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I have a theory that shields and certain effector technologies block sublimed and semi-sublimed civilisations from looking into and altering what we think of as normal space/time. The Airspheres in Look to Windward don't allow field technology afaik, and I think there's a similar artifact/location that has the same ban.
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May 12, 2010 16:13
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andrew smash posted:Jupiter is considered a desert planet and therefore terribly unfashionable by the dwellers and they basically never go there because it sucks so much dick and they would lose cred Dwellers are the best loving race.
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May 18, 2010 20:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It's basically a perfect utopia for individuals who are perfectly hedonistic, with no ambition or desire to achieve. Not true. Yes, whatever you can do a Mind can do a million times better, but this doesn't stop people in the Culture striving to create and achieve things - either for their own satisfaction, or for the admiration of their peer group (however they'd like to define that). The two examples that spring to mind: Jernau Morat Gurgeh - Accomplished game master, respected by players throughout the Culture and possibly beyond. Tutored in Azad by a ship's Mind who would consistantly beat him. Mahrai Ziller - Famous composer who straight up asks the Hub of Masdaq orbital whether it could do what he can do, and gets the answer 'yes'. I think it's Masdaq's Hub that gives the example of a mountain climber scaling a sheer cliff face to arrive at the top of a mountain, only to find a group of picnicers who have arrived by helecopter. The fact that they're there in no way invalidates the achievement of your climb. Gravy Jones posted:Given Banks' interview answer posted earlier it's interesting how many of the Culture novels feature protagonists who are bored or unsatisfied (or in some cases, just plain dislike) this Utopia. I think mainly because it's hard to write stories about people that are perfectly content. Most Culture novels are about people on the edge of the Culture - either Special Circumstances agents or individuals from other civilisations interacting with the Culture.
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May 19, 2010 10:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, how's that work out for him though? It's been a while since I read The Player of Games, but from what I remember it was basically an indictment of his entire lifestyle. More an indictment of his attitude. The dude was easily swayed into cheating on a game he could have won anyway just to look good, which says something about him. Compare that to the young female prodigy who seemed to be doing alright for himself. My main point was that people in the Culture know full well that the Minds are superior to them in pretty much every way, but try to excel anyway. Though I guess you do have to be a massive narcissist to want to be famous Culture-wide.
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May 19, 2010 14:02
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mllaneza posted:AaDB is a fantastic caper story filled with unusual settings and situations.It's dark, edgy and action packed. It'd be an absolute bitch to film but I'd love to see HBO or Showtime tackle it as a big budget miniseries. On the other hand, I hated AaDB, it seemed meandering, pointless, and generally depressing, with only a few interesting ideas it in. It's got more in common with Consider Phlebas than any of his other books, which is not really a good thing.
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May 31, 2010 12:42
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Graviton v2 posted:I was totally cheering for the Affront! You're supposed to. The point of the Affront is that evil isn't always moustache twirling and sinister. Monsters can be quite pleasant when you're not one of the ones being genetically altered to find sex more painful.
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Aug 10, 2010 13:52
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creamyhorror posted:Kind of like the colonial British, eh? (Mainly because of the "cheerfully") More like the USA 
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Sep 15, 2010 11:47
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Was anyone else disapointed with Transition? It started off a bit like Jerry-Cornelius-era Michael Moorcock fanfiction (which I was fine with), then just got a bit lazy and preachy.
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Sep 30, 2010 23:56
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I didn't see that ending coming. Also, Surface Detail really has made me realise what a completely monsterous thing the idea of Hell is. Not to get all angry atheist, but seriously, gently caress any religion that is totally cool with Hell as a justified punishment. 
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Nov 2, 2010 16:26
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Ask him why sublimed and semi-sublimed creatures/civilisations have a bias against forcefield technology. (it's probably because forcefields are four or five-dimensional constructs that intrude on their higher dimensional space but ask it anyway)
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Nov 9, 2010 09:56
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Sindai posted:Well you have to design artificial intelligences somehow. If you just grow them randomly you'll end up with the problems natural intelligences have where some of them either actively want to or don't care about harming or destroying other intelligences. Actually if you don't influence proper high level Minds, they go straight to Sublimination, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 units of exchange capital, or whatever it's called in age-of-scarcity societies.
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Nov 11, 2010 17:18
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FelchTragedy posted:Instead of signing my audiobook here is a message from Iain: Did you ask him any of our questions?
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Nov 13, 2010 01:39
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Ikonoklast posted:Btw, i want an Abominator class starship for christmas santa. Maybe if you ask REAL NICE one will inhabit your body for a while!
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Dec 6, 2010 13:22
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andrew smash posted:This is right, at some point it's explicitly mentioned that most of the mind's structure and processing capability resides in hyperspace. Allowing minds to think faster than light.
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Feb 22, 2011 11:05
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Lasting Damage posted:I think your take on the Sleeper Service is drat cool. Seconding this, it's a unique take on the vague design set out in the books (and I never did like the idea that they had "outriggers")
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May 10, 2011 09:29
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BastardySkull posted:The main problem with thinking of how to visualise the GSV is that Banks is really vague, thats true. Its a mock-project but I still need to try and think 'what does and doesn't work when you're looking at this in a shop' and made a decision early on that I'd have to make it look distinctively like a spaceship, otherwise people would get confused. It's really great man, you should try your hand at a more "populated" GSV. There's a great description in Look To Windward when Quilan first gets a look inside the outer field enclosure and it's full of smaller ships of all sizes, people in microlights, jetpacks etc.
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May 11, 2011 05:24
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Those own so hard. Is there any way you could post the Matter front cover without the text? I really want it as a background for my phone.
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May 16, 2011 05:31
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crazyvanman posted:So why the hate for this book? I didn't know people hated it, but I thought it was a bit mediocre. The ending was telegraphed so far ahead that it wasn't a surprise in the slightest, and it contains the most incredibly hamhanded caricature of an american that I've ever seen in a book - and he's not so much "slipping in" his politics as he is beating us over the head with them. Which is kind of annoying even though I agree with him.
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May 24, 2011 04:11
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It's supposed to be a safety mechanism, just in case one Mind goes crazy the other two are around to stop it. Obviously that's been.. less than successful. I think Banks himself has probably abandoned the idea anyway, it was mentioned in Excession, then never again AFAIK.
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Jun 3, 2011 00:58
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FelchTragedy posted:It does a bit. There are call backs usually in the form of a paragraph while people discuss previous characters or there is mention of previous stuff. Read them in order I say. Player of games is a favourite as well as Use of Weapons. On the other hand, the callbacks are so tiny as to be insignificant really. I say read whatever you have access to!
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Jun 6, 2011 12:33
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Both Surface Detail and Matter need some serious editing. I need to read Surface Detail again, but I honestly can't think of what the Quietus agent added to the plot at all.
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Jun 9, 2011 09:55
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LawrenceOfHerLabia posted:Matter was disappointing. Probably the weakest culture book after Inversions. I do like Inversions though, it's like a Culture fable.
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Jun 10, 2011 13:12
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A small detail about Consider Phlebas that bothers me is when the guy dies because his suit's anti-gravs don't work on the orbital, which uses centrifugal/centripedal/whatever force as a substitute for mass-generated gravity. If that was the case, how do Drones fly around on Masaq? Or any Orbital for that matter? I just wrote it off as the Culture using different means of anti-grav (probably field related) than the lovely suits the crew had, but it still kinda bugs me. Gravitas Shortfall fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Jun 20, 2011 |
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Jun 20, 2011 12:35
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I just re-read Surface Detail after picking it up in paperback, and it's definitely better on a second read. I still couldn't tell you what function Yime Nsokyi really serves in the book though I feel like she should have been cut out of SD and used as the main character in her own story.
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Jul 14, 2011 16:06
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In Surface Detail, Banks mentions a now defunct civilisation of a "pan-hopper" type, the implication being that there are several successful body types that keep cropping up on different planets just because of convergent evolution. It's a neat little idea. Look at the Azad, they're considered pan-human even though they have three sexes rather than two, which suggests "pan human" covers a pretty wide range.
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Sep 30, 2011 12:59
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I'd go so far as to say Player of Games is the best Culture novel.
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Oct 12, 2011 09:36
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Don't get me wrong, Look To Windward is a better introduction to how the Culture actually functions, Excession is full of great Mind info, and Matter gives you a good feel for how the larger galactic community functions, but Player of Games is more tightly plotted and well structured than any of the others. There's none of the weird and sometimes unecessary digressions that mar the other books.
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Oct 12, 2011 16:00
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LtSmash posted:Does anyone like Transition? I thought it was breathtakingly bad. Agreed. Awful. The only good bit in it was the idea that you'd find aliens watching solar eclipses
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Oct 12, 2011 21:46
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Yeah, the Dwellers were more like a slightly-less-horrible Affront. I doubt you'd find the culture literally eating and/or enslaving their young. The fact that they're not just decadent layabouts and have super weapons deep in their planets but just don't have a good reason to use them most of the time is awesome though.
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Oct 24, 2011 10:29
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Unlike that poor module in Excession that just wanted to hang out and pretend it was an awesome renaissance hero/castle/whatever.
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Dec 21, 2011 16:20
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Plus conflict is pretty rare amongst level 8s, most of them are mature enough to realize just how pointless and wasteful war is. You're more likely to see trouble from lower level civs looking to flex their muscles in some kind of galactic dick waving contest. Also you're forgetting the traditional saying; DON'T gently caress WITH THE CULTURE.
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Mar 2, 2012 16:49
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rejutka posted:GSV What If I Just Want To Twiddle The Nipples? That would be a totally valid ship name. Along with the ROU Just the tip
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Mar 2, 2012 17:53
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ROU All the cool kids are doing it
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Mar 2, 2012 19:09
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Murgos posted:Fast Picket I'm Just Not That Into You. GCU Friend Zone
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Mar 5, 2012 23:54
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Prolonged Priapism posted:What I really like about this is how it's drawn on paper with a child's drawing and some random equation on it. A perfect quick summary of the Culture. Coriolis posted:edit: Yeah, there isn't much artwork based on the Culture universe. The only neat thing I've ever found is this picture of Vavatch, which I'm currently using as my desktop: I'm using this Halo screenshot as my wallpaper, it's a nice interpretation of what an orbital might look like from ground level.
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Mar 22, 2012 12:42
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Fragmented posted:And what are the Oct supposed to look like? I'm reading through Matter and can't find where they are described. A bit like this;  Fragmented posted:Also a question about storing your mindstate...if you are stored and die "you" still die right? You don't take a plasma round to the face and then wake up in a new body it's just a stored copy of you? My friend said that took the danger out of the books for the backed up people but for me it doesn't at all. It's almost creepier than death, you still go to oblivion but now there's another you with your memories running around alive, gah! Yes, that comes up a few times when Culture citizens are about to die. They're all "Well I'll live on, but the me here and now with these experiences is going to die". However, if you've got a neural lace/soulkeeper device it stores your mindstate as/just before you're dying, which is a bit more of a Grey Area. Gravitas Shortfall fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Mar 22, 2012 |
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Mar 22, 2012 18:11
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MeLKoR posted:At least until everything goes to hell in a handbasket, but yeah I guess it's an happy ending in a way. Player of Games definitely has a happy ending. Gurgeh grows and matures as a person, an evil empire is bought down, a drone is revealed as being totally awesome
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May 25, 2012 16:26
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MeLKoR posted:Definitely happy in the long run, I mean... probably. The Culture were directly involved in this situation, I imagine they'll be doing everything they possibly can to minimize fallout. How successful they'll be is anyone's guess, though supposedly Chel was an anomaly so it'll probably work out.
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May 29, 2012 11:41
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Barry Foster posted:God, Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The was such a boring old arse. Totally didn't deserve to be in the Interesting Times Gang. Yeah, but that's what makes it perfect. Who'd suspect a Mind like that to be involved in a totally sweet secret club? 
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Jun 13, 2012 16:43
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What the culture did to/with Zakalwe is disturbingly similar to what the Chel do with/to Quilan, and what the Iridians do to/with Horza. All three are just tools to be used and discarded. The Culture have better motivations and arguably treat their instruments better, but the similarities are striking (and no doubt deliberate).
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Jun 21, 2012 16:15
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