This was a great in-depth exploration of some of the ideas from Banks' books that I thought deserved a deeper drive. Even though he was writing in the 80's Banks has a lot of foresight into how modern tech such as AI could result in a society like The Culture. It's definitely utopian, but to the author of this blog post's credit it comes with a subtle lack of meaning that some would find unbearable.<p>Reading this blog post gave me insight into our my own (Western) culture, and modernity. What happens as we move away from ascribed identities, like be born and dying a feudal serf, to achieved identities garnered from the actions we choose in our lives? I laughed at the jibe about the 2 ways a modern person finds meaning; either embracing their Celtic heritage or going full memeplex!<p>The website design is unreadable, except if you highlight sections of the text which make it straightforward to read. No idea how you'd read this on mobile, though.
On a tangent there are two Iain Banks related books that might be of interest. The first is an academic study and overview of Banks "Iain M. Banks (Modern Masters of Science Fiction)" and, more particularly, his culture books:<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Banks-Modern-Masters-Science-Fiction/dp/0252041011/ref=sr_1_1?crid=32CDW1D3Y34EP&keywords=paul+kincaid+banks&qid=1697457410&sprefix=paul+kincaid+banks%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.f5122f16-c3e8-4386-bf32-63e904010ad0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.amazon.com/Banks-Modern-Masters-Science-Fiction/...</a><p>The second book "The Culture: The Drawings" is slated to be released in early November (2023) and is a collection of drawings by Iain Banks that, per Amazon, details "the universe of his bestselling Culture novels":<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Drawings-Iain-M-Banks/dp/031657287X/ref=sr_1_6?crid=MW4XGBT3WR5P&keywords=Iain+banks&qid=1697457694&sprefix=iain+banks+%2Caps%2C59&sr=8-6" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Drawings-Iain-M-Banks/dp/0316...</a>
A Few Notes On The Culture, which Iain M Banks posted to rec.arts.sf.written on 10 Aug 1994 should be much higher up in this thread<p><a href="http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm</a>
I strongly recommend the audiobooks of Iain Banks work as read by Peter Kenny or Anton Lesser.<p>Absolute genius, the best audiobooks I’ve heard behind Nicol Williamsons The Hobbit.<p>In particular, listen to Excession and The Algebraist.<p>I never tire of the audiobook of the Algebraist, amazing.<p>Anton Lesser reading The Algebraist is the strongest case for why AI should never be used for narrating audiobooks.
> From a certain perspective, the Culture is not all that different from Star Trek’s Borg. The difference is that Banks tricks the reader into, in effect, sympathizing with the Borg.<p>Its interesting - star trek ds9 actually kind of makes that point in the marquis plot line <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv3Ex5kG2go">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv3Ex5kG2go</a>
>In the end, I didn’t love Use of Weapons,<p>Absolutely no surprises there. I've read the entire culture series several times. I've read every entry in it at least twice, some more than that. Except Use of Weapons. I only need to read about the "chair" once.
I guess the unreadable site is a bug.<p>I'm sure few people here need advice on how to fix/hack this, but here goes; In firefox for example, either use 'reader view' to get a plain page of text, or, select some text, right-click and choose 'inspect', then find the body color attribute, in the styles section of the developer tools panel that pops up, as follows:<p><pre><code> body {
color: #000000;
}
</code></pre>
And edit it from '#000000' to '#fff'.
I find that a lot of science fiction tends to project the author's worldview into the future and then comes up with a bunch of magic to explain how it'll inevitably happen. I haven't read any of Banks but based on the article, it pretty much sounds like the same thing on steroids. As (I think) William Gibson said, sci-fi is about the present, not the future.<p>Can anyone recommend sci-fi that <i>doesn't</i> do this, but instead tries to predict the future/near future and present a realistic vision of things, even if it's not precisely what the author hopes would happen? The closest thing I can think of is <i>Children of Men,</i> which is unfortunately a bit too dystopian for me.
For those struggling to read the text:<p><a href="https://txtify.it/https://www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/2017/11/12/why-the-culture-wins-an-appreciation-of-iain-m-banks/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://txtify.it/https://www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/20...</a>
My favorite Banks sci fi is The Algebraist which isn’t a Culture novel.<p>To give you a micro taste of the story, the villain, the Archimandrite Luceferous, keeps the head of his enemy preserved alive for years after having it taken off surgically after defeating him, hangs it from the ceiling in his office and uses it as a punching bag.
> Marx’s claim is that there are functional relations between technology and social structure, so that you can’t just combine them any old way. Marx was, in this regard, certainly right, hence the sociological naiveté that lies at the heart of Dune. Feudalism with energy weapons makes no sense – a feudal society could not produce energy weapons, and energy weapons would undermine feudal social relations.<p>This doesn’t do justice to the world building of Dune. Technology is very limited. Computers are banned (for good reasons), and using those energy weapons is also forbidden in most situations. Thus, combat is once again dominated by the kind of melee encounters that were also historically the domain of a trained warrior caste. All of this is explored in detail in the later books, which maybe the author hasn’t read? If anything, Dune deeply affirms that society mirrors technology rather than creating a simple “naive feudal sci-fi” world as claimed here.<p>I haven’t read much past that yet since the article is very wordy, and it’s hard to be motivated to push forward once you stop being convinced that the author has a point.
OK this was too long and painful to read (esp with the background issues).<p>My 2 cents on why you should like Iain M. Banks (for SciFi, aka Iain Banks for fiction, RIP):<p>- AI ships with cool names
Surface Detail is a fantastic read - by far my favorite of the series. Trouble is that to fully appreciate it means having read all the previous books in the series. Still worth it though.
Heinlein's law:
Arguing that a given scifi author's view of future society makes sense will always essentially reduce to arguing that the author's politics are correct.
I met Mr Banks once (empty bookshop signing) and he told me that he wrote the Culture books because he was sick of so much popular SF being “capitalism in space”.
I don't want to read this now because I'm currently in the middle of <i>Use of Weapons</i>. I am enjoying the series so far, even if I find Banks to be quite ruthless and some of the descriptions of pain and suffering hard to read. I usually read hard science fiction and do sometimes wonder if I've accidentally slipped into <i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</i>. But it's masterful writing and an incredible imagination.
Let's be clear, we'd need some miraculous corrective action to put our world on a path to the Culture. That is not where we are currently headed.
It's interesting to compare the Culture to the Polity in Neil Asher's books, since the Polity is also run by AIs with advanced technology, and comes into conflict with other (alien) civilizations. But it's usually super advanced biotech kind of threats, where human civilization is less advanced.
That website has the worst design imaginable. It's a totally unreadable black text on a blackish space image.<p>So, I'll react the the title. The real reason "the Culture Wins" is basically the storm trooper effect: they're the protagonists in fiction, so they're written to win regardless if it makes sense or not.<p>I believe one of the books does hint that the eventually disappear. The culture novel about <i>that</i> is the one I really want to read.