r/TheCulture

To be honest, I didn’t really like it. It felt like each scene was done well, but the overall plot just didn’t grip me. I felt similarly about Excession, but I liked that more to be honest.

When I say each scene was done well, I mean within each scene or context in the book (for example Vyr being on the water world with QiRia) the imagery was clear and detailed, and the writing was very poetic at times. Each scene was narrated to great effect.

The problem I had with it was it felt like there were a lot of dead ends or loose ends. Every time I was excited for a reveal, there either was no reveal or it felt unsatisfying.

One thing I did like was when Agansu leaves behind an android body with the Girdle City. At first, I was like, ok you missed your chance buddy. Vyr is already gone. But then I thought further, knowing how Banks writes, this is definitely Chekhov’s Gun, and we will be back. As soon as the Culture finds out QiRia doesn’t have the memories anymore, that he removed them, you just KNOW that the body modder has them.

I really liked the scenes with Ximenyr. Amazing character. His and QiRia’s life story in snapshots would have been more interesting to me than the rest of this book I think.

Agansu’s existential crisis, good. The Zoologist discussing subliming, good. Vyr’s personal struggle with feeling she has to play the Sonata, good. Though, it would have been more in line with the rest of the book if she did just let go of it, much like how the Minds let go of the truth of the Gzilt.

Yeah, I liked a lot of parts of the book, but I just had a bad feeling about it all and the end didn’t sell it for me. Is it Culture, sure, but I wish it wasn’t.

What are the community’s thoughts? Till now I thought this book was highly regarded but next to Matter and Surface Detail it feels kind of mid, so I’m wondering why. Those books had much more compelling worldbuilding in my eyes.

I'll start with a one from LtW.

>!It turned to look at him again. There was an expression of terrible sorrow on its face. ∼ You’ve wanted to die since you realised you’d lost her, since you recovered from your wounds, haven’t you, Quilan?!<

>!∼ Yes.!<

>!It nodded. ∼ Me too.!<

>!He knew the story of its twin, and the worlds it had destroyed. He wondered, assuming it was telling the truth, how many lifetimes of regret and loss you could fit into eight hundred years, when you could think, experience and remember with the speed and facility of a Mind.!<

>!∼ What will happen to Chel?!<

>!∼ A handful of individuals - certainly no more - may pay with their lives. Other than that, nothing. It shook its head slowly. ∼ We cannot let you have your balancing souls, Quilan. We will try to reason with the Chelgrian-Puen. It’s tricky territory for us, the Sublimed, but we have contacts.!<

>!It smiled at him. He could see his broad, furred face reflected in the image’s delicate features.!<

>!∼ We still owe you for our mistake. We will do all we can to make amends. This attempt does not absolve us. Nothing has been balanced. It squeezed his hand. He had forgotten they were still holding each other. ∼ I am sorry.!<

>!∼ Sorrow seems a common commodity, doesn’t it?!<

>!∼ I believe the raw material is life, but happily there are other by-products.!<

>!∼ You are not really going to kill yourself, are you?!<

>!∼ Both of us, Quilan.!<

>!∼ Do you really--?!<

>!∼ I am tired, Quilan. I have waited for these memories to lose their force over the years and decades and centuries, but they have not. There are places to go, but either I would not be me when I went there, or I would remain myself and so still have my memories. By waiting for them to drop away all this time I have grown into them, and they into me. We have become each other. There is no way back I consider worth taking.!<

>!It smiled regretfully and squeezed his hand again.!<

>!∼ I’ll be leaving everything in good working order, and in good hands. It’ll be a more-or-less seamless transition, and nobody will suffer or die.!<

>!∼ Won’t people miss you?!<

>!∼ They’ll have another Hub before too long. I’m sure they’ll take to it, too. But I hope they do miss me a little. I hope they do think well of me.!<

>!∼ And you’ll be happy?!<

>!∼ I won’t be happy or unhappy. I won’t be. Neither will you.!<

>!It turned more towards him and held out its other hand.!<

>!∼ Are you ready, Quilan? Will you be my twin in this?!<

>!He took its other hand.!<

>!∼ If you will be my mate.!<

>!The avatar closed its eyes.!<

>!Time seemed to expand, exploding all around him.!<

>!His last thought was that he’d forgotten to ask what had happened to Huyler.!<

>!Light shone in the sky above the Bowl.!< - Look to Windward, 16 - Expiring Light

Hello all. I have been intrigued by The Culture series for a little while now but have put off really giving it a try until I got some other series off my plate. My TBR is going to open up a bit in the summer and it feels like the right time to give this a try. I read Inversions a couple years ago and liked it enough. The only other books that I’m really interested in are Use of Weapons, Excession, and The Hydrogen Sonata.

Could I get away with reading just those three in that order? Is there any context that I might be missing from other books that would take away some of the impact or weight of these three books? Any info would be much appreciated!

I'm reading 'Surface Detail' and told my wife about the concept of 'Slap Drones' where your punishment is to be followed by a drone to ensure you don't repeat offend. She bought up the thought of how it would interfere with your life. How people, would react to you having it following you all the time (friends, family, employer? (if there is such a thing)).

Are peoples' reactions to these drones mentioned? Are they obvious in what they are or do they look like regular drones? What kind of stigma would there be on someone with one of these (it's going to be a lot more obvious than an ankle monitor). Are these drones proven (or not) to be effective?

Just finished reading Excession and wanted to post a few quick comments:

• This has to be the book with the most occurrences of the word “parapet” ever. 
• I appreciated the epilogue. >!In which it’s basically said that the Excession is a Contact ship from another even more powerful/intelligent universe. (There’s always something bigger than you.)!<
• I appreciate how such illustration, vocabulary, and syntax seem to just flow from Banks. While reading I was often simultaneously imagining deep space scenes/ships/orbitals/beaches and also Banks himself sitting at a keyboard spewing half-page+ sentences (sometimes with 3 words per page I needed to look up) from his fingers. 
• While there was a plot and initially disparate stories did become intertwined, the intervals between story overlaps can be so distant because of all the details/descriptions/inner-monologues/side-tangents. It was especially true for Excession that my most enjoyable reading experiences were when I read in multi-hour blocks, instead of 30 mins before bed. 
• I’m reminded that reading a Banks book is more a question of Do you want to hang out with the Culture for a while? than a question of do you want to experience twists and turns one after another. You have to just give in and let the world envelop you, without passing judgement on how it's elaborated.

>a lot of what passed for useful information-sharing within an organisation was really just the bureaucratic phatic of people protecting their position, looking for praise, projecting criticism, setting up positions of non-responsibility for up-coming failures and calamities that were both entirely predictable but seemingly completely unavoidable, and telling each other what they all already knew anyway. The trick was to be able to re-engage quickly and seamlessly without allowing anyone to know you’d stopped listening properly shortly after the speaker had first opened their mouth.

Every single meeting I'm in is this. Working from home means that last sentence translates to reading something in another window until I hear my name, whereupon I make whatever agreeable noises are expected of me and the proceedings move on.

Here's a couple I like:

In Hydrogen Sonata, when Vyr >!finally meets QiRia so she can get the memories in his eyes, then looks at his face and he has two extra ears instead of eyes!<

From Use of Weapons

&gt;If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you.

If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.

​Neural laces make biological death an inconvenience rather than an end. I find the casual indifference of a culture citizen intriguing. Which novel best explores the tension between continuity and immortality?

Some background information - I am a Chinese expat living in Australia. I have been unemployed for a few months. Sometimes I stay at home exploring my interests, and sometimes I will be out and about doing things with people.

My mother-in-law is a caucasian, and she has been very concerned of me staying at home - She would never forget to tell my husband that I should go out and meet people when she calls up. I think it is partly because of her projection of fear of being physically lonely at home, partly because of the cultural differences in perceiving connection between the East and the West. Coming from the East, I think I still deeply connect to the cosmos even I am physically alone, and I can feel staying at home and stay away from the noises and distraction is a good way for me to cultivate myself. In another word, I am alone, but I am connected to myself and the universe beyond me.

I am curious to know if you think there are cultural differences in seeing connection?

I'm re-reading Look to Windward and that wanker Ziller is, as usual, acerbic to the point of absolute obnoxiousness. I think I could bear about three whole minutes of his company before tipping my drink over his head. Every time I read LtW I want to reach through the page and slap him.

Kabe would be pleasant but dull.

Zakalwe would be a laugh, but I suspect would get maudlin and a bit PTSD'y after 4 or 5 pints.

Choubris Holse would be my man, I think. Likes a good drink and the occasional flutter. Salt of the earth, but can philosophise with the best of them. Chatty, but not wittering. If it kicks off he can handle himself, and will probably have my back if I've been standing my round.

The Changers are a Culture offshoot. Hear me out.

The events of Consider Phlebas happen pretty early in The Cultures history, right? And what do we know about them?

The Changers are "native" to an asteroid turned massive habitat/spaceship. They can change their form at will (but slowly), they can generate chemical compounds inside their bodies and they're pretty dang tough (adapting to different gravity loads, controlling pain responses, advanced wound recovery).

These are all things basic Culture citizens can do. They change gender and even physiology at will. They have Drug Glands. They adapt and heal faster than Base humans.

Horza, and The Changers as a whole, being basically Culture stock (albeit pretty basic considering the timeline) adds a delicious level of irony to his arc in my opinion.

I just finished reading Player of Games and I was blown away by the potential of Banks universe to be adapted into a TTRPG. Is there any unofficial one and if not, what system do you think would be the most suited for that?

I am about 30% of the way through the Matter audiobook (no spoilers please) and was putting off listening to it for quite a while because Peter Kenny is the perfect narrator for the Culture and I was wary of switching to a different narrator. But Toby Longworth is actually great! His narrating voice is good and his rendition of certain characters like Ferbin and Holse are perfect and hilarious. I love the banter between these two. There is a lot of humour in this book.

Also, I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else, but whenever I read Banks writing a medieval or fantasy-adjacent story, I get a very similar feeling to reading Joe Abercrombie's The First Law. I don't know if I can point to anything specific that makes me feel this way. I think it's something about the tone and humor and writing style that's very similar. I got a very similar feeling while reading Inversions.

Don’t downvote/flame me - this is just a fun/intellectual exercise!

On a r/printSF thread, I saw someone get downvoted, most likely because they wished someone could have continued Iain’s work (it was a The Algabraist thread)..

There’s almost certainly no single author I’d trust to continue any of Banks’s creations.

BUT…for shits & giggles, could you assemble a team of authors to iterate through and create an Algabraist or Culture novel?

- Peter F Hamtilon for story arc

- Richard Morgan for cynical wit

- Neal Asher for snarky drones (but no politics)

- Susanna Clarke for the prose

- Ken MacLeod for the socialism

- ??? for some absurdity?

- ??? for the humanity..

I’ve not thought to deeply about this so any alternatives/fill in the blanks?

Edit: Haha! All the downvotes! We’re a protective lot (I include myself)! 😅