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Don't worry, I wasn't clear on the Culture's role in the evacuation the first time I read it too. Re-reading Consider Phlebas after Excession, I remember thinking it was the stupid the CAT could escape a GSV so easily, until I realized it was donated to the effort and not run by a Mind.
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Jun 20, 2011 18:25
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LawrenceOfHerLabia posted: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. Actually, I'm the tit  I got to flipping through my copy last night and it actually does say that the Culture was helping with the evacuation.Consider Phlebas posted:"The Culture said they weren't having this, both sides refused to abandon their precious principles, and the Culture said, 'OK, if you won't back down we're going to blow the place away before you get there." And that's what's happening. Before the Idiran battle fleets arrive the Culture's going to evacuate the whole drat O and then blast it.'
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Jun 20, 2011 18:40
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Coriolis posted:Actually, I'm the tit I think that's what got me confused. Or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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Jun 21, 2011 15:44
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BastardySkull posted:
I just finished reading Use of Weapons and like most was floored by the ending. The twist ending was not at all what I thought it was going to be. But the one thing I was left wanting was mentioned above. Basically an explanation of Elothemiel's actions after the chair incident. What epiphany did he have to changed him from this seemingly psychopath (at least from the real Zakalwe's pov) to one filled with regret and deep self loathing. How could he go from doing what he did to wanting to atone to it? If anything though it makes me want to read it again, see what details I missed the first time.
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Jun 29, 2011 03:18
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I always thought he fought to win and his methods were also psychologically primed to terrify his opponents. One day, it occurred to him what that looked like from the outside.
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Jun 29, 2011 03:23
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I just re-read Surface Detail after picking it up in paperback, and it's definitely better on a second read. I still couldn't tell you what function Yime Nsokyi really serves in the book though I feel like she should have been cut out of SD and used as the main character in her own story.
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Jul 14, 2011 16:06
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I finished Surface Detail today and I'm still chuckling at the scene where the Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints is musing to himself about how awesome he is. Also, I really, really like the way Banks writes terse, short-hand communication mid-fights; I don't even know why, it just flows really well and sounds cool. Opal fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Jul 14, 2011 |
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Jul 14, 2011 23:55
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Odd question, but which of the books is centered more around the Minds and their interactions? I love the way that he sets them up as gloriously sarcastic beings.
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Jul 24, 2011 00:23
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Morning posted:Odd question, but which of the books is centered more around the Minds and their interactions? I love the way that he sets them up as gloriously sarcastic beings.
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Jul 24, 2011 02:07
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I think excession is the worst of the culture books. It's practically impossible to write a story about characters with god like intelligence unless they are on the periphery. As soon as they take center stage you realize they can only be as smart as the author. The plots and twists that the minds come up with were interesting but ultimately human machinations, not godlike ones. I think the minds are much better as backup characters where you don't really see the strings they are pulling.
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Jul 25, 2011 03:43
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As neat as the Culture is as a setting, I think I've enjoyed the characters in Banks' other science fiction stories more. Especially Ergates.
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Jul 25, 2011 05:16
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LtSmash posted:I think excession is the worst of the culture books. Ugh, you probably think "Use of weapons" is the best one.
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Jul 25, 2011 19:21
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FEMA summer camp posted:Ugh, you probably think "Use of weapons" is the best one. It is. Its got some of the saddest stories in it anyway. Excession is still one of the best, though. Also the Minds aren't god like in any way :/
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Jul 29, 2011 00:05
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I'm curious as to what the word godlike means to you because we either read different books or have a staggeringly different interpretation of that word.
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Jul 29, 2011 01:16
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BastardySkull posted:Also the Minds aren't god like in any way :/ quote:Never forget I am not this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side. Minds are incomprehensibly more intelligent than people. They can simultaneously interact with every being on an orbital, predict what they will do and make arrangements so they can do them (or not as desired), monitor the course and intentions of all ships nearby, accurately predict what other civilizations in their area will be doing, and still spend most of their time in Infinite Fun Space. Not to mention all the other things they could but aren't or won't do like read minds lightyears away or win a battle against a hostile fleet before anyone on the orbital noticed it was there. The only reason the Minds in Excession aren't godlike is that it was written by a human who fundamentally can't think and plot in any way that Minds really would. The only superhuman part of the plot in Excession was the time scale, but to reflect the capabilities Minds show in other books it should have had an incomprehensible number of layers of misdirection, feints, ploys, distractions, contingencies, seemingly unconnected consequences, and an actual goal that a human wouldn't understand even if they knew all the different strands carried out by a cast of hundreds of thousands of beings thinking they were doing something different and for their own ends. Compared to that Excession obviously falls short since no human writer could possibly come up with such a story let alone turn it into a comprehensible book. In other books like Player of Games or Look to Windward the Minds' plans are reasonably god like since we never get a look behind the curtain so to speak. What is the goal in any of the wars Zakalwe fights? What is the end goal in Look to Windward? We don't know, all we see is the pieces moving on the board of a game we don't understand played by those we can't understand. I think Excession would have been a much better book if it had been written in the same way. If the points of view had been much more narrow and the intentions and actions of the Minds were much more vague.
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Jul 29, 2011 05:01
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I just finished surface detail, had a question about the ending (spoilers obviously): since Vatueil was actually zakalwe, the final scene of the book is extremely reminiscent of part of Use of Weapons - on one of his holidays or whatever where he's in some cafe waiting for a female poet love interest - how do the timing of the books work out? I was under the impression that surface detail happened much later than UoW but if the ending scene of surface detail is actually the same scene from UoW i'm remembering maybe the events were overlapping? The timeline of UoW was hosed up enough anyway that it's hard to tell.
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Jul 29, 2011 15:08
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andrew smash posted:I just finished surface detail, had a question about the ending (spoilers obviously): Surface Detail happens quite a bit later. Like, 700 years later.
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Jul 29, 2011 15:12
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What's with the congruence between those two scenes then? They are almost identical aside from the plot-specific stuff in surface detail.
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Jul 29, 2011 15:21
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The female poet love interest - two possibilities there - finally shows up, giving closure of a sorts to his story?
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Jul 29, 2011 17:25
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lodidah posted:I just finished reading Use of Weapons and like most was floored by the ending. The twist ending was not at all what I thought it was going to be. But the one thing I was left wanting was mentioned above. Basically an explanation of Elothemiel's actions after the chair incident. What epiphany did he have to changed him from this seemingly psychopath (at least from the real Zakalwe's pov) to one filled with regret and deep self loathing. How could he go from doing what he did to wanting to atone to it? I have only read Use of Weapons once, but I was wondering this too when I remembered one of the later passages (went back and read some bits again): When Elothemiel is awake on the space ship that's on its way to the ice planet, and is one of only three people awake, he plays that game in zero G with the flashlight. It's slowly spinning and he decides that he'll kill himself if the light doesn't get to his face before he undoes his helmet, and if it does he'll keep his helmet on and live. Then the light goes out just as it is about to hit his face. I see this as Fate or the Universe or whatever refusing to condemn or forgive him, which is apparently what he wanted. Only he can decide whether his life is worth living, and in what manner, not some spinning flashlight. When he realizes this he becomes a somewhat normal person, though still haunted obviously. Until that point he's literally running away from the decisions he made, then he tries to get chance or fate or something else to pass judgement on him. We see this fail (it's the only really relevant bit in the chapter really), whereupon he accepts the burden of his past choices and decides to try and make good.
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Aug 1, 2011 03:56
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It's been a while since I read the book, but when reading above I can't help but wonder if there was any chance there was a Mind somewhere quietly effectoring that light off. It's totally the kind of thing they'd do.
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Aug 1, 2011 07:48
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I just finished Consider Phlebas and I'm a little disappointed that almost everyone dies. For some reason I thought the entire series was about Horza so it definitely was a surprise.  Now to read Player of Games.
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Aug 4, 2011 18:07
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I'm still going through the series. I really like everything I have read, definitely my kind of sci-fi. I finished Excession and I'm reading Look to Windward now. Excession was good, took me a little bit to get into it however. Look to Windward on the other hand is really grabbing my attention. Really enjoying it so far. The only thing though is I wish I had a picture of what Kabe and the Chel species look like. I can't picture in my head what the Chel's midlimb is suppose to do..
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Sep 21, 2011 21:06
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Be alien-y and stuff was what I guessed for, for the sake of it. Kabe though I found really hard to imagine on the fly, I had to sit down and read his appearance once or twice just to get the idea of how Banks envisioned him.
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Sep 21, 2011 21:48
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lodidah posted:I'm still going through the series. I really like everything I have read, definitely my kind of sci-fi. I finished Excession and I'm reading Look to Windward now. The Chel, basically, are kinda like tigers that have a sort of flappy limb in their middle, so their front limbs are like hands. The Homomdans are a little harder to pin down, but seem to be very large and solidly constructed pyramidical shaped creatures on three limbs. Banks is very imaginative and unique in many respects, especially with regards to the Minds, but his aliens do tend to be vague analogues of terrestrial species. So, the Oct are basically crabs, the Affronters are basically jellyfish, the Chel are basically tigers, the Pavuleans are basically two trunked elephants... Then again, it is very, very difficult, by its very nature, to imagine truly alien species. Peter Watts' 'Blindsight' is one of the few, off hand, I can think of that presents creatures utterly different to anything we have ever encountered.
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Sep 21, 2011 23:35
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Yeah, I would say that Blindsight and The Mote in God's Eye are the only two books I can think of purely off the top of my head that did really alien aliens without resorting to 'goo!' or 'energy field!'. Blindsight's critters may seem analogous to certain terrestrial marine organisms but it's purely superficial body-plan stuff. (Fire Upon the Deep had some pretty creative aliens but they were psychologically very human.) Banks' genius lies in making everything human anyway. General Battuta fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Sep 21, 2011 |
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Sep 21, 2011 23:46
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General Battuta posted:Yeah, I would say that Blindsight and The Mote in God's Eye are the only two books I can think of purely off the top of my head that did really alien aliens without resorting to 'goo!' or 'energy field!'. Blindsight's critters may seem analogous to certain terrestrial marine organisms but it's purely superficial body-plan stuff. (Fire Upon the Deep had some pretty creative aliens but they were psychologically very human.) I'd say even the Moties are pretty relatable. But you're right, Banks shines when he presents hyper-intelligent, god-like AIs as a sort of human-ish ideal. I like the idea, no matter how far-fetched, that true personalities can emerge just as easily from non-organic materials as they can from squishy meat stuff, and that they might even be miles better at being charming, funny, humane and clever than we are.
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Sep 22, 2011 00:30
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Barry Foster posted:I'd say even the Moties are pretty relatable. Well, some of the mediators certainly are, but as I recall it drives them insane in the long run if they emulate human psychology (the whole fyunch-click deal).
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Sep 22, 2011 00:36
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General Battuta posted:Well, some of the mediators certainly are, but as I recall it drives them insane in the long run if they emulate human psychology (the whole fyunch-click deal). True enough - again, you could argue that there's a certain semi-chinese room situation going on there, that they're just trying to model human relations without truly grasping them. It's not made completely explicit in the book, but you're right, there's probably a lot of leeway as to how much understanding there actually is there.
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Sep 22, 2011 00:41
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Barry Foster posted:Then again, it is very, very difficult, by its very nature, to imagine truly alien species. Peter Watts' 'Blindsight' is one of the few, off hand, I can think of that presents creatures utterly different to anything we have ever encountered. The prime aliens in the commonwealth saga were pretty atypical.
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Sep 22, 2011 17:58
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I finished my first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas a couple days ago and am glad I sought the book out. I'd kinda given up on reading sci-fi for a while but had this series on the back burner thanks to recommendations. Most of my questions come from the brief war history at the end. Did the Idiran-Culture War take place during the European Middle Ages here on Earth? I'm guessing the setting is in our Milky Way Galaxy since there is mention of Idirans saying, "Screw this, let's go next door to Andromeda where maybe we can start over." I liked that there was mention of races expanding outside galactic boundaries about half way through the book. I felt like many of the characterizations were too thin but the constant escalation of frying-pan-into-the-fire scenarios kept me going. The Player of Games is next for sure. e: I'm also still baffled by what exactly the Dra'Azon are but also loved that about them since some of the characters/races saw them as a God-entity to be feared. Are they a race that has moved up a level on the evolutionary scale? Pretty awesome that Banks feels enough confidence in his own writing and his readers not to have to spell things out all the time. Fleetwood fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Sep 24, 2011 |
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Sep 24, 2011 01:22
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Fleetwood posted:I finished my first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas a couple days ago and am glad I sought the book out. I'd kinda given up on reading sci-fi for a while but had this series on the back burner thanks to recommendations. answer to spoilered question: yes, give or take. The dra'azon are a sublimed race which means they transcended the usual concerns, methods and existence of the 'involved' races of the galaxy (the culture, idirans, homomdans, etc) and are more or less gods. The planets of the dead are their thing, nobody is really sure why they do it but nobody is strong enough to gently caress with them over it either so that's where it stands.
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Sep 24, 2011 01:40
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General Battuta posted:Yeah, I would say that Blindsight and The Mote in God's Eye are the only two books I can think of purely off the top of my head that did really alien aliens without resorting to 'goo!' or 'energy field!'. Blindsight's critters may seem analogous to certain terrestrial marine organisms but it's purely superficial body-plan stuff. (Fire Upon the Deep had some pretty creative aliens but they were psychologically very human.) David Brin's Uplift stuff's got a fair few x-with-extra-bits races, but there's some stuff (Traeki/Jophur, Zang, G'kek, Solarians etc) that're pretty far off the beaten track.
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Sep 25, 2011 22:47
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That is an excellent point and also reminded me of Stanislaw Lem (Solaris, Invincible).
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Sep 25, 2011 22:49
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The Gap series by Donaldson has some interesting Aliens, IIRC, completely non-human and unrelatable. It's been a while since I've read it.
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Sep 26, 2011 22:30
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andrew smash posted:answer to spoilered question: yes, give or take. Is this brought up or explained in any of the other books? I always assumed that the books were set in the future and the various races of the culture were the remnants of various transhuman diasporas. But presumably it's doing some sort of "humanity was seeded on earth from the stars" deal? Though admitedly it being set in the past does increase the star wars-y vibe Consider Phlebas gives off
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Sep 28, 2011 16:32
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Sargeant Biffalot posted:Is this brought up or explained in any of the other books? I always assumed that the books were set in the future and the various races of the culture were the remnants of various transhuman diasporas. But presumably it's doing some sort of "humanity was seeded on earth from the stars" deal? Though admitedly it being set in the past does increase the star wars-y vibe Consider Phlebas gives off I don't think this needs to be spoilered at all. "Panhumanity" is banks' term for it, it's just a given in his universe that lots of species seem to have evolved to look basically like humans to a greater or lesser extent. Most of the Culture's biological sapients are panhumans for historical reasons (the culture that would become the Culture initially arose from a loose conglomeration of a few panhuman civs and their AIs).
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Sep 28, 2011 16:37
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andrew smash posted:I don't think this needs to be spoilered at all. "Panhumanity" is banks' term for it, it's just a given in his universe that lots of species seem to have evolved to look basically like humans to a greater or lesser extent. Most of the Culture's biological sapients are panhumans for historical reasons (the culture that would become the Culture initially arose from a loose conglomeration of a few panhuman civs and their AIs).
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Sep 28, 2011 16:56
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The books vary in setting, but The State of the Art is set in 1977 and I think most of the other novels come within the next couple of hundred years. Consider Phlebas is set roughly in medieval times, and Surface Detail is several hundred years into our future.
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Sep 28, 2011 17:20
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Sargeant Biffalot posted:Is this brought up or explained in any of the other books? I always assumed that the books were set in the future and the various races of the culture were the remnants of various transhuman diasporas. But presumably it's doing some sort of "humanity was seeded on earth from the stars" deal? Though admitedly it being set in the past does increase the star wars-y vibe Consider Phlebas gives off I forget which book(s?) talked about it, but I thought the reason most of the Culture (and some other independent species) were pan-human was literally just because its currently in fashion. The reasoning was that most species didn't evolve into that configuration but chose to change themselves because its a bit like learning a widely spoken language: convenient and makes travelling the galaxy simpler.
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Sep 28, 2011 21:42
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