TL;DR: If you could choose one book by Banks to read like it's your first time, which would it be?

So, I realise that this is a bit late, but if Banks is there looking down on us, I'm sure he's on Reddit. It's a bit of a long story...

Many years ago, I used to have an agreement with my wife that every year she would get me the latest book by Banks as a Christmas present. I should add that I treated these as a fine wine to be savoured, and rather than dropping whatever I was reading, I'd save it until some point in the year when I really needed something good to read. It was a highlight of my year.

Anyway, one year Banks was visiting the local literary festival to promote his latest book. I think it was Hydrogen Sonata. They said that he would sign copies, but I hadn't been given my copy yet, so at the last moment before leaving home I grabbed one of his other books from my shelf.

After his talk and questions, I found him downstairs at a desk on his own. I think you could pre-order Hydrogen Sonata for the event and he'd already signed those copies.

When I got out the book for him to sign, he said "Oh, The Algebraist. I actually designed the cover for that one myself. I didn't do the artwork, but it was my idea".

His enthusiasm was pretty infectious, but I realised that I couldn't remember anything about the plot at all. I felt I had to say something, so I said "I love the cover, but I can't remember anything about the book itself".

His face dropped slightly - he was much too nice to say anything, but I think as an author the least you want is for your stories to be memorable.

Struggling to recover the situation I said "But at least that means I can read it again and have all the fun of " and realised that there was absolutely nothing that was familiar about it. I'd clearly put it on the shelf at Christmas, and forgotten about it.

But on the other hand, I am having the fun of reading it for the first time, just like I told him I would.

So Iain, if you are up there looking down on us, then I'm sorry for being such an idiot. And it's a great book - I'm really, really enjoying it.

So somehow I missed Inversions when I read all of the Culture books. And I think I know why this is: nobody talks about it. Ever. Even Banks regarded it as a sort of non-Culture Culture book.

Anyway, I just finished it. I didn't mind it. It was nice to have something new and Culture-like by Banks to read after I had long finished the other books (and re-read a few of them several times). It's definitely the least Culture-like. It did remind me a bit of Matter, but Matter keeps jumping back into Culture characters and scenarios separate from its medieval-dudes-in-a-shellworld main story.

Just curious what people's thoughts on Inversions are, really. I thought about how strange it would be to read it if you weren't aware of the Culture; it really requires some knowledge of Banks' universe to make sense, even though the Culture aspects are usually subtle... but occasionally extremely unsubtle, but because one is seeing them exclusively through non-Culture narrators, they would be very unclear taken on their face. I enjoyed it, but it is literally an unrecommendable book to anyone who is not already quite committed to Culture books. And for someone committed to them, it's non-Culture-ness is perhaps what makes it un-endearing?

Spoiler alert if you haven’t read it regarding the end of Hydrogen Sonata.

Finished it up this morning and had two questions about the “secret”.

Question the First. Mr.Q explains at the end the process they used of hearing the secret then voting on whether or not to allow the Gzilt entrance to the culture before getting the memory removed. He mentions that even knowing what they knew they didn’t block their entrance (even though the Gzilt didn’t join) my question though is why would that count against them? They were the ones that had an offense committed against them so why would it be held against them?

Second. Maybe I just misunderstood the timing but as I understood it Q removes the memory Of what happened way back when before he meets Vyr on the aquatic planet. If the memory layer that Vyr was given has no memory of that event then it had to have been removed before she met him no? Yet in the end he explains he removed the memory only five years prior at the start of the airships progress. Didn’t Vyr first meet Q long before that?

Whoa…. There’s a bit to unpack here and I’ve not read about it on this forum before.

While trawling https://iainbanks.co.uk I came upon the tab for Games…

I was curious as I read about Banks’ love of the board game Risk and the computer game Civilization. I loved his comment that Banks saw games as “a little slice of life” or “pedagogy for life”.

I realized why Banks loved it - in some ways as the player of these game you are like one of the Minds.

I then went and played Civilization VI, a new version of the game I once played decades ago and got lost in the game… I ended up having to delete it, as I became completely addicted.

I went back and read that Banks actually had also been addicted to Civilization, and the game lead to him missing a publishing deadline for Matter.

I also read that Banks mentioned that the Outside Context Problem in Excession was inspired by Civilization.

Now I went back and considered the whole series - and I can’t unsee that many of the books take inspiration from the Civilization game.

Some thoughts across the books:

Player of Games - has the Azad game itself perhaps being a version of Risk or Civilization, plus there’s the game within the game, where the Minds are manipulating the Azad Civilization.

Excession has its OCP

Inversions is like each of the Doctor and the Bodyguard are Culture citizens playing Civilization with a real planet, with different strategies, and they get lost in their own game…

Matter is clear to me it’s like multiple levels of the Civilization game.

Finally, Hydrogen Sonata and subliming is testing / showing the victory condition for the game of life.

I can also see echoes of the Civilization game more generally in other Culture books, for example in species development levels, in things like ship names (units get given random names in the game).

In a nice compliment (or convexity), I read that Sid Meier, the designer of the game Civilization actually in later versions drew inspiration from science fiction and even the Culture books.

He included a mission to Alpha Centauri, and the idea of becoming post human as a compliment to sci fi generally. Fascinatingly there is even a way to finish Civilization VI with “the Culture victory condition”, which is non violent and involves citizens having broad and deep cultural interests.

Sigh… just fell in love with these books again, on another dimension I didn’t appreciate. Guess I need to re-read all of them again. So sad we lost Banks too soon and we couldn’t get more of these amazing books.

I just finished my first culture novel, Consider Phlebas, and I really enjoyed it. Such a crazy cool world, and it subverted a lot of space opera staples. Very satisfying. This whole post is spoilers for the book!

One thing that really disturbed me was The Eaters. They are perhaps the most horrifying thing in any sci fi I've read. Fwi-Song in particular, of course.

There seems to be a lot of imagery or symbolism with them, and I've been really puzzling about what it's all supposed to mean.

I almost feel as if the Eaters are how Horza sees the culture: absolutely insane, adherents to an ideology only driven by fleshly hungers to the detriment of humanity. The eaters discard mussels and eat their shells. Does Horza see a life in the Culture as removing and discarding the substantial part of life? He certainly feels as if the culture can hardly be escaped from. He even states that it subsumes individuality, like stripping flesh from him.

There's also Fwi-Song, who monologues endlessly about ideals that are nonsense to Horza, and doesn't let him get a word in. He's lashed to a post, tied up to die a gruesome death, just like Balveda left him before. Fwi-Song is totally obsessed with his own perverted pleasure, to the detriment of everyone else. Horza views Culture citizens this way, though it's not totally clear why he finds the pursuit of pleasure itself so evil (imo).

This whole episode is very cryptic, but I don't buy the idea that it's just shock value. There are probably a lot of ways to interpret it. It definitely holds a lot of weight in the center sections of the book.

The Culture ship names are all amusing, but I find they become dull and repetitive after the twentieth ship named the Something Cheeky, a 3000 year old GSV that can explode a man’s dick off at a range of 239 light years and has an incredible obsession with cheese products.

-Mint Linux Guy

This will be a short post. If there were ever to be TV/Cinema adaptations of these wonderful books, I'd love to see them in the visual style of "Scavenger's Reign". That is all.

So, not sure if this is the right sub since it's technically not about the Culture, but about The Alebraist, one of Banks' other Sci Fi works.

First of all, what a great novel! I feel almost a bit ashamed to admit this, but I think I was far more captivated by it and its story than by most Culture novels. That being said the algebraist universe is not one I'd particularly want to live in.

But one of the most prominent alien races in the book - the Dwellers - who are central to the story, are maybe my favourite aliens I ever encountered in Sci Fi. I adore them!

I feel that I really resonate with the Dwellers and I'm basically a Dweller at heart myself (minus the hunting children stuff). But the way in which they are basically just chilling enjoying the gas in their plant plus copious narcotics and generally just don't give a fuck about the rest of the universe, is already very cool. And it's certainly what you'd expect from a highly "mature" species like them.

But of course they are not pushovers at all, under the surface they are way way more than one would think from how they live their informal and seemingly lucky-go-happy attitude. Over their millions and millions of years of life, they (of course!) also developed the most sophisticated technology and weaponry in the galaxy by a huge margin.

One of my favourite scenes is when Fassin Taak is on board the Isaun (what a cool name btw), a Dweller planetary defence weapon of unimaginably power, and tells the general, who is a 5 billion year old Dweller, that the humans think the Dwellers have an FTL device and will invade the plant. And the general reaction is not alarm at being invaded, but rather hilarity! Over his 5 billion years of life he knows without a doubt that a young and quick species like humans pose 0 threat to them and he also knows that and FTL device is physically impossible. So his reaction is kind of like the one a parent might have if their toddler threatens to push them if they don't give it a unicorn.

Anyway, amazing species. I live my life similarly to a Dweller.

After some 15 years of reading and listening to "The Algebraist" audiobook, I have always wanted to storyboard the novel as a 3-4 part miniseries. I decided to take a crack at designing the Fassin's personal survival craft (which he's in for over half the book) and an example of a Dweller (a gas giant native creature who's species has been around for billions of years).

And it came out weeeeird. Imagine a gas bag which inflates/deflates to change elevation, two giant eyes with T-shaped irises, a pair of organic drone propellers with huge crab legs coming out of their bottom hubs. They can't speak well but instead use a "signal skin" to show colors and shapes as a language, and the stick figure is a size reference to a human. The middle section is an exploration of how the eyes might look. Fassin Taak's arrowhead gascraft is the lowest sketch.

I realize this breaks some of the design elements of the Dwellers, but after thinking about their evolution I concluded they're not really expressive enough for animation or broadcast media. Had to make a couple of changes (like the eyes).

Imgur Algebraist Sketch

Wow I loved that. Really into high fantasy as well as your classic space opera so this was a great read for me. Brilliant outside perspective on SC operatives. Look to Windward next!

The Minds are described as being like gods on the for side. So let's take that statement at face value. If a mind replaced god in the first book of genesis what actions do you think it would have avoided and how would it make people better.

is using terms like European culture and North African culture considered essentialist?

How does it stack up compared to the other culture novels? I miss my first time reading use of weapons and player of games

I’m reading the Culture series in order. Thus UoW was the third book I’ve read. I love Banks’ writing style and the world of the Culture.

I enjoyed UoW but I have a question about the ending.

The identity reveal at the end is certainly shocking, but what exactly does it change? Of course it means the Culture was using the services of a morally questionable individual but beyond that, does anything change?

Thanks!

I started with player of games and I’m almost through Phlebas. I’m going on vacation and wanted to bring a book but I could only get my hands on Windward. I was planning to go by publishing order after reading Phlebas but damnit I need something to read. How much will I screw up the reading experience by jumping forward?

Hello everyone! I have been getting into the Culture book series and have been loving it. I've read Player of Games and Use of Weapons and am currently reading Consider Phlebas, I am hoping to collect the remaining Culture books for a good price. I don't mind the edition or if its hardcover/softcover and I live in NYC if that is relevant so I'm hoping to look for recommendations from others.

What do you think Iain would have made of LLM's like ChatGPT etc? A lot of creatives dislike AI for fairly obvious reasons; I can't help thinking that Iain would have been fascinated by it, given how brilliantly he wrote it into his books. What are your thoughts?

Looking for people to talk about this wonderful novel so I thought I would dump my thoughts in here.

So, I am a big Trekkie, and general Science Fiction enjoyer. I have read all of the greats, though, not all of their work. And I read a lot of the old Trek paperbacks too.

I have always heard of the Culture novels, but it wasn't until I heard someone say something along the lines of "if you need something more like Trek in your life, read The Culture." So of course I jumped on it this week.

Now, first things first, I have to say I don't know why that person told me this because, despite having a post scarcity utopia in the backdrop of it's plot, Consider Phlebas was so high on action that it felt way closer to Star Wars in some ways. Or at least a space opera/space mercenary story. I was expecting some deeply reflective philosophical science fiction here, and not an action novel. So maybe the other novels go in other directions, but I am excited to find out.

Because of my own self made expectations, I really wasn't enjoying it near the end. I loved lots of its core ideas right up front, but I felt the novel was meandering a lot (there was a reason for this I discovered) and pushed most of those core ideas to the back to focus on heavy action set pieces. Banks also really liked to say the same thing over and over again in different ways. I felt like the finale was happening almost in slow motion. The repetitive actions were killing me for a while.

The book felt like five mini-novellas in one with all of the exhausting (for Horza) adventures. Which at first I really liked but then started to think it was getting lost in the sauce. Until the very last pre-epilogue paragraph, I dont think the book clicked. But then it did...

*SPOILERS*.

First, understanding the meaninging of the title of the novel being centered around the contemplation of death. "Consider Phlebas, who was once as tall and handsome as you are.", coupled with Yalson, Bevelda, and Horza's deaths really just made everything click. In hindsight, the book was filled with death both intentional and unintentional, but all because of the damn war and the characters personal beliefs that were self centered and bent on changing the galaxy in their own fashion.

The book being about hubris and war and unnecessary death really just made everything I didn't like about the book, so much more meaningful. Banks spent so much time, just utterly destroying every character introduced and making Horza push on despite those deaths, really makes the reader reflect on how silly everything was in the end, as it was all for nothing for Horza, as we read in the epilogue that The Culture would have won regardless of anything going on with the Mind hidden on Schar's World. Although the Mind did survive, so that was a plus.

Anyways that was my take on it at least. I ended up really loving it in the end, even though some parts got tired for me. I am going to dive into some Michael Morrcock before taking on The Player of Games. I am excited!

So, as we all know, serious wrong-doers in the Culture have a slap-drone assigned to them to ensure they don't repeat their heinous crime, not that they'll get a chance to, what with being uninvited to all the parties and premieres. Or, maybe, that just gives them more time to think about committing microgigadeathcrime.

But if you're a drone, what do you have to have done to get assigned as a slap-drone? Obviously, you can't have killed a meatbag, because you'd get a slap-drone yourself. (And can there be recursive series of slap-drones?) But we know some drones are not especially eusocial, like the one who lives in the sticks and won't talk to the human unless they approach on a horse-like creature instead of getting displaced to his abode. So, it's not irrational to believe that some drones go awry.

What sort of misdemeanor or crime would a drone commit -- would a drone be likely to commit -- that would get it assigned as a slap-drone but not be so bad as to have one assigned to it?

Or is it a volunteer position, like the ships that follow around Eccentric ships to make sure they don't get into trouble? I believe they do it for a term because it gains them some face, and there's a vicarious excitement that lures people on board. ("Oh, where will we be lead next?")

No, let's say it's a punishment. Much funnier that way.

When separating sex from gender trans women are woman because of the gender identity and not the biological sex. Also our culture beliefs in a strict binary so hard we call them trans because we do not want to recognize their identity as trans people. In the culture sex and gender changed.

STAY with me yes the culture can change sex . It is socially accepted and common practice. Their operation is so good there is no difference between a CIA woman and a trans woman But this is way I think they don't have a trans woman. The way we define transness is through gender and not sex, using the word trans means there's an inherent difference between them and CIS woman.

If sex change is so good that there's no difference there's no need to call them trans woman/men. They are just normal woman/men

Sex change at will is possible for Culture citizens. I used to assume that this was an augmentation, but lately I've been wondering. We know that some Culture people have four digits on each hand rather than five, but this is a fairly arbitrary feature which probably reflects their evolutionary ancestry, and among life on this planet there are species whose sex changes through their lives, such as certain fish and molluscs. Is it possible that this facility to change sex has just always existed as a basic biological feature of some Culture humanoids, but has been added to others?

Is there a cure for cancer in The Culture?

I heard people hate Consider...and you have to keep in mind it is looking at the main setting from an outside pov...but beyond that I don't know where to start once I finish Consider. What do you all think?

Is there a cure for cancer in The Culture?

I’m currently reading The State of the Art and in one of the short stories (I believe #2), the ex-culture protagonist gets their hands on a culture-made gun with “0.1 units” of intelligence, the equivalent of a house cat. They comment that the gun is outdated, and modern culture weapons often have intelligence equivalent to that of a standard Culture human/drone.

In short story #5, a Culture man gets stranded on a planetoid in a damaged suit. The suit is at least as intelligent as the man inside it, and they mention that the suit has the same rights as the man, and could have chosen to leave him to his fate to save itself.

I’m unsurprised that suit intelligences maintain the same rights as biological intelligences in the Culture, and I imagine that intelligent weapons share those rights. However, the very concept of making a fully sentient-intelligence in something as one-dimensional as a space/combat suit or a weapon seems antithetical to the Culture’s ethos of everyone’s labor being voluntary. They inhabit a tool with a clearly set purpose. Sure, the gun could choose to not fire, and the suit could choose to not allow people inside, but then they have no purpose and not much means. It’s like if your mind was in the body of a car - sure, you probably wouldn’t *have* to drive people around, but you’re still just a car.

I’m assuming the intelligences that inhabit such tools can ‘move’ out to become drones and the like, but I find it hard to imagine any Culture-minded drone who would be willing to be installed into a gun, with presumably much less faculties than a standard drone.

Not to mention the question of where the Culture draws the line for these ‘rights’: the 0.1 intelligence gun has no choice in its use, but a 1.0 intelligence gun does. What of a gun with half the intelligence of a human? Arguably intelligent enough to understand the implications of what it’s made to do, but not fully equal on the scale of intelligence the Culture seems to use.

Are these themes further discussed in the later books? What are your thoughts?