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And effector blisters then are just like, a fancy way of organizing a ship using energy fields instead of a bunch of exotic physical materials?
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Dec 29, 2023 19:05
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Oh no on the Limiting Factor the blisters are just the bulges on the exterior of the ship that the effector (or other) equipment are inside of. Weaponised effectors are one of the main armaments of The Culture. E: this is the rough design of limiting factor. It has three front weapon blisters and five midship weapon blisters, spaced around the sides of the ship. (It's circular in cross section). They emptied the weapons out because it's demilitarised.  (That said, the main structural integrity of all Culture ships is by the fields and not by the physical matter, and there are Culture ships that crop up later in the series that don't even bother with in-between connective physical matter. For all Culture ships larger than a transport module the extent of the ship's 'hull' is considered to be the edge of its permanent forcefield envelope, not how far the matter reaches) MikeJF fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Dec 29, 2023 |
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Dec 29, 2023 19:08
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Many of the GSVs (the larger ships that often house nation-sized chunks of the Culture) present as slabs of cloud floating in space, and to approach them you would be descending through layers of fielded atmosphere until you popped out into a human city on the ship’s surface. I suspect GSV Sleeper Service was an exception to this, though I don’t know if its external appearance was described. (It’s a Culture necropolis).
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Dec 29, 2023 21:04
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Iain M. Banks, Excession posted:Ulver laughed. 'It looks,' she snorted, 'like a dildo!' 'That's appropriate,' Churt Lyne said. 'Armed, it can gently caress solar systems'
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Dec 29, 2023 21:10
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Alright, I think I'm sorted on how to imagine effector mentions now. The ship is actually much more straightforward than I've been picturing smaller culture ships. They described one of the GSV he rendezvoused with as insanely wide with essentially just a utopia landscape. He thought it was a planet or orbital at first. I wish I read these in college, I did a lot of paintings/sculptures that were landscapes on or in or of things, including a handful of floating islands as part of metaphors for space colonization type themes but the idea of them as actually functional massive craft like I never really represented them that way despite even having a ton of battleship models and spaceships around for using the greebles in terrains, but not actually building on the hulls. Just that visual is way cooler than what I was making at the time. I guess if I had read them I might've not made em at all since I'd probably have not been so negative on my point at the time that we'd all be just as rotten in the stars as here, but I much prefer this more optimistic conceptualization of space humanity. I can see now an art installation room sized chest level clusters or clouds of terrain and cityscapes and water and forests, underneath lights and interiors of seemingly countless levels of activity in semi visible blisters each their own dollhouse inside that may well be the local home for generations. Enough room to duck under or poke up inside it at parts where mountains or exotic constructions plume upward. They ever get to visual effects point at any projects licensing the books, I think I saw they scrapped a Phlebas movie at some point. So far the two I've gotten to aren't something I think you could turn into a videogame Khanstant fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Dec 29, 2023 |
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Dec 29, 2023 22:16
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There's a lot of SF/F that gets labeled "unfilmable" until someone goes and does it, but I think the Culture books may genuinely never be able to be adapted into TV or movies. So much that happens is so internal to the characters - how would you ever depict the (Excession spoilers) Killing Time taking on the Attitude Adjuster? Oh, and I always just pictured effectors as extremely precisely controlled force fields. Lemniscate Blue fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Dec 30, 2023 |
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Dec 30, 2023 00:43
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Matter TV adaptation with an hour long episode of just panning shots of waterfalls.
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Dec 30, 2023 06:42
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Lemniscate Blue posted:how would you ever depict the (Excession spoilers) Killing Time taking on the Attitude Adjuster? I would say dueling musical motifs, building tension until a sudden silence and a distant flash without further explanation, but if you felt the need to explain things you could borrow from Surface Detail where Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints gives Ledeje a play by play of intership combat and how small and slow humans are to the vast forces involved.
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Dec 30, 2023 12:41
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pygmy tyrant posted:I would say dueling musical motifs, building tension until a sudden silence and a distant flash without further explanation, Yeah you can do that but you're not really depicting it, that battle is a whole narrative sequence and character moment you'd be losing.
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Dec 30, 2023 14:06
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Not showing it visually is part of the whole point, being a clash of stuff we can't comprehend and all. Fair enough about the character moment though
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Dec 30, 2023 15:06
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Dude how is Grugehs bracelet not just the orbital he came from, how long is gonna take to notice that. And goddamn write Chamlis back what if she does before you get back huh then you'll feel like a ripe jerk.
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Dec 30, 2023 17:54
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Gurgeh could stand to feel like more of a jerk, imo
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Dec 30, 2023 17:59
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Judging him made me self conscious and I texted my grandma and an old friend I hadn't spoken to in ages
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Dec 30, 2023 18:59
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Khanstant posted:Judging him made me self conscious and I texted my grandma and an old friend I hadn't spoken to in ages As SC planned all along
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Jan 2, 2024 13:52
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Khanstant posted:They ever get to visual effects point at any projects licensing the books, I think I saw they scrapped a Phlebas movie at some point. So far the two I've gotten to aren't something I think you could turn into a videogame I think it could be adapted, but it would be a thankless job lost on most audiences and critics, especially given how (minor spoilers for a recurrent trope) Minds are often the "ok Daddy's home let's clean up now" button in the plots and even if the writing was really on-point most people would see that and just bleat "Deus Ex Machina" until they passed out.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:51
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My wife and I listened to the audiobook of Use of Weapons on our holiday long distance drive to family. I've read them all before but she hadn't. I felt the two scenes of 'Zakalwe' convalescing on the ocean of pain and getting high in a tent could of been way, way shorter but other than that the story owned bones (chair). Banks is really good at getting you to like a character and then making you realize they're a huge piece of poo poo. The revelation of the Chairmaker overshadowed the full ending, and I completely forgot the book actually ended with Sma recruiting Zakalwe's replacement and just continuing the cycle once he was used up.
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Jan 4, 2024 19:04
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Khanstant posted:Alright, I think I'm sorted on how to imagine effector mentions now. The ship is actually much more straightforward than I've been picturing smaller culture ships. One of the things I really like about Banks as a sci-fi author is that he really gets the idea that once energy is effectively limitless and you have forcefield technology that for Newtonian purposes lets you tell the laws of physics to shut up and do whatever you tell them to, then a spaceship looks like whatever you want it to look like.
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Jan 5, 2024 11:37
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Alchenar posted:One of the things I really like about Banks as a sci-fi author is that he really gets the idea that once energy is effectively limitless and you have forcefield technology that for Newtonian purposes lets you tell the laws of physics to shut up and do whatever you tell them to, then a spaceship looks like whatever you want it to look like. It's mentioned in the notes and drawings that cruise ships (which despite not being in the books much are the most common ships in the culture, basically endlessly connecting orbitals together) are basically all entirely unique in appearance and shape because they can just be designed to look like whatever you fancy with no concern for practicality or even the duties a GSV has.
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Jan 5, 2024 11:51
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MikeJF posted:It's mentioned in the notes and drawings that cruise ships (which despite not being in the books much are the most common ships in the culture, basically endlessly connecting orbitals together) are basically all entirely unique in appearance and shape because they can just be designed to look like whatever you fancy with no concern for practicality or even the duties a GSV has. I also like that this is true except for warships, which is where the Culture drops aesthetics entirely for the extremely utilitarian and efficiency maximising form possible.
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Jan 5, 2024 14:17
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Ostentatiously so, one might say
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Jan 5, 2024 14:31
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drat it, every time I finish a book I'm sad there are no new Banks novels to read. Someone needs to pick up the Culture torch and keep writing in that universe.
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Jan 5, 2024 14:39
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The cold hand of Kevin J Anderson reaches for the Culture franchise. . .
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Jan 5, 2024 14:51
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Is Brian Herbert busy nowadays?
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Jan 5, 2024 14:53
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Megillah Gorilla posted:Is Brian Herbert busy nowadays? I heard he just found a stack of notes from Banks about all the books he was gonna write.
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Jan 5, 2024 14:55
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Serjeant Buzfuz posted:drat it, every time I finish a book I'm sad there are no new Banks novels to read. Someone needs to pick up the Culture torch and keep writing in that universe. Banks writes a very unique blend of characteristics. Other authors are good, or can take on some of the aspects of a Culture novel, but I'd love to see another author write anything that comes close to that exact blend that Banks reliably delivered. Closest I can think of is maybe Dan Simmons. But I would probably settle for more books in the universe even if they are comparatively lame.
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Jan 5, 2024 14:56
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Ancillary Justice, while taking place within a distinctly un-Culture like empire, does star sapient warships with multiple avatars, or "Ancillaries" The Ancillaries are actually mind-wiped humans stuffed full of cybernetics that allow them to act as extensions of the ship
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Jan 5, 2024 16:15
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Yeah it's super hosed up the more they get into the details, and also a really good book.
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Jan 5, 2024 16:57
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Lord Awkward posted:Yeah it's super hosed up the more they get into the details, and also a really good book. What I like about the Ancillary books is how much they go into what it feels like to be a sapient warship, and the conflicting loyalties that go along with it. Also, the Justice of Toren has a lot in common with the Look To Windward's Lasting Damage - both are traumatised by acts of war and, both are struggling with identity and loss.
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Jan 5, 2024 17:20
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The only thing i hated about the Ancillary series was there were only three of them
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Jan 5, 2024 18:08
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:What I like about the Ancillary books is how much they go into what it feels like to be a sapient warship, and the conflicting loyalties that go along with it. Also, the Justice of Toren has a lot in common with the Look To Windward's Lasting Damage - both are traumatised by acts of war and, both are struggling with identity and loss. Twist my arm and make me reread both of these this year why don't you okay I'll do it MRC48B posted:The only thing i hated about the Ancillary series was there were only three of them I guess it was a good stopping point, but I still wanted more, yeah. Although I was glad to see Provenance continue that universe, and that she had characters dealing with the fallout from the trilogy in various ways. I haven't read Translation State yet but I'm hoping for more of that. Lord Awkward fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 18:16
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I guess I'll have to give AJ another shot. I tried it years back and it was so dry i didn't even get past the first part.
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Jan 5, 2024 18:32
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gently caress yeah my man gurgey got the "gently caress the world" eyes on and straight slaughtering at Azad. I love the way he describes the games, that sequence was really fun. gently caress these Canadian nerds
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Jan 5, 2024 18:38
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MRC48B posted:The only thing i hated about the Ancillary series was there were only three of them A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace are good books that are very much in the same vein. A lot of exploration of colonialism and empire. Khanstant posted:gently caress these Canadian nerds now imagining all the Azad people with extremely thick Canadian accents. "What's this Culture thing all aboot, hey?"
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Jan 5, 2024 18:40
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It's all fun and games until someone bets castration.
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Jan 5, 2024 18:41
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Khanstant posted:gently caress yeah my man gurgey got the "gently caress the world" eyes on and straight slaughtering at Azad. I love the way he describes the games, that sequence was really fun. gently caress these Canadian nerds Azad is an office hockey pool.
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Jan 5, 2024 18:55
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Ancillary Justice, while taking place within a distinctly un-Culture like empire, does star sapient warships with multiple avatars, or "Ancillaries" Oh poo poo I just picked this up. It was a little dry to begin with but I'll keep going. Gravitas Shortfall posted:A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace are good books that are very much in the same vein. A lot of exploration of colonialism and empire. I started this and couldn't finish it for lack of being able to keep track. My focus for reading is completely hosed nowadays. Maybe I should get back to audiobooks...
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Jan 5, 2024 19:43
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lmao the culture has more advanced autocorrect than I. This boy is goin' native. I got actually mad at him when he dismissed Flere-Iimasho and called him "thing."
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Jan 5, 2024 21:31
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Khanstant keep it up these play by plays are like reading it again and I'm loving it.
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Jan 5, 2024 21:48
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Springfield Fatts posted:I guess I'll have to give AJ another shot. I tried it years back and it was so dry i didn't even get past the first part. I thought it was good, but definitely the sum of its influences rather than greater than, if that makes sense.
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Jan 5, 2024 23:57
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I felt like AJ was pretty good but then the author got a little bored of the setting midway through the second book.
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Jan 6, 2024 00:22
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