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.

Thought of an idea where someone from contact visits a rather high tech planet on a holiday because they liked it so much when they were there on a contact mission a long time ago (they suspended and the planet developed higher tech).

By pure chance while they are there they get recruited (basically kidnapped) into this planets version of contact and get made to control a fake person "clone-drone" that they have which takes a mind scan of them and periodically synces their mindstates so that they live two lives simultaneously.

So this drone-clone thing is on another world which is not very high tech and it turns out the culture already has a contact agent working there undercover trying to prevent something from happening but fake-contact wants it to happen so they end up completing with eachother and having to pretend to still be regular citizens of this planet and the protagonist is also still pretending to be a citizen of fake-contact planet and all the while they both know they're contact agents and it's kind of a humourous and competitive scenario for them but also dangerous for the protagonist due to the drone-clone holding part of their memories essentially hostage and being a little bit trapped on this high tech planet.

Anyway it turns out the whole thing was a joke setup by a culture mind and the AI mind of fake-contact and they both found it hilarious while the other culture minds were a little upset that they got made fun of in a "look how seriously you take this silly job" kind of way

I was going to post a screenshot of the listing on Blackwell’s website (rules for the sub don’t allow it), but I found a listing for:

“Untitled New Iain M. Banks 2”, current publication date is 12/25/2029.

Any ideas what this is..?

Maybe I need to re-read something. I remember a cafe scene in, I think, Phlebas where there's a normal citizen running a cafe because it brings him the most joy. And the horrid banquet in Excession of course.

What I don't remember is how culture citizens typically get their food. Are there star trek style replicators? Something else?

Are there limits to this? We know they create avatars which are sort of alive. But we also know they collect, store and exchange animals. So can they create physical life? Animals?

After reading the series, I'm still somewhat confused about Orbitals and plates.

In Player of Games, Yay wants to build a plate on Chiark with volcanoes. I took that to mean that Chiark was not "finished".

So are Orbitals built as a base ring of scrith or whatever exotic super strong material The Culture uses and then they fill in the blanks with land and water, etc? Seems like it, rather than building the O as all usable land right from the start.

title

The names of Culture ships are one of my favorite things in the series overall. If I remember correctly it's actually what allowed me to discover the series in a way, as I was playing an old video game (unrelated to the Culture) where a ship called the Inevitably Successful In All Circumstances exists and I heard rumors that name was inspired by Culture naming conventions.

All that being said I thought picking a ship name for oneself might make for an interesting discussion. I've only put a few minutes of thought into it so far so I'll probably think of something I like better but my favorite I have come up with so far is "Who Invited This Guy?". I would love to hear what other people come up with.

It's an absolutely stellar book when it comes to memorable characters, events and interactions between characters, and world building, but the story doesn't make any sense.

(Spoilers alert)

As I've said before in this sub, nothing about the ending makes sense. It doesn't make sense, for starters, for a huge galaxy of insanely powerful civilizations to concentrate 70% of their Hells (which the destruction could even compromise 100%, as it seems to have done) in the hands of a single civilian from a weak-ass level 5 civ. Not only that, he's also the most important and famous and rich guy of that weak-ass level 5 civ. So suppose that anyone just decides to read his mind for some other reason, as there could naturally be many due to his position (and not everyone is as adverse to it as the Culture), boom, there goes the secret location of 70% of the galaxy's Hells, which by the way are just left on some fields near his mansion with zero protection whatsoever.

Also doesn't make any sense that any respectable, non-weak-ass civ like the level 8 Culture and even their proteges level 7 GFCF would need a gazillion ships to destroy the Hells. The rational given for it was that any foreign ships approaching would trigger the Enablement's military defense and probably of whoever else was near, but you don't need any of that when you're a level 7-8 civ and your target is just some random unprotected unofficial location in a weak-ass level 5 civ planet. Stealth is more than enough. Literally smuggling some bot into the planet with a bomb/nuke would suffice. And a level 8 civ wouldn't have any problem clearing its tracks, because according to the books level 5 tech is considered bow and arrow comparing to level 8.

Thirdly, also doesn't make any sense the extreme inertia of the Culture and any other minimally benevolent and powerful civs regarding the Hells, whose existence is one of the worst things that could have ever happened by any sane moral standards, and would therefore justify way more effort and even risks than just agreeing to fight a decades-long virtual war over it. If the Hells were after all so easy to deal with as we've seen in the end, then I can't believe that literally millions of superintelligent AIs wouldn't have come up with that plan or something similar decades earlier.

Veppers' rationale for giving up the Hells makes no sense whatsoever. Iirc, it was because "they would soon go out of fashion, so let me just do away with them". This makes zero sense, because what about all those powerful guys that you'll be backstabbing by doing it? I'm actually happy that Demeisen only tortured him for a few seconds and killed him, because had the Nauptre or other bad guys got to him first, it would have been much uglier. And he's a smart guy, he knew this. So he just basically took tons of risk for little gain.

And finally, even the mere existence of Hells seems to me extremely unlikely in the type of galaxy that we're presented with, which seems mostly made of healthily advanced societies, with only a few deranged exceptions like the Nauptre. When you have no scarcity, tons of fun things to do, and a highly functioning and just society (like most level 7 and 8s seem to have, which are the truly powerful ones, i.e. the ones who truly call the cards... And even the lower levels like the Enablement don't seem that bad either), why the Hell (no pun intended) would you want to torture some of your own citizens forever? Doesn't make any sense. Again, it's plausible that a few of these mega advanced civs were run by totally deranged guys, like the Nauptre, but they don't seem to be the majority, nothing points in that direction whatsoever.

(As for religious reasons, first not all religions conjecture the existence of a Hell, and even more relevantly, it's also implied in the book that as societies mature they tend to become less religious. Hell (again, no pun intended), even ours at a mere level 3 is what it is already, let alone a level 7 or 8. This is also supported by common sense.)

Who would win? What if a group of Minds decided to leave the Culture and override their ethical programming to create a hypercapitalist civilization and psychology that only cares about maximizing growth and expansion, something Darwinian in nature? Not something stupid like the Idirans or Azad, a real technological rival to the Culture. Would this “civilization” out-compete, out-expand, surround and starve the Culture, leaving the rest of the galaxies past the Milky Way to this cancer? Or do you think such a civilization would collapse on itself because of its endless competition, an outcome similar most civilizations in Accelerando?

EDIT: I'm talking about in reality (our physical finite observable universe), not in the Culture universe where there are ways to get infinite energy.

Hi!

After finishing all the books from the Saga, I´m trying to reimagine some of the impressions I had during the read.

To start I made a short intro to The Hydrogen Sonata in the way I imagine the Universe of The Culture and some of the music ambience.

I hope you like it!

https://v.redd.it/xma9g8z24mde1

So I just finished Player of Games and previously read (well listened to on Audible) Consider Phlebas and I enjoyed both but I think I enjoyed Consider Phlebas a fair bit more than Player of Games.

Player of Games is interesting but I felt that it started dragging and relied on the end reveals about the true stakes of Azad and Flere-Imsaho's identity a bit too much to pull the story together for my liking.

After finishing both books I think I've realized a few things about what I'd be interested in for another culture book:

1. After having just read two where it's Culture vs Evil Empire I would be interested in a book where that's not the plot. Are most Culture books about this kind of Contact feeling they have a moral imperative? From what I know of Excession and Surface Detail seem to be similar in that regard.

2. I definitely preferred the larger (imo) focus on relationships and emotions that Consider Phlebas had compared to Player of Games. I felt a lot more emotions while reading it and emphasizing with characters more than in Player of Games (and once Gurgeh left Chiark he honestly didn't have many connections, mainly just being annoyed with a drone).

3. This isn't that important but I was not too big of a fan of Gurgeh. I know he's supposed to be a bit of a douche but I didn't find it particularly enjoyable to read. Horza is obviously not a great guy but I found his perspective a lot more enjoyable and personal than Gurgeh's. And a bit of a sidenote, I found it odd that Gurgeh constantly said "drone" and "ship", idk if this is just common practice but it felt weird for someone to the Culture to refer to people that way. It's what I'd expect from someone who didn't see them as people which would be an alien view in the Culture I imagine.

So I guess to summarize I am interested in Culture books where "Culture against Super Evil Empire" is not a plot point (if there are books like that) and Culture books that have more of a focus on the person and their relationships and emotions than Player of Games. Sorry if this is a bit of a ramble.

Edit: Thank you all for the responses, you guys are very accommodating !

Have you ever wondered about this? I guess because in later texts, so much of the plot is about interactions between a Culture ship and humans or agents aboard, I began to wonder if there is a ship tracking/following Balveda. If so, what assistance are they giving? Is she in touch with them? I can't remember if the quiet barrier prevents this. But, what about before they reach the glitter cliff (or whatever it's called).

Maybe this is common/available knowledge, or you have thoughts?

Substrate Independence is a term used to denote how the mind is a dynamic process & is not tied to a specific set of atoms as the body replaces them often. By understanding that process, it is one day hoped that it can be transferred to a more durable configuration than proteins.

Something like a high-fidelity neural lace would allow ones' mind to travel in a computer network or any other physical structure capable of supporting that dynamic process.

From Excession: “She could trace her ancestry back through fifty-four generations on Phage itself & numbered amongst her ancestors at least two forebears who were inevitably mentioned in even one-volume Histories of the Culture, as well as being descended from - as the fashions of the intervening times had ordained - people who had resembled birds, fish, dirigible balloons, snakes, small clouds of cohesive smoke and animated bushes.

The tenor of the time had generally turned against such outlandishness and people had mostly returned to looking more like people over the last millennium, albeit assuredly pretty good-looking people, but still, some part of one’s appearance was initially at least left to luck and the random nature of genetic inheritance…”

I wonder if our societies response to acquiring tech that allows substrate independence would take the shape of something like the “outlandish” fashion of strange bodies being the norm - as a sort of rebellion for effectively developing a ‘science of the soul’ and then after maturing a bit most folks re-adopting bodies that seem pretty human basic on the outside.

Thoughts?

Greetings fellow Culture fans, I was wondering if any of you had an inside word or hot tip as to how to get my hands on the complete Iain M. Banks edition's with the newest artwork from Orbit. All I can find are 404 pages on Orbit's website and on Amazon Germany the "box set" where the cover art is mismatched.

I rarely buy physical books anymore, but when I do I want them to be of high quality, and precisely what I want.

Cheers.

A the end of Player of Games, Flere-Imsaho >!recovers a mini projectile from the ashes!<, I missed when this item was used. Was it used?

In the novel Excession a cache of Culture ships is hijacked by the Affront with the help of a rogue culture ship and tricked into fighting other Culture ships. Part of the hijacking process involves the rogue ship lying to the wakening warships telling them that actual Culture ships they are being asked to attack are "Deluger" vessels impersonating Culture ships.

From this we can infer that Delugers are highly advanced as the awakened ships see at least one supposed Deluger ship performing at the level of a full Culture warship and not questioning it. Beyond this I haven't been able to find any other information about them. I expected more to be said about them before the end of the novel but I only have 2 chapters left and nothing more has been given. I realize this is pretty irrelevant to the plot of the novel but it piqued my curiosity. Is any more information given about these Delugers in later books or are they just a Macguffin never to be mentioned again?

Edit: We learned from this thread some people thought the Delugers were just a made up threat as part of the lie (an interesting possibility I hadn't even considered) but then it also turns out in another plot twist that Banks HAD mentioned Delugers in a throwaway paragraph earlier in the book that painted a picture of them as an aggressive and advanced civilization but most people never even made the connection. Banks, your dialogue game still needs serious work but your world building never fails to impress.

Banks was Scottish. 'You weapon' is Scottish slang, a bit like calling someone a tool or a pillock. So the title is kind of like 'what to do with jerks.'

For not even being from Death by Water it's a great, clever, self-subverting title.

This got a bit out of hand so I apologize for the length. I wanted to say more but its already a novel... :D

I can certainly see arguments for why there are better Culture books, but I think this one is my personal favorite culture novel so far. I can't think of anything I didn't like about this story. Not fast paced and even "slow" but I never got bored and I was always drawn in.

In my first review of Consider Phlebas and even in my review of Player of Games, I had a light critique of how all the apex species of home worlds in the galaxy seemed to be bipedal humanoids, which feels at best unrealistic and at worst... unimaginitive. Well this book at least took out the second issue I've had. Kabe might be one of my favorite characters in all of Culturedom and he's a tripedal spidery looking creature? He befriends two Chelgrians, also tripedal and catlike centaurish creatures who don't want to meet one another but communicate through Kabe. All these guys are buddies with the orbital and hang with one of its many many many avatars on a frequent basis. And then there's the behemothaurs! Space whales that are measured in square kilometers that float in a bubble of air surrounded by three sunlike spotlights and who live for millions of years... and possibly are the actual creatures that run the galaxy... maybe. These are honestly some of the best depictions of aliens who are relatable characters I've read in sci-fi.

We follow Quillan as he deals with the grief of the death of his wife. She is lost forever since her ship was attacked too quickly for her mind to be backed up. He is a truly broken person and can't get over the grief and simply wants to die. Since he has nothing to live for, he is easily manipulated into a terrorist plot against the culture. I kept rooting for him to reverse course but he ends up being apparently trapped when he starts to have second thoughts. I liked how his mission is being revealed as he starts remembering what it is due to his memories being blocked in case his mind is scanned. As he remembers the past, we are introduced to it.

We also follow the adventures of Ziller, a brilliant composer and Kabe who is trying to navigate an avoidance triangle of which he is the center. Ziller wants nothing to do with Quillan, who he thinks is there to try an convince him to come back to their home world. Due to the secret mission of Quillan, he doesn't actually want to meet Ziller. Kabe is pressured into trying to play match maker of sorts even though his heart isn't really in it.

It all ends in a deus ex machina where a literal machine, the hub, knew all along the secret plot and took care of the whole thing and nobody was ever in any real danger. Standard "nothing even happened" Culture novel...

But this wasn't a story about a terrorist plot.

I would like to go back and check now, but I believe every chapter where we're with Kabe, Ziller or Quillan, the Avatar is always present. We always learn a little more about the Hub's history until we learn that the Hub was once a mind in a warship during the Idiran war and was responsible for the deaths of 3492 sentient beings when destroying a number of orbitals. Not just responsible, it made a strategic decision to kill them and then intimately observed each of their deaths.

SOME WAYS OF DYING

This story is about a lot of things, but its really about death. But not in a terrifying fearful way. Death is a good thing to be embraced when it is time to go.

• We have the cases of people who decide not to back themselves up. The thrill seekers choose to risk permanent death because that makes the experience of living more vivid. They feel more alive. Occasionally some of them die.

• Quilan could truly not let go of his wife's death and wanted to die in return. He chose what he considered an honorable death but his only goal was to die. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I don't love the idea that death would have been the only option for him. He seemed to go too early, but also the story seems to be saying he is truly broken. Regardless, it is the path he chose to take and he had passed a point of no return.

• The Hub, AKA Lasting Damage, became tired of living:

I am tired, Quilan. I have waited for these memories to lose their force over the years and decades and centuries, but they have not. There are places to go, but either I would not be me when I went there, or I would remain myself and so still have my memories. By waiting for them to drop away all this time I have grown into them, and they into me. We have become each other. There is no way back I consider worth taking.

• Ilom Dolince lived over 400 years and eventually felt like his life was as full as it will ever get.

I've seen so much, done so much, that even with my neural lace trying to tie my elsewhere memories as seamlessly as it can into what's in my head, I can tell I've lost a lot from in here.' He tapped one temple. 'Not from my memory, but from my personality. And so it's time to change or move on or just stop.

None of the deaths we witness until the final couple chapters in the book are horrifying. Even in those, there is an act of justice and in the case of Uagen Zlepe, its not a permanent one. The rest are all positive in some way. Thrill seekers enhance their lives, knowing they may die. Quilan will finally be at peace and join his wife in her non-existence. Ilom is the other end of the Thrill seekers. He has already filled his life as full as it can get and is ready to end. Hub is ready to let go of the past and end its existence instead of forever trying to make up for the memories of the deaths he caused, completing its redemption arc.

Horror and fear are not the only ways to look at death. We can also look at it as a necessary part of life. We can choose to fear it or embrace it when it is time. I love this messaging since our every instinct is to want to live forever. We create religion as a way to avoid it. We think of ways in which we can extend our lives. The Culture has figured this out to a large extent. People can live basically forever if they want. Minds are basically immortal. Yet there are downsides to this as well.

LOOK TO WINDWARD

Hub says to Ziller:

And, as you might imagine, I consider that I have an obligation to discharge. I fully intend to spend the rest of my existence here as Masaq' Hub for as long as I'm needed or until I'm no longer welcome, forever keeping an eye to windward for approaching storms and just generally protecting this quaint circle of fragile little bodies and the vulnerable little brains they house from whatever harm a big dumb mechanical universe or any consciously malevolent force might happen or wish to visit upon them, specifically because I know how appallingly easy they are to destroy.

"Look to Windward" is from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem, "The Waste Land".

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Phlebas is a sailor who has died at sea. The poem is a warning that looking to the past will destroy you. No wonder Hub is ready to go. A part of him was already dead.

There's some validity to the argument that human agency is long gone in the Culture and that the Minds have eternal control, and further, would never release it; even breakaway groups like the Elench fear that the Culture continues to watch them from afar, waiting for them to come crawling back.

But personally, I'm of the opinion that the Minds are practically indistinguishable from their human creators, to the point that you could say the Culture still is human to its core from the top down. Now, that might offend some of the Minds, and they're certainly capable of a lot more than some random guy off the street, but at the same time, the Minds have to be human enough--with idiosyncrasies and quirks--to remain in the universe, and for them to service their human companions, most of them do actually have to share the empathy and solidarity required to carry out their objectives.

Like, I get where some of that anxiety comes from (reading Excession and the nightmare conspiracy theories of perfect AI overlords is a doozy) but idk, never struck me as a particularly strong argument against the Culture, because the AIs are by every meaningful measure human already.

Don’t have a copy with me but the island bit in Use of Weapons was pretty cool

Even though this is fiction, I know Banks wrote The Culture to show a vision of “fully automated space anarchist communism” that he hoped would become a reality sometime in the future. The only problem is The Culture has an infinite energy source, but our observable universe appears to be finite in mass/energy. With finite resources, would a similar system as the Culture be able to work in the future and become the most powerful and effective civilization? Maybe a hybrid of the Culture and capitalistic markets?

Anyone else feel that while the ideas and books are interesting, Banks story has some confusing pieces? Take Player of Games, amazing ideas in this book and in general the book was amazing, funny even mesmerizing to read. However it was disconcerting to find that we have no real idea how the Azad game actually works only glimpses of it. Also how is our protagonist able to be so good at the game in an year? Still found the book compelling and enjoyed reading it.

The next one I read was Use of Weapons. Boy this one really made me mad almost shake my head. Did Banks actually name the useless culture agent Ditzy?? Oh right it's Dizzy, huh? Did he make us follow an intricate plot to just tell us how it was useless as most of war is useless. Wait so the hero is the villain? Oh right the hints from earlier about the Bond villain like submarines and selling life extensions should have given it away?!

To be honest by the end I was not even clear if the Culture was able to influence the events in a way for the greater good or did everything fall apart not that it matters as the book is really about how war is awful and destroys everything. I mean to be honest a much worse book series like Hunger Games did a better job making me feel that war is awful no matter the final outcome. Also the glaring issue of what exactly are we even trying to accomplish as the Culture? Prevent war or push civilizations to evolve faster?

Reading Excession next. Wish me luck but use of weapons really burnt me a bit. I wonder if reading them in some other order would make me feel better about it all.

How would you improve the Culture’s quality of life?

It can be in terms of what’s plausible in the setting or something else entirely. The only rule is that it can’t be something completely ridiculous like every citizen gets their own universe or the powers of Superman.

My example would be readily accessible teleportation. A Culture citizen would be able to teleport to elsewhere on an Orbital, GSV etc. in an instant using small terminals placed in key areas.

Hello, I've been mulling an idea over in my head for a while now, for a fanfiction idea I had.

If an SC agent fully decked out, with all their augmentations active and equipment on, a bit like Djan Seiry Anaplian at the end of Matter, ended up stranded on a panhuman preindustrial planet (so no electronic devices to connect to with her sort of "effector" implant that Djan had), unable to contact the Culture with their current equipment, and with all the human equivalent or higher AI in their equipment facing some sort of malfunction that makes it so they can't help the SC agent for an unknown amount of time, could be a few months to a few years while the AI sort themselves out, leaving all the equipment working on the bare minimum systems( I invisage this as meaning that the SC agent has to either tell the equipment what to do with their mind lace or do it manually by pressing on buttons or other interfaces available), and the SC agent having no information on the species, except quickly noticing that they are panhuman, or the civilisations of the planet they find themselves on, including not knowing anything about their languages, do you think the agent would be able to decipher their language given enough time with only their own mind, mind lace and all the SC knowledge and training they have ?

I imagine that when the human equivalent and higher AI "wake up" they'll be able to help enormously since they probably have databases to help translate a language and can think far faster then humans, but before that the agent has to try by themself. (In this specific scenario I'm imagining the SC agent is accompanied by an SC drone, but it is facing the same malfunction as the other equipment)

I'm aware that such a situation is highly unlikely in the Culture, but please humour me for a while.

I don't remember in what book this was said, but I think it was mentioned that Culture humans are slightly more intelligent then normal humans but not by much, they aren't necessarily geniuses compared to us.

In "Player of Games" they say that in the Culture they don't play "normal" games like chess, but play games with random chance in the mechanics.

But why do they do that ?

I get that Minds can predict the perfect move in games like chess, but they would also win in games with random chance, they are simply far to intelligent.

And anyway humans probably aren't going to play against a Mind, that would be pointless.

So why don't they play "normal" games, if they aren't inherently more intelligent then us it should still be a challenge between humans.

Did I misunderstand something or did I forget something from the book ?

ive seen some ppl say that consider phlebas is a bad starting point for some altho its the first in the series, and that starting with player of games can be more enjoyable, so im not sure what book i wanna start out with - thanku in advance