No Gravitas Allowed -- The Iain [M.] Banks thread

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andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

WE DOIN IT NOW posted:

I'm pretty sure this is actually stated in Look To Windward when the societies in the Universe are being explained on a technological level. They mention the Culture as being one of the races that has reached its peak and simply chooses not to sublime for whatever reason. Think it happens in one of the chapters on the Behemothaurs.

That's interesting, in Consider Phlebas the Culture is depicted as making some staggering advances (especially in Mind and warship technology) all within the few years between the start of the war and the events of the novel. The Player of Games also features a war-era military ship that's called 'geriatric' so obviously their capabilities have continued to advance in the intervening period (about 700 years). I guess though that Look to Windward takes place last in the Culture's timeline, so conceivably they could have at that point only recently entered a period of developmental stagnation.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2009 06:21

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:56

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

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

This point is explicitly addressed

# ¿ May 15, 2010 04:08

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Pompous Rhombus posted:

I agree with you, but it's not like publishers are actively out to make their books lose money or something. They've found that genre readers are more likely to buy books with rocket ships and busty chicks on the cover, and non-genre readers don't like to pick up a book and find those things inside (rocket ships, at least).

I love the cover art for The Algebraist, it's one of my favorites of all time. If it was available as a poster/print, I'd probably buy it and put it on my wall.

That said, I recently re-read it (actually listened to the audiobook, which was pretty well done) and I'm not sure it's as strong a book as I originally thought. It feels like two or three separate plots mashed together that don't really gel together that well, especially what's-her-name in the military coming back for the industrialist guy, but also Epiphany Five Disconnect invasion - I get that it's in there to ratchet up the tension on Fassin's delve, but Banks never really sells it, despite (or maybe because of) that mustache-twirling Luseferous dude. I mean, they inhabit the same book and are sort of tied to the same events, but it just feels kind of... disconnected. There are also lots of exposition sessions/info dumps just thrown in, but I mostly give Banks a pass on it where I'd normally roll my eyes, because it's generally pretty fascinating stuff. I could probably read a whole book of just straight Dweller Studies stuff

Overall, it felt like it had the makings of a great book, although the execution was a bit clumsy. I loved the big reveal(s) at the end; he really did a good job on selling how game-changing the Dweller List would be, as well as the AI's, and as usual, his prose was often humorous and always pretty well-written. For me, it's kind of a B- to B range book.

Yeah, I agree with most of this. The biggest part of the plot that didn't gel for me was the old AI genocide war being the motivation for the beyonders to hate the mercatoria. It just didn't seem necessary, the mercatoria seemed like enough of a stuffy, repressive pain in the rear end to want to be separate from without branding it space nazis.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2010 06:54

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

alkanphel posted:

I agree that out of all his books so far, the Player of Games is probably the easiest to translate into a movie. Azad would be challenging but not impossible. Maybe they'll take some artistic liberties with the way the game is visualised.

Nah, the player of games might be the best of his books that would make a passable movie but Consider Phlebas has more or less already been made into a movie more than once. It's a series of sci-fi set pieces, basically unconnected in terms of thematic significance, strung together as the adventures of a plucky crew in a lovely spaceship. It's basically star wars with cursing and loving.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2010 02:24

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Cuntpunch posted:

The entire point was that the Culture couldn't show their hand in the conflict. If they popped in and either declared for a side, or otherwise could be blamed for involving themselves, it would cause the war to grow unpredictably. They really did need a 'man on the ground' approach.

No they didn't. Use of weapons is a book about cheradenine zakalwe so I don't blame Banks for putting cheradenine zakalwe in the book but the excuse the culture gives to use him at all in that situation is really loving thin. Their technology is literally magic and the aliens they were loving around with were benighted primitives in comparison. They could have resolved that situation any number of ways without revealing themselves.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2010 21:10

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

I realize it's a spacefaring civilization, one of the major plot points involves zakalwe getting stuck on one of their spaceships...? My point was primarily that based on the other culture novels it's really clear that the culture's tech is exactly as wizardly and amazing as banks needs it to be for any given story which ends up with it being sort of annoyingly inconsistent.

The existence of special circumstances in general is a specialized case of what I consider the central conceit of the culture novels in general. The Minds keeping humans around at all makes for more interesting stories but the idea that humans (and drones for that matter) can do *anything* more effectively than Minds is pretty silly when they are really not much more than entertaining and occasionally insightful pets.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2010 13:26

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

FelchTragedy posted:

It's something for people to do. The culture isn't just the Minds, it's the people and AI's in it. Also the minds pretty much care about stuff. Some more than others. Remember the bit in Look to Windward, when the Masaq hub relates what it had to do in the Idiran war and how it observed what it did. 'People matter'. That was the point expressed multiple times with different aspects in the book 'Matter'.

Dude, I know. I've read and love the books too. But you cannot read a culture novel in any way approaching critically without being confronted with the fact that the grand utopia can only exist while its gods see fit to keep things running smoothly for their (frankly somewhat blase) charges.

I said god for a specific reason, too. Basically any culture mind is capable of doing anything that the abrahamic god does in the old testament without really trying. The only exception would be creating the universe, but if you consider that the ancient jews had no idea what a universe was and could only have really referred to their planet than a mind could clearly do that too. They are literally gods and the humans of the culture live in their shadows and don't even bother with a burnt offering every now and again. What happens when a god gets tired of taking care of its indifferent worshippers? I know at least some of you guys played black & white too.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2010 01:41

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

M_E_G. ADI. K posted:

Nit-picking a bit, but they were the Chelgrians. The Chelonians were a race of tortoise-men from Doctor Who.

Now that door's open...I'm a huge fan of both the Culture novels and Doctor Who and was wondering if anyone had read The Also People by Ben Aaronovitch? The plot is basically 'The Doctor turns up on a Culture Orbital and solves a murder mystery'. Whatever you may think of the DW franchise it's obvious that the author is really into Banks and he added a few nice touches to his Culture-analogue society. Examples: the groups that would normally make up most governmental functions are basically clubs of people with similar interests with nicely Orwellian doublespeak names. The cops are the 'Interpersonal Dynamics Interest Group'; the military, rather than being Contact and SC are 'Xenocultural Relations (Normalization) Interest Group' and so forth. Instead of coloured fields drones indicate their mood with holographic cartoon smiley faces. The Mind that runs the O (actually it's a Dyson Sphere) has got a pretty warped sense of humour - it keeps sending a suspicious-looking and unappetizing bright yellow dip to all the parties. There's no way that the Mind can NOT notice noone touches the dip, but they're too polite to say anything and the Mind keeps sending it anyway. Also the penalty for murder is people stop inviting you to their parties.

It's like a somewhat comedic take on the Culture, personally I rather liked it.

Sounds quite a bit like culture meets dwellers (the interest group thing anyway). Also the murder thing is a direct reference to a conversation that occurred (i think) in look to windward. Since culture humans generally have failsafes in place against unwanted death, killing one is more of a nuisance and is kind of a jerk thing to do but not a huge deal. Apparently if a person went out of their way to completely and irrevocably murder another culture citizen beyond the point where they could be remade, the murderer would be a social pariah but that's about it.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2010 14:21

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

MeLKoR posted:

He'd also have a drone permanently assigned to monitoring him.

Sucks for the drone.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2010 21:45

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Gul Banana posted:

I just reread Use of Weapons, which reminded me of a question I had about it. I can't find any exploration of this idea on the internet, even though it seems to be to be crucial to the book's central character and his origins.

At the end of the book, it's revealed that the protagonist is Elethiomel, and that he was responsible for the war on his homeworld and for an atrocity at the end of it. Several important details are ambiguous:

1) Was this a revolution against the established structure (which was a typical feudal oligarchy, with nobles and slaves)? That would make Elethiomel's apparent personality more consistent - otherwise, and I've read numerous complaints about this, it seems like his motivations for fighting ("do good") sprung up mysteriously on the way to Iceberg Planet.

His father was imprisoned and later killed for political reasons; you can read this as being a rival to the top oligarchs, or, a dangerous revolutionary. Either way, Elethiomel seems to be motivated by this and follows in his footsteps. I think it's the second one for circumstantial reasons; for one, the family wasn't (as) wealthy. Later on in the world's history the Staberinde, symbol of Elethiomel's army is considered a monument and museum - preserved, like it would be done by a later more progressive culture who recognised the fight against the nobility as an important step.

2) Did the crew of the Staberinde, in fact, win the battle? In the chapter describing it it says that "they fought well, and almost won", but this is revealed to have a double meaning - the doctors fighting for Cheradinine's life lost that battle. Does it actually have only a single meaning, and so the revolutionaries(?) won? This would be consistent with the preservation of the site, and with Elethiomel's abilities - but reviews and critiques I've read seem to make the opposite assumption.

I haven't seen any interpretations of the book which make these assumptions; I've seen several which complain about a lack of consistency, or even say that the major twist reduced the moment's power for them as a result. Surely this is just a common error. I think the better reading is that Elethiomel decided to do anything necessary to win a 'just' war, as he does later in life, but found that this first and perhaps most excessive 'use of weapons' was an unending regret.

Here are a few of my interpretations:
1. Elethiomel's war wasn't quite a revolution but was more a civil war - not altogether a bad thing, considering the apparently oppressive nature of the existing government with its apparent willingness to murder political opponents (his parents), but not particularly altruistic either. I thought his intentions to do good came about as a result of his 'becoming' zakalwe in exile.

2. I thought the book was pretty clear in indicating that both groups fought hard and lost - the attitude of the post-war government (turning staberinde into a monument, etc) seems to be one that came about through a truth and reconciliation process or something similar. Also if elethiomel won it would have been odd for him to flee the planet in exile regardless of how terrible he felt.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2011 16:16

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

General Battuta posted:

Huh, that's a clever find. The central premise of Surface Detail is so brilliant I'm not surprised he'd been thinking about it or something related ahead of time.

Unfortunately I don't think it was his best. All the bits about Hell and the war were brilliant, but he cheated by making the antagonist so thoroughly unambiguously slimy. Lededje seemed to oscillate weirdly between capable hardass and someone more like that society girl from Excession, and the third principle character didn't have anything to do at all.

It was a great journey but I'm starting to wonder if the Culture's wearing thin. It all feels so safe now. As hilarious a character as the ROU was, I never once even suspected that he (or anything in his care, including Lededje) would ever be in real danger.

I haven't read Use of Weapons, though. Ought to go back and do that one next, yes?

Use of Weapons is probably the best culture novel.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2011 02:22

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

gvibes posted:

Probably my favorite Banks novel period.

I would agree but I REALLY liked The Algebraist. I think Use of Weapons is definitely the technically better book but Algebraist was really fun.

Actually I have the same opinion of Consider Phlebas, I guess I just like space romps.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2011 18:38

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

I lost my old-cover copies in a house fire and only rebought them recently so they're all the blurry photo style covers except excession

# ¿ Feb 12, 2011 01:51

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Cuntpunch posted:

I don't think this is necessarily the case, Banks deals with it by simply noting that The Culture has a loving gigantic area of influence and things can take a while. Sure he doesn't get down into how things go fast, but he definitely takes into account distances and travel times - it's just a non-issue in his books because it's a non-issue to his characters for the most part. Sure his ships go "fast" but there's no "instant point to point" travel like with the Algebraist's wormholes. In at least a couple of his books, The Player of Games for instance, characters(Gurgeh) contemplate the huge time they'll be separated from their 'home'. Gurgeh spends years travelling but because it's somewhat normal we don't spend huge portions of the book worrying about the trip itself as a gigantic undertaking. Immortality dulls the importance of a few years spent at high speed travelling the galaxy.

Also the fact that interstellar travel involves life on a ship that is its own world with billions of inhabitants, a unique subculture, and instantaneous communication with any other point in the Culture probably takes some of the sting out of it.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2011 17:22

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

alkanphel posted:

That might be about right. I remember reading that most of the Mind is in another higher dimension or something. The Mind we can see is just the anchor to the world and there are biological parts as well I think.

This is right, at some point it's explicitly mentioned that most of the mind's structure and processing capability resides in hyperspace.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2011 13:55

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Graviton v2 posted:

It is a cracker isnt it. Thats one of my go to books whenever I attempt to convince a non-nerd to try a bit of sci-fi. Rarely works

are you at all surprised by this?

# ¿ Mar 2, 2011 14:58

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

rejutka posted:

I don't get it. (Am I having a Mr Thicky moment?)

Just finished Surface Detail last night. loving loved Demeisen/Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints. Oddly, I semi-guessed the Zakalwe reveal but that was probably because I re-read Use of Weapons just before and wondered why Zakalwe wasn't involved in the Hell war.

I can't find my copy of Excession to reread. No Infinite Fun Space for me.

blunderbuss

# ¿ Mar 9, 2011 21:46

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

If I recall correctly (can't remember which novel said this though) the biggest GSVs are even too much for a single Mind to handle and are run by committee. A committee of gods for a single spaceship.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2011 00:03

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

The Dark One posted:

Especially when you have Orbitals managing the lives of billions of inhabitants perfectly well with just a single Mind (and sometimes without one).

IIRC (this was in player of games maybe?) Orbitals are seen as quaint backwaters compared to the big GSVs. I'll concede that they apparently don't *need* extra minds though.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2011 13:31

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Lasting Damage posted:

Last point I'll make is that the Culture can make machines that can perform sophisticated tasks but are not sentient. So if no drones or Minds are willing to clean up the mess after a party, the Culture equivalent of a roomba can still do the job and no sentient's freedoms are impinged upon.

This is an important point, as far as you can really describe the culture as having laws one of them is that nothing sapient can be forced into labor of any kind. So basically drones exist and are intelligent and make more drones with each other for the same (more or less) reasons that humans do, but not for labor purposes. The robot slaves that clean up parties and poo poo might be really complex and sophisticated but aren't sapient.

Edit: beaten handily

# ¿ Jun 7, 2011 03:25

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Vanadium posted:

I just realised I already forgot what anybody in Excession who wasn't the Sleeper Service was doing with regards to the plot. I'm not good at books.

It's not just you, the human characters in excession are complete garbage. The affronters are cool though.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2011 04:50

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Nope, the idirans apparently stated their intention to land troops there and occupy it and the culture decided to blow it up rather than let them use it as a staging area and resource hub.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2011 15:52

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

I'm curious as to what the word godlike means to you because we either read different books or have a staggeringly different interpretation of that word.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2011 01:16

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

I just finished surface detail, had a question about the ending (spoilers obviously):
since Vatueil was actually zakalwe, the final scene of the book is extremely reminiscent of part of Use of Weapons - on one of his holidays or whatever where he's in some cafe waiting for a female poet love interest - how do the timing of the books work out? I was under the impression that surface detail happened much later than UoW but if the ending scene of surface detail is actually the same scene from UoW i'm remembering maybe the events were overlapping? The timeline of UoW was hosed up enough anyway that it's hard to tell.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2011 15:08

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

What's with the congruence between those two scenes then? They are almost identical aside from the plot-specific stuff in surface detail.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2011 15:21

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Fleetwood posted:

I finished my first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas a couple days ago and am glad I sought the book out. I'd kinda given up on reading sci-fi for a while but had this series on the back burner thanks to recommendations.

Most of my questions come from the brief war history at the end. Did the Idiran-Culture War take place during the European Middle Ages here on Earth? I'm guessing the setting is in our Milky Way Galaxy since there is mention of Idirans saying, "Screw this, let's go next door to Andromeda where maybe we can start over." I liked that there was mention of races expanding outside galactic boundaries about half way through the book.

I felt like many of the characterizations were too thin but the constant escalation of frying-pan-into-the-fire scenarios kept me going.

The Player of Games is next for sure.

e: I'm also still baffled by what exactly the Dra'Azon are but also loved that about them since some of the characters/races saw them as a God-entity to be feared. Are they a race that has moved up a level on the evolutionary scale? Pretty awesome that Banks feels enough confidence in his own writing and his readers not to have to spell things out all the time.

answer to spoilered question: yes, give or take.

The dra'azon are a sublimed race which means they transcended the usual concerns, methods and existence of the 'involved' races of the galaxy (the culture, idirans, homomdans, etc) and are more or less gods. The planets of the dead are their thing, nobody is really sure why they do it but nobody is strong enough to gently caress with them over it either so that's where it stands.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2011 01:40

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Sargeant Biffalot posted:

Is this brought up or explained in any of the other books? I always assumed that the books were set in the future and the various races of the culture were the remnants of various transhuman diasporas. But presumably it's doing some sort of "humanity was seeded on earth from the stars" deal? Though admitedly it being set in the past does increase the star wars-y vibe Consider Phlebas gives off

I don't think this needs to be spoilered at all. "Panhumanity" is banks' term for it, it's just a given in his universe that lots of species seem to have evolved to look basically like humans to a greater or lesser extent. Most of the Culture's biological sapients are panhumans for historical reasons (the culture that would become the Culture initially arose from a loose conglomeration of a few panhuman civs and their AIs).

# ¿ Sep 28, 2011 16:37

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Graviton v2 posted:

This. Apart from 'State of the Art' there is no direct invlovment with actual proper 'Human Beings' in any of the books.

The afterword(i think) from consider phlebas mentions formal earth-culture contact taking place in like the 23rd century or something. That's the only other instance of it though as far as i know.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2011 22:33

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

It kind of looks like a footnote. TPOG: The player of games. Maybe it's referencing you to that page for some reason.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2011 13:57

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

I really liked matter until the end sort of came out of nowhere. There was no closure to any of the conflicts in the book, although I did like the very last part where smugdude gets all the moneys and babes.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2011 15:39

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

There's nothing wrong with the ending, it's just the ending to a different book than the preceding 600 pages or whatever.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2011 15:55

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

LtSmash posted:

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?

This is one of the recurring themes of the culture books - for all the normal humans and drones and minds to enjoy a kickass utopia with all kinds of hobbies like lava surfing and poo poo you need a certain element that is willing to get dirty in ways that prissy future humanists won't and that can attract (require?) some extremely unsavory personalities.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2011 04:59

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Consider phlebas is fine, it's not an amazing book but it's quick and full of action and horza is a pretty cool character.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2012 21:35

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Daktar posted:

Consider Phlebas is great, but I wouldn't really call it a Culture book as such. It's a sci-fi story which has the Culture in it. I sometimes wonder whether Banks meant for them to take centre stage. Pretty ballsy making them the enemy in the first book if he did intend it all along, though.

Eh, I dunno. He makes the culture the antagonists, sorta, but it's also pretty clear that the idirans are loving crazy and that the culture is fairly reasonable in contrast.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2012 01:27

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Joramun posted:

It's almost as if there are shades of grey and moral ambiguity.

Thanks for contributing.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2012 02:17

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

What is the minds' nickname for their virtual world thing again? Something like super happy fun time space but I can't remember specifically.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2012 04:59

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

I think a pretty good portrayal of what you might expect a normal mind to be like (rather than a psychopathic sadist like the Moral Constraints, snotty busybodies like Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, paranoid and obsessive schemers like the interesting times gang, or a chilled-out old veteran like masaq hub) would be the ship that lededje is initially resurrected on in surface detail - basically a mind that doesn't bother itself with the crazy poo poo that banks writes novels about but just the normal business of running a post-singularity hyper society, which honestly seems like a pretty awesome place to live.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2012 22:40

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Big culture ships are mostly fields anyway in terms of their physical shapes so pictures of them are kind of pointless.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2012 23:32

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Prolonged Priapism posted:

As far as I can remember he has ignored it, although the fact that real light is slower than ships can move is referenced several times; After the destruction of Vavatch Horza thinks about looking at the real space view, where it hasn't been destroyed yet, and in Look to Windward Hub talks about seeing a planet orbit below the surface layers of its sun, and being able to see it after it has been destroyed via hyperspace.

The speed of light being faster in hyperspace might negate the time travel thing. If we assume that ships/signals don't go faster than hyperspace light (which seems fair, there's a delay in communications between ships, and we can assume they use the fastest communication possible) then the whole thing might boil down to a more complicated version of the situation with mediums where the speed of light is slower than in vacuum (all of them, although there are a few technical exceptions). In water, for example, light travels slower than it does in air, where it is slower than in vacuum. But there are particles that end up being faster than water-lightspeed (like electrons flying off radioactive materials), and that's where the infamous blue glow of nuclear reactors comes from (Cherenkov radiation). The point is, I don't think causality gets broken in water, even though particles traveling faster than light in that medium are physically possible. So maybe 3D space is like a medium sitting in the greater 4D reality, and our slower light speed can be broken without breaking causality, because nothing is breaking the real, hyperspace light speed barrier?

The real reason is that banks is an anarchist, not a physicist, and doesn't write time travel stories because at least to this point he hasn't wanted to. There isn't a consistency between culture universe physics and relativity because he hasn't bothered to try and come up with one. And, let's be honest - the resulting culture book would suck balls if he did.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 01:28

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:56

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

Prolonged Priapism posted:

This does really make me wonder about causality in media where the speed of light is lower... the same apparent time travel should be possible, unless I'm misunderstanding.

You are. It is already possible to accelerate particles above the speed of light in specific media. All it does is produce a pretty glow, no time travel involved or causality broken.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2012 00:18

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > No Gravitas Allowed -- The Iain [M.] Banks thread

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