Anyone else getting a bit fed up with the delays of The Algebraist read by Peter Kenny on Audible? It's now been delayed by a month and a half. Also does anyone have any inside knowledge of why it keeps getting delayed?

What fictional settings and characters would you like to see the Culture interact with and vice versa?

I’d like to see how they’d respond to Mr. Mxyzptlk from DC wreaking havoc and mischief for his amusement across the galaxy. How would they respond to someone they have no feasible way to stop through their usual means?

For any creature below 1.0 sentience level, what rights do they have? How does that work?

Honestly I still think a Culture TV show would be better, but this just occurred to me as a possibility

https://youtu.be/cntb3wcZdTw?si=1NTimrxw-UOLczY6

Here me out on this one, I think Taika wititi would do great. To be clear I'm not talking about his marvel stuff as reference. (although Ragnarok was pretty good)

I'm talking about his smaller stuff like Jojo rabbit, and that interesting movie about soccer on a tiny island.

Im not sure he matches the tone for the books as a whole, but I really think his total lack of fucks to give, and the genuinely chill personality of his movies would really capture the vibe of the culture.

:Edit ignore the Akira comments, you see nothing. I made no oopsy the comments are lies!

I recently read the Player of Games (my first Culture book) and found out that Elon has named a few space x shuttles after ships in the book and I assume is a fan of some kind. Isn't the whole premise of The Culture pretty opposite to everything that man stands for on multiple levels - economically, culturally, socially, it's gender beliefs etc. Am I missing something? Does Elon have low reading comprehension? Do you think he's actually read any of the books? Lol.

Steve Mould just released this video about propagating flames.
Halfway through they've done a calculation about how 'long' a circular forest have to be to support a never ending forest fire traveling through it!

Now there's explained that the forest can re-ignite it self. But it still fun to imagine the planet being roughly twice earth, or covered in bamboo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqhXQUzVMlQ&ab\_channel=SteveMould

So I have the version published in 2000 and on page 94 the lines seem to be wavey o's this meant to be like this or do I have a misprint

The 3D is our space, then we have the Minds who use 4D, the Sublimed use the 7th and up. But what are those 5th to 6th dimensions used? Could a Mind go into there and potentially become more powerful? Or can they be used to miniaturise the electronics even more? So I can run a Mind-like computer in my smartphone?

I seriously enjoyed Hydrogen Sonata and Excession, reading the high tech adventures of Minds and humans made for some great reading. But i tried to read Surface Matter and The Use of Weapons, and found them a little dark and depressing compared to the others and what the Culture is about.

Which of the other books in the series would you say are not depressing and are captivating like Excession?

I probably don't fully understand how society works in those habitats inhabited by plus size humans but, isn't that basically what the Culture is?

Sorry if I'm a noob in all this. I'm genuinely curious. Thank you.

So I the book exession can remeber it word for word but one charecter says the minds can have sex is it ever explained what they do when they are "having sex"

https://www.udio.com/playlists/kbnzG4SMSTHLXNepp8RM9F

Including two original versions and selected extended versions .

https://www.foliosociety.com/summer-collection-sign-up

The Folio Society has given some hints about its upcoming summer releases of fancy hardback editions, and it looks like The Player of Games is among them (hint #5). After releasing Consider Phlebas in May 2023 this would finally indicate they will actually continue this series. Hopefully they can accelerate the pace a bit. :)

Beyond esoteric stuff like metamatics, since in the Iridian War The Culture of that time was legitimately afraid that the Homonda would get involved. And since that also means the Minds of that time knew they couldn't just use some wondertech that the organics wouldn't be able to decipher, that only leaves an hypothetically advantage of speed from the Culture that could be countered by a sufficiently old civilizations with more knowledge.

Or is there something that the Minds could build that others cannot? And I mean as a fundamental thing, not that an organic civilization could do it after some centuries.

Is this deliberate, or an oversight?

Just relistened to the excellent BBC 4 dramatization at https://youtu.be/IRl9D_agLbU

It strikes me that this story may have inspired Elon Musk to launch a red Tesla roadster into space. My copy of the book has a fine B&W woodblock print of a [red] Volvo station wagon floating between the moon and Earth.

I’m getting a cat soon and am thinking of naming it either Diziet(Sma) or Genar(Hofoen) after my favourite characters. I’d love a ship name but I don’t think The Grey Area or meat fucker would go down well with literally everybody. Im interested, has anyone else named a pet after a Banks culture character?

I know reading order doesn't really matter but I've also seen people saying that Hydrogen Sonata makes sense as the last book.

Long story, but I've read all of the Culture books except those two. I had them both checked out from the library and started Surface Detail on a plane..... and left the book on the plane.

Now I have to wait thirty days for the airline to do their lost item recovery thing. I don't really want to report it to the library until I'm sure it's gone, because it's a big expensive library binding edition.

So can I start reading Hydrogen Sonata while I wait? I've really loved this series and I don't want to screw up the experience of finishing it.

I just started reading this book was just wondering how good is? Well compared to Consider Phlebas since that’s the only Culture book I finished.

So I finished the state of the art book then got to the short story scratch and Jesus is there even a story what does this entire book seem like he was on cocain the whole time

Please forgive me but Banks seemed to have a fine sense of humor.

https://www.udio.com/songs/nxMTa99ZRukPBpR16suCVc

I thought 1 was interesting, but I didn’t really get the hype. Then I absolutely loved two, but book three is really not for me. I think I’m ready to stop, but I wasn’t sure if this was a common experience

Edit: thank you all for your recommendations!

From State of the Art:

They have ... disposable clothes and fashions that mean changing your clothes every year, every season! -' ... 'Compared to them, the Culture moves at a snail's pace!'

On GSVs, I had the belief that everyone was pretty much always in costume for some event, and access to replicators means you can go on never wearing the same outfit twice. I would expect life on orbitals and small crew ships (where Sma spends most of her time) to be different, but most Culture citizens live on GSVs that are basically party yachts/cruise ships 24/7 with a Mardi Gras every week.

Does it really make sense for them to have a slow pace for clothing fashion? Or is fashion pushed on Earth primarily for capitalistic/scarcity status reasons?

I could see a post-scarcity utopia having more fashion trends and cycles because more people could devote their lives to designing clothes. Given the population of the Culture, surely they have more fashion designers that are doing it because they love it, and not because they need to make money. And they would have basically infinite resources to pursue that vocation, as well as multiple Earth lifetimes to do it.

Remember the eponymous "drug bowls" that were littering certain kinds of recreational activities in The Culture?

Guess what: https://twitter.com/crazyclipsonly/status/1776987608792355189

I just finished the final book, Hydrogen Sonata. I am extremely sad that this is it. But after some reflection I wonder who could beat out the Culture? It is the most advanced and amazingly benevolent(yet capable of precision destruction) faction that I’ve ever read of. They seem almost godlike in comparison to some of the other scifi that I’ve read. Thoughts? I ask this because I would love to read whatever you suggest could take them on.

Yeah, I know that existential dread can be amplified by external stressors, like ahem, living on a dystopic neoliberal quasi-fascist phase of human civilization, but what about on The Culture, there must be at least some people (based on statistics) that had a severe case of existential dread and are constantly worrying about highly abstract things like the far future, the end of the universe, or if the Sublimed really exist or even if they are even sapient, what about those who feel like Subliming is just becoming part with a multiversal Eldrich being.

Or people who cannot find solace in that not even Minds are capable of controlling and knowing everything, and that science cannot explain everything.

There’s a Mind with the name “bodhisattva” in surface detail, when I first read it the name caught my eye immediately. So, naturally I looked up the definition as there’s always a double meaning to the names. The definition is as follows: (in Mahayana Buddhism) a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save suffering beings.

This seems to be a sort of analogy for the culture as a whole, a whole society capable of reaching nirvana - subliming put another way - but sticking around to guide suffering beings, thwarting the worst of the galactic dark forest in a sense. (contact, SC etc)

I just finished Consider Phlebas, and I must have mixed up and ordered Use of Weapons instead of Player of Games.

I realized this after reading about 100 pages of UoW and am enjoying it - I ordered PoG but it won’t be in till Monday and I’d like to do some reading this weekend.

Think I’m good to keep reading or should I wait and read PoG first?