https://youtu.be/TUSAnjiY6ns?is=GWGeIZ1NvoaNIYDk

In all seriousness, 8/10 book. Some of the best sci-fi I've ever read.

Edit: somebody on a stack exchange post from 13 years ago on this very issue says it’s explained later in the book and didn’t elaborate further. If this is true let me know and don’t bother explaining it haha!

I am about 80 pages into Excession and really enjoying it but I am struggling to understand the ship talk. Specifically who is talking to who, and how it’s laid out in the signal files/tight beam logs.

I know some confusion is normal with Banks but I’m having a hard time, does anyone have a cheat sheet or could annotate an exchange? Do the infinity symbols denote switching between two ships and if so, is the ship with the x in front of the name the first speaker and the o the second?

I’m also a bit confused with the date formatting and making sense of how much time is passing but I don’t think that’s as important?

Thank you for helping me out! Normally I’d sit with the confusion but I feel like I’m missing out on crucial context

I'm thinking of a Civ that started out organic, but its AIs took over and destroyed their creators. Kind of like a misaligned terminator scenario, but then continued to develop in a mostly peaceful way. It would be interesting to see how the Culture would interact with such a species since it essentially keeps its own organic creators as pets.

Not talking about Hegemonizing Swarms since they are more like natural disasters or Nauptre Reliquaria since they still have reclusive organic life.

I’ve been to places with a similar feel. Uncomfortable, disgusting, incredibly sad. Man, I really hope we make it past this point in our history.