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Do you prefer the extended summer thread format? This poll is closed. |
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I remember reading one as a teen where a member of the culture decides to 'retire' to a primitive planet and live and die as a normal human. It's set in the contemporary 90s I think. It might not be a culture story but I remember reading everything our local library had by Banks, which wasn't in order or a complete collection. I think that might be the one linked in the post above yours.
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Jul 13, 2021 14:10
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My first experience with Banks was the Wasp Factory, which, well, that’s a book alright.
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Jul 13, 2021 14:11
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Borrovan posted:Would they be eligible to join FIFA, and, if not, can we just play with them instead? Hosting the first Galactic cup on a planet with half gravity
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Jul 13, 2021 14:16
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Red Oktober posted:I think that might be the one linked in the post above yours.
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Jul 13, 2021 14:19
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I remember reading one as a teen where a member of the culture decides to 'retire' to a primitive planet and live and die as a normal human. It's set in the contemporary 90s I think. It might not be a culture story but I remember reading everything our local library had by Banks, which wasn't in order or a complete collection. Yeah, it's the short story "State of the Art," which appears in a collection of his short stories entitled the same. It's the only story in the collection which is definitively stated to be set in the Culture universe. I think it was written fairly early in the series but I'm not sure where it fits in publication order. It features Sma, a character who turns up in Use of Weapons but if I remember correctly State of the Art would be a prequel of sorts to that specific story since it takes place earlier. And as others have mentioned, The Culture encounters Earth, finds that it's not terrible enough to destroy but will never have the potential to be folded into the Culture so it's left alone. One of the crewmates does indeed, 'Go native,' during their investigation and exploration of Earth and Sma is tasked with talking him back round. I don't recall which Culture book it's in but one of them had an interview with Iain and it brings up the question of whether he thinks Earth could produce a civilisation like the Culture and he definitely doesn't think so because of the track humanity has been throughout the 20th century into the 21st. It's actually rather depressing.
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Jul 13, 2021 14:20
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Beefeater1980 posted:My first experience with Banks was the Wasp Factory, which, well, that’s a book alright. Same. I read it back in secondary school and you were supposed to be in sixth form to actually loan it out because of the book's content. The librarian knew me well enough to know I was mature enough to read it so I think I was around about GCSE age when I took it out. I still think about that book to this day. Worth reading but I don't know if one enjoys that book so much as 'experiences' it.
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Jul 13, 2021 14:24
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I always had it in my head that that book was a lot older than it actually was. Probably because when it was mentioned in English class it was in a compare and contrast with A Clockwork Orange so I just assumed that at some point in the 60s everyone got obsessed with extreme violence and genitals. It came as quite a surprise that it was an 80s book by the same guy as that sci fi guy.
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Jul 13, 2021 14:31
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Guavanaut posted:I always had it in my head that that book was a lot older than it actually was. Tbf that’s a very contemporary obsession too
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Jul 13, 2021 14:44
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I was a teenage centrist dickhead when I read it so my takeaway from it was 'but ludvico's technique is good?' I was convinced for a long time that if they just used a milder form of the drug and made people feel bad whenever they did a violence then that would be a good thing! 
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Jul 13, 2021 14:44
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Chubby Henparty posted:I just want to thank this thread for not being like every other one that is just a torrent of 'South Park was always terrible both sides libertarian trash and I want to make clear that I would never, and never have, watched any episode'
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Jul 13, 2021 14:54
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 satire is dead
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Jul 13, 2021 14:58
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runwiled posted:Yeah, it's the short story "State of the Art," which appears in a collection of his short stories entitled the same. It's the only story in the collection which is definitively stated to be set in the Culture universe. I think it was written fairly early in the series but I'm not sure where it fits in publication order. It features Sma, a character who turns up in Use of Weapons but if I remember correctly State of the Art would be a prequel of sorts to that specific story since it takes place earlier. It's not that Earth is "so terrible it'll never have the potential to be folded into the culture" it's that Earth is assigned to the control group in the great "is intervention in other planets a good idea?" experiment. So they study it for a bit, put it in the records, and leave.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:06
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The best thing about Corbyn is that his kids are actually cool too, while most of his contemporaries have just produced awful idiot failsons. Especially Tommy. My secret wish is for Jez to step down as an MP for the next election only for Tommy to win Islington North as an independent, absolutely crushing whichever idiot Labour put up (before somehow becoming PM and then Legalising It)
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Jul 13, 2021 15:06
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At no point in this “culture” conversation has anyone mentioned the author name or the book series, it took several posts before anyone could work out people were even spoilering a book and not a TV show :/ Like be nice and let people in with the titles if you are going to do that pls 
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Jul 13, 2021 15:13
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Guavanaut posted:
The system can endure an aberration for a generation now and then.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:14
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runwiled posted:Same. I read it back in secondary school and you were supposed to be in sixth form to actually loan it out because of the book's content. The librarian knew me well enough to know I was mature enough to read it so I think I was around about GCSE age when I took it out. I still think about that book to this day. Worth reading but I don't know if one enjoys that book so much as 'experiences' it. I took hearing about books that were too old for me as a challenge, and then realised too late for this and Naked Lunch that they were right. I think the only book that ever gave me as big a physical reaction as WF was Goodnight Mr Tom.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:17
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learnincurve posted:At no point in this “culture” conversation has anyone mentioned the author name or the book series, it took several posts before anyone could work out people were even spoilering a book and not a TV show :/ It's such a widespread leftist meme that it's transcended beyond having to mention the author name! The author is Iain M. Banks, the Culture series. I'll leave it to someone more knowledgeable to give recommendations for where to start.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:17
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learnincurve posted:At no point in this “culture” conversation has anyone mentioned the author name or the book series, it took several posts before anyone could work out people were even spoilering a book and not a TV show :/ I hate when I see tumblr posts discussing a moment from a show that looks really cool but they don't say what show it is. It's usually that show that has the guy who was in angel but with long hair and they do scams but I still don't know what show they're talking about. I accidentally watched the first episode of The Librarians because of this and am still mad. E: Does the Culture series count as scotpol? Discuss. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 15:18
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Guavanaut posted:
I thought 'that Hilary Benn has put on a lot of weight' then noticed it was a different son.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:18
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I didn't know he had more than one.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:21
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OwlFancier posted:I didn't know he had more than one. Me neither until 10 mins ago!
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Jul 13, 2021 15:25
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Large Adult BennsChubby Henparty posted:I took hearing about books that were too old for me as a challenge, and then realised too late for this and Naked Lunch that they were right. I think the only book that ever gave me as big a physical reaction as WF was Goodnight Mr Tom.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:27
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sebzilla posted:The best thing about Corbyn is that his kids are actually cool too, while most of his contemporaries have just produced awful idiot failsons. Bobby Deluxe posted:I was a teenage centrist 
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Jul 13, 2021 15:29
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Nothingtoseehere posted:It's not that Earth is "so terrible it'll never have the potential to be folded into the culture" it's that Earth is assigned to the control group in the great "is intervention in other planets a good idea?" experiment. So they study it for a bit, put it in the records, and leave. Then I'm misremembering. I do remember they had a discussion about what to do with the planet while someone was dressed up as Captain Kirk and destroying it seemed to be a serious consideration. They general consensus of the crew seemed to be that the planet was A Bit poo poo.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:32
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Beefeater1980 posted:My first experience with Banks was the Wasp Factory, which, well, that’s a book alright. I read The Wasp Factory and I have no idea why so many people rave about it. It's dull.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:36
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Guavanaut posted:I read that years ago and I cannot remember anything about it. I can remember Junky, I can remember a bunch of HST and Oscar Acosta's gonzo books, I can remember a bunch of the short stories from The Neon Wilderness, but Naked Lunch completely escapes me other than that he's an exterminator and there's a dildo called Steely Dan and some big insects and a bunch of drugs, and even some of that I may be unconsciously subbing in from the film. It's not even that I didn't like it, it's just bizarre that I can't recollect it at all. I should re-read it. It was the Mugwumps that got me, my young mind just couldn't deal. At the time a guy I knew on the local BBS scene went by that name and I was like WTF MAN and he said he picked it up from the political term but I could never look at him the same way, probably to his amusement. My fave Burroughs are the Cobain + Disposable Heroes albums.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:40
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Borrovan posted:Most people I know in my age bracket have gotten steadily more & more left wing as they age, no idea if the Zoomers are gonna keep it up or not but if they do It's not like the material conditions that have lead to people in my cohort becoming steadily more left wing as they grow up have changed in any meaningful positive direction lately.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:41
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OwlFancier posted:I didn't know he had more than one. Every Benn family member I've come across in any capacity has had really bad politics. Pretty sure there's a granddaughter who's a lib dem or something as well.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:47
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I would suspect that the terrible lib failsons are as much a product of the end of history period as they are a product of having socialist dadds. It is, IMO, a very lib idea to suggest that people form their lifelong politcal ideas out of teenage rebellion rather than constant reinforcement from their environment.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:50
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Chubby Henparty posted:It was the Mugwumps that got me, my young mind just couldn't deal.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:55
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Borrovan posted:I'm hoping that the "children of socialists rebel & become libs" thing is a pre-Blair phenomenon, there's certainly been a lot of Labour MPs in that bracket but the bad Miliband is the youngest I can think of I think I'm about the same. I had pictures of Lenin on my bedroom walls when I was 13 when everyone else had Donny Osmond, David Cassidy or Michael Jackson (before he was white). My mum took me to see Dr Zhivago when I was 13 in an attempt to put me off commies but it didn't - the images of poor people living in the palace, the images of troops charging at protestors stuck with me. I wouldn't say I'm more 'right wing' probably a little less dogmatic and the world has shades of grey. I did turn up unannounced for Sunday Lunch one time when I was in my 20s with a police person on the back of his motorbike and my mum was delighted. My dad spent the whole time muttering about 'overpaid bourgeois imperialist bully boys in blue' under his breath.
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Jul 13, 2021 16:05
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Tony benn came from some lord or whatever and was probably wealthy, his kids being poo poo is pretty much regression to the mean.
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Jul 13, 2021 16:13
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When people were into Ian M Banks i was busy grooving to Frank Herbert, Gordon R Dickson and Julian May (easier to be taken seriously in publishing back in the 50s when a woman had to use a mans name).
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Jul 13, 2021 16:26
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I'm still curious what drives Bank's clear drift on the topic of moral interventionism between the Empire of Azad (from Player of Games, 1988) and the Affront (from Excession, 1996) Banks goes to some effort to present elite Affronters as being individually affable, and the Affront's "self-perpetuating, never-ending holocaust of pain and fear" nonetheless presenting some virtues of spontaneity and enthusiasm that are absent from the hedonism of the Culture ('[Genar-Hofoen] leant towards the school of thought which held that evolution, or at least evolutionary pressures, ought to continue within and around a civilised species, rather than - as the Culture had done - choosing to replace evolution with a kind of democratically agreed physiological stasis-plus-option-list while handing over the real control of one's society to machines...'). The Azad on the other hand is a parade of gloating evil-doers gloating evilly (there's an obvious and cynical out-of-universe observation that the first Gulf War and the NATO intervention in Bosnia happen in between, but I'd prefer a textual analysis) ronya fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 16:27
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runwiled posted:Same. I read it back in secondary school and you were supposed to be in sixth form to actually loan it out because of the book's content. The librarian knew me well enough to know I was mature enough to read it so I think I was around about GCSE age when I took it out. I still think about that book to this day. Worth reading but I don't know if one enjoys that book so much as 'experiences' it. Its a fairly unsettling book and years on I'm not entirely sure if it was just a mood piece or if it was addressing something broader.
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Jul 13, 2021 16:46
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Vagabong posted:Its a fairly unsettling book and years on I'm not entirely sure if it was just a mood piece or if it was addressing something broader. I’m 99% certain it was a mood piece. He was a heavy drinking, poetically minded guy with a strong sense of the macabre and that darkness runs through everything he wrote. I feel like the Iain M Banks books were him in manic mode and the Iain Banks ones were mostly him just letting his Id out.
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Jul 13, 2021 17:16
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Beefeater1980 posted:I’m 99% certain it was a mood piece. He was a heavy drinking, poetically minded guy with a strong sense of the macabre and that darkness runs through everything he wrote. I feel like the Iain M Banks books were him in manic mode and the Iain Banks ones were mostly him just letting his Id out. I do remember reading it and wondering if there was some sort of point that I was missing. At least American Psycho beats you over the head with its satire in between the vomit-inducing bits. I will give it credit though, the maggot and kite scenes have stuck with me more than most books normally do. They're genuinely haunting.
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Jul 13, 2021 17:28
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ronya posted:I'm still curious what drives Bank's clear drift on the topic of moral interventionism between the Empire of Azad (from Player of Games, 1988) and the Affront (from Excession, 1996) I'm not sure there's really much of a shift there. Or if there was, not a lasting one. Space Elon Musk in Surface Detail (2010) is back to being utterly irredeemable, and the pro-hell politicians are basically conservative stand-ins including ranting about how people are inherently sinful and bad and that's why severe punishments must be handed out or society will collapse. And of course, before Azad, there's the Idirans in Consider Phlebas (1987) who are space racists who are individually affable if they consider you one of the Good Guys (but still inferior of course). The big shift between the Idirans and Affront is primarily the international community being a bit more queasy about the Culture's constant meddling. And the Culture's continued reckoning with causing, hold on: quote:Total casualties, including machines (reckoned on logarithmic sentience scale), medjel and non-combatants: 851.4 billion (± .3%). Losses: ships (all classes above interplanetary)—91,215,660 (± 200); Orbitals—14,334; planets and major moons—53; Rings—1; Spheres—3; stars (undergoing significant induced mass-loss or sequence-position alteration)—6. That. But that war and the galactic communities unease comes up in books pre Gulf War, like Use of Weapons.
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Jul 13, 2021 17:58
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I think he definitely felt a bit less comfortable later on with the idea of the Culture being very pro-interventionist in support of their utopian values, especially when a lot of similar arguments were being made about Iraq. I remember I read an interview with Banks somewhere where he got a bit shirty because the interviewer asked if the stuff in Look to Windward with the botched intervention was in reaction to the Iraq War.
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Jul 13, 2021 18:05
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SDLP MP Colum Eastwood has used parliamentary privilege to name Soldier F in the HoC. "Over the past couple of weeks his name has been plastered on Free Derry Corner, it has gone viral on social media. "The people of Derry know his name. There is no reason for him to be granted anonymity. "No other perpetrator involved would be given anonymity, for some reason Soldier F is a protected species." https://twitter.com/ethaninflux/status/1414971586071891972?s=20 (Tip of the hat to whoever that Shadow Minister is for giving a loving worthless response)
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Jul 13, 2021 18:08
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