The Culture

[Turzem]

So, recently Ian M. Banks released Matter, a brand new Culture book.

The Culture is light sci-fi, typically full of adventure. He has a strange take on sci-fi that I personally hadn't encountered before. This is a story set extemporaneously to our own time line (first book happens around like 1300ad by our calender), and is full of typical humanish type things and very non humanish type things. The Culture is a civilization made up of several humanish type people that all live in basically what amounts to an incredibly advanced series of hippie communes. They have no need of anything, as anything can basically be fabricated out of energy. They have vastly intelligent Minds which control all their incredibly huge ships and ringworld type habitats.

The ringworlds in these books (called Orbitals) are what Halo got its inspiration from. Instead of being huge solar system circumscribing unstable things, they are "only" a few million kilometers around. Very interesting idea. Their ships can be dozens of kilometers long and vastly potent.

The books are all very easy to get into, and you can start anywhere. There is no plot from book to book, each book wraps up its own story. Banks throws a lot of his own terms, but they are easy enough to understand in context. He uses only a minimum of sci-fi technobabble and what there is, is typically not overly pertinent to the story. He has created a large assortment of awesome, memorable characters human, drone (human type intelligent sentient cybernetic things) and even ships.

They are definitely worth a read if you want something light and somewhat pulpy.

[dechire]

hmmm, i was actually wondering about this guy today at the book store. I just had no idea if there was a starting point or not in this series. Hell ill just pick up Matter this week and throw it on my every growing stack of books i need to read. thank god i'm about to come up on a lot of spare time.

[Turzem]

Originally Posted by dechire

hmmm, i was actually wondering about this guy today at the book store. I just had no idea if there was a starting point or not in this series. Hell ill just pick up Matter this week and throw it on my every growing stack of books i need to read. thank god i'm about to come up on a lot of spare time.

The first book is Consider Phlebas, but any book can BE a starting point as long as you are generally familiar with how sci-fi tends to work. Most people say start with Use of Weapons or Player of Games.

Consider Phlebas, while being the first book, is done from the perspective of an enemy of the Culture, so you don't get to see a lot of what the Culture is capable of. After reading up to Look to Windward, Consider Phlebas makes more sense.

[spronk]

His earlier works are much darker (imo), his most recent works seem a bit more ... light? I enjoyed Excession, its a bit brainless but fun to read. I also recently read the Algebraist, its not set in the culture but has similar themes of AI, future societies, aliens, etc. Very enjoyable read, although again very light ala Harry Potter (contrast with edgy, "hard" scifi like Vinge or Scalzi). Haven't gotten Matter yet.

You can see a lot of his influences on stuff like BSG, Stargate, etc. Personally while I enjoy his books I think his imagining of "the future" is kinda dumb, somehow I really don't see AIs/ships 1000000x smarter than humans all acting like 13 year olds with infinite power. Many of his characters seem obsessed with sex as well.

I definitely wouldn't start with Fersum Endjinn, very hard to read book (but interesting). Personally I find Algebraist to be my favorite (not culture though), followed by Excession then perhaps Player of Games, Against a Dark Background, Consider Phelbias, or Inversions.

[Brand]

Consider Phlebas and Player of Games are my two favorites...However, in some ways I consider Player to be the least Culture book, in spite of the fact of what a pivotal plot point it is....Just me.


And The Algebraist is awesome, but not a culture book.

[DoctorSpooge]

I wouldn't call Scalzi 'hard scifi'.

Interesting favorites here. At westeros.org, the favorite seems to be Use of Weapons.

Anyway, I'll be starting the series next month.

[Fog]

Originally Posted by Turzem

The ringworlds in these books (called Orbitals) are what Halo got its inspiration from.

For the record, Larry Niven's Ringworld series is five times as famous as anything Iain Banks has written, and was published something like twenty years ago.

[Turzem]

Originally Posted by Fog

For the record, Larry Niven's Ringworld series is five times as famous as anything Iain Banks has written, and was published something like twenty years ago.

Not to start a pissing match, but Bungie named Banks' Orbitals as the inspiration for the Halo installations, not Nivens Ringworld. Banks probably drew a fair bit of inspiration from Niven, but ran in a very different direction with the concept. Orbitals are of a smaller, more sane, and more stable scale. The Halo installations are similar to Orbitals, NOT the Ringworld.