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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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I got the feeling that taking care of humans was a lot like us taking care of cats. The humans think that its all about them and the Minds are clearly waiting on them hand and foot just like cats think humans are waiting on them hand and foot and feed them at their whim and clean up their poo poo. But from the human's point of view the cats are there to amuse us and we pet them when we feel like it and feeding them and changing their litter box from time to time isn't a real imposition on us. Similarly to the Minds humans mostly take care of themselves but occasionally need a spaceship ride to the vet or some drugs or something. Only its way more so since Minds think way faster than humans so we are more like lethargic turtles: the Mind can fill our food bowl, get high, go to the movies, do some homework, win a space battle, and brag to some friends, and come home and we still haven't made it to our food. Not all people care for cats, just like not all Minds care for humans. Just like we consider anyone who doesn't like cats but gets one anyway just to torture it a sicko the Minds would consider one who mistreats humans to be a sicko.
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Jun 6, 2011 21:54
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Lasting Damage posted:I like the comparison, but does this mean Hubs are like crazy cat ladies that keep 20 of them? Graviton v2 posted:Must be. Cat ladies who can hold 10000 conversations at the same time. Cat ladies would love that, its like a From the description of Culture life in Excession with the girl who is a contingency backup (I can't remember her name) it sure looks like a good deal of the Culture is a never ending supa-soap-opera. RE: Matter. I really enjoyed it as a book, especially seeing the Culture and other involved's from the view of a less developed species rather than seeing lesser species' through the eyes of the Culture. And the prince basically arguing Divine Right as the reason the Culture should help him viewing his retainer as properly loyal and thus following him to hell and back while the retainer actually just realized it was his only option that wouldn't end in a messy death for possibly being a witness. It does have some pacing issues though. I get the feeling that lately Banks is getting more leeway from his editor because of his expanding reputation. Sadly not all authors do their best work off the chain so to speak, and the contribution of a talented editor is very important. Sort of on that note what was the point of the Surface Detail arc where Yime goes to try and recover the image of Lededje? It kinda wanders along for a while and then ends when its revealed that nothing she did or encountered had any real impact of the main plot.
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Jun 8, 2011 04:15
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LawrenceOfHerLabia posted:I am reading through Consider Phlebas at the moment. It's the second or third time I've read it. On the current read-through I've noticed that the bit about The Eaters on that island drags on really badly. Also, the idea of The Eaters getting up to what they do jars with what we learn about the culture later. Specifically, the guy they murder clearly doesn't want to be eaten, but the Culture sit by and let it happen. Ok, in that case the Orbital Mind may have flown the coop, but before the mind would have surely monitored them and witnessed others of their number being mutilated. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Yeah looking back on Consider Phlebas there are a few things that are kinda jarring but not unacceptably so considering when it was written. The drone shuttle on the island for one is pretty dumb despite the fact it should be as intelligent as a regular person. And where are all the other Involved when the Idirans are trying to conquer everything? Consider Phlebas isn't alone in this though. In Player of Games or Use of Weapons The Culture is portrayed as being much more of a power beyond reckoning but by the time Matter or Surface Detail are written The Culture is a super power but also part of a greater community of mostly equal powers, even though canonically Matter is happening at about the same time as Player of Games. Similarly in State of the Art (I think) its said that SC acquires drones from the general population when a drone is too belligerent to fit in and are given the option of joining SC or basically being used for scrap. In other books its said that SC drones are purpose built to be belligerent but if they turn out to be too far out of spec they have the option of personality reconditioning or being demilitarized and become a regular civilian. Canonically there might be some explanation of it but it seems like a stretch at best. Instead just realize that Banks didn't totally develop the Culture and universe before he started writing and it has been evolving with the books. As Banks has given more time to flesh out his world some of the details have changed. And as Banks wants to tell different kinds of stories the universe changes to accommodate them. If Matter had The Culture in the same position galacticly as in Player of Games as soon as Anaplian noticed something was seriously wrong she could have called in a dozen warships to smash it totally. On the other hand Player of Games wouldn't really be better if Gurgeh had to negotiate 3 levels of involved before even getting to Azad.
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Jun 17, 2011 21:45
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I think excession is the worst of the culture books. It's practically impossible to write a story about characters with god like intelligence unless they are on the periphery. As soon as they take center stage you realize they can only be as smart as the author. The plots and twists that the minds come up with were interesting but ultimately human machinations, not godlike ones. I think the minds are much better as backup characters where you don't really see the strings they are pulling.
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Jul 25, 2011 03:43
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BastardySkull posted:Also the Minds aren't god like in any way :/ quote:Never forget I am not this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side. Minds are incomprehensibly more intelligent than people. They can simultaneously interact with every being on an orbital, predict what they will do and make arrangements so they can do them (or not as desired), monitor the course and intentions of all ships nearby, accurately predict what other civilizations in their area will be doing, and still spend most of their time in Infinite Fun Space. Not to mention all the other things they could but aren't or won't do like read minds lightyears away or win a battle against a hostile fleet before anyone on the orbital noticed it was there. The only reason the Minds in Excession aren't godlike is that it was written by a human who fundamentally can't think and plot in any way that Minds really would. The only superhuman part of the plot in Excession was the time scale, but to reflect the capabilities Minds show in other books it should have had an incomprehensible number of layers of misdirection, feints, ploys, distractions, contingencies, seemingly unconnected consequences, and an actual goal that a human wouldn't understand even if they knew all the different strands carried out by a cast of hundreds of thousands of beings thinking they were doing something different and for their own ends. Compared to that Excession obviously falls short since no human writer could possibly come up with such a story let alone turn it into a comprehensible book. In other books like Player of Games or Look to Windward the Minds' plans are reasonably god like since we never get a look behind the curtain so to speak. What is the goal in any of the wars Zakalwe fights? What is the end goal in Look to Windward? We don't know, all we see is the pieces moving on the board of a game we don't understand played by those we can't understand. I think Excession would have been a much better book if it had been written in the same way. If the points of view had been much more narrow and the intentions and actions of the Minds were much more vague.
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Jul 29, 2011 05:01
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Does anyone like Transition? I thought it was breathtakingly bad. I never cared about who any of the characters were, what they were doing, why they were doing it, or what would happen next. The whole book felt like he had a half remembered dream about the transitioning concept and decided to just bang a book out for the hell of it that ended up lacking everything everything else I expect from and enjoy about Banks' writing. I only remembered it because I was looking to see if there was any info around about his next book and stumbled on Transition release stuff instead. So has there been any word about his next book?
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Oct 12, 2011 21:31
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Flipswitch posted:One book I haven't seen discussed much is Surface Detail, what do you guys think about it? I thought it was decent but definitely didn't match up to any of the previous books. I enjoyed it overall but it was kind of weak. There were some interesting threads but it just didn't seem as well developed as the other books. The hells, the Culture section that deals with sublimed, some more involved politics, what it means to be alive when virtual realities are real and the many simultaneous existences of Vatueil. The Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints is pretty great. And while it didn't make much impact when I first read the book whats going on when we first meet it is pretty mind boggling. Culture people are in a 'war' bar and are watching live feeds of people fighting to the death elsewhere in the galaxy. That's horrifying and all on its own but the Culture has its hand in most of the wars out there. They are relaxing watching people kill each other in wars they collectively set in motion. And this is utopia? I'm somewhat puzzled by two parts though: 1) Why go through the trouble of tricking Lededje into thinking she didn't have a slap drone but give her one anyway only to have it end up killing Veppers anyway when she wasn't able to? 2) Why was Yime in it at all? Her whole excursion is one possible contingency to deal with Lededje that SC already knows isn't needed. It never even comes back the way the similar arc in Excession does.
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Oct 13, 2011 04:51
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