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Entropic posted:An example of the "inscrutable higher intelligence" thing I really liked was in Greg Egan's last book Incandescence. It takes place in The Amalgam, a society even more advanced than The Culture who've basically colonized the entire galaxy, except for the core. That's the territory of The Aloof, whose existence is only known by the fact that any attempt to colonize the core is gently but systematically repelled by forces unknown. Isn't that the same thing Vernor Vinge does in his books? Although the advanced culture stays away from the core for different reasons.
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Jul 6, 2009 00:26
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I rather enjoyed Matter although the pacing could have been better and the whole feudal intrigue was kind of bland compared to George R R Martins stuff which I read not too long ago. There are still lots of Banks' 'What the gently caress' moments like the aquatic species' dyson sphere that incapacitates the main character when he realizes how insignificant he is in comparison. Or the former culture agent who carries on a one sided conversation with the nano spy machines the culture set on him when he left and who the locals all assume is insane but made him supreme commander of their army anyway. The finale when they make it back home and have to fight the drones in the shellworld's core and the SC agent tells them to go limp since the suits will fight on their own better and faster than they could and will break their limbs if they struggle was also a very nice image of really high tech fighting. Usually sci-fi end up like modern fights only shinier like Han Solo shooting stormtroopers with a blaster. Instead when the the top end culture gear is involved its not something humans can fathom or interact with.
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Jul 6, 2009 21:19
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LtSmash posted:I rather enjoyed Matter although the pacing could have been better and the whole feudal intrigue was kind of bland compared to George R R Martins stuff which I read not too long ago. There are still lots of Banks' 'What the gently caress' moments like the aquatic species' dyson sphere that incapacitates the main character when he realizes how insignificant he is in comparison. Or the former culture agent who carries on a one sided conversation with the nano spy machines the culture set on him when he left and who the locals all assume is insane but made him supreme commander of their army anyway. The finale when they make it back home and have to fight the drones in the shellworld's core and the SC agent tells them to go limp since the suits will fight on their own better and faster than they could and will break their limbs if they struggle was also a very nice image of really high tech fighting. Usually sci-fi end up like modern fights only shinier like Han Solo shooting stormtroopers with a blaster. Instead when the the top end culture gear is involved its not something humans can fathom or interact with. I quite enjoyed a similar moment in Excession - when the ROU dispatched to check on the recently commandeered fleet decides to attack and you get pages of description of it shredding through the fleet, trying to find the traitorous command ship, making passes back at it - when it finally sees the traitor self-destruct in despair and ends it's assault - time passed: fractions of a second
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Jul 7, 2009 08:14
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Heh yeah, I liked that part. Pages and pages of battle, then at the end the ship says something like 'total elapsed time in the battle, 11 milliseconds'.
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Jul 7, 2009 12:30
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It's really a good thing that the Minds are so benevolent towards humans in The Culture, 'cause if they ever decided to go all SkyNet they could wipe everyone out in the time it takes you to blink.
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Jul 7, 2009 17:23
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Entropic posted:It's really a good thing that the Minds are so benevolent towards humans in The Culture, 'cause if they ever decided to go all SkyNet they could wipe everyone out in the time it takes you to blink.
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Jul 7, 2009 17:40
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I've read all of the M books except The Algebraist and Feersum Endjin. I was probably halfway through Feersum Endjin when it was stolen from me at a laundromat, and I haven't had the energy to pick it back up. Frankly I was struggling with it and had almost no idea what was going on, but I'll pick it back up again someday. I'm not surprised at the hate here for Excession. The first time I read it, I thought it was kind of lackluster. Then I read it again a few years later and I absolutely loved it. The intricacy of the plots between minds, and the scope of the novel, and it's central theme of the 'outside context problem' blew me away. If you read it before, and thought it sucked, I'd suggest another read through because I certainly didn't pick up on it's brilliance until the second time. I love the duet of Consider Phlebas and Look to Windward. The Idiran war is such a monstrous backdrop for those books...an event that could easily have spanned several novels in and of itself is used as flavor, and that's part of what makes Banks amazing to me. He doesn't hoard his ideas he uses them, and sometimes the great ideas serve as flavor to the rest of the story. I'm one of those people who was blown away by Use of Weapons, so much so that I basically had to physically stop reading for a couple of days to recover. I love the dark themes Banks touches on, and his concept of a possible future where anything is possible. The Culture books are really a great thought experiment when you get right down to it. How would people live if their every need could be met? This thread has inspired me to re-read Against a Dark Background too. One thing that I don't think gets mentioned because it's not really related to the books is the great cover art of the original trade paperbacks. I don't know why, but I love that art, especially Consider Phlebas, which as a book doesn't get enough love.
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Jul 7, 2009 22:07
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alkanphel posted:I think in one of the books somebody asked a Mind that question but I forgot the answer. Something like they could wipe out the humans in the Culture but they choose not to because they want to observe them like guinea pigs or for entertainment. Well they kind of feel benevolent towards their ancestors. They have the unwritten rule not to read the minds of their charges out of this respect, which they are not bound to but choose to respect - or they face a measure of shunning. Also it doesn't cost them anything to run the habitats of their charges. If they didn't want to do it they aren't obliged to. They are just people-ish. When they are created they are made with a personality and influences from their creation. These personalities develop over the mind's lifetime as the AI code develops with their experiences. In matterThe ship isn't infected buy the Iln virus because it's developing personality code is always changing, but does take control of the Morganveld's more computery Intelligence stuff. When some minds were made to have no personality or connection to the humanoid races, they immediately choose to sublime. FelchTragedy fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Jul 8, 2009 |
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Jul 8, 2009 01:49
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FelchTragedy posted:Well they kind of feel benevolent towards their ancestors. They have the unwritten rule not to read the minds of their charges out of this respect, which they are not bound to but choose to respect - or they face a measure of shunning. Also it doesn't cost them anything to run the habitats of their charges. If they didn't want to do it they aren't obliged to. They are just people-ish. When they are created they are made with a personality and influences from their creation. When some were made to have no personality or connection to the humanoid races, they immediately choose to sublime.
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Jul 8, 2009 01:58
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alkanphel posted:The end of Windward suggests thatthe Culture no longer exist after 1 Galactic Cycle. Do you think it means they all sublimed or simply died off? It's not said. So I don't know. It's evident that races in play simply exist and die off, sublime or maybe just move away. Sublimation is a race cashing in it's final score. It could have been destroyed by one of the threat types mentioned in Excession. It could become 3 of those threat types ( Galactic hemegeonising swarm, OCP, sublimed ).
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Jul 8, 2009 02:07
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It was a good battle... I just finished Use of Weapons and I'm still trying to pick my brain up off the floor. There were parts of the book that I sort of struggled through, and for a while figured that since it wasn't as smooth and fun as Excession that there'd be no way that even a solid ending could change my favoritism, but I'm completely rethinking it and already considering another reading to sort things out.
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Jul 11, 2009 04:55
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Smegmalicious posted:I'm one of those people who was blown away by Use of Weapons, so much so that I basically had to physically stop reading for a couple of days to recover. I just finished Use of Weapons, I really didn't like Zakalwe compared to some of Banks' other characters, but I realized that that just made the book that much better. Once he ties the knot on all the recurring images it really pulls the book together magnificently. e: It still hasn't overtaken Consider Phlebas as my favorite book of his (the characters in that, especially the realistically dynamic attributes of their personalities were incredible) but I've got a lot of reading yet to do before I finish the Culture series.
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Jul 12, 2009 10:08
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Cuntpunch posted:I'm completely rethinking it and already considering another reading to sort things out. It is probably cheating but it is worth rereading the chapters in chronological order after your first read through because it definitely helps you link it up.
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Jul 13, 2009 03:13
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Thought this might be of interest to everyone, a tour of his study/office: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB1riyVLRcU He seems like such a cool guy 
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Jul 13, 2009 06:14
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Honestly I picked up the Algerbraist in an airport and struggled to read through the first chapter. When I finally managed to push through a couple more it was just incredibly boring, incredibly wierd and didn't really pull me in or engage me in anyway. A lot of the minor details and stuff in the dialogue was really jarring as well and nothing really seemed to mesh together. If I had to explain it I'd say it felt like I was reading a book in an established universe that I had no prior knowledge of. Maybe the book gets really good after the first couple of chapters but I wouldn't know because I wasn't really interested in getting there.
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Jul 13, 2009 14:47
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Dan Didio posted:Honestly I picked up the Algerbraist in an airport and struggled to read through the first chapter. When I finally managed to push through a couple more it was just incredibly boring, incredibly wierd and didn't really pull me in or engage me in anyway. A lot of the minor details and stuff in the dialogue was really jarring as well and nothing really seemed to mesh together. That's understandable, I personally loved that feeling of being lost in a strange universe with completely hosed up aliens and having no clue what was going on, but everyone's different. Consider Phlebas is really his best book to start with, it's just non stop action from start to finish and establishes the universe of the Culture which most of Banks' books are a part of but the Algebraist is *not*.
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Jul 13, 2009 22:15
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I thought started with Use of Weapons, and while it was a decent starting point, I thought Player of Games seemed like the best place to start. It introduced and spent a decent amount of time in the Culture (so you got a great sense of how it worked), but then also had action and adventure throughout.
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Jul 14, 2009 10:15
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So I've chewed my way through all of Alastair Reynolds' and Peter F. Hamilton's bibliographies and I'm looking for something new. Has anyone read stuff by either of them and how does it compare to Banks? EDIT: I just realized that there's a space opera thread 
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Jul 14, 2009 13:01
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Moist von Lipwig posted:So I've chewed my way through all of Alastair Reynolds' and Peter F. Hamilton's bibliographies and I'm looking for something new. Has anyone read stuff by either of them and how does it compare to Banks?
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Jul 14, 2009 14:25
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syphon posted:I thought started with Use of Weapons, and while it was a decent starting point, I thought Player of Games seemed like the best place to start. It introduced and spent a decent amount of time in the Culture (so you got a great sense of how it worked), but then also had action and adventure throughout. I just finished Consider Phlebas and started Player of Games. At about 150 pages into Player of Games I still think Horza was right.
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Jul 14, 2009 21:45
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Fallom posted:I just finished Consider Phlebas and started Player of Games. At about 150 pages into Player of Games I still think Horza was right. About what exactly? It's been a while since I read both.
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Jul 15, 2009 01:22
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FelchTragedy posted:About what exactly? It's been a while since I read both. People were hesitant to recommend Consider Phlebas because the protagonist, Horza, hates everything the Culture stands for and works as an agent for a fanatical alien race not because he believes in them but because they're trying to destroy the Culture. Horza said the Culture was decadent, stagnant, non-spiritual, and entirely at the whims of the machines who didn't give a single poo poo about humankind.
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Jul 15, 2009 02:53
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While we're on the topic of Horza, I love the chapter where he gets stranded on the cannibal island. That poo poo read like a Stephen King short story and made an amazing interlude between action setpieces. It was also fantastic when he sweet-talked the Culture escape shuttle into letting him dick around inside it until he figured out where its brain was and shot it with a cannon.
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Jul 15, 2009 04:51
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Turpitude posted:That's understandable, I personally loved that feeling of being lost in a strange universe with completely hosed up aliens and having no clue what was going on, but everyone's different. Consider Phlebas is really his best book to start with, it's just non stop action from start to finish and establishes the universe of the Culture which most of Banks' books are a part of but the Algebraist is *not*. I'll look that up then. I honestly can't quite pin down what I didn't like about the Algebraist but it was just so drat difficult to get into. There were bits where it shined through and I definitely didn't think it was a bad book, just not really my cup of tea.
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Jul 15, 2009 09:12
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Turpitude posted:While we're on the topic of Horza, I love the chapter where he gets stranded on the cannibal island. That poo poo read like a Stephen King short story and made an amazing interlude between action setpieces. It was also fantastic when he sweet-talked the Culture escape shuttle into letting him dick around inside it until he figured out where its brain was and shot it with a cannon.
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Jul 15, 2009 18:31
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Fallom posted:Horza was right. Band name found. Dan Dildo posted:Honestly I picked up the Algerbraist in an airport and struggled to read through the first chapter. When I finally managed to push through a couple more it was just incredibly boring, incredibly wierd and didn't really pull me in or engage me in anyway. A lot of the minor details and stuff in the dialogue was really jarring as well and nothing really seemed to mesh together. I read the whole thing and found it good but not great; it's definitely not as engaging as the Culture books are. The villain was way too over-the-top and hammy. I just finished Against a Dark Background and it was kinda underwhelming. I've got 3 non "M" books to read though, looking forward to those.
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Jul 17, 2009 04:17
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I was thinking about picking up The Bridge, but it seems to have mostly disappeared from Amazon. Did this book somehow become rare?
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Jul 28, 2009 01:59
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GrandpaPants posted:I was thinking about picking up The Bridge, but it seems to have mostly disappeared from Amazon. I was dismayed to find out that Look To Windward is currently out of print.
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Jul 28, 2009 03:40
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GrandpaPants posted:I was thinking about picking up The Bridge, but it seems to have mostly disappeared from Amazon.
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Jul 28, 2009 04:43
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GrandpaPants posted:I was thinking about picking up The Bridge, but it seems to have mostly disappeared from Amazon. I got it used for like $2 on Half.com a month or two ago (same with Complicity and The Business)
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Jul 28, 2009 05:43
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Just finished Player of Games and man, Banks really had to go out of his way to make the empire seem terrible. You've got the Culture on one had, which ironically annihilates everything that has anything to do with actual culture in the species it adopts, and on the other hand you have the Empire of Azad which appeals greatly to human nature and has its own culture, spirit, and dreams and in order to make it seem abominable the author had to throw in one or two scenes where torture and rape is televised. Honestly I hope in the subsequent books Banks continues to provide foils for the Culture, because rooting against them seems to be more entertaining.
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Jul 28, 2009 06:06
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Magnificent Quiver posted:Just finished Player of Games and man, Banks really had to go out of his way to make the empire seem terrible. You've got the Culture on one had, which ironically annihilates everything that has anything to do with actual culture in the species it adopts, and on the other hand you have the Empire of Azad which appeals greatly to human nature and has its own culture, spirit, and dreams and in order to make it seem abominable the author had to throw in one or two scenes where torture and rape is televised. Honestly I hope in the subsequent books Banks continues to provide foils for the Culture, because rooting against them seems to be more entertaining. I read some of the later Culture books first, and I'm glad I did, because the Azad are totally a strawman for the Culture to point smugly at. The best of the Culture books have non-Culture protagonists. My favourite is Kabe in Look to Windward, the super-chill Homomdan who's sympathetic to The Culture, but detached enough that he see some of the things they don't see about themselves.
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Jul 28, 2009 07:29
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In my German edition of Consider Phlebas there is a foreword by Ken MacLeod where he interprets the conflict between the Culture and the Idirans on the background of the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan during the 80's. Back then we, the West, supported the Mujahedin against the Red Army, and they were often glorified as god fearing rebels against the soulless, cold, atheistic war machine of the red army. Consider Phelebas was written during that time frame. According to MacLeod the Culture symbolizes a kind of idealized communist state, a benevolent and sophisticated social order, but also one that has lost it's soul along the way, while the Idirans are primitive and violent, but have a more "natural" society, compared to the Culture. Horza, the protagonist, supports the Idirans, because he loathes the well meaning homogenization of the Cultures influence on the universe. There is a similiar theme in Use of Weapons. Zakalwe doesn't really like the culture even though he works for them. He dislikes their unpassionate efficiency, as he says himself in the book. DeusEx fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Jul 28, 2009 |
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Jul 28, 2009 12:21
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DeusEx posted:In my German edition of Consider Phlebas there is a foreword by Ken MacLeod where he interprets the conflict between the Culture and the Idirans on the background of the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan during the 80's. Back then we, the West, supported the Mujahedin against the Red Army, and they were often glorified as god fearing rebels against the soulless, cold, atheistic war machine of the red army. Consider Phelebas was written during that time frame. In the Culture's defense, unlike the Soviets they are cool with whole tranches of their society just going off to do their own thing - like the Elench. Also they don't commit complete genocide against races. Also they tried their hand at appeasement with a lesser race to stop them being so destructive to everyone. Also during the Iridian war the Culture had to adapt to having to be warlike. They didn't want to and it has it's costs. The necessary evil of it all and of parts of special circumstances. There is a bit in Matter where a culture person who is part of the peace movement has a moan at a special circumstancer. I love the sentence in Matter which paraphrased was "Special circumstances agent and combat drone. A cliche often mentioned to scare naughty children and bad people." FelchTragedy fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Jul 28, 2009 |
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Jul 28, 2009 13:34
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You see both sides of the issue with the Affront. There's a strong desire to just let them have their wild gasbag party, and an equally strong desire to step in and enforce the Culture's ideals.
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Jul 28, 2009 15:39
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I'm about halfway through The Wasp Factory and goddrat, Frank tricking little Paul into hitting the bomb and making it blow up  . One of the most harrowing and disturbing things I've ever read. (I've not read American Psycho.)
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Jul 28, 2009 17:49
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Zimadori Zinger posted:I'm about halfway through The Wasp Factory and goddrat, Frank tricking little Paul into hitting the bomb and making it blow up It gets worse. 
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Jul 28, 2009 19:04
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Cuntpunch posted:I was dismayed to find out that Look To Windward is currently out of print. Its available on Kindle, if you have one (or want to get one and need an excuse).
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Jul 29, 2009 21:13
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Yuppie Scum posted:Its available on Kindle, if you have one (or want to get one and need an excuse). Used copies going here for $6.49. The mass market paperback is going for like 31 used, over 100 new.
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Jul 29, 2009 23:21
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Just finished up Look To Windward last night. Completely forgot that I had ordered it off Amazon so had to put down Stephenson's Diamond Age for a bit and plow through it. Absolutely loved it, my new favorite M. book. Look To Windward has such great commentary and insight into the Culture and it's Minds. The scene where Masaq' Hub describes everything he's doing at the moment was beautiful. Hub was just a fantastic character for Banks to go balls out with the space porn. I think it's the book that deals the most with the philosophy of The Culture and that's always been my favorite parts of the Culture Novels. Plus you got to have the just pure alien feel of the Airsphere and the Dirigible Behemothaur parts. Just ordered Excession Amazon. After that it's only Inversions before I've ran dry of M. Banks. That's depressing. His new book doesn't seem to be hard Sci-Fi either, which is a bummer.
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Sep 18, 2009 01:55
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