Code:
[ stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28.866.2083 ]
xGSV [I]Shoot Them Later[/I]
oEccentric [I]Oh no you didn't[/I]
[B] How goes the journey?[/B]
∞
[ stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28.866.2083 ]
xEccentric [I]Oh no you didn't[/I]
oGSV [I]Shoot Them later[/I]
[B]Change of plans. Heading to the Milky Way. Received a radio signal from a Humanoid
species called Gaffers. They need desperate help in the "console wars". Also, the species is
on the brim of extinction due to social anxiety by 99.78 of the Male population.[/B]
∞
[B]My, you have your hands full. Well, good luck. Let me know if you need assistance.
[/B]
∞
[B]Indeed. Should not be a problem. Thanks for the offer. I will keep you updated.
[/B]
"The Culture is a fictional interstellar anarchic, socialist, and utopian society created by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks which features in a number of science fiction novels and works of short fiction by him, collectively called the Culture series."
I noticed from the the sci-fi and monthly book threads that gaf has some Culture fans, but a lot have never heard of it. Thought I would make this thread to introduce people to this great series, and also a place to discuss anything related to the Culture.
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The best way to describe the Culture is basically:
It is a society where humanoid and machines live as one. There is no money, no home planet, no laws, no poverty, torture, murder, rape and anything that is wrong with this world. If you commit any of these heinous acts, you will be simply Slap Droned. Meaning that a drone will be following you forever, making sure you never do it again. Also you will never be invited to parties again foreveralone.jpg
They are spread all over the galaxy on Orbitals, massive ships known as GSV(s) and even asteroids. They live together with hyper intelligent machines that do everything. They provide everything to the humanoids. There is no such thing as slavery here. The machines choose to do this.
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MINDS control nearly everything in the Culture. From toilet flushes to everything inside a System Class GSV that is 200km+ long. There are also Drones and other ship types who do everything. From being bodyguards to serving drinks.
The Culture is a
Level 8 Civilization. They can control matter like gods. Move around space at incredible speeds. Teleport and transfer matter light years away.
They also have backups of every sentient being in the Culture ( Unless someone willingly chooses not to be backed up). If you die by accident, they will simply resurrect you.
Immortality exists if any humanoid chooses it, but most just like to live the normal lifespan, which is 400 years. All humans posses drug glands.
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BIOLOGY / PHYSIOLOGY
The Culture is a posthuman society, which originally arose when seven or eight roughly humanoid space-faring species coalesced into a quasi-collective (a group-civilization) ultimately consisting of approximately thirty trillion (short scale) sentient beings (this includes artificial intelligences).
In Banks' universe, a good part (but by no means an overwhelming percentage) of all sentient species is of the "pan-human" type, as noted in Matter. It is not explained how this similarity in many species came about.
Although the Culture was originated by humanoid species, subsequent interactions with other civilizations have introduced many non-humanoid species into the Culture (including some former enemy civilizations), though the majority of the biological Culture is still pan-human.
All members are also free to join, leave, and rejoin, or indeed declare themselves to be, say, 80% Culture.
The degree of enhancement found in Culture individuals varies to taste, with certain of the more exotic enhancements limited to Special Circumstances personnel (for example, weapons systems embedded in various parts of the body).
Most Culture individuals opt to have drug glands that allow for hormonal levels and other chemical secretions to be consciously monitored, released and controlled. These allow owners to secrete on command any of a wide selection of synthetic drugs, from the merely relaxing to the mind-altering.
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Now that may sound boring to some, no? So where is the problem? Where is the story you say?
Well, the series involves the Cultures interaction with other Civilizations. The Culture has organizations dedicated to this.
CONTACT : Contact's role within the Culture is to coordinate interactions with other civilizations: equivalent to a Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence combined in this universe. In the case of less-developed civilizations, Contact normally acts to minimise the potential culture shock resulting from contact with the technologically-advanced Culture. Sometimes, where the Culture believes it can help (in some capacity), Contact directly intervenes in other civilizations.
Where these interventions require actions that exceed the moral and knowledge capacity of Contact, a branch of it, known as Special Circumstances comes into play.
SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES : Special Circumstances, abbreviated SC, is a 'secret service'-type organisation that exists within the fictional anarchist utopian science fiction civilisation known as the Culture. It forms a background and plot device in several novels and shorter works of Iain M. Banks.
Special Circumstances is part of a larger fictional Culture organisation called Contact, which coordinates Culture interactions with (and in) other civilisations. SC exists to fulfil this role when circumstances exceed the moral capacity of Contact, or where the situation is highly complex and requires highly specialized skills, such as in The Player of Games. Special Circumstances also does the 'dirty work' of the Culture, a function made especially complicated by the normally very high ethical standards the Culture sets itself. SC acts in a way that has been compared with the democratising intentions of real-world liberal intent on overcoming the world's (and especially other nation's) evils by benign interference.
In each book, they have to deal with very unique problems. All of them are not just meeting a civilization and interacting with them. They are much more complex and involve completely different problems and storyline's.
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Where to start?
Let me preface by saying that the Culture novels are not related to each other, but they are!!!! *GASP*. The story, characters and setting in each one changes. but the foundation is the same.
The usual answer will be from the start, but the first book in the Culture series is heavy. Some find it humourless and strict. It is a character study. If you are up for it then start from the beginning.
If you want something a little on the lighter side, with an incredible story then start with The Player of Games.
You can even pick up any random Culture novel and read. I say start with the first two because down the line when you get to other novels, you will understand the inside jokes and smaller details MUCH better.
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The Novels:
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.
Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.
The Culture - a human / machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy.
Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game ... a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death.
The first ever collection of Iain M. Banks's short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, 'The State of the Art'. This is a striking addition to the growing body of Culture lore, and adds definition and scale to the previous works by using the Earth of 1977 as contrast.
The other stories in the collection range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear the indefinable stamp of Iain M. Banks's staggering talent.
The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks or military action.
The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought.
The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a burnt-out case. But not even its machine intelligence could see the horrors in his past.
Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.
Now it is back.
In the winter palace, the King's new physician has more enemies than she at first realises. But then she also has more remedies to hand than those who wish her ill can know about.
In another palace across the mountains, in the service of the regicidal Protector General, the chief bodyguard too has his enemies. He also has at least one person he cares for deeply and who cares for him, though neither can risk saying so.
Spiralling round a central core of secrecy, deceit, love and betrayal, two stories - linked more closely than even those involved can know - climb to a devastating climax.
It was one of the less glorious incidents of the Idiran wars that led to the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported. Now, eight hundred years later, the light from the first of those ancient deaths has reached the Culture's Masaq' Orbital. For the Hub Mind, overseer of the massive bracelet world, its arrival is particularly poignant. But it may still be eclipsed by events from the Culture's more recent past.
When the Chelgrian Ziller, a composer of great renown now living in self-imposed exile, learns that an emissary from his home world is being sent to Masaq' Orbital, he fears the worst: that the Chelgrians want him to return. A considerable debt is owed to the Chelgrians, but Ziller is an honoured guest on their world and the Culture would not force him to leave.They know that they are facing a slight diplomatic problem. However, Ziller is not the only thing on the Chelgrian emissary's mind. If his mission is successful, it will illuminate the Culture's future as well as its past.
In a world renowned within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever.
Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has become an agent of the Culture's Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilisations throughout the greater galaxy.
Concealing her new identity - and her particular set of abilities - might be a dangerous strategy. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone elses war is never a simple matter.
It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters.
It begins with a murder.
And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.
Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture.
Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful - and arguably deranged - warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war - brutal, far-reaching is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it's about to erupt into reality.
It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the centre of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether.
The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, provably, the End Days for the Gzilt civilization.
An ancient people, organized on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture ten thousand years earlier and were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they've made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilizations; they are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new and almost infinitely more rich and complex existence.
Amid preparations though, the Regimental High Command is destroyed. Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont appears to have been involved, and she is now wanted - dead, not alive. Aided only by an ancient, reconditioned android and a suspicious Culture avatar, Cossont must complete her last mission given to her by the High Command. She must find the oldest person in the Culture, a man over nine thousand years old, who might have some idea what really happened all that time ago.
It seems that the final days of the Gzilt civilization are likely to prove its most perilous.
About the author:
Iain [Menzies] Banks was born in Fife in 1954, and was educated at Stirling University, where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology.
Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984.
His first science fiction novel, Consider Phlebas, was published in 1987. He has continued to write both mainstream fiction (as Iain Banks) and science fiction (as Iain M. Banks).
He is now acclaimed as one of the most powerful, innovative and exciting writers of his generation: The Guardian has called him "the standard by which the rest of SF is judged". William Gibson, the New York Times-bestselling author of Spook Country describes Banks as a "phenomenon".
Iain M. Banks lives in Fife, Scotland.
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I hope you enjoy reading the novels, and hopefully this thread has been helpful to newcomers.
If you need more info, go to the Culture Wiki page. TONS of informations here.
Just be careful as it contains spoilers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture
No trolling or spoiling books, or you will be Slap Droned D:<
