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sebmojo posted:Matter is great, it's Banks doing Shakespeare. The title is everything, it's about what matters, and it's about matter. I found it quite boringly obsessed with that bland Medieval world and then he realises his deadline is in two weeks and goes nuclear.
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Jul 15, 2018 10:55
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Culture AIs are close to gods, but from the other side.
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Jul 15, 2018 10:56
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Applewhite posted:I’m still a little blurry on whether the lead renegade ship was effectored into killing itself (and the “reprogramming” took the form of suicidal remorse for its actions) or whether it genuinely felt remorse and killed itself. Iirc the renegade ship ordered a few nearby stolen ships to mask themselves as it, and when the Killing Time swept its effector over it and the others (who all instantaneously exploded/killed themselves) it didn't even realise it had been hacked and thought it was in the clear, until it became violently suicidal. The other Interesting Times Gang members are like "sheesh" when they hear how Killing made it self-incinerate with its own diverted engine thrust. I also loved how furious the Killing Time got when it realised it had handily beaten them all without a challenge and wasn't going to be able to brag about about a heroic sacrifice to its warship pals. On a side note I missed a chance to visit a Banks book signing during the Hydrogen Sonata release and I still regret it to this day.
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Jul 15, 2018 11:34
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Applewhite posted:With the new Amazon series coming out soon, there’s never been a better time to read the books. They only just announced it, so it's probably 4 years away yet. And Consider Phlebas is not that political but with the Culture series as a whole being a pretty good advert for luxury communism I wonder if it's going to get somehow stepped on or meddled with.
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Jul 15, 2018 13:23
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Xaintrailles posted:They only just announced it, so it's probably 4 years away yet. lol the political undertones are definitely going to be Bora's personal dumbass view about the inhumanity and suffocating banality of space communism. They may briefly make the idirans look mean and militaristic as a "wow really makes you think" counterpoint but more likely they will be shown as strong and honourable, in the personal image of Xoralundra.
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Jul 15, 2018 13:33
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bitmap posted:lol the political undertones are definitely going to be Bora's personal dumbass view about the inhumanity and suffocating banality of space communism. They may briefly make the idirans look mean and militaristic as a "wow really makes you think" counterpoint but more likely they will be shown as strong and honourable, in the personal image of Xoralundra. the Idirans are basically space ISIS tho. hard to really show that in a positive light unless you entirely remove the moral quandary that's at the heart of Bora's story.
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Jul 15, 2018 13:39
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That was a cool part of the book, for someone like me who read it as their first Culture novel with no preconceptions about it either way. On first read, when I was 12 or something, I was siding with the Idirans. Yeah, these noble three legged aliens just wanna have honor and poo poo! At the end Horza and me started to question that idea.
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Jul 15, 2018 13:41
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Plavski posted:the Idirans are basically space ISIS tho. hard to really show that in a positive light unless you entirely remove the moral quandary that's at the heart of Bora's story. The idirans will be space america, noble warrior priests reluctantly drawn into conflict with the uppity and meddlesome coastal elite culture. There may be flaws in their pursuit of bringing the light of their religion to the stars but, god drat it, they're alive.
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Jul 15, 2018 13:47
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Player of Games is by far my favorite. Banks does an excellent job setting up the rules for the game and I liked the focus on a Culture citizen who isn’t in the military, to show how people fill their time in a limitless utopia. It’s not sci-fi but my second favorite Banks book was The Crow Road.
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Jul 15, 2018 16:14
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Applewhite posted:Also effector weapons are the scariest and most badass sci fi weapon I’ve ever read and I wish they’d turn up in more sci fi. Nova level hypergrid intrusion and subsequent CAM bombardment.
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Jul 15, 2018 16:48
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From Inversions, which I'm reading right now: I love how in one of DeWar's later stories of Lavishia his mask slips a bit because it's nearly unchanged from what actually happened and he's retelling it like a memory and really getting into it. So when Lattens asks if they had to cut off Sechroom's broken leg (a completely reasonable thing to assume given medieval medicine), he's just like 'What?? Oh, no.'
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Jul 15, 2018 17:09
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doverhog posted:That was a cool part of the book, for someone like me who read it as their first Culture novel with no preconceptions about it either way. On first read, when I was 12 or something, I was siding with the Idirans. Yeah, these noble three legged aliens just wanna have honor and poo poo! At the end Horza and me started to question that idea. I grew up in a republican household and slowly transitioned to the left in my mid-twenties after experiencing corporate culture first-hand. I read Consider Phlebas right in the middle of that transition, and it's interesting looking back that I remember having almost a conscious cognitive dissonance about how I felt reading the book. I told myself I was rooting for Horza, and the ends justified the means to defeat Space Communism... but by the end of the book I was fully aware there was no justification for his actions and the the Idirans were acting purely out of racial superiority and religious fanaticism, something you're hit over the head with in the beginning but I ignored because of my existing predispositions- something I now realize I had done my entire youth as a republican, something that any religious republican who supports Trump doing right now. Anyways, I read Player of Games a year or so later and at that point was a full on socialist and was completely on board with the Culture as an ideal. I really think Consider Phlebas had a profound effect on my political identity.
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Jul 15, 2018 17:46
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I read the first four books or whatever when I was 20 and liked the cool sci-fi poo poo in them. My political opinion of I don't give a poo poo about anything was well solidified by then, and hasn't changed since.
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Jul 15, 2018 17:58
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I’m a huge Banks fan...I still feel twinges of sadness because he is dead and there won’t be any more Culture books 
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Jul 15, 2018 18:09
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The Dennis System posted:I think Ian Banks made The Culture too powerful. That one psycho ship destroyed an entire fleet of Culture Weeaboo ships in two seconds and, if I remember right, the Culture Weeaboos were nearly technologically equivalent to The Culture. I mean, those Culture AIs are basically gods. (Although making those AIs nearly godlike might have been the point, I don't know.) He continually upped their power level because the books transitioned from stories about the moral authority of the Culture to ones questioning that authority. By giving them near-omnipotent power halfway through the series you're supposed to realize that "can we?" is never a question the Culture has to ask itself, only "should we?" Think about how Player of Games and Look to Windward are basically the same premise.
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Jul 15, 2018 18:10
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what the gently caress is consider penis
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Jul 15, 2018 18:12
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I just remembered that bit where the dying duder jammed the train to full throttle with his broken rear end body. Man that was so well written. I love those books. Need to give them a reread soon.
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Jul 15, 2018 18:15
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Onkel Hedwig posted:The rear end in a top hat ship who messed up the human who volunteered to be its avatar was in "Surface Detail" the human was either never concious of what happened, or had his mind wiped at the end. it was p funny
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Jul 15, 2018 18:20
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I hope the TV show nails the game show chapter.
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Jul 15, 2018 18:20
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Plavski posted:I found it quite boringly obsessed with that bland Medieval world and then he realises his deadline is in two weeks and goes nuclear. The concepts involved in these stories are just absolutely amazing, it's pure high sci-fi at its very best- but a lot of the books are meandering and there isn't always much of a payoff at the end. The fact he jumps a thousand years and has no consistent protagonists or settings lets you fill in the blanks in your own imagination, which is better than any of the books are. You can tell he wrote these one handed while yelling "oh yeah, space communism, magic robot friends uuuunnngghh," although that's half the fun and is exactly what all of us reading the books are doing too
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Jul 15, 2018 18:22
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The Culture novels loving suck. No one is impressed by big sci-fi ideas when it still boils down to adventure fiction with bad prose.
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Jul 15, 2018 18:26
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Hell Yeah posted:what the gently caress is consider penis the gay agenda
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Jul 15, 2018 18:29
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The Culture novels loving suck. Have you considered that is you that sucks?
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Jul 15, 2018 18:32
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The Culture novels loving suck. Like most forms of escapist entertainment the main purpose of genre fiction is to make your apartment less lonely, these ones just focus on being halfway intelligent
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Jul 15, 2018 18:33
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when I'm old I'm going to shoot up a bunch of richers while screaming MONEY IMPLIES POVERTY THE PURSUIT OF IT DOUBLY SO and then you can take your Culture criticisms and shove them up your pooper
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Jul 15, 2018 18:36
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why not do it now so we don't have to see your posts anymore
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Jul 15, 2018 18:39
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naem posted:Like most forms of escapist entertainment the main purpose of genre fiction is to make your apartment less lonely, these ones just focus on being halfway intelligent The Culture novels aren't intelligent, they're just hypocritical pulp fantasy. I think the best example of this is how there's a novel about a Culture agent having to make a peace negotiation possible, but after some gruesome adventures the peace negotiations are entirely skipped. Despite being supposedly about utopian democracy, actual utopianism and democracy are sidelined in the novels, and their world is elitistic, militarized, and hyperviolent. The Culture isn't actually a progressive utopia, it's just a capitalist society that has eliminated the need for a working class. It's foreign policy even involves incrementally improving other civilizations so that they can join it.
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Jul 15, 2018 18:43
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The Culture novels aren't intelligent, they're just hypocritical pulp fantasy. You're wrong.
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Jul 15, 2018 18:51
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Nurge posted:You're wrong. No
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Jul 15, 2018 18:52
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Y
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Jul 15, 2018 18:53
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The Culture novels aren't intelligent, they're just hypocritical pulp fantasy. Membership in the Culture is voluntary, though. Entire systems protested the Idiran-Culture war and left the Culture. Presumably they got to keep all the fancy nonmilitary advances. Iain Banks good.
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Jul 15, 2018 18:56
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phasmid posted:Membership in the Culture is voluntary, though. Entire systems protested the Idiran-Culture war and left the Culture. Presumably they got to keep all the fancy nonmilitary advances. As I said, the series is a fantasy. If there's a movie that shows that Americans who don't like police brutality or whatever can simply lawfully and peacefully secede to form their own society, that wouldn't be convincing at all. Also I'd like to remind that this is the intelligent "world-building" people are cumming over: Player of Games posted:[...] “I can tell you that each of those steel strings has strangled a man. You see that white pipe at the back, played by the male?”
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Jul 15, 2018 19:05
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The Culture novels aren't intelligent, they're just hypocritical pulp fantasy. The books are about a society that attempts to be a progressive utopia, and the plots are the struggles and failures encountered, even the failures at the very core of that society despite it's best intentions. If they were a perfect utopia already it wouldn't be much of a story would it, and then how would I distract myself from my student loan debt
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Jul 15, 2018 19:06
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ACKTUCHUALLY now that I think about it, the books aren't about the happy culture members boinking and using their magic robot brain drugs uto-pllly; the books are all set in various intergalactic truck stop parking lots on third world country/planets
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Jul 15, 2018 19:11
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naem posted:The books are about a society that attempts to be a progressive utopia, and the plots are the struggles and failures encountered, even the failures at the very core of that society despite it's best intentions. It would seem far better to have just written about building a genuine utopia. If an author can imagine complex interstellar civilizations, surely they can imagine how one might be able to establish an ideal society.
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Jul 15, 2018 19:13
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:It would seem far better to have just written about building a genuine utopia. If an author can imagine complex interstellar civilizations, surely they can imagine how one might be able to establish an ideal society. No, they can't.
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Jul 15, 2018 19:17
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:It would seem far better to have just written about building a genuine utopia. If an author can imagine complex interstellar civilizations, surely they can imagine how one might be able to establish an ideal society. I think Ian Banks was brave enough to ask thematic questions like "is humanity even capable of true utopia?" and "what if the best possible attempt at utopia imaginable still has elements of colonialism/fascism etc that it struggles with despite good intentions"
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Jul 15, 2018 19:19
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That player of games passage is one of the on the nose criticisms of totalitarianism. Of course the upper classes will do poo poo like that. The books are about space communism, but they are also about what would a post scarcity society be like, what problems would they encounter, how would they decide where to intervene and how. The Culture rejects all out war, but it also rejects stupid Trekkie prime directive poo poo. If you have the power, you also have the responsibility to act. Almost? all the books are about Contact or Special Circumstances, because that conflict between the Culture and other civilizations that do not share their ideals is what is interesting.
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Jul 15, 2018 19:19
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:It would seem far better to have just written about building a genuine utopia. If an author can imagine complex interstellar civilizations, surely they can imagine how one might be able to establish an ideal society. You are a loving idiot, fyi.
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Jul 15, 2018 19:21
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Despite being supposedly about utopian democracy, actual utopianism and democracy are sidelined in the novels, and their world is elitistic, militarized, and hyperviolent. Yeah... uh... you kind of don't understand these books. Like, at all.
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Jul 15, 2018 19:22
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