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Murgos posted:It comes down to whether or not you have a 'soul'. It's pretty clear that sublimation is the process by which a civ passes from banks-style singularity to vinge-style singularity. Afterlife among the galactics in the way most people think of it is explicitly dealt with in surface detail.
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Mar 23, 2012 23:56
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Pope Guilty posted:If it isn't the right word, then dammit, something like it should be! I've seen people on the internet use the term singularitarian without irony. take that as you will. rejutka posted:That said, is there anyone would not become a part of the Culture? Gobuchul and Zakalwe are the only two I remember with genuine misgivings. Horza and zakalwe, despite being interesting protagonists, are also war criminals by any sensible definition of the word so consider their perspective.
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Mar 24, 2012 02:50
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How fine can you split the hair? What about lededje, whose neural lace transmits her consciousness as a backup as she dies so that the copy that reawakens parsecs away actually remembers being murdered? Did the original still fully die? Edit: VVV 
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Mar 26, 2012 01:46
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To each their own I guess. I read ringworld as a teenager and thought it was awesome, then reread it a couple years ago and thought it was garbage. In comparison I've been reading the culture books for about a decade and things i've really enjoyed about them have shifted over the years but my experiences with them have always been very positive.
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Apr 4, 2012 03:51
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Seldom Posts posted:It's been awhile since I read the book, what did you find silly about his reasons? IIRC horza thinks the idirans are preferable because they "believe in something" rather than nothing even if what they believe in is religious holy war. I want to say I'm partly remembering wrong because the culture clearly has its own ideology but maybe that's part of the stupidity of horza's reasoning.
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Apr 4, 2012 14:30
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Barry Foster posted:I'm reading Ringworld right now, actually, because I needed a new fix of not too complicated sci-fi to get me to sleep at night. One thing I remember about reading it as a teenager was that I found things off about the book but just assumed that they were products of it being "old fashioned." Then, much later, I discovered that there were all sorts of people writing as niven's contemporaries or even earlier that produced tremendously complex and nuanced sci-fi (vance, wolfe, poul anderson, lem, etc) and that larry niven is just an idiot manchild who wanted to write a book about himself having sex with tons of alien babes.
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Apr 4, 2012 14:46
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Pope Guilty posted:If anything, Horza's views reflect a sentiment that advanced technology and easy living makes people weak and soft that I used to see in classic SF (which is a big part of why I decided I didn't like SF for awhile when I was a teenager). Is Heinleinian the word I want? I cheerfully admit that this is a kind of half-formed idea. That's sort of ironic given the fact that horza's entire race is a piece of highly advanced and weaponized biotechnology.
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Apr 4, 2012 17:02
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I love most banks titles. I even thought the Algebraist was perfect once I figured out what it referred to. But hydrogen sonata I just don't understand, sadly. I'm hoping to be surprised.
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Apr 7, 2012 04:29
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:In Excession it talks about how Minds deliberately set minders for themselves to make sure they don't get completely caught up in IFS. The reasoning is more "no matter how awesome this is, someone could still pull the plug for boring, bland, ugly, unfashionable realspace" than "we can make both equally interesting" though, at least for most Minds.
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Apr 22, 2012 02:34
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I think they don't even really re-educate gurgeh, at least not in clockwork orange style by any means. The culture is just completely assured of its own moral superiority, in the sense that it's been rigorously examined and upheld in every way. They just put gurgeh in a situation where he has no alternative but to reeducate himself.
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Jun 1, 2012 17:01
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Coriolis posted:True, the Culture would never stoop to something so crude as re-education camps (or mindhacking) but given the level of interest Minds can take in individuals as shown in Excession, I feel that somewhere out there is a Mind that considered reforming Gurgeh just as important as the other aspect of the mission. That may be true but the moral distinction lies in the fact that gurgeh wasn't sat in a chair and reformed but was led inevitably to reach his own conclusions vis-a-vis the culture and reform himself. That's sort of the point of the culture in a nutshell anyway.
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Jun 1, 2012 21:42
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Fleetwood posted:
They didn't until the end. IIRC gurgeh realized it was the only way he could win. He knew exactly what he was doing.
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Jun 2, 2012 03:11
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Seldom Posts posted:He wasn't "sat in a chair" but he was manipulated by beings much more powerful than himself. The question is whether you think they put in him a situation where he really had a choice . Some people think they just gave him the tools to change his mind. I tend to think it was just a more "civilized" way of putting him in a chair. There's still a distinction between those two things and that distinction is what the culture prides itself on. And it doesn't have anything to do with one way being more 'civilized' - just more honest I guess.
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Jun 4, 2012 00:51
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It's interesting you bring up christianity because there are distinct (and I would guess intentional on Banks' part) parallels between Gurgeh and the parable of the prodigal son!
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Jun 4, 2012 14:45
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None of that matters, the choice as such happens in the climactic game against the emperor. Gurgeh chose to play as the culture essentially. He could have resisted and lost the game, but there's no way he would have done that because at that point he became cognizant of the fact that the culture's way was simply better. It was spelled out for him on the game board, which was really the only way he would ever really grasp it.
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Jun 4, 2012 20:45
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Less Fat Luke posted:I don't know, I think it might be flattering and life-changing to think that almost omnipotent beings who control everything used *you* as a pawn in a (mostly bloodless) conflict with a new culture. I don't know if mostly bloodless really applies to that situation considering SC didn't wow the backwards primitives with their spiffy guns and ships so much as destabilize the social order of a small interplanetary empire almost certainly causing massive upheavals if not an outright civil war.
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Jun 10, 2012 18:42
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MikeJF posted:True, but like the Idiran War and all of their other interventions (Chel being the notable anomaly) it saved more lives than it cost - in the long run. Oh, I know. Got to break a few eggs, etc.
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Jun 11, 2012 03:21
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andrew smash posted:Oh, I know. Got to break a few eggs, etc. I understand your point, but characterizing that as "mostly bloodless" is disingenuous regardless.
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Jun 11, 2012 05:03
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"Tear yourselves apart and rebuild in a form we find acceptable or we'll do it for you"
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Jun 11, 2012 14:19
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I know! I'm not even disagreeing. The way mikeJF characterizes the culture's view on rights a few posts up is something I agree with basically entirely. I'm just saying - the culture isn't squeamish enough to pretend they don't get their hands dirty, so why should we?
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Jun 11, 2012 14:33
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Lemmi Caution posted:I think an idea Banks is exploring is that if you achieved a society such as the Culture you would be forced to deal with these situations in one way or another. The Culture goes with interventionism. His argument is stronger than that, he outright says that contact is basically the way the rest of the culture justifies its own existence.
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Jun 11, 2012 16:54
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Pope Guilty posted:Yeah, I went looking for people talking about it and there's a forum thread out there that mentions it. I had a copy of Matter lying around that I hadn't read for some reason, so I guess that's what I'm on to next. I really liked Surface Detail; Player of Games remains my favorite Culture so far (I've read those two and Consider Phlebas and Use of Weapons), but Surface Detail was pretty close to as good. Be prepared to be somewhat disappointed in Matter. The climax of the story is pretty bad (although the denouement is satisfying). You should really read Look to Windward, I think it's perched with Use of Weapons right on the top of the heap.
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Jun 25, 2012 00:02
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Coriolis posted:The pacing is also pretty terrible. It felt like nothing terribly exciting happened in the first 90% of the book, then Banks went "oh gently caress-CLIMAX... end". I enjoyed the first part of the book despite all that. The main character's manservant was very amusing. The plot was pretty shaky though, that much I'll agree with.
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Jun 26, 2012 06:03
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Pope Guilty posted:They could just be humans from Earth, which still hasn't been contacted, couldn't they? Earth is contacted by the culture per the appendix to consider phlebas IIRC
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Aug 22, 2012 12:06
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Cardiovorax posted:
Edit: you could make a decent case for culture ulterior or zetetic elench being ethically preferable to the culture I guess andrew smash fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Sep 9, 2012 |
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Sep 9, 2012 05:02
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I guess there's also that. Still, I appreciate it anyway. It makes it feel less like some weird love poem to his own vision of a perfect future like some sci-fi novels end up doing. I always feel slightly embarrassed reading those.
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I don't disagree with you, just noted that an argument to that effect could be made.
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Sep 9, 2012 05:39
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Base Emitter posted:They're confident they know what they're doing (they're not always right). I'm not even sure this is true honestly, I re-read look to windward a few weeks ago and got the nagging feeling that the chel civil war was less unexpected than everybody thought. I wouldn't put it past sc to anticipate something like that, recognize the consequences (in the form of a devastating war for the chelgrians and the culture having to eat crow for a bit) and just thinking that in the end it'll all be worth it (and in the end an SC mind might argue it was).
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Sep 11, 2012 03:56
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The Dark One posted:I don't think it's clear if the Changers were 'human' any more than the Azadians, or the civilization in A Gift From the Culture were. Even Culture residents are the result of a half-dozen races genetically modifying themselves to the point where they could interbreed.
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Sep 13, 2012 05:55
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ConanTheLibrarian posted:People have complained about the Dajeil and Genar-Hofoen sub plot in Excession being a drag on the rest of the story too, though it's long enough since I've read it that I can't say whether I agree. I read it a couple of years ago and agreed with this. I heard afterwards that banks had wanted to add human characters to make the story more relatable. The result was them feeling pretty tacked-on and extraneous.
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Sep 14, 2012 14:26
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Mammal Sauce posted:Hate to detract from Hydrogen Sonata chat but I just wanted to chime in and say Feersum Endjinn is the only novel I've ever read that has a really successful twist/reveal that takes the form of the final word in the entire text. Plus that whole bit being told from Bascule's point of view was just great, that guy is one of Banks' best characters ever.
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Oct 27, 2012 19:14
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silly posted:And the (minor spoiler) reveal of Mistake Not My...'s full name was so awesome. I actually thought this was kind of stupid. What it implied was obvious even if the specific content was hidden. There was no need to "reveal" anything and I felt doing so detracted from the exchange.
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Nov 26, 2012 17:49
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silly posted:we the reader weren't really aware that Mistake Not... was essentially a military super ship..
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Nov 26, 2012 19:38
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Mister Sinewave posted:Culture ship names would not stand out in any way whatsoever on this board, for example. Interesting that you should mention it
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Feb 7, 2013 01:03
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While I felt that on the whole the book was flawed, I quite liked the portion in Transition where the main character ruminates on what it feels like to enter a universe in which the version of himself that he inhabits is gay.
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Apr 3, 2013 21:35
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Dude, the book's been out for eight years. Also, we're half in mourning and half reminiscing about the good times in here. Having a stick up your rear end about the rules is kind of gauche given the circumstances.
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Apr 5, 2013 00:38
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Those On My Left posted:Oh sorry, I didn't realise that the author's impending death meant you could ruin the books for anyone who came here to commiserate (I mean they've been out for a while, if you haven't read them then gently caress your ability to read them unspoiled). Hahaha, okay man. Click that big shiny report button if you have an issue with something i posted. Nice edit. Trying to dodge a probation for backseat modding?
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Apr 5, 2013 00:52
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Wolfechu posted:M John Harrison is one of those guys who'd be considered literary were he not into scifi. The Centauri Device reminds me more of William Gibson stuff than anything, if only in tone. Will definitely check out the other guy, though, as I've not come across him before. Harrison is fantastic, one of my favorite authors. Unfortunately for me, online discussion of his books is hard. He seems to regard sci-fi fandom with complete disdain (i don't necessarily blame him) and so there seems to be a fair amount of frothing hatred directed toward him whenever he comes up in online settings. Haven't seen it here though.
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Apr 7, 2013 00:47
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BastardySkull posted:The Jean le Flambeur stuff by Hannu Rajaniemi has been really good. A lot more abstract than Banks and less infodumps and stuff but still really engaging and interesting worldbuilding. Agreed, the oubliette is a fantastic setting. I've read that he patterned it after paris and that's exactly the feel that I got from it.
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Apr 7, 2013 03:50
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I am OK posted:No living sci fi author comes close because the rest of them are obsessed with writing nerdy po-faced series' that are more an exercise in tedious world-building rather than good, stand-alone stories with genuinely progressive ideas and characters that would work in any context. Banks is in a bracket all of his own. This is pretty much the death of non-embarrassing sci fi. I agree with your sentiments about banks and science fiction as a genre on the whole but he isn't the only person writing it well.
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Apr 8, 2013 10:04
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I am so loving sad he's dead.
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Jul 31, 2013 00:37
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