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"West Coast droneship under construction will be named "Of Course I Still Love You"" All this makes me more sad about Banks' passing :-(
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Jan 23, 2015 20:21
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One day I hope to read about the Meatfucker docking with the ISS.
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Jan 23, 2015 20:50
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Player of Games posted:He had a sudden, paranoid idea. He turned to Chamlis urgently. 'These friends of yours are ships.' Of course, they are named after General Contact Units - that is, after all, what the barges were built for - to have the rocket 'Generally' Contact them while they get the Specifics sorted out : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA5boBWEKPg 9-Feb-2014 "SpaceX successfully lands on the floating landing platform "Just Read The Instructions" after launching NASA's DISCOVR observatory"
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Jan 24, 2015 17:57
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Gangringo posted:One day I hope to read about the Meatfucker docking with the ISS. Mankind reaches Mars aboard the USS "What are the civilian applications?" Edit: Thinking about it, the ultimate fate of Meatfucker has always troubled me. Do we really want a GCU obsessed with genocide to be the first culture contact absorbed into the OCP? lenoon fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 00:09
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lenoon posted:Thinking about it, the ultimate fate of Meatfucker has always troubled me. Do we really want a GCU obsessed with genocide to be the first culture contact absorbed into the OCP? I thought that was a big part of why the OCP reported that the Culture universe wasn't ready to be contacted yet? Between the near-war and Meatfucker's issues they certainly gave a poor first impression.
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Feb 6, 2015 00:42
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Is there any timeline on Excession being published for kindle? I can't find anything but may be dumb.
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Feb 6, 2015 02:31
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Captain Monkey posted:Is there any timeline on Excession being published for kindle? I can't find anything but may be dumb. http://www.amazon.ca/Excession-Iain-M-Banks-ebook/dp/B00GVG1BZK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423228196&sr=8-1&keywords=excession http://www.amazon.com/Excession-Culture-Iain-M-Banks-ebook/dp/B00GVG1BZK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423228205&sr=8-1&keywords=excession
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Feb 6, 2015 14:10
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Less Fat Luke posted:Which country? It's definitely available in Canada and the US Amazon stores for Kindle: For the US, check your link again. It appears in the store, but for some reason cannot be purchased, and I really don't want to get the paperback because I have everything else on my kindle and it would bother me to have one book sitting out there, and a gap in my kindle list. 
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Feb 6, 2015 16:51
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BatteredFeltFedora posted:I thought that was a big part of why the OCP reported that the Culture universe wasn't ready to be contacted yet? Between the near-war and Meatfucker's issues they certainly gave a poor first impression. I thought the Excession had the Elench ships too -- didn't it? I thought its judgment was pretty reasonable given the overall state of the Galaxy. But it's been a while since I read that one, I should go back for another look.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:18
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It picked up the Peace Makes Plenty and Break Even, yeah.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:27
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It's probably also smart enough that it doesn't really matter whether it reconstructs the overall state of the Galaxy from the Grey Area's mind state or from any other Mind.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:54
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Captain Monkey posted:For the US, check your link again. It appears in the store, but for some reason cannot be purchased, and I really don't want to get the paperback because I have everything else on my kindle and it would bother me to have one book sitting out there, and a gap in my kindle list. I'd email Kindle support then, cause that is weird. They're actually quite good at responding.
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Feb 6, 2015 23:57
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http://www.newser.com/story/182274/doctors-find-44-year-old-fetus-in-woman-84.html
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Feb 10, 2015 18:44
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Well this is interesting. http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/arts/news/dying-wish-of-scots-author-iain-banks-revealed-1-3690835
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Feb 16, 2015 09:26
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I've never read any Ken MacLeod, thoughts on this from people who have?
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Feb 16, 2015 10:09
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czg posted:Well this is interesting. Seems like Ken feels he's been let off the hook and doesn't actually have to do it though. Which is a shame because that would be really cool
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Feb 16, 2015 10:22
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I just found this, and thought I'd share - a twitter account of Culture Ship names based on recent media events. The one for when Banks announced his cancer was ROU: The Worst Possible News
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Feb 16, 2015 12:28
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That summary of the Culture is hilarious.
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Feb 20, 2015 04:08
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Barry Foster posted:The one for when Banks announced his cancer was ROU: The Worst Possible News "Melancholy Enshrines All Triumph."
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Feb 20, 2015 04:22
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MikeJF posted:I've never read any Ken MacLeod, thoughts on this from people who have? I've read a couple of his novels and they never really grabbed me. I don't think he can pull off the sense of whimsy that Banks had - I think it would end up with a darker tone and less well-developed characters.
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Feb 23, 2015 21:55
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Is there anywhere you can find Excession as an e-book? Book storage woes have made me take a strict ebook-only stance on new purchases so I would really like to avoid having to get a physical copy.
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Feb 23, 2015 22:19
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Less Fat Luke posted:Which country? It's definitely available in Canada and the US Amazon stores for Kindle: Halfway up the page, though it sounded like there were problems with the US store edition. UK here: Amazon
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Feb 23, 2015 22:31
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Note that you can order from the UK kindle store just by changing your country under "Manage Your Content and Devices" -> "Settings". Add a valid UK address (10 Downing Street, London, SW1A 2AA, United Kingdom), order the book, then switch back to your actual address.
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Feb 23, 2015 23:52
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withak posted:Note that you can order from the UK kindle store just by changing your country under "Manage Your Content and Devices" -> "Settings". Add a valid UK address (10 Downing Street, London, SW1A 2AA, United Kingdom), order the book, then switch back to your actual address. I can confirm that this works, but I've heard it's dangerous - a few people have reported having their purchase removed by Amazon for having falsified their location, though I haven't heard of that happening recently.
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Feb 24, 2015 01:01
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I've done it a couple of times without problems. If you are worried then download it to your computer and use Calibre to strip the DRM.
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Feb 24, 2015 01:05
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Kesper North posted:I can confirm that this works, but I've heard it's dangerous - a few people have reported having their purchase removed by Amazon for having falsified their location, though I haven't heard of that happening recently. I've done it 8 times dating back to 2012 (starting with Red Country). So far, so good.
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Feb 26, 2015 00:45
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Y'know, there are other colors than cerise.
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Mar 8, 2015 20:39
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Sat down this afternoon with Consider Phlebas and didn't get up again until I was done with it. It's some real good poo poo.
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Mar 31, 2015 01:15
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Yes. Yes it is.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:49
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Is Consider Phlebas the first book chronologically? I remember Player of Games referenced the Idiran War as 700 years in the past. A lot of the books involve Dziet Sma and I think the Idiran War is in the past for her?
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Apr 16, 2015 13:41
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Yeah, all of the other books take place a fair bit of time after the Idiran War.
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Apr 16, 2015 13:45
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State of the Art may be a comedy novella, but I think I'll remember Dziet's angry "money implies poverty!" comment. I bet the writers of Star Trek had wished they'd thought of that one.
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Apr 16, 2015 15:35
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I'm a little confused as to why Inversions is titled the way it is. Is it because DeWar was the one who favored active intervention, while Vocill believed in non-violence, and DeWar completely failed to accomplish anything while Vocill turned a whole nation around and is implied to have her knife-drone murder several people?
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Apr 18, 2015 12:37
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The parables are told in a gender-neutral manner, but it's Vosill who is the active, directly interventionist one. She tries to push the King toward her more liberal views while DeWar is content to be a reactive force. He doesn't try to shape the Protecterate; he's happy to look for martial threats and confide in Perrund.
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Apr 18, 2015 20:40
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The Dark One posted:The parables are told in a gender-neutral manner, but it's Vosill who is the active, directly interventionist one. She tries to push the King toward her more liberal views while DeWar is content to be a reactive force. He doesn't try to shape the Protecterate; he's happy to look for martial threats and confide in Perrund. I've finally finished Use of Weapons after putting it down 3 times. I've read Considering Phlebas and Player of Games. What should I pick up next?
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Apr 18, 2015 20:50
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gohmak posted:I've finally finished Use of Weapons after putting it down 3 times. I've read Considering Phlebas and Player of Games. What should I pick up next? Depends which you like the most and why, really. Inversions is a Culture novel seen very much from the outside, so it has themes of Phlebas. Excession has a lot of Mind interaction, also you could say it's the Culture being the other side in a Special Circumstances operation. Use of Weapons is the nonlinear story of one SC operative, many would say it is at least top 2. I read them in order of publication, except I read Player before Phlebas.
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Apr 18, 2015 22:25
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The audiobook of Excession ready by Peter Kenny is really good. Don't usually go in for Audiobooks but had a long drive with my mom, we both really enjoyed it. She listens to a ton of audiobooks and said the voice acting was really top notch. It's fun hearing the various voices he assigns to the minds.
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Apr 19, 2015 02:47
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xian posted:The audiobook of Excession ready by Peter Kenny is really good. Don't usually go in for Audiobooks but had a long drive with my mom, we both really enjoyed it. She listens to a ton of audiobooks and said the voice acting was really top notch. It's fun hearing the various voices he assigns to the minds. That's good to hear. I was worried about that one due to how much of the book is repeated lists of recipients of messages. It seems like that could get annoying after a while.
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Apr 19, 2015 02:54
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Snapchat A Titty posted:Depends which you like the most and why, really. Inversions is a Culture novel seen very much from the outside, so it has themes of Phlebas. Excession has a lot of Mind interaction, also you could say it's the Culture being the other side in a Special Circumstances operation. Use of Weapons is the nonlinear story of one SC operative, many would say it is at least top 2. I did not enjoy Concidering Phlebas but Use of Weapons and Player of Games were brilliant.
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Apr 19, 2015 04:38
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Imo Consider Phlebas is the weakest, but also an outlier, it's very feuilleton setpiece-to-setpiece-like. The others cohere better.
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Apr 19, 2015 04:44
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