Around the same time I was reading "Look to Windward", I stumbled upon Underworld. I particularly loved their song "Jumbo" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URHfUV5GkkE&ab\_channel=SpamersMale). The upbeat, joyful, and "warm" electronic sounds (I'm not technically versed in describing music as you can tell) made me feel like I was on the Masaq' Orbital taking in every second of life in strides as I live it up to the fullest. Another song that gave me similar vibes to living in a utopia is "Everything is going to be ok" from the 2017 game "Prey" soundtrack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr1zrntLNp8&ab\_channel=SomeNerdyGamer).

Are there any other songs with similar vibes to this? Preferably in the electronic genre. Thanks!

I had a really fun time with the book in general. And by chance I went to a Pompeii exhibition while reading which gave me more appreciation of excavation section of the book.

I did have one lingering question that I don't remember a resolution to, and I can't find anyone discussing it online.

Who was behind the communication device shaped like a small globe that spoke to Oramen?

They seemed to have knowledge of something dangerous being buried, they seemed sympathic to the Oct and didn't seem to care for the Aultridia.

I can't put it together though, was it a dissenting Oct maybe? I feel like I missed something.

As I recall, an orbital is around 10M km in circumference (so 3.2M km diameter). So the inside surface is about 1.6M km from the central star.

It rotates in about 1 "standard day" and this rotation generates about 1 "standard gravity".

(I checked these numbers with ChatGPT and this configuration would result in a "gravity" value of about the same as Earth's gravity - so this checks out.)

But how does an Orbital have a day / night cycle if it is orbiting a star and everyone is on the inside surface? Is there something like a dark shield that casts a shadow on half the Orbital?

That's also extremely close to the central star. How does the heat of the star not make the inside surface uninhabitable?

I realize that the Culture has incredible force field technology, so they can make a force field that shades 1/2 the Orbital and another that controls the intensity of the starlight. But did Banks ever discuss his thoughts on how Culture handles this?

The Edgewall is where Horza is going with CAT for the first time. I reread the series and realized I don’t know what the Edgewall looks like. Are there any pictures of it, or how did you imagine it? How is it visually connected to the Eaters' planet?

Maybe it was immature to lust after revenge, but fuck that; let the fuckers die horribly. Well, let them die. She'd compromise that far. Evil wins when it makes you behave like it, and all that. Very very very hot now, and getting woozy. She wondered it it was oxygen starvation making her feel woozy, or the heat, or a bit of both. Feeling oddly numb; hazy, dissociated. Dying. She'd be revented, she guessed, in theory. She'd been backed up; everything up to about six hours ago copied, replic-able. But that meant nothing. So another body, vat-grown, would wake with her memories - up to that point six hours ago, not including this bit, obviously - so what? That wouldn't be her. She was here, dying. The self-realisation, the consciousness, that didn't transfer; no soul to transmigrate. Just behaviour, as patterned. All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself. Very specific; this bit, here, right now. All the rest was fantasy. Nothing was ever identical to anything else because it didn't share the same spacial coordinates; nothing could be identical to anything else because you couldn't share the property of uniqueness. Blah blah; she was drifting now, remembering old lessons, ancient school stuff. "What's -?" Pathetic last words.

Some of Banks’ writing is so impactful to me when he touches on more existential topics. The way that life and mortality is warped in these books gives rise to such interesting perspectives and, however obvious they are, some of the ideas like the emboldened passage above are so well written and make me love his work so much more.

It makes me wonder how I would go about the many options that members of the Culture and other civs have around death and afterlives. Would you want to be revented? reincarnated? stored? just.. dead? sent to heaven or some other virtual afterlife? or something else I haven’t thought of..

In the Culture novels it is mentioned multiple times that Culture people almost always have a slight hidden sense of superiority over other civilisations that sometimes slips out. This is pretty understandable considering what society they live in and in my impression they aren't overly arrogant, they always try to understand others and sometimes it is even detrimental because they understand their enemy to well and sympathise (like in Consider Phlebas). But I've been reading a Culture fanfiction recently and I feel like the author diald the arrogance up to eleven. The characters are an adult SC Culture agent and a Culture child that visit a earth like civilisations and the child constantly calls the natives barbarians. This might just be because he's a child but that didn't seem like the Culture in the books. Do you remember anything like that in the books ?

Just finished Inversions and loved it, some classic Banks moral conundrums in there. Most of the hidden meaning is clear to me, but I wondered about the mentions of 'rocks from the sky' disrupting their society (and possibly killing the old King? I can't remember) and whether it's possible this was a Culture accident of some sort - would explain why Vosill was sent by SC to exercise some soft power and smooth things out politically. Perhaps they felt some responsibility for the events and wanted to make amends. I don't recall SC getting involved in other civilisations without good reason. Anyway interested to hear what people think!

“A Region of the brain that shows a sex difference in its average size is the ‘bed nucleus of the stria-terminalis’. This is where the amygdala begins to send projections into the hypothalamus.

There’s one type of neuron in the stria with a certain kind of neurotransmitter that is reliably twice the size in males than in females. So much so that you can reliably determine the sex of an individual based on the number of those neurons.

(Example of sexual dimorphism)

There was an interesting study conducted by neuroanatomists that concluded that trans individuals had a ‘stria terminalis’ with a size that corresponded to the sex they identified with, not the sex they were born as.

What this study suggests is that trans individuals don’t just feel like they are a different sex - but that they ended up with the wrong gendered body.

These are individuals who are chromosomally of one sex, in terms of their gonads they’re of that sex, in terms of their hormones they’re of that sex, in terms of their genitalia & secondary sexual characteristics they’re of that sex - but they’re insisting “this isn’t who I really am”, that region of the brain agrees with them. (the stria terminalis)”

• Robert Sapolsky

“Marain, the Culture’s quintessentially wonderful language (so the Culture will tell you), has, as any schoolkid knows, one personal pronoun to cover females, males, in-betweens, neuters, children, drones, Minds, other sentient machines, and every life-form capable of scraping together anything remotely resembling a nervous system and the rudiments of language (or a good excuse for not having either).

Naturally, there are ways of specifying a person’s sex in Marain, but they’re not used in everyday conversation; in the archetypal language-as-moral-weapon-and-proud-of-it, the message is that it’s brains that matter, kids; gonads are hardly worth making a distinction over.”

• Echoes Robert Sapolsky & neuroanatomists findings that individuals can be born with brains that have bodies of the wrong sex (stria terminalis)

I originally wrote some of this up as an argument against the US presidential administration’s decision to force trans individuals to label official documents with the gender they were born as not that they identify with. That last bit about the finding that people can be born with mismatched brains & bodies causing gender dysphoria inspired me to find the quote from player of games on the same topic. Thoughts?

• my argument of course, is that just like in the culture quote, it’s brains that matter most here.

I've put generated a dependency graph for the Culture series reading order. The idea is that if there's an arrow from book A to book B, then to get the most possible enjoyment from either A or B, A should be read before B. Here is the graph, and >!< is the vizgraph description file that lists my rationale for each dependency.

Assuming one agrees with the graph, the set of ideal reading orders (that is, the set such that for all orders it contains, no order exists which is strictly better) is the set of topological sorts of the graph.

This gives the number of possible ideal orders as 63840. That's a lot of good ways to do it!

Please let me know what connections I've overlooked— I'm sure there are some.

Given the serious issues about the future safety of AGI in the human realm (not Generative AI, but General AI, as I'm sure you clever people know), has any of the Culture books ever addressed the question of what stopped the god-like Minds from simply taking over?

There's a comforting sense throughout the books that, for reasons unknown, all Culture AI's share a benevolent nature and are happy to serve, even though they are treated as equals as far as I can see.

Has this ever been explored?

Hi all, wondering if there are any online sources where I can find visualisations (pictures / backgrounds / 3d models etc) of anything Culture related eg other than the books cover art?

Azad is just Settlers of Catan.

Of course, the board is 1,001 tiles across.

I love the Culture but this book is sooo slooow! I've put it down many times recently.

I have read all the Iain M. Banks books and love them dearly, having read some several times, but Look to Windward and Feersum Endjinn leave me struggling to get up to speed, and ultimately unsatisfied.

Does anyone feel the same way about these or any other of the books?

Why bother with things like caring about the price of salvaged materials?

They could just get a ticket to the nearest Culture world and live in a utopia of Fully Automated Luxury Communism. >!They were even on a Culture GSV where they could have just ditched their lives of worrying about money for new lives where they would never have to worry about money ever again.!<

edit. I know that if Earth made contact with another civilization that was basically The Culture I would get a ticket over there. If I couldn't get one for free I would take out as many credit cards and payday loans as it would take to pay for a ticket, max them out and get out of here.

Honestly, the damage players were kind of refreshing. That game is about bluffing and lying, but the players are probably the most honest characters in that book

Idk, Balveda is never dishonest. Doesn’t need to be.

She doesn't lie, much. My point is in a galaxy where everyone's gambling in lives. At least the Damage players aren't trying to pretend it's anything more than that.

He made a brilliant point that I’d never considered before. Just wanted to share it with you all.

So basically I'm a citizen quite obsessed with the idea of cosplaying as Adam Smasher or as a very modded SC member. So how much would the Minds allow me to be modded without me having to outright join Contact? Could I get something like antigrav mods, low intensity lasers (relatively speaking, because I assume it would be like using a 40k lasgun), a civilian drone circuits upon my mind, some mods to survive having some of my vital organs being ripped off, and enough armour and fields to survive a car hitting me, make me able to survive the void of space.

I don't care about getting drone slapped for a while. Is because I like cosplaying and a bit of prepperism.

Shits real boys n gals

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DC5UKc0xCfv/?igsh=bXV0a3BhbnJrc2t5

It’s really a thing.

I just finished the Hydrogen Sonata.

I feel a mix of Sadness and nostalgia because it's the last Culture book there is, but also happiness because it was an amazing book and an amazing series in general and I think I've changed for the better through reading it.
The Hydrogen Sonata was a really interesting story with incredible characters, and some that were really detestable but still incredibly well written. I felt unsure about Cagad Agansu and Septame Banstegeyne just getting to sublime but Banstegeyne finally had his actions catch up to him and he was mentally destroyed because he killed his lover and Agansu never got his final victory, he got completely crippled and couldn't even really be there for the final battle. I guess it's the point of subliming that what you did in the physical doesn't really matter anymore.

I was also really surprised that Vyr decided not to sublime and her final call with her mother when she told her "Yes, you can, mother" after her mother told her she can't sublime without her. It was also a really beautiful moment when she finally finished playing the Hydrogen Sonata.

I still have some mixed feelings about subliming, it makes me a bit uncomfortable.

I do have a couple questions, I remember someone on this subreddit saying that at some point in the Hydrogen Sonata a Mind said that Ngaroe QiRia was the perfect image of a Culture citizen, but I don't remember anything even close to that in the book.
I also remember someone talking about a group of ships that don't really want to interact with the main Culture and just stay by themselves, am I mixing things up because I also don't remember anything about that in the Culture series.

I read that the range of the grid fire is 50 light years but I did not understand the meaning, the projectile/beam is influenced by the speed of light and therefore once fired the shot travels for 50 light years before dissipating or thanks to its hyperspatial nature it immediately reaches the target through the grid

So I just re-read Matter.

This is a rude/blasphemous thing to suggest, but was Ferbin a totally unnecessary character?

Yes he's a primary protagonist. Yes he has character development. But if he wasn't in the book, Djan Seri would have still been going to Sursamen anyway.

Maybe tweak a few details about how the info gets to Djan and the book would be a few hundred pages shorter?

Oramen could have served as the tragic family connection totally fine.

Of course the real answer is this Banks is the author and he can do what he likes. Rightly so. I'm just wondering what a really ruthless cutthroat editor would say?

As a comparison I guess lots of people would say that A Song of Ice and Fire could have been shorter with vicious editing. And the early to mid Ferbin sections of Matter really remind me of that series

P.S. That ending absolutely blew me away the first time. The descent to the core and rapid escalation following Oramen's death really snuck up on me so fast the second time.

All my homies hate Liseidens

When I'm playing tennis, sometimes I imagine I'm an avatar of a ship who can calculate exactly where the ball will be/should be, and can make impossible shots possible.

You?

Hi fellow Culture-heads, I wonder if the group mind can help with this one.

Put simply, why are Vossil and De War on the same planet as each other?

De War's bedtime stories of Lavishia suggest that Vosill, pro-intervention, is on the planet as part of an SC operation. Her knife missile etc. seem to confirm this.

In the Lavishia tales De War, anti-intervention, appears to leave the Culture altogether and (like Linter in State of the Art) go native, live a life of self-exile on some primitive planet.

If we're reading this correctly, then I think the question arises - how come the planet De War has chosen for his exile happens to be the same planet where his old pal is doing SC work?

Or, put the other way round, how come SC chooses the exact planet De War has chosen for his exile to carry our some SC intervention, using De War's old pal as the agent?

It can't possibly be coincidence, in a galaxy so big, with a Culture so very clever at finding things out.

So either one or the other chose that planet deliberately, knowing the other to be there.

But why? Neither shows any indication of being aware that the other is there, just over the horizon.

They're each attached to opposite sides, but why is De War attaching himself to power if he doesn't believe in intervention? Why is he protecting the protector, if not to aid the advance of Ur Leyn's revolution?

And isn't the aim of De War ultimately the same as that of Vosill - to encourage the world's evolution out of the dark ages?

Thoughts welcome!

I live in mainland Europe and I'm not sure where my bookstore ordered my books from (US? UK? I should ask next time), but last year I collected all the 10 Culture Books throughout the months and the mass market paperbacks were fine, nothing to write home about, but fine. I just got 'Against A Dark Background', not Culture, but part of the same connected spine Iain M. Banks series and its such an idiotic downgrade that it baffles me. It went from the fairly standard matte cardboard feeling material to the very obvious poorly pressed together cover with the glossy finish that you know the plastic layer is gonna peel off soon enough. The blacks also look deeper now, but not necessarily in a good way, especially next to the other books in the connected spine series. Pictures dont do it much justice just how much its a downgrade but I added them anyway.

https://i.imgur.com/mDLyjs3.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/kJ0952I.jpeg

I walked through the «Frogner park» just as they met there in the book.

I was gifted the first three books a few years ago and finally decided to sit down and read them. I started with Consider Phlebas. I loved it at first, was a good book. Then we got to the ending, and everyone dies. The whole story was pointless, and frankly needlessly so. I don’t like that I spent so long reading this book just for everyone to die. It feels… rude, and insulting on behalf of the author. There’s no point to the story at all, no triumphant victory or even a somber retreat, it just ends. There’s no lesson to be learned, no satisfaction to be had. There’s not even the promise of a sequel. It’s like Iain popped out at the end just to say “Oh, by the way, fuck you!” I don’t understand why anyone would enjoy this. Are the rest of the books any good, at least?

Edit: Holy shit this made some people mad lmao, but most of y’all are alright. I’ve changed my mind a bit, I’m still not satisfied with the ending, (I feel like it came out of the blue and was just a bit too chaotic and random) but I can see the appeal of this universe, it’s very well world built. I’m gonna give Player of Games a chance tomorrow, thanks to everyone here who was chill, the rest of y’all oughta go touch grass

I would make this a poll, but, for whatever reason, the post creator will not let me, so I will just ask. Mawhrin-Skel was Flere-Imsaho in disguise (or maybe the other way around). Did you see it coming before the last two words of the book? If so, where?

We can all agree that the world was robbed of Banks’ talent way too early. I would have loved to see another Culture novel or twelve. But which aspects of the Culture would you like to have seen further developed?

I’d like to see more on family life and young people - how it is for people growing up in the Culture. Perhaps a novel with a young adult as a main character.

I’d also have loved a novel focusing on Uplift of a newly contacted species. The problems that arise as people adjust to a completely upended reality, etc. SOTA touches on this to some degree, but I would like to have seen the theme explored further.

Perhaps also jumping back in time to an earlier phase in the Culture’s development could be interesting. It might hit some of the same notes as above - adjusting to new reality. But also exploring how it came to be, the early coalition of spacefaring species, the inevitable internal conflicts and machinations.

What would you wish for in a (sadly only hypothetical) future Culture novel from Banks?

We know from Excession that the Cultures has Universities, but how do you think they learn ? In the Hydrogen Sonata a lot of information and even basic understanding of an alien language are downloaded pre digested into the mind of a character, so to what extent do you think do they need to learn ? Maybe they don't really learn information like us but more techniques and methodes. How to think, analyse, solve problems. I'm completely speculating, but maybe downloading information directly into the mind isn't good or easy to do when humans are still children, so they would need to learn at that point in their life. What do you think ?

There have always been rumours about Culture series adaptations. I don't know who currently holds the rights, but I'd love to see a film or limited TV series set in the Culture universe. It would be cool to experience Orbitals or GSVs in full cinematic glory, and see what a visual storyteller does with the books given there are so many inventive sequences.

That said, you often read about certain IPs being 'unfilmable', and I wondered how that would apply to the Culture - especially if you factor in 'justifiable' changes. So here's my take in 'filmability' ranking order with some notes. I'd love to hear what other people think.

1. Inversions: Almost no one's favourite, but unquestionably the easiest to adapt. You basically just need to build a lot of medieval sets. The drama is also quite intimate, no big action set pieces required. Would be a weird choice to adapt first, though, given the lack of Culture context.

2. Consider Phlebas: First in the series is usually a good place to start adapting. Phlebas is also trying to be an exciting space opera, and was the one of the books Banks was most keen to see adapted. I'd change small details like the excrement eating, and probably ensure there's a likeable character that survives and could feature in a sequel.

3. The Player of Games: In some ways this would be straightforward to adapt. It's a very streamline narrative, very much Gurgeh's story. Azad the empire would be great visual world-building and the fire planet would be cinematic. Main issue is that Azad the game is very vaguely referred to in the books, and you'd need to visualise it in a way that makes sense.

4. Matter: You'd need to simplify, cut meandering middle bits, but at it's heart this has potential as a triple pov blockbuster style space opera. The biggest change I'd make: people on the Shellworld don't know about the outside universe to start, and the audience learns that with them. I would argue if you went for this approach this would be a good first adaptation.

5. Use of Weapons: This would be a very practical adaptation in some ways as a lot of the settings aren't too outlandish, and there's a single character focus (Zakalwe). I could see the twist being something that generates a lot of interest. A question is how you make the twist work if the backstory is visualised - and how much of the 'numeral' chapter you show.

6. The Hydrogen Sonata: I think there's a lot in here that would work visualised (the Girdlecity, Elevenstring, the Last Party, the Sound sequence, the drone sand garden, etc). I can't think of anything that's particularly unfilmable, but it's also not the most exciting plot, so you might want to ramp up the stakes somewhat.

7. Look to Windward: This would be great to see adapted as it's the best look at what life is like for a Culture citizen. Two issues here, though. First, the VFX would be really expensive to do. Second, I think you'd need to know the Chelgrian mission earlier to hook audiences in and maintain tension levels. It's a slow novel, which doesn't lend itself to a big budget adaptation.

8. Surface Detail: Another space opera, but the Hells are problematic. How hardcore do you go? There's also a lot of virtual world pivoting that might lose a lot of people at the pace of a film. It's definitely not one you'd be looking to adapt first.

9. Excession: Some of my favourite bits in the Culture series is the ships talking to each other. But how do you visualise that and make it compelling? I guess you could use avatars meeting in virtual space, but does that 'humanise' the Minds too much? This is a tricky one to adapt, I think.

A final thought from me: continuity between adaptations. It's fine to have standalone stories, and I doubt many fans would want a Marvel-like interconnected Culture cinematic universe where you have to have seen everything else for the current story to fully make sense. But using some consistent characters could maintain interest and help with familiarity in future adaptations. Some characters like Sma and Zakalwe pop up in different novels so it's not a stretch to expand this idea.