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andrew smash posted:IIRC (this was in player of games maybe?) Orbitals are seen as quaint backwaters compared to the big GSVs. I'll concede that they apparently don't *need* extra minds though. Well, fashion is everything in the Culture, and maybe at the time, it was just more fashionable that your home roamed the galaxy rather than orbited the same boring star all the time. In a society where your very lifespan can be affected by fashion, the current 'in' place to live is probably downright whimsical.
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Jun 5, 2011 05:17
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A couple weeks ago I saw at the library The State of the Art and decided to take it out as I had been meaning on reading Bank's sf books. I read Wasp Factory years ago and loved it and I also read The Business, which was just odd. I really liked the self titled short story in The State of Art, and wanted to read more of The Culture books. So I just finished Consider Phlebas and it was a fun read with a nice pinch of dark humor thrown in. However, I found the ending depressing, though not in a bad way, just surprising . Throughout the book Horza does everything in his power to not die from one crazy adventure after another, only to die right after he learns his lover is pregnant and The Mind is right within his grasps. That is some harsh poo poo. And then the throwaway line about The Changers having all been killed off was like salt on the wound. I mean, I'm someone who likes dark, depressing reads, but that ending just seemed to come a little out of left field. I hope The Changers are mentioned in other Culture books. Anyway, my library doesn't have The Player of Games so I put in an ILL request, which will take a couple of weeks depending. So I was thinking of reading Use Of Weapons next while I wait. My question is will it matter if I read it out of order?
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Jun 6, 2011 10:08
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lodidah posted:A couple weeks ago I saw at the library The State of the Art and decided to take it out as I had been meaning on reading Bank's sf books. I read Wasp Factory years ago and loved it and I also read The Business, which was just odd. It does a bit. There are call backs usually in the form of a paragraph while people discuss previous characters or there is mention of previous stuff. Read them in order I say. Player of games is a favourite as well as Use of Weapons.
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Jun 6, 2011 12:31
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FelchTragedy posted:It does a bit. There are call backs usually in the form of a paragraph while people discuss previous characters or there is mention of previous stuff. Read them in order I say. Player of games is a favourite as well as Use of Weapons. On the other hand, the callbacks are so tiny as to be insignificant really. I say read whatever you have access to!
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Jun 6, 2011 12:33
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The order isn't really important so I wouldn't worry about it, but as others have said (way back), Player of Games is enjoyable in that it's a lot more relaxed in pace and tone felt compared to Use of Weapons or Consider Phlebas which are a lot more action orientated. It's the reason Look to Windward is my favourite of the books, it reads like a daily stroll.
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Jun 6, 2011 13:22
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:On the other hand, the callbacks are so tiny as to be insignificant really. I say read whatever you have access to! The callback in player of games kind of spoiled Phlebas a bit for me. Matter has a spoiler for Excession. And Surface Detail really needs to be read after another of the books i.e. -----------Use Of Weapons------
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Jun 6, 2011 15:16
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I have only read Excession so far and am getting started with The Player of Games and I was wondering to what extent the sentient AI constructs are effectively forced labor. The obvious purpose of drones for example is that people don't have to perform manual labor, and it just seems kinda handwaved that drones don't really mind cleaning up after everybody and are really enjoying themselves, and I cannot help but wonder what a Mind does when it gets bored of running an Orbital or some backwater colony, or to a lesser extent the sentience of some guy's living space. Is there a procedure to transfer them to a new spaceship or something or are all of them forcibly programmed to enjoy whatever they were constructed for? I cannot wrap my head around the social dynamics between human beings and AIs that are thousands of times more intelligent yet happily ferry the humans around space or build space statins for them or let them hold positions of authority.  vvv yeah infinite fun space is mentioned in Excession. I was mainly wondering what kept AIs doing their job, not what they'd do if they weren't. Vanadium fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jun 6, 2011 |
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Jun 6, 2011 16:29
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Vanadium posted:I have only read Excession so far and am getting started with The Player of Games and I was wondering to what extent the sentient AI constructs are effectively forced labor. The obvious purpose of drones for example is that people don't have to perform manual labor, and it just seems kinda handwaved that drones don't really mind cleaning up after everybody and are really enjoying themselves, and I cannot help but wonder what a Mind does when it gets bored of running an Orbital or some backwater colony, or to a lesser extent the sentience of some guy's living space. Is there a procedure to transfer them to a new spaceship or something or are all of them forcibly programmed to enjoy whatever they were constructed for? Its strongly hinted that there is a level of design in the creation of the minds, the warships being the obvious example, they are built to be moody motherfuckers who delight in blowing stuff up. As for what they do with their spare time, in one of the books Banks introduced the concept of 'infinite fun space' where a mind or minds hangs around making staggeringly complicated 12 dimensional mathematical constructs 
Graviton v2 fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Jun 6, 2011 |
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Jun 6, 2011 19:42
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There seems to be a lot of reasons, but really this is the setting's core conceit. You just sort of have to roll with it because otherwise you don't get this utopia. Minds and drones are definitely not slaves though. For every drone that chooses to play butler for a some obnoxious humans I'm sure there's a dozen that have chosen to do something else. That butler drone can always decide its not interested in carrying drinks anymore, and apply to Contact to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life, and blah blah blah Minds are the same way, they're not actually obligated to do anything for anyone. The Mind of a ship can decide to flag itself as not interested in passengers, and no one will solicit it for a ride. Having read Excession you should know that Minds can in fact simply remove themselves and all their awesome hardware from the Culture proper and buzz off to do their own thing. Extremely rude? Yes. Against the rules? Nope, because there really aren't any. There's no real procedure. An Orbital Hub can just tell its peers its sick of running the space station and to put it in touch with another Mind interested in taking over. Last point I'll make is that the Culture can make machines that can perform sophisticated tasks but are not sentient. So if no drones or Minds are willing to clean up the mess after a party, the Culture equivalent of a roomba can still do the job and no sentient's freedoms are impinged upon. Minds and drones are designed to be predisposed to a certain task when they are made, but it sounds like after their initial creation there's nothing stopping them from developing in any direction they desire.
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Jun 6, 2011 19:48
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I got the feeling that taking care of humans was a lot like us taking care of cats. The humans think that its all about them and the Minds are clearly waiting on them hand and foot just like cats think humans are waiting on them hand and foot and feed them at their whim and clean up their poo poo. But from the human's point of view the cats are there to amuse us and we pet them when we feel like it and feeding them and changing their litter box from time to time isn't a real imposition on us. Similarly to the Minds humans mostly take care of themselves but occasionally need a spaceship ride to the vet or some drugs or something. Only its way more so since Minds think way faster than humans so we are more like lethargic turtles: the Mind can fill our food bowl, get high, go to the movies, do some homework, win a space battle, and brag to some friends, and come home and we still haven't made it to our food. Not all people care for cats, just like not all Minds care for humans. Just like we consider anyone who doesn't like cats but gets one anyway just to torture it a sicko the Minds would consider one who mistreats humans to be a sicko.
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Jun 6, 2011 21:54
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I mean it's not all free will. People can only ask for what is reasonable and feasible and expect satisfatcion. Also if it's democratically OK i.e. doesn't impinge on others enough. Also there is the one rule that the Minds have for biologicals in terms of mind reading them. Plus not hurting them in certain ways if avoidable. I'm going to see Iain tomorrow at a talk now that he's doing the rounds for the paperback release of Surface Detail.
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Jun 6, 2011 22:58
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LtSmash posted:I got the feeling that taking care of humans was a lot like us taking care of cats. I like the comparison, but does this mean Hubs are like crazy cat ladies that keep 20 of them?
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Jun 6, 2011 23:05
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Lasting Damage posted:I like the comparison, but does this mean Hubs are like crazy cat ladies that keep 20 of them?
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Jun 6, 2011 23:24
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Has nobody simply quoted Banks on the matter yet?quote:It is, of course, entirely possible that real AIs will refuse to have anything to do with their human creators (or rather, perhaps, the human creators of their non-human creators), but assuming that they do - and the design of their software may be amenable to optimization in this regard - I would argue that it is quite possible they would agree to help further the aims of their source civilisation (a contention we'll return to shortly). At this point, regardless of whatever alterations humanity might impose on itself through genetic manipulation, humanity would no longer be a one-sentience-type species. The future of our species would affect, be affected by and coexist with the future of the AI life-forms we create. http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm My reading of his assertions regarding the relationship between Minds/Humans is less one of master/pet, and more one that at some point you stop thinking of them as machines and more as people or at the very least - neighbors. When there is no scarcity, which is the other very central point to The Culture, the entire concept of ownership and of indebtedness is forgotten. Banks refers to it repeatedly, in various contexts, that every sentience in the Culture basically does whatever it wants, unless it infringes upon another's right to the same. The Minds don't see themselves as dedicated enablers or caregivers, any more than the humans see themselves as dedicated hedonists.
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Jun 7, 2011 01:00
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I just want to say that all the 'butler drones' and clean up things aren't sentient at all. However with sophistication comes the higher requirement of sentience by the look it. This is why Banks created the sentience rating were 1.0 is a human. I think he had a suit that was so sophisticated that it was regarded as 0.5 or something like that. its also why the Idirans had their homeworlds 'shacked' or hobbled AI network freed by the Culture. It was being deliberately held back from sentience, which is against their ethical standards. edit: also if you think that the relationship between machines and humans in the Culture is 'master/pet' then yeah if they existed you would kind of be proving the Culture right and they would probably laugh at you. There is no master/pet relationship because no entity in the Culture has control of any other and you've completely missed the point if you think thats the case. The Minds are in control because the people of the Culture understand that they're the only entities capable of maintaining their environment and they're also the only entities capable of stopping people infringing on other peoples rights, which is also why they created Marain for example (using the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis). BastardySkull fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Jun 7, 2011 |
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Jun 7, 2011 03:21
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Lasting Damage posted:Last point I'll make is that the Culture can make machines that can perform sophisticated tasks but are not sentient. So if no drones or Minds are willing to clean up the mess after a party, the Culture equivalent of a roomba can still do the job and no sentient's freedoms are impinged upon. This is an important point, as far as you can really describe the culture as having laws one of them is that nothing sapient can be forced into labor of any kind. So basically drones exist and are intelligent and make more drones with each other for the same (more or less) reasons that humans do, but not for labor purposes. The robot slaves that clean up parties and poo poo might be really complex and sophisticated but aren't sapient. Edit: beaten handily
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Jun 7, 2011 03:25
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I just finished Matter, and while I liked it, I still think it had some serious pacing issues. Am I alone with this? (I read 2/5 of the book a couple years ago, I got it from the library, forgot I had it and tried to finish it in two days. I didn't. Only picked it up again last week.)
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Jun 7, 2011 19:45
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HUMAN FISH posted:I just finished Matter, and while I liked it, I still think it had some serious pacing issues. Am I alone with this? Yeah, the narrative of Matter kind of meanders along at a leisurely pace for a few hundred pages, then falls off a cliff in the last two or three chapters.
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Jun 7, 2011 19:59
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Lasting Damage posted:I like the comparison, but does this mean Hubs are like crazy cat ladies that keep 20 of them? Graviton v2 posted:Must be. Cat ladies who can hold 10000 conversations at the same time. Cat ladies would love that, its like a From the description of Culture life in Excession with the girl who is a contingency backup (I can't remember her name) it sure looks like a good deal of the Culture is a never ending supa-soap-opera. RE: Matter. I really enjoyed it as a book, especially seeing the Culture and other involved's from the view of a less developed species rather than seeing lesser species' through the eyes of the Culture. And the prince basically arguing Divine Right as the reason the Culture should help him viewing his retainer as properly loyal and thus following him to hell and back while the retainer actually just realized it was his only option that wouldn't end in a messy death for possibly being a witness. It does have some pacing issues though. I get the feeling that lately Banks is getting more leeway from his editor because of his expanding reputation. Sadly not all authors do their best work off the chain so to speak, and the contribution of a talented editor is very important. Sort of on that note what was the point of the Surface Detail arc where Yime goes to try and recover the image of Lededje? It kinda wanders along for a while and then ends when its revealed that nothing she did or encountered had any real impact of the main plot.
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Jun 8, 2011 04:15
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LtSmash posted:From the description of Culture life in Excession with the girl who is a contingency backup (I can't remember her name) it sure looks like a good deal of the Culture is a never ending supa-soap-opera. I just realised I already forgot what anybody in Excession who wasn't the Sleeper Service was doing with regards to the plot. I'm not good at books.
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Jun 8, 2011 04:20
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Vanadium posted:I just realised I already forgot what anybody in Excession who wasn't the Sleeper Service was doing with regards to the plot. I'm not good at books. It's not just you, the human characters in excession are complete garbage. The affronters are cool though.
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Jun 8, 2011 04:50
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Hey, I liked the guy on Pittance.
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Jun 8, 2011 05:50
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Graviton v2 posted:Well some of them do care about people and some of them dont. The ones who choose to be a ship/hub/orbital with people on it are doing it cos they want to. I think it was The Land of Infinite Fun, and it was mentioned in Excession. It was all a bit hand-wavy and out of place I thought. Still, Excession was fun. Meatfucker is still my favourite culture character. Although I wouldn't call it that to its face.
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Jun 8, 2011 20:16
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LawrenceOfHerLabia posted:I think it was The Land of Infinite Fun, and it was mentioned in Excession. It was all a bit hand-wavy and out of place I thought. Still, Excession was fun. Meatfucker is still my favourite culture character. Although I wouldn't call it that to its face. You wouldn't have to say it out loud, you know.
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Jun 9, 2011 00:26
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Both Surface Detail and Matter need some serious editing. I need to read Surface Detail again, but I honestly can't think of what the Quietus agent added to the plot at all.
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Jun 9, 2011 09:55
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Both Surface Detail and Matter need some serious editing. I need to read Surface Detail again, but I honestly can't think of what the Quietus agent added to the plot at all. Matter was disappointing. Probably the weakest culture book after Inversions. The humanoid characters were thin, and the whole shellworld idea was a bit daft. I haven't had a go at Surface Detail as yet.
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Jun 9, 2011 17:48
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I actually quite liked Djan-Seriy in Matter. My biggest problem with Surface Detail was that the human Culture characters didn't seem to really do anything. Yime was just kind of along for the ride.
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Jun 9, 2011 18:58
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LawrenceOfHerLabia posted:Matter was disappointing. Probably the weakest culture book after Inversions. I do like Inversions though, it's like a Culture fable.
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Jun 10, 2011 13:12
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I do like Inversions though, it's like a Culture fable. It wasn't a bad book. It was just dull.
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Jun 13, 2011 17:21
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I have to admit, sometimes I feel like only one third of a Culture novel really interests me, while I skip through the rest. Banks includes these parts where he writes in this impersonal (leaving out names, etc.) fairy-tale style. Also some of the characters I don't care for (human hedonists or oh-so evil aliens). I wouldn't mind a novel just with (mostly) mentally stable drones, ships and suits as the main characters.
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Jun 16, 2011 12:43
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I guess Excession is the closest you'll get to that. Although not all the Minds are mentally stable  I am reading through Consider Phlebas at the moment. It's the second or third time I've read it. On the current read-through I've noticed that the bit about The Eaters on that island drags on really badly. Also, the idea of The Eaters getting up to what they do jars with what we learn about the culture later. Specifically, the guy they murder clearly doesn't want to be eaten, but the Culture sit by and let it happen. Ok, in that case the Orbital Mind may have flown the coop, but before the mind would have surely monitored them and witnessed others of their number being mutilated. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Anyway, it still seems really fresh, even after all this time.
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Jun 17, 2011 07:47
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One gripe about the culture is just how samey his main female characters are across the books. Diziet Sma and Lededje are probably the exception to this.
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Jun 17, 2011 08:15
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LawrenceOfHerLabia posted:I am reading through Consider Phlebas at the moment. It's the second or third time I've read it. On the current read-through I've noticed that the bit about The Eaters on that island drags on really badly. Also, the idea of The Eaters getting up to what they do jars with what we learn about the culture later. Specifically, the guy they murder clearly doesn't want to be eaten, but the Culture sit by and let it happen. Ok, in that case the Orbital Mind may have flown the coop, but before the mind would have surely monitored them and witnessed others of their number being mutilated. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Yeah looking back on Consider Phlebas there are a few things that are kinda jarring but not unacceptably so considering when it was written. The drone shuttle on the island for one is pretty dumb despite the fact it should be as intelligent as a regular person. And where are all the other Involved when the Idirans are trying to conquer everything? Consider Phlebas isn't alone in this though. In Player of Games or Use of Weapons The Culture is portrayed as being much more of a power beyond reckoning but by the time Matter or Surface Detail are written The Culture is a super power but also part of a greater community of mostly equal powers, even though canonically Matter is happening at about the same time as Player of Games. Similarly in State of the Art (I think) its said that SC acquires drones from the general population when a drone is too belligerent to fit in and are given the option of joining SC or basically being used for scrap. In other books its said that SC drones are purpose built to be belligerent but if they turn out to be too far out of spec they have the option of personality reconditioning or being demilitarized and become a regular civilian. Canonically there might be some explanation of it but it seems like a stretch at best. Instead just realize that Banks didn't totally develop the Culture and universe before he started writing and it has been evolving with the books. As Banks has given more time to flesh out his world some of the details have changed. And as Banks wants to tell different kinds of stories the universe changes to accommodate them. If Matter had The Culture in the same position galacticly as in Player of Games as soon as Anaplian noticed something was seriously wrong she could have called in a dozen warships to smash it totally. On the other hand Player of Games wouldn't really be better if Gurgeh had to negotiate 3 levels of involved before even getting to Azad.
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Jun 17, 2011 21:45
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LawrenceOfHerLabia posted:I am reading through Consider Phlebas at the moment. It's the second or third time I've read it. On the current read-through I've noticed that the bit about The Eaters on that island drags on really badly. Also, the idea of The Eaters getting up to what they do jars with what we learn about the culture later. Specifically, the guy they murder clearly doesn't want to be eaten, but the Culture sit by and let it happen. Ok, in that case the Orbital Mind may have flown the coop, but before the mind would have surely monitored them and witnessed others of their number being mutilated. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Vavatch wasn't a Culture orbital.
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Jun 19, 2011 04:24
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Coriolis posted:Vavatch wasn't a Culture orbital. I hadn't realised that. I had assumed that as the Culture were going to destroy it and were evacuating the citizenry, it must have been theirs. It makes slightly more sense now.
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Jun 19, 2011 12:45
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Nope, the idirans apparently stated their intention to land troops there and occupy it and the culture decided to blow it up rather than let them use it as a staging area and resource hub.
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Jun 19, 2011 15:52
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LawrenceOfHerLabia posted:I hadn't realised that. I had assumed that as the Culture were going to destroy it and were evacuating the citizenry, it must have been theirs. It makes slightly more sense now. Actually, I don't the Culture was even involved in the evacuation. At least, I don't think it ever explicitly stated that they were. The Culture shuttlecraft on the island and the GSV docked underneath the port were both ex-Culture craft. The shuttle was incredibly old, and the Culture had given it away because it was obsolete. Apparently it had been built at a time when AI wasn't really up to snuff (that's why it was so  ). And the GSV didn't even have a Mind. The only actual Culture presence we saw at Vavatch was the Eschatologist, which was just hanging around in stealth mode, and the SC agent.
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Jun 19, 2011 18:10
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A small detail about Consider Phlebas that bothers me is when the guy dies because his suit's anti-gravs don't work on the orbital, which uses centrifugal/centripedal/whatever force as a substitute for mass-generated gravity. If that was the case, how do Drones fly around on Masaq? Or any Orbital for that matter? I just wrote it off as the Culture using different means of anti-grav (probably field related) than the lovely suits the crew had, but it still kinda bugs me. Gravitas Shortfall fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Jun 20, 2011 |
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Jun 20, 2011 12:35
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I just wrote it off as the Culture using different means of anti-grav (probably field related) than the lovely suits the crew had, but it still kinda bugs me. Forcefield pushing against the floor? Or a small internal field engines that counter match the 'gravity' rather than actual anti-grav? The culture's so far in advance of what they had on CAT you'd just assume they'd be using something completely different.
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Jun 20, 2011 13:42
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Coriolis posted:Actually, I don't the Culture was even involved in the evacuation. At least, I don't think it ever explicitly stated that they were. The Culture shuttlecraft on the island and the GSV docked underneath the port were both ex-Culture craft. The shuttle was incredibly old, and the Culture had given it away because it was obsolete. Apparently it had been built at a time when AI wasn't really up to snuff (that's why it was so One day I'll learn to read books carefully and not make a tit out of myself in public. I'm re-reading the The Player of Games next. No doubt I shall be asking out of context questions after that as well. LawrenceOfHerLabia fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Jun 20, 2011 |
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Jun 20, 2011 14:36
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