7 ms·

This is not the first time I've read articles attempting to paint the Culture as a dystopia. I think the best counter is to quote the author's own words, descr

This is not the first time I've read articles attempting to paint the Culture as a dystopia. I think the best counter is to quote the author's own words, describing how he felt about it, from an interview he did with CNN [1]: CNN: Would you like to live in the Culture [the society he has created]? Iain M. Banks: Good grief yes, heck, yeah, oh it's my secular heaven ... Yes, I would, absolutely. Again it comes down to wish fulfillment. I haven't done a study and taken lots of replies across a cross-section of humanity to find out what would be their personal utopia. It's mine, I thought of it, and I'm going home with it -- absolutely, it's great. [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/15/iain.banks/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/15/iain.banks/ind...

cplanas 1y ago
That quote from Banks only tells us that The Culture is his personal utopia. Fair enough, but Banks does not have authority over interpretations on his work. One man's heaven is another man's hell.
- dingnuts 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - AlotOfReading 1y ago
    1. "Utopia turns perverse" is established enough to be a tired trope. Brave New World is the canonical example here. 2. The Culture books are critical of the utopia. More than half of them are directly about the difficulty of reconciling the ideals of that utopia while coexisting in a universe with other people. The subgenre the Culture books belong to is literally called "critical utopia" fiction. 3. All (good) sci fi is political. You should find a different genre if you don't want politics in it.
    - username332211 1y ago
      > All (good) sci fi is political. You should find a different genre if you don't want politics in it. I think you are reaching one of the limitations of the English language here. Machiaveli's Prince and John Knox's Monstrous Regiment of Women are both "political" books, but in a very different sense. The former is an exercise in trying to understand the nature of power and society in specific circumstances (in particular, the Prince is a study of autocratic power by a committed republican). The latter is just a polemical weapon, designed to advance some political goal. When people complain about politics in literature, it's usually because they don't like reading the second sort of book. That sort of books are seldom good, whatever their genre may be. (I'm intentionally using Renaissance examples here, to avoid any unproductive discussions on more modern books.)
      - AlotOfReading 1y ago
        I'm using "political" in the way it's commonly applied to literature: social relationships involving power. This encompasses both your examples, as well as the Culture books. Kameron Hurley has a longer piece on what it means for writing to be political: https://locusmag.com/feature/kameron-hurley-the-status-quo-is-not-a-neutral-position-fiction-and-politics/ https://locusmag.com/feature/kameron-hurley-the-status-quo-i... And honestly, you can pick the "good" writer of your choice from Asimov to Zelazny. Their politics come through in their writing. Foundation and Lords of Light are both obviously political works. I don't need to get into Heinlein or Bradbury, or poul and it comes through the space between in the lines in Wolf and Pohl. Le Guin and Clarke wore their politics on their sleeves. Etc. I'm not making some pedantic point here. Science Fiction is a deeply, inherently political genre and always has been.
        rsynnott 1y ago
        Yeah, I'm really struggling to think of a major work of sci-fi that is _not_ in some sense political. Possibly Robert Forward's stuff, but as I think he admitted himself those were mostly an excuse to play with weird physics.
  - FooBarBizBazz 1y ago
    I too was so surprised by that Banks quote that I still wonder if maybe he was lying or being deliberately provocative. (I wouldn't call The Culture "leftist" exactly, as it seems to be a space version of liberal imperialism, which the international Left always opposed. Though it is "left" in the American Fox/CNN-tier sense.) If I choose to believe Banks' quote, then I have to interpret The Culture as merely the best possible society, in a universe where human nature severely constrains what societies are possible. To me it seems to be a world full of pointlessness and barely-suppressed existential angst -- so perhaps he is saying: "Imagine that we can solve death and supply unlimited entertainment and pleasure. Even then, you will not be able to escape a kind of background noise, an omnipresent drone, in a minor key -- because that's inevitable to existence." Now I imagine a back-story: The people of The Culture, the Minds, everything -- they are actually in Hell. Their universe is Hell. They are incredibly clever; they have outwitted the gods (to the extent possible); they have ended the tortures, chained Satan (or whoever used to administer), and found ways to roast marshmallows over the lakes of fire. It is a tremendous triumph. And yet they are still in Hell, and no matter the palaces they build there or the drugs they take, there is pain beneath the surface. I read The Culture books as a subtler version of that story, where it is never spelled out clearly where they are. At the same time, don't take this to mean that I want to force some religious meaning onto the books. My meaning is also secular. Hell is a metaphor of some kind. The meaning I am suggesting is more existentialist than religious.
    - zbentley 1y ago
      That’s an interesting idea. I’m not sure how well hell maps to Banks’ books in terms of choice though. In most religious depictions, one of hell’s predominant characteristics is its inescapability—either logistically or by the mental limits of its inhabitants. Tons of Banks’ work, on the other hand, has a through line of “people could choose to leave the Culture, they’re fundamentally in their situation by (extremely unconstrained!) choice”. This comes up in the idea of Subliming, being Stored, many characters’ choices to commit suicide/decline immortality, or just plain leaving the Culture as many do. Plenty of his characters are in hells of their own making/choosing, or are tortured by other people, which I think is definitely a commentary on the sources of suffering being behavioral rather than just environmental, but I’m not sure it follows that “therefore the Culture is hell”.
  - aredox 1y ago
    Just read Look to Windward to see how wrong you are. Banks knows very well that hell is paved with good intentions. See also Use of Weapons and Excession.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > The reframing of the Culture as his ideal society turns the whole series into boring political propaganda If it was criticism of the utopic ideas, it would be just as much political propaganda, just for different ideas.
- Yeul 1y ago
  I told a Christian recruiter once that I don't want an afterlife. Their mind basically broke down trying to process it.
  - like_any_other 1y ago
    What makes physical death so special that you do want to exist before it happens, but don't want to after? Why not pick some other arbitrary event, like say, the next New Years?
    - oasisaimlessly 1y ago
      Some people enjoy playing games in 'Hardcore' mode (see e.g. Subnautica) where if you die, instead of respawning, the game ends and your save file is deleted.
    - exe34 1y ago
      for me it's the fact that I could theoretically end it (modulo quantum immortality, my worst nightmare). the afterlife is usually sold with "guaranteed forever". I've been in so many situations that you might think "oh I wish this could go on forever" and then regretted it, that I want to make sure there's a way to pull the plug.
    - Yeul 1y ago
      Spending the rest of eternity with other human beings is not very appealin.
      - like_any_other 1y ago
        What if you could spend it with cats? What if it didn't have to be forever - if you could end it any time you chose, like after 1000 years or whenever? It seems what you don't want is only a very specific version of an afterlife.
        rsynnott 1y ago
        Does any major belief system actually have an afterlife in which you can _die again_?
- FrustratedMonky 1y ago
  Yes. Even today, one mans garbage is another's gold. Sci-Fi is full of 'Utopias' that can also be viewed as 'Dystopia', depending on the view point. And in a lot of movies, that shifting view point is the story.
- nitwit005 1y ago
  Words are a means of communication. An author can clarify what was intended to be communicated.
- exe34 1y ago
  in the Culture universe, you don't have to stay in the Culture - you can get defanged and slum it out on some backwater hell hole like the rest of us.
  - FireBeyond 1y ago
    Right. Just because the universe is post-scarcity, doesn't mean you can't build items, and entire production chains. Just because you can live to near immortality, doesn't mean you have to do things to prevent natural aging.
  - UltraSane 1y ago
    One guy became a member of the alien race the Affront, so named because they they have culturally and socially ingrained traits for exploitation, sadism and brutality.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > That quote from Banks only tells us that The Culture is his personal utopia Idk, post-scarcity immortal FTL-wielding techno-democracy with benevolent artificial superintelligence doesn’t strike me as some hell. And the Culture isn’t a galactic monolith. If you want a more traditional existence, there are other societies you can fuck off to.
  - drak0n1c 1y ago
    The Culture intervenes in and steers those other societies and species even when unprovoked. Essentially a neoconservative utopia as envisioned by a young Irving Kristol. Yes, it would be a heaven for all who are pleased to take on its espirit de corps and live in it, casual and decadently low-pressure such might be, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a healthy influence in the long run on a universe that it is arrogantly homogenizing. There is such a thing as unintended consequences, and The Culture is not yet one of the more advanced, wiser "Sublimed" civilizations.
    - UltraSane 1y ago
      The Culture is absolutely not "neoconservative". I don't think modern political terms can meaningfully apply to a post-scarcity civilization with benevolent AI Gods.
    - scotty79 1y ago
      We do what we must because we can.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > and The Culture is not yet one of the more advanced, wiser "Sublimed" civilizations I got no indication that Sublimation was a marker of advancement. More just a different state.
- UltraSane 1y ago
  Anyone who really thinks the Culture is hell is not mentally healthy.
  - munksbeer 1y ago
    I wouldn't use those words, but I agree with the sentiment. I'd go and live as a culture citizen in a heartbeat.
    - UltraSane 1y ago
      I'm not sure how else to phrase it. Perhaps, anyone who considers The Culture universe to be hell thinks incomprehensibly different to me.
      - munksbeer 1y ago
        Absolutely agree.
Barrin92 1y ago
That's arguably the worst argument given that the author has no special authority over the interpretation of the work. Heinlein with his increasingly militaristic views wrote Starship Troopers as a sincere story, but Paul Verhoeven showed quite compellingly that it might make for better satire.
- falcor84 1y ago
  That's actually an ironic example, seeing how so many (maybe most) viewers took the intended satire at face value, essentially looping all the way back to Heinlein's intent.
  - pessimizer 1y ago
    The best satire is always convincing to its targets, because it doesn't misrepresent their positions. The Prince may be satire; who knows what was in Machiavelli's head.
    - username332211 1y ago
      Doesn't the guy have another book - The Discourses on Livy, that confirms the general gist of The Prince? (i.e. autocracies are horrible, to be a successful autocrat you need to be brutal and ruthless)
    - FrustratedMonky 1y ago
      Exactly. Even today, a lot of satire aimed at the 'right', viewed from the 'right's perspective is not realized as satire and is viewed like someone is trying to make a real point. They can't tell it is satire.
- BoingBoomTschak 1y ago
  Didn't Verhoeven famously not read the book? Hard to call it "satire" then, "straw man" might be more accurate.
  - 1y ago

cplanas 1y ago

That quote from Banks only tells us that The Culture is his personal utopia. Fair enough, but Banks does not have authority over interpretations on his work. One man's heaven is another man's hell.

dingnuts 1y ago
[flagged]
- AlotOfReading 1y ago
  1. "Utopia turns perverse" is established enough to be a tired trope. Brave New World is the canonical example here. 2. The Culture books are critical of the utopia. More than half of them are directly about the difficulty of reconciling the ideals of that utopia while coexisting in a universe with other people. The subgenre the Culture books belong to is literally called "critical utopia" fiction. 3. All (good) sci fi is political. You should find a different genre if you don't want politics in it.
  - username332211 1y ago
    > All (good) sci fi is political. You should find a different genre if you don't want politics in it. I think you are reaching one of the limitations of the English language here. Machiaveli's Prince and John Knox's Monstrous Regiment of Women are both "political" books, but in a very different sense. The former is an exercise in trying to understand the nature of power and society in specific circumstances (in particular, the Prince is a study of autocratic power by a committed republican). The latter is just a polemical weapon, designed to advance some political goal. When people complain about politics in literature, it's usually because they don't like reading the second sort of book. That sort of books are seldom good, whatever their genre may be. (I'm intentionally using Renaissance examples here, to avoid any unproductive discussions on more modern books.)
    - AlotOfReading 1y ago
      I'm using "political" in the way it's commonly applied to literature: social relationships involving power. This encompasses both your examples, as well as the Culture books. Kameron Hurley has a longer piece on what it means for writing to be political: https://locusmag.com/feature/kameron-hurley-the-status-quo-is-not-a-neutral-position-fiction-and-politics/ https://locusmag.com/feature/kameron-hurley-the-status-quo-i... And honestly, you can pick the "good" writer of your choice from Asimov to Zelazny. Their politics come through in their writing. Foundation and Lords of Light are both obviously political works. I don't need to get into Heinlein or Bradbury, or poul and it comes through the space between in the lines in Wolf and Pohl. Le Guin and Clarke wore their politics on their sleeves. Etc. I'm not making some pedantic point here. Science Fiction is a deeply, inherently political genre and always has been.
      - rsynnott 1y ago
        Yeah, I'm really struggling to think of a major work of sci-fi that is _not_ in some sense political. Possibly Robert Forward's stuff, but as I think he admitted himself those were mostly an excuse to play with weird physics.
- FooBarBizBazz 1y ago
  I too was so surprised by that Banks quote that I still wonder if maybe he was lying or being deliberately provocative. (I wouldn't call The Culture "leftist" exactly, as it seems to be a space version of liberal imperialism, which the international Left always opposed. Though it is "left" in the American Fox/CNN-tier sense.) If I choose to believe Banks' quote, then I have to interpret The Culture as merely the best possible society, in a universe where human nature severely constrains what societies are possible. To me it seems to be a world full of pointlessness and barely-suppressed existential angst -- so perhaps he is saying: "Imagine that we can solve death and supply unlimited entertainment and pleasure. Even then, you will not be able to escape a kind of background noise, an omnipresent drone, in a minor key -- because that's inevitable to existence." Now I imagine a back-story: The people of The Culture, the Minds, everything -- they are actually in Hell. Their universe is Hell. They are incredibly clever; they have outwitted the gods (to the extent possible); they have ended the tortures, chained Satan (or whoever used to administer), and found ways to roast marshmallows over the lakes of fire. It is a tremendous triumph. And yet they are still in Hell, and no matter the palaces they build there or the drugs they take, there is pain beneath the surface. I read The Culture books as a subtler version of that story, where it is never spelled out clearly where they are. At the same time, don't take this to mean that I want to force some religious meaning onto the books. My meaning is also secular. Hell is a metaphor of some kind. The meaning I am suggesting is more existentialist than religious.
  - zbentley 1y ago
    That’s an interesting idea. I’m not sure how well hell maps to Banks’ books in terms of choice though. In most religious depictions, one of hell’s predominant characteristics is its inescapability—either logistically or by the mental limits of its inhabitants. Tons of Banks’ work, on the other hand, has a through line of “people could choose to leave the Culture, they’re fundamentally in their situation by (extremely unconstrained!) choice”. This comes up in the idea of Subliming, being Stored, many characters’ choices to commit suicide/decline immortality, or just plain leaving the Culture as many do. Plenty of his characters are in hells of their own making/choosing, or are tortured by other people, which I think is definitely a commentary on the sources of suffering being behavioral rather than just environmental, but I’m not sure it follows that “therefore the Culture is hell”.
- aredox 1y ago
  Just read Look to Windward to see how wrong you are. Banks knows very well that hell is paved with good intentions. See also Use of Weapons and Excession.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > The reframing of the Culture as his ideal society turns the whole series into boring political propaganda If it was criticism of the utopic ideas, it would be just as much political propaganda, just for different ideas.
Yeul 1y ago
I told a Christian recruiter once that I don't want an afterlife. Their mind basically broke down trying to process it.
- like_any_other 1y ago
  What makes physical death so special that you do want to exist before it happens, but don't want to after? Why not pick some other arbitrary event, like say, the next New Years?
  - oasisaimlessly 1y ago
    Some people enjoy playing games in 'Hardcore' mode (see e.g. Subnautica) where if you die, instead of respawning, the game ends and your save file is deleted.
  - exe34 1y ago
    for me it's the fact that I could theoretically end it (modulo quantum immortality, my worst nightmare). the afterlife is usually sold with "guaranteed forever". I've been in so many situations that you might think "oh I wish this could go on forever" and then regretted it, that I want to make sure there's a way to pull the plug.
  - Yeul 1y ago
    Spending the rest of eternity with other human beings is not very appealin.
    - like_any_other 1y ago
      What if you could spend it with cats? What if it didn't have to be forever - if you could end it any time you chose, like after 1000 years or whenever? It seems what you don't want is only a very specific version of an afterlife.
      - rsynnott 1y ago
        Does any major belief system actually have an afterlife in which you can _die again_?
FrustratedMonky 1y ago
Yes. Even today, one mans garbage is another's gold. Sci-Fi is full of 'Utopias' that can also be viewed as 'Dystopia', depending on the view point. And in a lot of movies, that shifting view point is the story.
nitwit005 1y ago
Words are a means of communication. An author can clarify what was intended to be communicated.
exe34 1y ago
in the Culture universe, you don't have to stay in the Culture - you can get defanged and slum it out on some backwater hell hole like the rest of us.
- FireBeyond 1y ago
  Right. Just because the universe is post-scarcity, doesn't mean you can't build items, and entire production chains. Just because you can live to near immortality, doesn't mean you have to do things to prevent natural aging.
- UltraSane 1y ago
  One guy became a member of the alien race the Affront, so named because they they have culturally and socially ingrained traits for exploitation, sadism and brutality.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> That quote from Banks only tells us that The Culture is his personal utopia Idk, post-scarcity immortal FTL-wielding techno-democracy with benevolent artificial superintelligence doesn’t strike me as some hell. And the Culture isn’t a galactic monolith. If you want a more traditional existence, there are other societies you can fuck off to.
- drak0n1c 1y ago
  The Culture intervenes in and steers those other societies and species even when unprovoked. Essentially a neoconservative utopia as envisioned by a young Irving Kristol. Yes, it would be a heaven for all who are pleased to take on its espirit de corps and live in it, casual and decadently low-pressure such might be, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a healthy influence in the long run on a universe that it is arrogantly homogenizing. There is such a thing as unintended consequences, and The Culture is not yet one of the more advanced, wiser "Sublimed" civilizations.
  - UltraSane 1y ago
    The Culture is absolutely not "neoconservative". I don't think modern political terms can meaningfully apply to a post-scarcity civilization with benevolent AI Gods.
  - scotty79 1y ago
    We do what we must because we can.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > and The Culture is not yet one of the more advanced, wiser "Sublimed" civilizations I got no indication that Sublimation was a marker of advancement. More just a different state.
UltraSane 1y ago
Anyone who really thinks the Culture is hell is not mentally healthy.
- munksbeer 1y ago
  I wouldn't use those words, but I agree with the sentiment. I'd go and live as a culture citizen in a heartbeat.
  - UltraSane 1y ago
    I'm not sure how else to phrase it. Perhaps, anyone who considers The Culture universe to be hell thinks incomprehensibly different to me.
    - munksbeer 1y ago
      Absolutely agree.

Barrin92 1y ago

That's arguably the worst argument given that the author has no special authority over the interpretation of the work. Heinlein with his increasingly militaristic views wrote Starship Troopers as a sincere story, but Paul Verhoeven showed quite compellingly that it might make for better satire.

falcor84 1y ago
That's actually an ironic example, seeing how so many (maybe most) viewers took the intended satire at face value, essentially looping all the way back to Heinlein's intent.
- pessimizer 1y ago
  The best satire is always convincing to its targets, because it doesn't misrepresent their positions. The Prince may be satire; who knows what was in Machiavelli's head.
  - username332211 1y ago
    Doesn't the guy have another book - The Discourses on Livy, that confirms the general gist of The Prince? (i.e. autocracies are horrible, to be a successful autocrat you need to be brutal and ruthless)
  - FrustratedMonky 1y ago
    Exactly. Even today, a lot of satire aimed at the 'right', viewed from the 'right's perspective is not realized as satire and is viewed like someone is trying to make a real point. They can't tell it is satire.
BoingBoomTschak 1y ago
Didn't Verhoeven famously not read the book? Hard to call it "satire" then, "straw man" might be more accurate.
- 1y ago