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ConanTheLibrarian posted:One issue in their "eventual net benefit" approach to things like the Idirian War is that it seems some races may pay a much larger price than the average, for instance the extinction of the changers mentioned in the appendix of Consider Phlebas, or the damage done to the Chel. I could be remembering this wrong but weren't the Changers genetically engineered to be super-assassins, i.e. weapons of war? So, only that "branch" of some species was lost. Thematically, both the Idirans and Changers prove to be more machinelike than the AIs Horza hates (I'm thinking of the inflexible Idiran soldier justifying murdering Horza's girlfriend as the optimal tactics at the time), and destroying the Changers seems like emphasizing Horza's failure. ConanTheLibrarian posted:It still strikes me as far more preferable to Star Trek's Prime Directive and other such moral stances taken by advanced civilisations towards less developed ones. The Federation in Star Trek supposedly has the Prime Directive because they're afraid of screwing it up. "First, do no harm." PD episodes always seem to feature unintended consequences. The Culture does not have that fear because thanks to godlike artificial intelligence and millennia of experience they're confident they know what they're doing (they're not always right). vvv That's a good point, and I could see it happening that way. Base Emitter fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Sep 11, 2012 |
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Sep 11, 2012 03:45
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Base Emitter posted:They're confident they know what they're doing (they're not always right). I'm not even sure this is true honestly, I re-read look to windward a few weeks ago and got the nagging feeling that the chel civil war was less unexpected than everybody thought. I wouldn't put it past sc to anticipate something like that, recognize the consequences (in the form of a devastating war for the chelgrians and the culture having to eat crow for a bit) and just thinking that in the end it'll all be worth it (and in the end an SC mind might argue it was).
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Sep 11, 2012 03:56
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andrew smash posted:I'm not even sure this is true honestly, I re-read look to windward a few weeks ago and got the nagging feeling that the chel civil war was less unexpected than everybody thought. I wouldn't put it past sc to anticipate something like that, recognize the consequences (in the form of a devastating war for the chelgrians and the culture having to eat crow for a bit) and just thinking that in the end it'll all be worth it (and in the end an SC mind might argue it was). I get the same feeling. It was the realization about Hadesh Huyler and that he was working for the Culture since before the Chelgrian civil war. It gives me the impression that SC never really stopped manipulating the Chel, and that the war was not outside of the range of predicted results.
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Sep 11, 2012 04:55
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Base Emitter posted:I could be remembering this wrong but weren't the Changers genetically engineered to be super-assassins, i.e. weapons of war? So, only that "branch" of some species was lost. quote:The Federation in Star Trek supposedly has the Prime Directive because they're afraid of screwing it up. "First, do no harm." PD episodes always seem to feature unintended consequences. The Culture does not have that fear because thanks to godlike artificial intelligence and millennia of experience they're confident they know what they're doing (they're not always right). The point is that there will be a distribution of outcomes when it comes to Contact/SC operations and those at the tail ends are going to happen every once in a while. The unlucky races that end up with extreme outcomes get hosed, maybe irrevocably.
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Sep 12, 2012 22:37
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ConanTheLibrarian posted:If an entire race/religion/other "branch" of humanity was lost for some reason, I think people would consider that a big deal. I don't think it's clear if the Changers were 'human' any more than the Azadians, or the civilization in A Gift From the Culture were. Even Culture residents are the result of a half-dozen races genetically modifying themselves to the point where they could interbreed.
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Sep 13, 2012 02:28
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The Dark One posted:I don't think it's clear if the Changers were 'human' any more than the Azadians, or the civilization in A Gift From the Culture were. Even Culture residents are the result of a half-dozen races genetically modifying themselves to the point where they could interbreed.
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Sep 13, 2012 05:55
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andrew smash posted:are they? I was always under the impression that galactic pan humanity was more of a handwavy concession to story than something banks tried to explain. It's been mentioned that The Culture originates from a half a dozen races that tinkered so much with their genetics over time, through the various eras where there was optimum humanoid designs, through the crazy physical form trends, through all their history, that they've eventually globbed into one mostly artificially designed species.
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Sep 13, 2012 06:01
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Galactic pan humanity is just the approximately two arms, about two legs, head on a stalk morphology. The Culture itself originated with a small number (dozens or hundreds) of pan human species that engineered themselves to be interfertile with each other (and apparently a wide swath of non-engineered pan humans), along with a whole lot of other useful improvements.
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Sep 13, 2012 06:05
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Im trying to gland cristal clear right now but its not working, could someone displace a knife missile nearby to fix me up.
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Sep 13, 2012 06:19
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Are suit/knife missile/shuttle minds happy in their jobs? They always seem to be. Are they made that way?
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Sep 13, 2012 06:26
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Seaside Loafer posted:Are suit/knife missile/shuttle minds happy in their jobs? They always seem to be. Are they made that way? I think you never hear of ones that aren't because they sublimed or something? I don't know. I'm reading Looking Windward and I have no idea what the gently caress is going on other than this monkey dude is doing fetch quests for some gigantic space whale.
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Sep 13, 2012 06:53
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fookolt posted:I think you never hear of ones that aren't because they sublimed or something? I don't know. I'm reading Looking Windward and I have no idea what the gently caress is going on other than this monkey dude is doing fetch quests for some gigantic space whale. The guy who was studying the gas giant beings ends up being 'revented' after 1 Grand Cycle (of the galaxy so like 50 million years or something) But yeah dont really worry about that guy its not really part of it.
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Sep 13, 2012 07:35
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Seaside Loafer posted:
More like 300 million.
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Sep 13, 2012 07:40
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Banks is pretty bad about subplots that aren't that relevant. In Matter, once the poo poo hit the fan it seemed like all the stuff with the civilisation in the shell world was pointless because the Iln nuked them all. Likewise I thought the Quietus agent in Surface Detail had very little impact for all the pages what were devoted to her. The Dark One posted:I don't think it's clear if the Changers were 'human' any more than the Azadians, or the civilization in A Gift From the Culture were. Even Culture residents are the result of a half-dozen races genetically modifying themselves to the point where they could interbreed. It's an analogy, not a statement of the origin of the changers.
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Sep 13, 2012 10:19
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Basically, the term 'human' in the Culture books means what 'humanoid' means in most other sci-fi.
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Sep 13, 2012 10:57
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MikeJF posted:Basically, the term 'human' in the Culture books means what 'humanoid' means in most other sci-fi. Banks also mentions other body forms that are common across space and time. Matter mentions a "Pan-hopper" species in the same way "pan-human" is used, and all Gas Giant species seem to be very similar. Most of it is just convergent evolution in terms of efficient body types.
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Sep 13, 2012 15:25
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Banks also mentions other body forms that are common across space and time. Matter mentions a "Pan-hopper" species in the same way "pan-human" is used, and all Gas Giant species seem to be very similar. Most of it is just convergent evolution in terms of efficient body types. He also freaking loves his dirigible behemothaurs - which he confusingly refers to as 'avians', even though they're nothing like birds.
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Sep 13, 2012 16:19
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ConanTheLibrarian posted:In Matter, once the poo poo hit the fan it seemed like all the stuff with the civilisation in the shell world was pointless because the Iln nuked them all. That's because they don't
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Sep 14, 2012 04:29
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pseudorandom name posted:That's because they don't Pithy. Banks has a tendency to make huge narrative sacrifices towards points like that, though, and it can be frustrating.
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Sep 14, 2012 04:53
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Seaside Loafer posted:Are suit/knife missile/shuttle minds happy in their jobs? They always seem to be. Are they made that way? Knife missiles are sub- sentient i think, so they don't really matter. Player of Games talks about drones partially designing themselves and choosing how to develop, so I'd guess is the same for suits and modules. I'd worry about the (small m) mind that wants to inhabit a skin tight space suit though
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Sep 14, 2012 11:33
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MikeJF posted:Pithy. You've got to admit that in a book called 'Matter', however, it's thematically pretty appropriate.
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Sep 14, 2012 11:33
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Strom Cuzewon posted:I'd worry about the (small m) mind that wants to inhabit a skin tight space suit though To be fair, they probably spend most of their time hanging around the Either that or they're just weird. Maybe it's a type of mind that can't get bored. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a 'be a suit/module/missile for a few years, then go Drone' thing pretty commonly.
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Sep 14, 2012 12:30
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I'm pretty sure one of the books says that suits/drones/Minds are designed to suit their task, e.g. the Mind that watched over the ship store in Excession was built to like the isolation. Hanging out in the dataverse is probably the most common activity for specialised, infrequently used objects.MikeJF posted:Pithy. My point exactly. And whatever about the thematic appropriateness in Matter (not that it excuses it), the same thing happens in Surface Detail with the character Yime Nsokyi whose role in the plot was pretty small compared to her page count. People have complained about the Dajeil and Genar-Hofoen sub plot in Excession being a drag on the rest of the story too, though it's long enough since I've read it that I can't say whether I agree.
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Sep 14, 2012 13:43
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ConanTheLibrarian posted:People have complained about the Dajeil and Genar-Hofoen sub plot in Excession being a drag on the rest of the story too, though it's long enough since I've read it that I can't say whether I agree. I read it a couple of years ago and agreed with this. I heard afterwards that banks had wanted to add human characters to make the story more relatable. The result was them feeling pretty tacked-on and extraneous.
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Sep 14, 2012 14:26
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I disagree, personally. I think the plotlines of Dajein/Genar-Hofoen and the Excession aren't actually subplots of each other, rather, they complement themselves as similar events that happen on the biggest and on the smallest levels that the Culture deals with. Both plotlines are really very similar, when you get down to it: A singular problem pops up that doesn't affect anything outside itself. A Mind wants in on that action. The Excession is, well, what it is: A kind of future-tech so advanced that no Involved group even gets to touch it. It would have popped in, done its thing, popped out and nobody would've been impacted by it at all, if the Elench hadn't thought they knew better and started to meddle with the to-scale equivalent of an ant standing in front of a bucket-wheel excavator. The Dajeil/Hofoen story is basically the same thing, but on the micro-scale: Two invididuals deal with each other, neither provides what the other wants, they eventually part ways. Dajeil would have gone to her planet and Genar-Hofoen wouldn't have, if not for the meddling of the Sleeper Service that, as it later admits, basically happens out of nothing but pride in his skill at manipulating people. Instead of the non-event the whole thing could have been, one person almost dies, Hofoen's fetus actually dies and the whole thing stays pointlessly unresolved for a good 40 years. As such, I don't consider any of the plotlines superfluous. They both illustrate what I think is the running theme of the Culture novels in general: Just because you're a super-culture run by quasi-godlike artificial intelligence doesn't mean you should meddle with everything just because you can. I'd almost say this kind of parallel plotline is one of Banks' signature elements, he really does it a lot.
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Sep 14, 2012 14:59
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I prefer Alastair Reynolds because his books are easier to follow from a story perspective rather than Banks' seemingly obtuse meandering which only comes together in the final chapters. Reynolds book are like being on a roller-coaster. You know pretty much where you're headed but the ride is exhilarating anyway. Banks' feels like you're blindfold in a house of horrors and at the end is a twinklecake with a butterfly made out of crystals and the tears of an ancient species.
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Sep 17, 2012 18:24
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WastedJoker posted:I prefer Alastair Reynolds because his books are easier to follow from a story perspective rather than Banks' seemingly obtuse meandering which only comes together in the final chapters. Reynolds gets by almost entirely on atmosphere and mood, though. Banks can actually write characters and subtext and everything else that's needed to hold up as Real Literature. Don't get me wrong, I've really enjoyed a lot of Reynolds' work - less so lately, but still - and while I have no problem with you preferring him to Banks, I don't think he's nearly as accomplished a writer. He excels at one thing, the creepy cold slightly detached techno-Gothic story of unease, but he's got no range.
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Sep 17, 2012 18:50
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3rd October! The Hydrogen Sonata is released today, isn't it?
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Oct 3, 2012 16:20
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I got my shipping notice from play.com today - can't wait.
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Oct 3, 2012 17:56
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I have a signed copy of Hydrogen Sonata sitting right next to me – only noticed yesterday that the man himself was doing a visit to Waterstones London Piccadilly tonight.
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Oct 3, 2012 22:03
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Taratang posted:I got my shipping notice from play.com today - can't wait. 
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Oct 3, 2012 23:09
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Sitting staring at my Kindle waiting for it to come through. 22 minutes past midnight. Tut tut, I wanted to read it before I went to bed. edit: if anyone remembers the covers I did for some of the Culture novels over a year ago now I'm probably going to do one for this one too.
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Oct 4, 2012 00:23
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According to my Amazon, Hydrogen Sonata comes out on the 9th. Or is it earlier in the UK or something? (It's sort of dumb but I'm hoping I get my Kindle Paperwhite at the same time to read it on.) e: Curiosity got the better of me, .co.uk does indeed say the 4th. drat showoffs. Base Emitter fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Oct 4, 2012 |
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Oct 4, 2012 05:51
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Base Emitter posted:According to my Amazon, Hydrogen Sonata comes out on the 9th. Or is it earlier in the UK or something? Also @BastardySkull, loved your covers. Can't wait to see the new one!
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Oct 4, 2012 05:56
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I think Amazon done hosed up, actually. They shipped me the Hydrogen Sonata a week ago (after having sent me an email that the delivery time would be "moved up" with no explanation).Amazon.com posted:We have received new release date information related to the order you placed on September 05, 2012 (Order# 103-0126758-4302620). The item(s) listed below will actually ship sooner than we originally expected based on the new release date: And here I am, holding the copy of the book that's been at my apartment for a week. Amazon's web site still claims an October 9 release, too. I blew through the book in like two days and checked this thread, only to be completely surprised by the absolute absence of postrelease chat. Now I know why, I guess. It's really good.
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Oct 4, 2012 20:59
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Reiterpallasch posted:I think Amazon done hosed up, actually. They shipped me the Hydrogen Sonata a week ago (after having sent me an email that the delivery time would be "moved up" with no explanation). And yes, it was quite good, much more... Edited, compared to Surface Detail or Matter. I can only think offhand of one thread that was basically irrelevant. I wasn't completely sold on the Mistake Not... until the finale, but that was a great scene with an amazing reveal - "Cool, eh?"
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Oct 5, 2012 00:10
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17$ for the Kindle edition with the Hardcover being 15$? gently caress off, 'the publisher'.
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Oct 5, 2012 11:53
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Is Look to Windward usually quite expensive? I ordered it through my local Barnes and Noble and the copy that came was $25 in softcover!
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Oct 5, 2012 16:37
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uXs posted:17$ for the Kindle edition with the Hardcover being 15$? gently caress off, 'the publisher'. They pulled the same poo poo with Surface Detail. I waited patiently for the price to drop, although I am a huge fan.
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Oct 5, 2012 18:15
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Got home today to find my copy of The Hydrogen Sonata in the postbox. There goes any productivity for me this weekend
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