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Wow... there's a ton of Banks fans on here. I have tried on multiple occasions to delve into his culture series, but sadly have always found myself unable to unravel it into something I could grasp on to. 50 pages or so into Consider Phlebas I found myself picking up Bova's grand tour of the solar system books instead.
I found myself loving the ideas... but I had absolutely no enjoyment of reading the book.
So, if you please my friends... throw me a lifeline. What am I doing wrong? Am I giving up too soon? Is this some sort of trial one must suffer to have everything come together in the final pages, offering a rapture of delight at having survived it? Or perhaps am I just too "old school" to appreciate Banks as a writer?
One thing to note is that we KNOW the Culture is on a limited timeline. We've seen [i forget in which book] at least one flashforward to the next Galactic Cycle, and the hyperintelligences there barely register the Culture as a blip in history.
Banks had planned their end. Whether he'll ever tell us about it or not is another question.Reply
The Culture themselves know they won't last for ever and in "Look for Winward", the very end of the book does in fact have an epilogue which (possible spoiler ...)
is well into the future and categorically states that the Culture no longer exists. At least not an entity that calls itself the Culture nor presumably bears any significant relation to it.Reply
I own every Culture book, I'm a fan of the writing, but the actual Culture, I hate. I hate its smugness, I hate its ageless superiority. I hate its hedonism. I hate its effortless ego.
The main thing I hate about it is that as a device, it fails. It couldn't exist. The beings within it? They aren't humans. They aren't even life that could be. They have all weakness and instability ironed out, they are perfect, there is nowhere for them to go and nothing to do. They suffer from NOTHING we call humanity, no frailties whatsoever, and all they do is have fun. The books always actually follow what few flawed beings there are in this world Banks creates, the incorporated imperfects, the unhinged Minds, the enemies. That's the only way he can tell a story, because the Culture itself is a non event, a galactic soap opera, a 2 thousand year episode of the OC, and equally implausible.
But, I accept that that is the device he uses. The Culture is not the story, it can't be. It's a mirror to reflect the real story, whatever Banks concocts to cause the story in his world. It's not even an entity, its an idea. Again, one I say couldn't exist, but these are books about spaceships and aliens anyway. As such, the idea that there should be a book about the end of the Culture misses the entire point. What would it be about? Who would do the fighting? How do you crash the ultimate party?
These are Culture books, that means a specific set of special circumstances. The story happens within them. You can't have a book about the end of the idea the book is about. It would be like a scifi story being about the end of scifi.
If you want to read about infinite fleets rolling forth, the clashing of universal titans, intergalactic doom and other simple pleasures, you can do that elsewhere. The Culture books aren't about that.Reply
The very nature of the Culture is a state of constant flux: it's not so much a galactic civilization as it is exactly what it's called--a *culture,* and all cultures are continually evolving and changing. Even given superluminal travel and the immortality of most of its residents, a culture large enough to span an entire galaxy cannot possibly remain frozen into one homogenous whole. Banks' Culture is, in essence, a loose alliance of *millions* of civilizations and societies that all agree to share certain common social protocols.Reply
It wouldn't have to be a Hamiltonesque pan-galactic war. Not what I had in mind at all. I think it might be a much quieter book than any of the others, coming late in the history of the Culture after it has faded from the galactic scene. Maybe with some of the atmosphere of Jack Vance or Gene Wolfe. All complete speculation, but interesting none the less.
I do think the Culture is as much a subject as a setting. The writing is very good, so the ideas aren't ever allowed to overwhelm the story, but there the Culture is as much a philosophical construct as Asimov's Foundation. I'm certain it will be brought to a conclusion, but can only speculate on what it will be.Reply
@Damien G Walter: Not with a bang but a whimper... Yah I could see that. Societies finally having to leave the ancient patched up Orbitals, the Minds long silent, learning to live on planets again. Telling legends of the Drones and speculating what happened to all the folks on now unreachable worlds.
Maybe not as a whole novel and certainly not a linear series. Interwoven with a story set late in the Culture's prime where the seeds of dissolution have begun.
Could be cool. But hey, whatever he wants to do with the Culture will be eagerly read by fans like me.Reply
Interesting to me in the "Culture" universe are those who move past the party phase into something more interesting. I just wish they all didn't end up in 'Special Circumstances.'
"Matter" was fun because it showed a superior, older culture living under their noses without detection.
"Player of Games," one of my favorites, explores the ability to commit to an abstract and whimsical field of study BECAUSE of the Culture. This is the Culture as enabler, creating opportunity for those with the desire and passion to pursue it.
I suspect a society that engages in that much free play will make some pretty fascinating discoveries well ahead of those motivated by profit and progress.
The whole fun of the Culture is the notion that if you did not have to work, or have to die, what would you do with your time?
Not everyone wants to party all the time. If you could do whatever you want for as long as you want, what would you do?Reply
Ugh. One of the many things I love about the Culture books is that there isn't any Grand Saga running through it. Banks has never really done the Dawn of the Culture nor has he bothered to fill in every bloody detail of its history. To do so would reduce it to a hack space opera series like Dune has become.
Does Mr Walter want to read some Ragnarok type clash of Minds against the Honored Matres or Uber-Borg? Ridiculous. Besides, anything that attacks the Culture eventually becomes part of it like the Iridians or eventually the Chelgrians. Even the Excession adopted some mannerisims of the Culture.
These books are not about the Encroaching Doom That Threatens the Galaxy. Asher and Reynolds do that for me quite nicely, thank you. The Culture doesn't need to be that kind of series. Hell, it really isn't a series at all.
Just a bunch of really great books I'll read again and again.
@Grey_Area: There's a lot more value to concluding the Culture series than just getting off on apocalypse porn. It's always been a setting that's deeply rooted in our context in the here and now. The Culture started out as the ultimate imperialist fantasy, really - it's an all-powerful liberal-internationalist collective that shares all of the West's values and does all the same things we do, only better and bigger and with giant thinking spaceships.
That was well and good right after the fall of the USSR when that's the story everybody wanted to hear, but that's over now, it's not a story people can relate to as easily, and acting like that and pretending we were gonna last forever and turn into something like the Culture was what made things that way. Had Banks released Player of Games last year he'd never have got anywhere, nobody'd want to hear it. And if you've built your career out of holding up a mirror for your nation's ego then sometimes that means moving with the times, and right now that would mean showing a society that's wrestling with some really serious unacknowledged problems.
But then, the whole series never sat all that well with me in the first place for precisely those reasons, so, y'know. Opinion is what it is.Reply
@Katayev: I've always been a bit blind to political allegory, it's a conscious choice and allows me to be entertained by works from authors I would probably say rude things to in person. Banks is way more blatant about the whole end of the Cold War and Decline of the West in Transitions.
It might be interesting to show the ultimate end of the Culture with a whimper not a bang. I could imagine the Minds getting bored and just shutting off the lights one by one.Reply
In a 2002 interview with Science Fiction Weekly magazine, when asked:
"Excession is particularly popular because of its copious detail concerning the Ships and Minds of the Culture, its great AIs: their outrageous names, their dangerous senses of humour. Is this what gods would actually be like?"
Yeah, I have to continue the strain of disagreement. I think part of the notion of the Culture- indeed, even behind its capitalized-generic name (much like the Federation) was, as Sagan put it with regards to SETI, a "main-sequence civilization," exploring the possibility, that, once they figured out poverty, disease, interstellar travel, and weren't surfing a bunch of exponential growth and decay curves anymore, that a civilization might settle in for a long, enlightened ride into deep time- in the case of the Culture, one long party. I think the lack of a cut-and-dried end is almost implicit in the premise.Reply
I agree with you, Charlie Jane. Mr. Banks has repeatedly made the point that the Culture is a good environment for storytelling because of the range of characters and situations it enables, and not even a plausible civilization in and of itself. I don't understand why Walter is trying to paint it as a moralistic political arc by selecting two books out of seven as 'pivotal'.Reply
I think my favourite Culture novel is Look to Windward, because it's actually about living there, and it has the funniest characters and dialogue, sort of a nutz Wizard of Oz comedy mixed with a really sad story.Reply
Consider Phlebas and the other Culture novels are really the best representatives transhumanism could ever have. And I'm not just saying that because of the hot girl who told me I should read it.
Ray Kurzweil's an idiot, and the singularity is a silly notion, but I could happily live in and around the Culture.Reply
@fistrodisco: I think that's why the Culture novels appeal to so many. Most visions of humans ascending to higher purely spiritual / intelllectual planes and all that sound really, really dull.
The Culture is a kinda "nobody wants for anything" utopia but it's a human utopia where people still want to play, shag, drink and partay.
Utopia as written by a lefty Scotsman who also wrote a book about why Whisky rocks..Reply
@MrFlake: That's the problem with most utopias... perfection is boring--even stagnant.
The culture is more like the best possible outcome of a technological democracy. It's a wonderful place, but it has flaws and dissenting opinions. In fact, it's founding principle seems to be dissent.Reply
@Anekanta - Has spatula, will travel: " It's a wonderful place, but it has flaws and dissenting opinions. In fact, it's founding principle seems to be dissent."
Indeed, not even the "perfect" AIs can agree on policy half the time. Humans who find it all a little safe also have the obvious career path..Reply
@Anekanta - Has spatula, will travel: Of course, the Culture would be a lot more boring if it wasn't for their habit of playing fast and loose with other civilizations...Reply
@Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.: I often wonder how much more peaceful our own Earthbound civilization(s) would be if more of us knew how to just agree to disagree about our various ideologies and policies... (and then get down and party of course).Reply
@Anekanta - Has spatula, will travel: My family lived in the early communism occupied Poland. My grandpa was a western-culture and capitalism supporter while my uncle had very communistic views. They always quarreled about politics but at the end they shaked hands and invited each other for a drink.Reply
Glad to see I'm not the only one who feels an emotional attachment to the Culture.
The whole structure is a paradox of course. Good stories come from conflict and fear, but the Culture has conquered these things.
The only useful way to tell stories about it is to focus on the responsibility of power and talk about how even perfect societies fail when confronting the brutality of "human nature."
Am I the only one who reads and listens to these stories for the wrong reasons?
I gloss over the conflicts and problems and linger in utopia, delighting in all the fun I could have with infinite time and infinite resources.
The novel I want to read is a sequel to State of the Art, where the Culture conquers Earth and turns us all into jolly hedonistic Marxists.
How would the Culture handle a full-on planetary conquest? How do you convert Earthbound barbarians into rational, responsible anarchists?
Don't kill the Culture, Iain. Bring them to Earth and save us!Reply
@michaelduff: Hey Michael, your first three paragraphs saved me from writing it myself - thanks!
And I would like to take my time falling on my knees and thanking Iain M. Banks for filling my head with such exhilarating ideas. He not only introduces us to a utopia but also exactly describes why it works.Reply
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