethbr1 2y ago
      That's a solid answer, if unsatisfactory (for Culture fans) because it empowers them by retarding their civilization-wide transcendence.
      • yencabulator 2y ago
        I personally read it as there's some weird quirk to the psychology of Culture that lets them have enough fun right now that they're not drawn to transcendence.
  • LeroyRaz 2y ago
    The culture triumphs because it is a technological super power. It is a technological super power because the minds (the super AIs running everything) are given free reign (and presumably most of its industrial base is used to create more minds, and develop more industry). I've always gotten the impression that the resources dedicated to maintaining and serving the humans in the culture empire are dwaft by the resources invested into developing their science and AI. (I mean basically they have Von Neumann machines controlling whole star systems, obviously this level of industry beats most biological enemies) It's worth noting though that there are several other cultures/species that are more advanced than the culture though. E.g., the ascended species that stewards the tomb worlds (and is in essence like a god compared to the culture). There are many other examples. I don't think it was ever claimed that the culture was predestined to be the strongest, or anything like that.
  • yencabulator 2y ago
    > Vinge takes a similar approach, constructing his big bad from an obviously-not-equivalent antagonist, sidestepping the direct comparison. I'd argue A Fire Upon the Deep clearly has the antagonist winning, and the life we recognize is only saved by basically staying within a safe area of the galaxy. You haven't conquered the monster just because you're safe under your blanket.
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• swayvil 2y ago
  Let's play Maximum Happy Imagination. I'll start small. Flying cars.
• A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  You might want to live there, but I wouldn't. Virtually all humans in the books -- and I'm aware of the fact that they're not Earth humans but a wide variety of humanoid aliens -- are kept as pets by the ships, for amusement, basically as clowns. Everything important about the flow of human life is decided by the mighty ship minds; humans are left to nibble at the margins and dance to the tune of their betters. There are a small subset of elites, in organizations like Special Circumstances, that are granted a modicum of independent agency, but even this is rather difficult to justify under the circumstances. Most of the drama in the books comes to pass when the ship-dominated Culture interacts with a "backwards and benighted," but still vital and expansionist, species. It's just not a human future. It's a contrived future where humans are ruled by benign Gods. I suppose that for some people this would be a kind of heaven. For others, though... In a way it's a sort of anti-Romanticism, I guess.
  • robotomir 2y ago
    There are less than benign godlike entities in that imagined future, for example the Excession and some of the Sublimed. That adds an additional layer to the narrative.
  • Mikhail_K 2y ago
    The author admits to not liking "Consider Phlebas," which is the most original and captivating of the Culture series.
    • EndsOfnversion 2y ago
      Gotta read that one with a copy of The Wasteland, and From Ritual To Romance handy. The command systems train as lance smashing into the inverted chalice (grail) dome of the station at the end. Death by water. Running round in a ring, Tons of other parallels if you dig/squint.
    • grogenaut 2y ago
      I remember "Consider Phlebas" as "not much happens" "Giant train in a cave" "smart nuke". I think that the unknown viewpoint switching constantly makes "Consider" and "Weapons" pretty not fun (as well as just everyone in weapons sucks). I definitely prefer "Player". But everyone gets to enjoy what they enjoy. I'd love to have had more banks to love or hate as I chose :(
• weregiraffe 2y ago
  Try The Noon Universe books by the Strugatsky brothers instead.
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• mattmanser 2y ago
  He hasn't even read Excession! To me it is the pinnacle of the Culture novels. It mixes the semi-absurdity and silliness of the absurdly powerful minds (AI in control of a ship), individual 'humans' in a post-scarcity civilization, and the deadly seriousness of games of galactic civilizations. It also has an absolutely great sequence of the minds having an online conversation. I do agree with his consider phelebas hesitancy. I still enjoy it, but it is clearly his early ideas and he's still sounding out his literary sci-fi tone and what the culture is. And you can skip the section where the protagonist gets trapped on an island with a cannibal. I think it was influenced by the sort of JG Ballard horror from the same period, and doesn't really work. He never really does something like that again in any of the culture books.
  • throwaway55340 2y ago
    Surface Detail or Use of Weapons qualifies. Although Use of Weapons was written much earlier than released, IIRC.
    • mattmanser 2y ago
      Use of Weapons is great. I struggled a bit with Surface Detail and found it a bit meandering, like a few of the later books. It was good, but I definitely rate others above it. Excession, Player of Games and Use of Weapons are probably my top Culture novels. With Feersum Endjinn up there in his general SF work, though I must admit I've only read it once as I don't have a copy. Probably far too late for this thread, but lots of his non-SF work is amazing too. Though often dark and dealing with uncomfortable themes. The plots and themes of Song Of Stones + The Wasp Factory have popped into my head for decades after I read them.
  • davedx 2y ago
    I love Consider Phlebas, it’s a right old romp, the pace always pulls me right in.
  • simpaticoder 2y ago
    Agreed about being able to skip the island sequence in _Consider Phlebas_. I recently reread the book after many years, and in my memory that section looms large, and I expected it to be 100 pages. But it's ~20. It was much easier the second time around, and I think it serves to underscore how committed the Culture is to personal agency, to the extent that if citizens wish to give themselves over to an absurdly evil charismatic leader, no-one will stop them. There was also something interesting about the mind on the shuttle on standby, its almost toddler-like character, told "not to look" at the goings on on the island by the orbital. And its innocent, trusting self is eventually murdered by Horza during the escape, adding some black dark pigment to Horza's already complex character hue.
• seafoamteal 2y ago
  I think just yesterday I saw a post on HN about what people in the past the future (i.e. today) would look like, and how wildly wrong a decent proportion of those predictions are. The problem is that we generally tend to extrapolate into the future by taking what we have now and sublimating it to a higher level. Unfortunately, not only is that sometimes difficult, but we also make completely novel discoveries and take unforeseen paths quite often. We need more people with 'muscular' imaginations, as Sloan puts it, to throw out seemingly improbable ideas into the world for others to take inspiration from and build upon. P.S. Robin Sloan is a wonderful science-fiction and fantasy writer. I was first introduced to him in the excerpts of Cambridge Secondary Checkpoint English exam papers, but only got around to reading his books many years later. I would recommend them to anybody.
  • GeoAtreides 2y ago
    >taking what we have now and sublimating to a higher level That's fine, the Culture is really against sublimating
  • Vecr 2y ago
    Going by AI theory Banks failed that hard. I suspect he knew that, due to his tricks with language, but that doesn't mean he successfully predicted a plausible future, even in broad strokes. The singularity is called the singularity for a reason, and even when you throw economists at it you tend to get machine civilizations (though, maybe partially squishy and probably made from carbon instead of silicon) expanding at 1/3rd the speed of light. No culture there.
    • DanHulton 2y ago
      I don't think we can confidently say he failed -- the singularity is still just a theory. Being as it hasn't happened, we can't say as to whether the economists or Banks are correct.
• minedwiz 2y ago
  L
• asplake 2y ago
  > I do not like Consider Phlebas One of my favourites! Excession most of all though. Agree with starting with Player of Games.
• andrewstuart 2y ago
  I loved reading the books but then discovered the audiobooks. The audiobooks are absolutely the best way to enjoy Iain M Banks. The Algebraist read by Anton Lesser one of the best audiobooks ever made. Equal best with Excession read by Peter Kenny. These two narrators are incredibly good actors. I could never go back to the books after hearing these audiobooks.
• worik 2y ago
  The culture was a dystopia.
  • pavel_lishin 2y ago
    How so?
    • GeoAtreides 2y ago
      The Culture makes really obvious there's no real purpose, no great struggle, no sense to the universe. When everything is provided, when everything is safe, when there is no more effort, then what's the purpose of life? A lot of people when confronted with these revelations/questions have an existentialist crisis. For some, the solution is to deny the Culture. Long story short, the Culture is a true Utopia and some people just can't handle utopias
    • worik 2y ago
      It is interesting to read the books in the order they were written. The earlier novels (I am going completely from memory here) "Use of Weapons" and "Consider Phlebis" The humans are pets of the machines. The machines are vicious, and righteous. They use extreme, and creative, violence when they feel it is in their interests. In the later novels I feel Banks lost his way a bit, got too attached to the characters. In the later Culture novels the main characters are invulnerable, he does not let any of them die. Whereas in consider Phlebus (spoiler alert) Horza dies at the end and his whole race is genocided.
  • Barrin92 2y ago
    It's not a dystopia, which is a maximally negative state, but I also always found it pretty comical to call it utopian. A decent chunk of the stories has the reader follow around Special Circumstances, which is effectively a sort of space CIA interfering in the affairs of other cultures. The entire plot of Player of Games, spoiler alert for people who haven't read it, is that both the protagonist of the story, as well as the reader by the narrator, have been mislead and used as a pawn to facilitate the overthrow of the government of another civilization which afterwards collapses into chaos. To me you can straight up read most of the books as satire on say, a Fukuyama-esque America of the late 20th century rather than a futuristic utopia.
• hnbear 2y ago
  Whenever I’m asked the sort of generic icebreaker questions like “what fictional thing do you wish you had” a neural lace is one of my first answers, short of membership in the Culture or access to a GSV or a Mind. I also love Consider Phlebas. Maybe because it was the first I read, but I’ve found it to be a great comfort read. Look to Windward and Player Of Games next. Use Of Weapons is always fantastic, but less fun. His non-sci-fi fiction is great too. I loved Complicity and have read it many time. His whisky book is fantastic.
  • globular-toast 2y ago
    I like Consider Phlebas too. I'm not sure why so many say they don't like it. Player of Games was not one of my favourites, but I might read it again at some point to see what I missed. I actually really liked Inversions despite being generally the least well regarded Culture book.
• Slava_Propanei 2y ago
  [dead]
• mrlonglong 2y ago
  Elon Musk liked these books and look at what happened to him since, he's gone far right and all swivel eyed on twitter.
  • yew 2y ago
    Banks had very "fast cars, chicks, and drugs" tastes - a "bro" if you will - and much of his work is basically James Bond stories. I'm not sure the fans are surprising.
    • mrlonglong 2y ago
      Did he really? That's not what I heard.
      • yew 2y ago
        He collected the cars and wrote about the (non-fictional) drugs. He wasn't an exhibitionist, as far as I know, so you'll have to infer what you like about the middle one from his writing. Some related reading: https://www.theguardian.com/books/1997/may/20/fiction.sciencefictionfantasyandhorror https://www.theguardian.com/books/1997/may/20/fiction.scienc... https://www.scotsman.com/news/interview-iain-banks-a-merger-of-two-banks-2460282 https://www.scotsman.com/news/interview-iain-banks-a-merger-... https://www.vice.com/en/article/iain-banks-274-v16n12/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/iain-banks-274-v16n12/
  • LeroyRaz 2y ago
    Lol. The culture is pretty far left (strong super-paternalistic government, equality of outcomes, etc...). I don't think one can draw a serious connection between liking the series and rightwing politics.
    • mrlonglong 2y ago
      Not what I meant.
  • swayvil 2y ago
• api 2y ago
  I might have to try Player of Games. I didn't like Consider Phlebas either.
  • alkyon 2y ago
    I also failed to appreciate Consider Phlebas, on the other hand I liked Wasp Factory very much. Well, let us see Player of Games.
• danielodievich 2y ago
  I am a huge Culture fan. Yesterday at my birthday dinner there were 3 others who are also fans of Banks, one of whom I turned onto the Culture just last year. We were having a great discussion of those books and lamenting the untimely passing of Banks from cancer. That friend gifted me The Player of Games and Consider Phlebas from esteemed Folio Society (https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/the-player-of-games.html https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/the-player-of-games.html, https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/consider-phlebas.html https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/consider-phlebas.html), gorgeous editions, great paper, lovely bindings, great illustrations. I've been eyeing them for a while and it's so nice to have good friends who notice and are so generous.
• hermitcrab 2y ago
  if you are a fan of Bank's culture books, consider reading his first novel 'the wasp factory'. Very dark and funny, with a huge twist at the end. NB/ Not sci-fi.
  • howard941 2y ago
    Iain Banks' Horror, non-SF stuff is great. Like you I enjoyed The Wasp Factory. Also, The Bridge. We lost him far too young. edit: and if you enjoyed Banks' Horror you'll probably get into Dan Simmons' stuff, another SF (Hyperion) and Horror writer. The Song of Kali was excellent.
• blackhaj7 2y ago
  I love the culture series. The worlds that Alastair Reynolds builds in the Revelation Space series grips me the most though. The conjoiners with their augmented, self healing, interstellar travelling yet still a little human characteristics is both believable but beyond the familiar all at the same time. Highly recommended
  • ImaCake 2y ago
    I think Revelation Space does a great job creating a universe that squeezes out novel human cultures through the crushing vice of selection pressure. It’s every bit as daring as The Culture, just a different vibe!
  • LeroyRaz 2y ago
    It's decent. I just find Alastair Reynolds a bad observer of humans though... He paints jarringly bad portaits of humans, e.g., in one of his books he has the mercenaries hand wringing about how they can't be morally shady despite the whole fate of the human race depending on them acting decisively. It's is a really naive depiction of how humans actually act under pressure. I have similar issues with the Three Body problem.
    • ethbr1 2y ago
      That was always my issue with Foundation. I couldn't suspend my disbelief sufficiently that characters were acting as they were written.
• robwwilliams 2y ago
  Thanks for the link to Banks’ site. Great read. Here is one suggestion that I think surpasses Banks in scope and complexity, and yes, perhaps even with a whiff of optimism about the future: Hannu Rajaniemi’s Jean Le Flambeur/Quantum Thief Trilogy (2010 to 2014) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief https://www.goodreads.com/series/57134-jean-le-flambeur https://www.goodreads.com/series/57134-jean-le-flambeur He manages plots with both great intricacy and with more plot integrity than Banks often manages. And he is much more of a computer and physics geek too, so the ideas are even farther out. Probably also an HN reader :-) Also set in a comparative near future. The main “problem” with the Quantum Thief trilogy is the steep learning curve—Rajaniemi throws the reader in the deep end without a float. But I highly recommend perservering!
  • jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    I really loved Quantum Thief, with it's Accelerando-like scope & scale of expansion, but mixed with such weird/eccentric/vibrant local mythos of the world, such history. Without my prompting it ended up in our local sci-fi/fantasy book club's rotation a couple months back, and there was some enjoyment but overall the major mood seemed to be pretty befuddled and confused, somewhat hurt at some of the trauma/bad (which isn't better in book 2!). But man, it worked so well for me. As you say, a very deep end book. But there's so much fun stuff packed in, such vibes; I loved puzzling it through the first time, being there for the ride, and found only more to dig into the next time. Still feels very different from Banks, where "space hippies with guns" has such a playful side. Quantum Thief is still a story of a solar system, and pressures within it, but there's such amorphous & vast extends covered by the Culture, so many many things happening in that universe. The books get to take us through Special Cirumstances, through such interesting edge cases, where-as the polot of Quantum Thief orbits the existing major powers of the universe.
  • yencabulator 2y ago
    The Quantum Thief is the kind of scifi where anything is possible if you call it "quantum" something; not a huge fan.
    • 2y ago
• throwaway13337 2y ago
  In these topics, I don't see cyborgs come up much. We're already kinda cyborgs. We use our tools as extensions of ourselves. Certainly my phone and computer are becoming more and more a part of me. A chess playing AI and a human beat a chess playing AI alone. The future I'd like to see is one where we stay in control but make better decisions because of our mental enhancements. With this logic, the most important thing now is not 'safe AI' but tools which do not manipulate us. Tools should, as a human right, be agents of the owners control alone in the same way that a hand is. AI isn't separate from us. It's part of us. Seeing it as separate puts us on a darker path.
  • brcmthrowaway 2y ago
    Transhumanism is just rich people babble
  • yencabulator 2y ago
    I think the implication is Culture humanoids are all cyborgs. Their technology doesn't follow "a dude with a metal arm" cyberpunk fashion, but they seem all physically well superior to naturally-grown organic humanoids. https://medium.com/@Fares_Mohamed_Amine/demystifying-neural-lace-the-fusion-of-human-minds-with-ai-1cebfd8517a9 https://medium.com/@Fares_Mohamed_Amine/demystifying-neural-... http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=2993 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=2993 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1881 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1881
• golol 2y ago
  For me my favorite Culture novels are the ones which are just vessels to deliver the perfect Deux Ex Machina - Player of Games, Excession, Surface Detail etc.
• hypertexthero 2y ago
  Is there a video game that is particularly complementary to one of the Culture novels?
  • Vecr 2y ago
    It's probably not possible to really do it. You could play something like Swat 4 while role-playing an one of the Special Circumstances agents I guess? You can switch between the views of each member of your team, use a fiber optic device to look under doors, sometimes have snipers set up, and look through their scopes/take shots. Lots of what we see "on screen" (but obviously it's a book) is really a somewhat detail-less alien action book dressed up as 1990s Earth (that's why the characters are called humans, and why certain things are described inaccurately). A good entry in an action game series started in the 90s isn't a bad bet. As I said, it's close to what good parts of the books portray themselves as anyway.
  • teamonkey 2y ago
    Can’t think of one. Maybe something like Commander Blood - high concept space opera, focus on alien interactions, humourous & quirky. But it’s also nothing like it.
  • HelloMcFly 2y ago
    Interesting question. Stellaris is the clear choice if you're into grand strategy, you can be an AI-led multi-cultural civilization (starting or become one) with Culture-like win conditions. Endless Space II is another option that's turn-based and a little more approachable. Mass Effect has a lot of fun with a galactic society. If you like the crew-based action of Consider Phlebas and want more of a story then that or (believe it or not) the Guardians of the Galaxy game that came out a couple of years ago are good choices. Deus Ex and Cyberpunk 2077 tackles trans-humanism to an extent but they're Earth-bound. Primordia is a point-and-click adventure where humans are extinct and our creations live on. I could probably think of some more but the dinner alarm is going off!
  • ThrowawayR2 2y ago
    Play SimCity or Civilization and contemplate what your relationship is to each of the sims or population units digitally represented in the game is. That would be the difference in level of consciousness between the Minds and ordinary humans like you and I. You are making those crude representations of beings in game happy, protecting them from outside threats, and generally looking out for their well being but your ability to relate to them or converse with them as equals with them will never be any different.
• squeedles 2y ago
  The level of discussion in this thread, both pro and con, demonstrates that I have made a grave omission by never reading any of this. However, the article has one point that I viscerally reacted to: “we have been, at this point, amply cautioned. Vision, on the other hand: I can’t get enough.” Amen.
• Animats 2y ago
  What kind of culture would strong AIs put together? That's the real question. Would it need, or involve, humans? Maybe most of space belongs to robots, and humans are left with the planets in the habitable zone.
• gradschoolfail 2y ago
  If you find Iain M’s characterization of his own work reliable, here’s an interview. My own question is, do humans not feel this need to be useful as strongly, as pervasively?? http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/a-few-questions-about-the-culture-an-interview-with-iain-banks/ http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/a-few-questi... In the "Reasons: the Culture" section of the appendices in Consider Phlebas there's the line, "The only desire the Culture could not fulfil from within itself. . . was the urge not to feel useless." In that need alone it is not self-sufficient, and so it has to go out into the rest of the galaxy to prove to itself, and to others, that its own high opinion of itself is somehow justified. At its worst, it is the equivalent of the lady of the manor going out amongst the peasants of the local village with her bounteous basket of breads and sweetmeats, but it's still better than nothing. And while the lady might—through her husband and the economic control he exerts over his estate and therefore the village—might be partly responsible for the destitution she seeks, piecemeal, to alleviate, the Culture isn't. It's just trying terribly hard to be helpful and nice, in situations it did nothing to bring into being.