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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'

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.
    - theptip 2y ago
      Unless there is some sort of “maximum diameter” of each civilization, past which it either splits, stagnates, or implodes. In which case you can sidestep the assumption that development monotonically increases and the first-mover must win.
      - AlotOfReading 2y ago
        Which is more or less the case in the culture universe. Civilizations within the same "tier" are roughly comparable, and anyone who moves past the culture's tier ascends into irrelevance (excepting plot devices in excession and consider phlebas).
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        Personally, I think Vinge did a better version of this, explicitly segregating max capability zones and explaining how a civilization might persist over eons in a light-speed-is-a-limit universe.
    - jayGlow 2y ago
      In the culture series there is sort of a cap on technology. once a civilization reaches a certain point they tend to sublime effectively leaving the current plane of existence. This means most civilizations only last a few 10s of thousands of years at most.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  They aren't unique to the culture, the series just focuses almost solely on the culture. The few other perspectives we get to look at (e.g. the Idirans in Consider Phlebas) are bloody fanatics who prefer to conquer their enemies in martial combat, not spies. Even within the Culture, special circumstances exists as a pragmatic necessity at odds with the broader society of the Culture. It's pointed out many times that its existence and methods are controversial and widely distrusted. I think the only real glimpse we get of other civilizations' versions are in Surface Detail, where it's mentioned (but never directly observed) that the other side of the war has agents influencing events exactly like the culture does.

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.
  - theptip 2y ago
    Unless there is some sort of “maximum diameter” of each civilization, past which it either splits, stagnates, or implodes. In which case you can sidestep the assumption that development monotonically increases and the first-mover must win.
    - AlotOfReading 2y ago
      Which is more or less the case in the culture universe. Civilizations within the same "tier" are roughly comparable, and anyone who moves past the culture's tier ascends into irrelevance (excepting plot devices in excession and consider phlebas).
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Personally, I think Vinge did a better version of this, explicitly segregating max capability zones and explaining how a civilization might persist over eons in a light-speed-is-a-limit universe.
  - jayGlow 2y ago
    In the culture series there is sort of a cap on technology. once a civilization reaches a certain point they tend to sublime effectively leaving the current plane of existence. This means most civilizations only last a few 10s of thousands of years at most.
AlotOfReading 2y ago
They aren't unique to the culture, the series just focuses almost solely on the culture. The few other perspectives we get to look at (e.g. the Idirans in Consider Phlebas) are bloody fanatics who prefer to conquer their enemies in martial combat, not spies. Even within the Culture, special circumstances exists as a pragmatic necessity at odds with the broader society of the Culture. It's pointed out many times that its existence and methods are controversial and widely distrusted. I think the only real glimpse we get of other civilizations' versions are in Surface Detail, where it's mentioned (but never directly observed) that the other side of the war has agents influencing events exactly like the culture does.