|
I lost my old-cover copies in a house fire and only rebought them recently so they're all the blurry photo style covers except excession 
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2011 01:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 00:44 |
|
|
I hope that Banks can return to the universe he established for The Algebraist one day. Its world-building, harder-edged constraints (no FTL without wormholes, fleets taking relative centuries to make long trips, etc) & portrayal of the galaxy-encompassing Mercatorial bureaucracy really appealed to me where the Culture universe is beginning to become a little stale, given, as mentioned, the general invulnerability of the Minds & their human hangers-on.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2011 07:11
|
|
|
You should check out Alistair Reynolds... particularly the Revelation series. There's no FTL travel in his series either, and I think it makes for a really really interesting sci-fi setting. The crews of most spaceships are used to several hundred years passing by whenever they travel to different worlds... and there's one particular convoy that departs earth, and 3 generations go by on the ship before it actually arrives at its destination. I thought he dealt with the culture (no pun intended) of such a scenario in a very interesting manner.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2011 09:27
|
|
|
Since we are pimping non-FTL novels "A Deepness in the Sky" is pretty great in that it describes how a culture (no pun intended) of slower than light travel merchants arose.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2011 15:59
|
|
|
syphon posted:You should check out Alistair Reynolds... particularly the Revelation series. There's no FTL travel in his series either, and I think it makes for a really really interesting sci-fi setting. The crews of most spaceships are used to several hundred years passing by whenever they travel to different worlds... and there's one particular convoy that departs earth, and 3 generations go by on the ship before it actually arrives at its destination. I thought he dealt with the culture (no pun intended) of such a scenario in a very interesting manner. Seconding this. Reynolds has all sorts of flaws - janky pacing, some weird prose quirks - but everything about Revelation Space and Redemption Ark was cold and mechanistic and gothic and brutal. Tremendously atmospheric, almost the opposite of the Culture books. Plus the Ultras have ship names almost as awesome as the Minds.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2011 16:17
|
|
|
I thought the Pre-Melding Plague stuff we saw in The Prefect was a lot like a dark, slightly less advanced, gothic take on the Culture.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2011 16:35
|
|
|
I love having relativity being a factor in the stories. During the aforementioned "3 generation voyage across the stars", there's a bit about how the various ships were doing their best to shed any excess weight. Having a lighter ship meant that they could hold off 'braking' on their approach by an extra few seconds, which had the relative effect of them arriving at the planet 10 years earlier. I love reading about that kind of poo poo. While I love the culture novels, Banks tends to just hand-wave his explanation of FTL travel (or rather, he doesn't discuss it at all).
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2011 23:01
|
|
|
syphon posted:I love having relativity being a factor in the stories. During the aforementioned "3 generation voyage across the stars", there's a bit about how the various ships were doing their best to shed any excess weight. Having a lighter ship meant that they could hold off 'braking' on their approach by an extra few seconds, which had the relative effect of them arriving at the planet 10 years earlier. I love reading about that kind of poo poo. Agreed, lack of FTL makes me warm in the pants. Though Banks makes up for it a little by having large time frame between his books and by not allowing instant travel which is something.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2011 03:09
|
|
|
syphon posted:
I don't think this is necessarily the case, Banks deals with it by simply noting that The Culture has a loving gigantic area of influence and things can take a while. Sure he doesn't get down into how things go fast, but he definitely takes into account distances and travel times - it's just a non-issue in his books because it's a non-issue to his characters for the most part. Sure his ships go "fast" but there's no "instant point to point" travel like with the Algebraist's wormholes. In at least a couple of his books, The Player of Games for instance, characters(Gurgeh) contemplate the huge time they'll be separated from their 'home'. Gurgeh spends years travelling but because it's somewhat normal we don't spend huge portions of the book worrying about the trip itself as a gigantic undertaking. Immortality dulls the importance of a few years spent at high speed travelling the galaxy.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2011 09:31
|
|
|
Cuntpunch posted:I don't think this is necessarily the case, Banks deals with it by simply noting that The Culture has a loving gigantic area of influence and things can take a while. Sure he doesn't get down into how things go fast, but he definitely takes into account distances and travel times - it's just a non-issue in his books because it's a non-issue to his characters for the most part. Sure his ships go "fast" but there's no "instant point to point" travel like with the Algebraist's wormholes. In at least a couple of his books, The Player of Games for instance, characters(Gurgeh) contemplate the huge time they'll be separated from their 'home'. Gurgeh spends years travelling but because it's somewhat normal we don't spend huge portions of the book worrying about the trip itself as a gigantic undertaking. Immortality dulls the importance of a few years spent at high speed travelling the galaxy. Also the fact that interstellar travel involves life on a ship that is its own world with billions of inhabitants, a unique subculture, and instantaneous communication with any other point in the Culture probably takes some of the sting out of it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2011 17:22
|
|
|
I'm doing a project for university whereby I'm going to illustrate all 10 Culture novel covers. I just want to ask goons what kind of things would they like to see on the covers that maybe aren't something you would directly expect. It doesn't have to be that subtle, though for example I did think of doing the beach scene from Use of Weapons, probably one of the most evocative scenes in the book imo. I already like the series of UK covers for the fact that they don't immediately scream THIS IS A SCI-FI BOOK with space ships zooming about and so on, but they are rather ambiguous. Also what do you guys imagine ship Minds to 'look like'. Entropic posted:Well, there's the weird not-really-a-spoiler-unless-someone-tells-you-it-is one with the chair on the cover, and then there's the cheesy '80s generic SF one with the space-plane, are there any others? This is from a while back but on the mock-up I have for Use of Weapons at the moment I haven't strayed too far from the current UK cover version. I have the ship on the front but on the back I've mocked up a chair actually made from bones. Would people consider that a massive spoiler?
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2011 17:46
|
|
|
BastardySkull posted:Also what do you guys imagine ship Minds to 'look like'.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2011 19:05
|
|
|
Graviton v2 posted:In Consider Phlebas the runaway mind is described in fairly good detail. Its a silvery epsiliod about 3 meters long. Like a blob of floating mercury. Yeah I should have worded this better. I'm wondering how people imagine them to look like 'inside'. I'm guessing that would just be some sort of containment field/vessel. I've always imagined them to be similar to the positronic brains from the I, Robot movie. I'm thinking about featuring the Mind from Consider Phlebas as described on the cover for that book though. The previous covers for that book all seem to be the Orbital sea.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2011 20:14
|
|
|
Consider Phlebas: The game of damage. Player of games: Fire rolling across a planet surface. Or that web game. Use of weapons: A bed full of catemites. Excession: A bat with it's wings torn off and a tennis racket. Look to windward: Cable car plate continent. Or lava canoe Matter: Floating dildo drone. Surface Detail: A vision of the hell. Fearsum Enjin:Disembodied head with it's tongue saying "Gibibibibi" Algebraist:Dweller barge. Or people lined up and encased in that wrap as they are about to fired out of Luicferous' space ship Not read Inversions or Against a dark background yet. FelchTragedy fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Feb 20, 2011 |
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2011 20:22
|
|
|
BastardySkull posted:Yeah I should have worded this better. I'm wondering how people imagine them to look like 'inside'. I'm guessing that would just be some sort of containment field/vessel. I've always imagined them to be similar to the positronic brains from the I, Robot movie.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2011 07:48
|
|
|
alkanphel posted:That might be about right. I remember reading that most of the Mind is in another higher dimension or something. The Mind we can see is just the anchor to the world and there are biological parts as well I think. There is quite a detailed description of a drones photonic/semi-biological/electronic brain at the beginning of Excession but they are different. Its interesting to visualise anyway. Does anyone have any ideas of what they'd personally like to see on covers? Don't just say scenes from books though, thats not what I'm going for.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2011 13:51
|
|
|
alkanphel posted:That might be about right. I remember reading that most of the Mind is in another higher dimension or something. The Mind we can see is just the anchor to the world and there are biological parts as well I think. This is right, at some point it's explicitly mentioned that most of the mind's structure and processing capability resides in hyperspace.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2011 13:55
|
|
|
andrew smash posted:This is right, at some point it's explicitly mentioned that most of the mind's structure and processing capability resides in hyperspace. Allowing minds to think faster than light.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2011 11:05
|
|
|
Inversions: Mortar/pestle; dagger; bottle of perfume; crown; all of them laying on a blanket with ragged edges
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2011 04:17
|
|
|
use of weapons has got to be the chair
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2011 13:38
|
|
|
Seldom Posts posted:Inversions: Mortar/pestle; dagger; bottle of perfume; crown; all of them laying on a blanket with ragged edges Inversions isn't strictly 'A Culture novel' so I'm not doing it I'm afraid! I haven't even read it actually, I should get round to it. coffeetable posted:use of weapons has got to be the chair Yeah this is going on the back. I've actually mocked up the front covers of 2 already just to try and get a feel for the style. Keeping a slightly modified version of the current text with the same font for now. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2011 00:48
|
|
|
BastardySkull posted:Inversions isn't strictly 'A Culture novel' so I'm not doing it I'm afraid! I haven't even read it actually, I should get round to it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2011 04:16
|
|
|
BastardySkull posted:Inversions isn't strictly 'A Culture novel' so I'm not doing it I'm afraid! I haven't even read it actually, I should get round to it. These look pretty sweet, but the Use of Weapons cover is almost exactly the same as the actual cover. Exact same ship, exact same angle, exact same size.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2011 15:44
|
|
|
Strom Cuzewon posted:These look pretty sweet, but the Use of Weapons cover is almost exactly the same as the actual cover. Exact same ship, exact same angle, exact same size. BastardySkull posted:This is from a while back but on the mock-up I have for Use of Weapons at the moment I haven't strayed too far from the current UK cover version. I have the ship on the front but on the back I've mocked up a chair actually made from bones. Yeah he knows
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2011 20:14
|
|
|
Good books!
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2011 20:14
|
|
|
Strom Cuzewon posted:These look pretty sweet, but the Use of Weapons cover is almost exactly the same as the actual cover. Exact same ship, exact same angle, exact same size. Unfortunately battleships are battleships, but I am considering changing the angle and doing the scene where he's hallucinating and falling through layers of air, then sea, and I think a boat as well while in incredible pain and the Staberinde is on the horizon. I did say BastardySkull posted:This is from a while back but on the mock-up I have for Use of Weapons at the moment I haven't strayed too far from the current UK cover version. I have the ship on the front but on the back I've mocked up a chair actually made from bones. It is very similar and I'm not too happy about it but the ship and chair are the two main plot points. If you have any other ides I'd be grateful.   
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2011 20:23
|
|
|
Just finished Use of Weapons. God. drat.  That was heart-wrenching and well done. Definitely going to give it another go at some point. One my absolute favorite books. I dug the structure, reminded me a bit of Memento. Worked really well.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2011 04:56
|
|
|
Zimadori Zinger posted:Just finished Use of Weapons.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2011 10:26
|
|
|
Graviton v2 posted:It is a cracker isnt it. Thats one of my go to books whenever I attempt to convince a non-nerd to try a bit of sci-fi. Rarely works are you at all surprised by this?
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2011 14:58
|
|
|
andrew smash posted:are you at all surprised by this?
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2011 16:05
|
|
|
I just finished Use of Weapons, right about now. Sweet Jesus. I got spoiled on the nature of the chair but not on the identity of the Chairmaker. So I went into the final stretch feeling all  and then what the gently caress Zakalwe is THAT GUYDefinitely the best Culture book. Though ironic in that it's hardly about the Culture. I found it ironic how the chair was the first and in a way most powerful manifestation of Elothemiel's ability to turn anything into a weapon; thus the title I suppose. He ultimately won the war, right? Was there any science fictional justification given for Elothemiel coming to possess his memories so vividly?
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2011 22:43
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:I found it ironic how the chair was the first and in a way most powerful manifestation of Elothemiel's ability to turn anything into a weapon; thus the title I suppose. He ultimately won the war, right? Was there any science fictional justification given for Elothemiel coming to possess his memories so vividly? He doesn't possess his memories. The whole book is in third person, and the parts about Zakalwe are about Zakalwe. That doesn't mean that Elothemiel has his memories, he was close enough to Zakalwe to know all about him to the point where he knows that sending him the Chair will force him to commit suicide. Its here that he takes over. e: I think this quote from here points out why there is trouble with this. "As it turns out, Banks doesn't provide us with the defining moment of his protagonist's life. That would be showing us the decision to use Darckense as he did, and more importantly, the moment at which he realized that to do so was a terrible mistake. Without that moment of transformation, Zakalwe ceases to make any sense--we can't reconcile the monster with the irreparably damaged man." BastardySkull fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Mar 7, 2011 |
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2011 07:11
|
|
|
I dunno, that didn't give me trouble. Some things speak well enough when only implied.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2011 16:57
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:I dunno, that didn't give me trouble. Some things speak well enough when only implied. Yeah I agree but a lot of people seem to get confused with it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2011 22:22
|
|
|
BastardySkull posted:Inversions isn't strictly 'A Culture novel' so I'm not doing it I'm afraid! I haven't even read it actually, I should get round to it. I really, really like your covers. The only nitpick I have with it is that the "I" and "M." in "Iain M." are in white and they are right up against the white background of the covers. Perhaps you could shrink "Iain M." just a teeny little bit so it all fits within the black "Banks". I'd love to see more.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2011 19:49
|
|
|
FelchTragedy posted:ROU: Reversing bus Blunder I don't get it. (Am I having a Mr Thicky moment?)Just finished Surface Detail last night. loving loved Demeisen/Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints. Oddly, I semi-guessed the Zakalwe reveal but that was probably because I re-read Use of Weapons just before and wondered why Zakalwe wasn't involved in the Hell war. I can't find my copy of Excession to reread. No Infinite Fun Space for me. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2011 21:20
|
|
|
rejutka posted:I don't get it. blunderbuss
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2011 21:46
|
|
|
Oh Jesus, I was having a Mr Thicky moment. In amends, a ship name I'd like to see - ROU Smile When You Say That
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2011 21:56
|
|
|
He's speaking in Glasgow on Saturday, if anyone is interested. Part of the Aye Write festival.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 02:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 00:44 |
|
|
Just finished Surface Detail. The reveal at the end. Oh my. What I don't quite understand though is where he even fits in. I recognize that he was a plant by the pro-Hell side into the anti-Hell forces, but exactly how then did he even end up working against the Culture and for which of the other L8s? Did I miss some glaring hints somewhere or are those questions left entirely for speculation?
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2011 17:56
|
|