A Few Questions About the Culture: An Interview with Iain Banks

http://strangehorizons.com/2014/20141103/1banks-a.shtml

by strlen • 12 years ago

154 86 12 years ago

cpeterso• 12 years ago

Perfect timing! I just finished Surface Detail about thirty minutes ago. :)

mbillie12• 12 years ago

I've always found the Culture a fascinating and refreshing alternative to the extremely played-out and commonplace dystopic visions of AI as exist in virtually all other science fiction. It's also interesting to think about how a post-scarcity society would function, particular as our society moves (ever so slowly) toward at least the full automation of labor, if not post-scarcity itself.

cstuder2• 12 years ago

The funniest thing about the books: They are mostly not about the Culture itself. Because it's boooooring.

The fringes are much more interesting.

Tloewald3• 12 years ago

Very true. Indeed several of the books are about the culture dealing with some kind of (generally not serious) crisis. Most enlightening: the Culture was created initially as a setting for Use of Weapons

api• 12 years ago

"They are mostly not about the Culture itself. Because it's boooooring."

This is why if we had the technology for a post-scarcity society on Earth there would be sets of people who would use this level of technology to do things like try to colonize Mars -- to the abject horror of the latte-sippers who would pen endless screeds about how foolish it is as they sit and sip latte.

Wait... did I even make up that last part?

ChillyWater2• 12 years ago

I think the funniest thing about the books are the names of the ships. Things like: The 'Probably Not a Good Idea' dropped into orbit around the fourth planet.

Toenex• 12 years ago

It's also worth trying his contemporary fiction which is just as good. Most people are aware of "The Wasp Factory" which can probably also be classed as science fiction (although not SciFi). He also wrote the excellent "Crow Road" which has probably one of the greatest opening lines in any book I've ever read.

mercurial4• 12 years ago

"The Bridge" is a masterpiece. They're not all equally good, but his style is such that even the less good ones are still worth reading.

ChillyWater2• 12 years ago

"Song of Stone" was written in an interesting style to me. It is some sort of post-apocalyptic The Stand kind of situation.

He alternates between normal modern prose and some very dense poetry-prose. I would have to read and re-read those passages to get the meaning, but it was enjoyable.

arethuza6• 12 years ago

IMHO Banks manages to do his best opening in Espedair Street:

Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with its cargo of mouldering kings) to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains, and in my dying moments look forward to an encounter with Staffa’s six-sided columns and Fingal’s cave; or I might head south to Corryvrecken, to be spun inside the whirlpool and listen with my waterlogged deaf ears to its mile-wide voice ringing over the wave-race; or be borne north, to where the white sands sing and coral hides, pink-fingered and hard-soft, beneath the ocean swell, and the rampart cliffs climb thousand-foot above the seething acres of milky foam, rainbow-buttressed.

Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive. Everything that follows is . . . just to try and explain.

Eric_WVGG• 12 years ago

related: A Few Notes on Marain (as it is written and coded) http://trevor-hopkins.com/banks/a-few-notes-on-marain.html

Love these books. Re-read Surface Detail myself last month, now slogging through Algebraist and seeing if I actually like it or not…

wpietri4• 12 years ago

I ended up loving The Algebraist. It's a very different book that the various Culture novels, but I love the world-building and so many of the little details.

jwatte• 12 years ago

"Selfishness is the the new black and I despise it."

That. Right there. He sees it; we (collectively) don't.

eevilspock2• 12 years ago

My favorite part:

I pretty much despise American Libertarianism. Have these people seriously looked at the problems of the world and thought, 'Hmm, what we need here is a bit more selfishness'? . . . I beg to differ. This is not say that Libertarianism can't represent a progressive force, in the right circumstances, and I don't doubt there will be significant areas where I would agree with Libertarianism. But, really; which bit of not having private property, and the absence of money in the Culture novels, have these people missed? The Culture is hippy commies with hyper-weapons and a deep distrust of both Marketolatry and Greedism. One rests one's case.

isomorphic2• 12 years ago

This is because American Libertarianism conflates the two ideas "I should be free to do almost anything I want" with "I owe nothing to other humans (and vice-versa)." The Culture is absolutely about the former and absolutely not about the latter.

anigbrowl• 12 years ago

I don't really get where he's coming from here, and now of course I never will since he's not around to expand on it. The Culture is a post-scarcity society; while you can't have a planet full of minions and go about conquering other people, nobody in the Culture really lacks for material needs of any kind and risk is virtually non-existent, unless you are determined to off the grid and get yourself killed somewhere that won't be noticed and without having your mind-state backed up. In the absence of economic scarcity and risk, of course money becomes meaningless. I'm not sure about the absence of private property; people certainly have their own houses, ships and other things. Both libertarianism and communism become sort of meaningless in the absence of economic scarcity, and hardly anyone in the Culture seems to be a hippy either - on the contrary, they're all enjoying the hell out of everything technology has to offer, unless he means their energetic epicureanism. Nobody in the Culture (outside of Contact/Special Circumstances, the secret agent set of People Who Have Adventures) is asked to make personal or economic sacrifices of any meaningful kind. It's easy to be generous from a starting point of endless abundance.

Some of Banks' most memorable Culture novel characters go against this trend; Jennat Gurgeh in The Player of Games is singular precisely because of his egoism and selfishness, and this is assigned huge economic value in the story, notwithstanding the nose-holding that accompanies it; Bora Horza Gorbuchul in Consider Phlebas is fundamentally opposed to the Culture but is invested with immense moral standing despite his persistent anti-heroism. I think that a lot of the time Banks likes to start with the Culture as the default narrative perspective and then inflict a hypersadistic external antagonist, beside whom the hedonism and self-absorption of the Culture folk seems positively benign, even though it might appear neurotic or narcissistic by contemporary standards. The Culture-Idiran war (which is in many ways the defining event of the civilization) is laid out in some depth in the latter book, and examines the Culture's transformation from a reactive to a proactive culture, or a transition from pacifism to realpolitik, if you like. It's interesting to me that while life within the Culture is largely based on non-economic mutualism, the vast majority of Banks' Culture protagonists are plucked form the moral gray area in which Special Cricumstances proactively attempts to shape events to suit the Culture - a gray area Banks liked so much that he named one of the Minds after it in Excession.

dalanmiller• 12 years ago

"The Player of Games" is one of my favorite books.

It's such a shame that we lost him last year while still quite young - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks

isomorphic2• 12 years ago

He was my favorite author (and not just for the science fiction). He is sorely missed.

girvo• 12 years ago

Only in the past year did I pick up the Culture series, and I agree entirely; "The Player of Games" is one of my all-time favourite books. Absolutely brilliant.

danieltillett3• 12 years ago

Player of Games is really good, but his best Culture book is probably "The Use of Weapons".

eco• 12 years ago

My favorite is Excession. The minds are often more interesting than the humans.

arethuza6• 12 years ago

"Use of Weapons" also got the dubious honour of being the best SF book never filmed in a poll in the Register a few years back.

Come on Hollywood, you need to make a Culture movie - I believe Banks said he'd be OK with Consider Phlebas getting a happy ending for a movie (OK apart from the 851 billion deaths, and the destruction of all of those ships, planets, orbitals, rings and stars).

I've wanted to see the escape of the Clear Air Turbulence from the Ends of Invention ever since I first read the novel 26 years ago.

Making a sensible movie of Use of Weapons would be a challenge I suspect, but could be rather good as it does have some rather cinematic scenes (e.g. Zakalwe's visit to the Ethnarch Kerian).

Panino• 12 years ago

I'm about halfway through the Culture novels. The stories provide so much to consider/discuss and I highly recommend them.

The thought Banks continually returns to in this interview is how as a species to overcome xenophobia. I think this problem should be overcome before people start building true AI, because just imagine xenophobic AI.

A great interview. Now I can't wait to pick up the next Culture book!

XorNot2• 12 years ago

I'd argue that overcoming xenophobia is more important for us as a species so we can relate to true AI.

danieltillett3• 12 years ago

I would argue not developing xenophobic AI is more critical. If we hate the AI's their feeling will just be hurt, but if they hate us...

misnome2• 12 years ago

I'd argue that overcoming xenophobia is more important for us as a species so we can relate to each other.

cletus• 12 years ago

I think I read my first Culture book more than 20 years ago. I still remember the delight at the chase scene through the GSV. It reminds me of the shopping mall chase from the Blues Brothers in a way (and I am by no means the first to make that comparison).

Some of the ideas expressed are just amazing. I still use and love the phrase "Outside Context Problem". Excession, while not as universally popular as the (excellent) Player of Games, is still one of my favourite books.

I haven't read the last one yet. I almost can't bring myself to, in a way. Because after that, that's it. It's incredibly sad that we lost Banks so soon, obviously for his friends and family, but I would've loved to continue reading what he would have written.

Other commenters mention the dystopian future many authors project. The other end of the spectrum is dominated by nauseating projections of America utopias like in Star Trek.

For a very different yet immersive world I'd highly recommend people pick up either the Merchanter or the Foreigner series by CJ Cherryh.

kristianp• 12 years ago

The chase scene is in "Consider Phlebas", in case anyone is wondering.

HCIdivision17• 12 years ago

I can understand your feelings, but i suspect you'll find The Hydrogen Sonata a fitting book to cap the series. There's a neat demonstration of what fairness really is worth at the end that's just ... I don't know, poetical. There's a sense of finality and closing that fits nicely.

But perhaps I just need to revisit the books again, if only to revisit Sleeper Service.

midhir• 12 years ago

That's cool, I've never seen anyone recommend The Hydrogen Sonata so left it to last, along with Inversions.

For all the fixation on his comment about American Libertarianism, Banks's politics seem fairly standard post-Thatcher Scottish to me. After what that PM did to Scottish communities many Scots apparently feel they have little in common with the direction English conservatives are taking the UK.

Banks was a supporter of Independence and famously cut up his British Passport and sent it to Downing Street in protest of the Iraq invasion.

IMO you can see his politics all over the Culture; from the entire tragedy of Look To Windward to the wee things.

cstuder2• 12 years ago

This interview has been published as a goodie for the donation drive Strange Horizons is currently doing. If you liked it, consider donating a couple of bucks: http://strangehorizons.com/fund_drives/2014/main.shtml

(No affiliation, I just love how much stuff there is to read for free on that page...)

topbanana• 12 years ago

Amusing pronunciation guide in the Marain page:

http://trevor-hopkins.com/banks/a-few-notes-on-marain.html

'll' as in Welsh

In fact, ll is pronounced as 'y' in the Welsh language

ufmace• 12 years ago

I started reading the Culture series based on a few recommendations here, and I've really been enjoying it so far. The stories make for good reading, though the nature of the society hasn't been explored that well, and I guess never will now, leaving a lot of open questions about the nature of humanity and AI. A few that it's brought me to ponder:

Are humans capable of living in a society where we know that machines rule us unquestionably, we can never do anything as well as a machine can, and anything we could ever want is provided to us free, so much so that there isn't even any point to the existence of money? Would we all just collectively flip out or something?

For that matter, what happens if an ordinary Culture person decides to take a trip to some foreign capitalist society? Presumably the trip would have to be approved by Contact or something, which seems kind of ominous by itself. Where would they get money to go do touristy things in that society? Does the culture make money in that society somehow, and give anybody who wants to visit an unlimited pile of it? Or is it limited somehow?

Exactly what makes the Mind AIs free from all of the mental issues and personality flaws that have caused Human-led societies so many issues? Especially when we see that the human-level drones seem to have a rather ordinary level of positive and negative personality traits.

Exactly how does this society go about deciding which Minds decide what? Do the Minds vote or something? If so, how is it decided which Minds get a vote? Which Minds decide when and how to produce more Minds, and how to train/educate them? Essentially, what is the structure of the Mind-government? Do the humans keep track of the going-ons of the Mind government, however it works, and how do they feel about having zero say about what happens there?

A Few Questions About the Culture: An Interview with Iain Banks

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