The Culture Series

[Comrade]

I've never read any of the books from the 'Culture series', but continued references to the books on this forum and elsewhere have intrigued me, and I'm thinking I'll go and grab a book or two of the series and see if it's as interesting to me as it sounds from the references I keep hearing to it. But as with any series, I'm not sure where best to start, whether I should go chronologically or start with the first book published and continue from there. So I figure what better way to resolve that little question than to ask on here? What's the best way to go about the Culture series?

[Selrahc]

There isn't an overarching story. All the books are self contained. Book 1 or book 2 are probably the best entrance points. Book 1 is more action heavy, book 2 is more cerebral.

[Aotrs Commander]

I was in the same boat, and I tried the first one, Consider Phlebas. It was...okay. I was expecting more out of it than I got.

I think the trouble was was that the Culture were more in the background, and they were far more interesting than the other people floating around (particularly the protagonist). It's also noting, despite the setting being a war, you see really very little of the actual fighting, and the story felt a bit episodic, lots of little incidents and misadventures strung together rather than one contiguous story. The ending was pretty banal as well, and the suspense was dragged out for about two to three times as long as it needed to be, until I was crying for the Bad Thing to hurry up and happen already, because I was bored of waiting.

So yeah.

It wasn't so bad I'd never read another one, and as people have suggested since, the second book might be a better introduction which I might well try in due course.

That would be my opinion, anyway.

[Brother Oni]

I agree to second book (The Player of Games) on being a better introduction to the Culture, especially how they interact with a civilisation they find distasteful (getting into a shooting war is usually regarded as a last resort and an indication of failure).

If you're interested in how the Culture actually does warfare, Excession covers it very well and also details how they deal with an Outside Context Problem, which is a type of problem "that most civilizations would encounter just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop."

[nedz]

Some of the later ones kind of assume you've read the earlier ones in that they contain references you will miss, or are iconoclastic to the setting.
State of the Art, Use of Weapons and Inversions fall into this category.

I preferred Consider Phlebas to be better than Player of Games, but opinions vary.

[Eakin]

Having read the first three, I thought #2 (Player of Games) was most enjoyable. Can't really speak to the direction of the series beyond that though

[Cyrano]

Culture novels I find are pretty hit-or-miss. I'll toss my hat in for Player of Games as probably the best introduction, and also as one of the better novels in the setting. Consider Phlebas, Excession, and (according to my brother but I've never read it personally) Use of Weapons are good ones, I find.

The problem is when you get one like Look to Windward, a novel that can be accurately summarized as "Guy comes to Culture station, has an unpleasant past which is gradually revealed, and doesn't do anything." Or Surface Detail, which has the cajones to ask the tough ethical questions: Maybe putting people's mind-states in computers so they can suffer for a subjective eternity after death in vividly realized digi-hells is, like, not a great thing to do? Or at least I assume that its purpose is in asking a Culture-novel "should we interfere" sort of ethical question, because the main character has no impact and not even much involvement in what's going on, so as a narrative it's pretty flat.

In sum: Start with Player of Games. Don't be afraid to read reviews and skip some if you continue with the setting.

[Chen]

I have to agree here that The Player of Games is probably the best introduction (and one of the best of the series too). Consider Phlebas wasn't bad either. I also read Matter which I found was also pretty interesting. It was the first one I read actually and it wasn't too confusing or anything.

I tried reading Use of Weapons and honestly could not get into it at all. The way it jumped around was painful to read. I'm currently reading Excession and I find it a tad slow. It also jumps around a bit in a non-obviously connected way which is a little off too. But the overall plot is still interesting enough to keep me going.

[Weezer]

I have to agree here that The Player of Games is probably the best introduction (and one of the best of the series too). Consider Phlebas wasn't bad either. I also read Matter which I found was also pretty interesting. It was the first one I read actually and it wasn't too confusing or anything.

I tried reading Use of Weapons and honestly could not get into it at all. The way it jumped around was painful to read. I'm currently reading Excession and I find it a tad slow. It also jumps around a bit in a non-obviously connected way which is a little off too. But the overall plot is still interesting enough to keep me going.

The best part I found with Excession is that it has the largest and most intense space battle I've yet encountered in the Culture novels, and it was very well done.

But I too think Player of Games is by far the best introduction to the Culture.

[willpell]

Well, having finished Excession, I agree that it might have been better if I started on a different book, as this one was rather difficult. (I had no choice in the matter, since upon two visits to Barnes and Noble I discovered that this was the only Culture book which was available in a tolerably-priced paperback; I actually think I got $8 worth of satisfaction out of it despite its flaws, but paying nearly twice as much for a larger and thus more difficult-to-store-and-transport volume was simply never an option.) It contained a number of passages that I found very profound and enjoyable and which I've marked for future reference, but it also contained a lot of awkwardly written bits and questionable inclusions.

One possible claim of the series' critics which I cannot help but agree with is that Ian M. Banks, author of the internationally esteemed and arguably even legendary Culture Series, is without question the supreme and unparalleled past master of the arbitrarily overlong and disjoined run-on sentence which continues without end or even punctuation for an unquestionably absurd and unnecessarily length, until the reader' sympathy for his loquaciousness is doubtlessly exhausted.

I was determined to read a book from this series because of its utopian leanings (both in general because I don't like stories that depress me, and specifically because I run a D&D game set in an extremely civilized and benevolent society, so other stories of such settings are valuable research), and have argued at moderate length over in the Warhammer Vs. Culture thread against the belief that the Culture's hedonism is a bad thing. However I will say that the scene in Excession which dwells the most on hedonistic excess (when Byr is wandering around Night City, all pimped out with his three drug-devices, one of which is alive, after having slept with something like seven of what would be prostitutes if he had actually had to pay them) rather turned my stomach, and if that was what these critics were thinking of, I can somewhat see their point. I don't believe that hedonism is entirely negative, but certainly this portrayal did it no favors.

Overall I'm happy with Excession, but could have been more so, and I feel I can take a relaxed approach to getting more Culture books in the future.

[Ormur]

Excession is a difficult book to start with, with its convoluted plot and preponderance of conversations between minds. I really like it though, it has a very grand feel to it. I agree that The Player of Games is a more straightforward story so it's easier to follow and yes it's one of the best in the series. Consider Phlebas doesn't have to be the first story you read but knowing about the war helps in a lot of later books.

As for the hedonism I must confess that the excesses of cruelty and pleasure in his books are a big, maybe sort of perverse, attraction for me. However he manages to balance that with the rather utopian but still not entirely unambiguous morals of the Culture.
Someone mentioned Look to Windward and while I understand if people think it's boring compared to some of his other books it actually calls the moral infallibility of the culture in question and manages to sympathetically portray a terrorist.
Then there is the Use of Weapons which really shook me, I wholeheartedly recommend that one. In fact I have to read it again myself.

In fact I really like all of his Sci-Fi books, even the non-Culture ones.

[Philistine]

I have read Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons, and Matter; I grabbed the third because I'd heard good things about it and I was determined to try one more time to find the appeal of this series. I really doubt I'll bother with any more, though. I find his writing dry and long-winded - so not only does it take forever for anything to happen, but it seems even longer. (And then when you finally get to the action sequence he's been building up to for 600 pages... it's over in, like, three. And most of it happens off-screen.) There are entire subplots that just don't ever go anywhere (like the one that occupied about 1/3 of Matter). And his vision of utopia - in which people are in truth pampered pets of godlike AIs - is one I find repugnant. Also, he doesn't seem to have gotten the memo that 1967 is over... but that part is merely incredibly uninteresting rather than actually disgusting.

[willpell]

Excession is a difficult book to start with, with its convoluted plot and preponderance of conversations between minds. I really like it though, it has a very grand feel to it.

It is good at creating scope, I'll agree there. It is less good at making anything of that scope once it's created. You get the impression there should be a roleplaying game to explore all this unused worldbuilding, except that a setting as low in conflict as the Culture setting would be a rather horrid place to roleplay.

II find his writing dry and long-winded - so not only does it take forever for anything to happen, but it seems even longer. (And then when you finally get to the action sequence he's been building up to for 600 pages... it's over in, like, three. And most of it happens off-screen.)

Agreed, this is definitely a weakness he has.

And his vision of utopia - in which people are in truth pampered pets of godlike AIs - is one I find repugnant.

As opposed to what, settings like Warhammer 40K where billions of people are intentionally tortured specifically so they can suffer? While I agree (and have previously stated) that the descriptions of ultrahedonism are lacking and unflattering, the general idea of what an idealistic anarchistic post-scarcity society in which everyone can do and have whatever they want is pretty hard to fault IMO. Saying that people are pets of the Minds is like saying that children are the property of their parents. The Minds are hard-coded down to their most basic nature to help people prosper; it's their equivalent of an instinct. They have no desire to belittle, marginalize, or render irrelevant the human race; despite their sentience, they are still ultimately tools (though it would be exceedingly impolite to tell them this), simply tools that are capable of accomplishing incredible amounts of work without requiring (or being able to benefit from, given the operational speeds involved) human supervision. How is it any more repugnant than a Roomba sparing you the labor of vacuuming? The difference is really only in scale.

Also, he doesn't seem to have gotten the memo that 1967 is over...

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

[Philistine]

As opposed to what, settings like Warhammer 40K where billions of people are intentionally tortured specifically so they can suffer? While I agree (and have previously stated) that the descriptions of ultrahedonism are lacking and unflattering, the general idea of what an idealistic anarchistic post-scarcity society in which everyone can do and have whatever they want is pretty hard to fault IMO. Saying that people are pets of the Minds is like saying that children are the property of their parents. The Minds are hard-coded down to their most basic nature to help people prosper; it's their equivalent of an instinct. They have no desire to belittle, marginalize, or render irrelevant the human race; despite their sentience, they are still ultimately tools (though it would be exceedingly impolite to tell them this), simply tools that are capable of accomplishing incredible amounts of work without requiring (or being able to benefit from, given the operational speeds involved) human supervision. How is it any more repugnant than a Roomba sparing you the labor of vacuuming? The difference is really only in scale.

WH40K and The Culture are not the only possibilities. Which is good, since they're both absolutely terrible outcomes for humans - but it does mean your argument is a False Dilemma.

I'm not a fan of utopian visions in the first place, but this particular utopian vision gives people all the apparent freedom of a pet, or a small child - it's the "freedom" of having zero responsibility, because the Minds will take care of everything that matters and see to all their needs. But that's dependence, not freedom. If your actions carry no consequences, then you're not free. You're irrelevant. I'm not saying that's worse than the WH40Kverse, but I'm very pointedly not saying it's better, either.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

1967? Summer of Love? Flower Power? Ringing any bells yet? Because Banks's idea of the ultimate human happiness has apparently never matured past "If it feels good, do it." (Also... I'm guessing you haven't read Brave New World. You maybe should. And pay attention to the means that society uses to keep its citizens under control (hint: it's not terrible, 1984-style repression).)

[Brother Oni]

I'm not a fan of utopian visions in the first place, but this particular utopian vision gives people all the apparent freedom of a pet, or a small child - it's the "freedom" of having zero responsibility, because the Minds will take care of everything that matters and see to all their needs. But that's dependence, not freedom. If your actions carry no consequences, then you're not free. You're irrelevant.

In a post scarcity civilisation, it can be very hard to find meaning, but individual relevancy isn't a very good yardstick for the value of a culture.

The average person is utterly irrelevant in almost any of today's cultures - does that mean all of them are repugnant to you?

You don't like the Culture - that's fine. Plenty of people within the novels don't like the Culture including its own citizens, but despite the control you claim that they exert over them, they're completely free to renounce citizenship and leave (and quite large numbers have done).

1967? Summer of Love? Flower Power? Ringing any bells yet?

Being sarcastic to get your point across isn't very helpful. In any case, anybody old enough to both comprehend and experience 1967 is pushing 60 at the moment.

I also think you're over-estimating the social effects and knowledge of the Summer of Love outside the US.

[willpell]

your argument is a False Dilemma.

I figured it for more like Reductio ab Absurdium, but either way. It's no secret that I tend toward the extremes, and in this case I don't consider the Culture to be the extreme anyway. The exact opposite of 40K's "all grimdark all the time" wouldn't be The Culture, where human beings are still interesting even to machines capable of simulating entire alternate universes; it'd be more like Jack Williamsons' "With Folded Hands", in which the robots won't let people do anything because it might be dangerous, so everyone just sits around bored out of their mind in the robots' suffocating custody forever. The Culture is light-years different from that IMO.

gives people all the apparent freedom of a pet

If that pet/child could wander from one side of the galaxy to the other on a whim, working toward the greater fulfillment of all sentient beings, yeah... From what I understand from Wikipedia, the entire message of Consider Phlebas was that the Culture knows what it's doing is sort of pointless, and is willing to drag itself into a war just to prove that it's not completely so...it's extremely dangerous for such a powerful society to get into a war with another one of comparable ability to unleash apocalyptic devastation, but they know it's the right thing to do and so they take that chance. Though admittedly this does not seem to have been their finest hour in a lot of ways.

because the Minds will take care of everything that matters and see to all their needs. But that's dependence, not freedom.

Are you "dependent" on the internet? On a car? On clean drinking water and the ability to eat without having to hunt and kill your next meal, which might hunt and kill you instead? There are those who believe there to be some sort of macho nobility associated with the ability to endure hardship and suffering, and that's on them, but I for one would really like it if there was an agency out there willing and able to ensure that people with such beliefs are only able to live those beliefs themselves, and have zero ability to enforce them on their children, their neighbors, the nation in which they get a governmental vote, or anything else beyond their own personal preferences. Someone wants to rough it, they go right ahead, but don't lets permit them to drag me into the muck with them just, because they think I'm some sort of degenerate for wanting to live a comfortable life.

Because Banks's idea of the ultimate human happiness has apparently never matured past "If it feels good, do it."

This is a common misinterpretation, and not entirely unjustified; he does have rather a fair bit more of this than he should. In Excession, Byr and Leffid pretty much exemplify the attitude you're talking about, and Ulver isn't much better (she is intentionally a spoiled princess-type, though, and Byr is enough of a deviant to semi-admire the Affront, so Leffid is the only one that's close to being a "typical" Culturian). But then we have someone like Geshtra Ishmethit, who builds model sailing ships to amuse himself, or the Sleeper Service, who poses Stored people in holographic "paintings". I'm strongly inclined to believe that people who have somewhat more interesting ways to have fun than "get stoned out of own gourd and sleep with anything that moves" are probably much more common in the Culture than people like Leffid and Ulver, though admittedly that doesn't match the way Banks portrays it. Maybe that's a failing on his part, or maybe he just figures sex sells and makes more interesting reading than a bunch of weird hobbies. Either way, I'm okay with it.

(Also... I'm guessing you haven't read Brave New World.)

I have, but not in a very long time. I saw the Leonard Nimoy movie version more recently than I read the book, for whatever that proves. And I see what you're saying, but there's a big difference. The Culture doesn't burn the books, it doesn't force anyone off the reservation, it doesn't engineer people to happily accept menial labor, and while it does offer a lot of drugs, none of them seem to have anywhere near as stultifying an effect as soma - indeed many of them make people *more* productive, which would be pretty pointless if there was nothing useful for those people to do.

[QUOTE=Brother Oni;14058400]In a post scarcity civilisation, it can be very hard to find meaning[/auote]

Which is very much part of the point of the books, and a dilemma for both Banks and the Minds on their respective sides of the fact/fiction divide; the Culture is aware of this problem and tries to do something about it, it's just very careful about making sure it doesn't do so via methods that are invasive enough to be more destructive than the status quo. Likewise, Banks doesn't write a lot of stories about individuals smack-dab in the middle of the Culture who do what the typical Culturian (as much as there is such a thing) does; he writes about the fringes because that's where the action's happening.

The average person is utterly irrelevant in almost any of today's cultures - does that mean all of them are repugnant to you?

This. Many of us fill our lives with busy-work that exists as much to gratify the egos of our bosses as to accomplish anything that a machine couldn't already do more efficiently if you put a little time and effort into programming it right. Human labor is used because it's cheaper than a properly-built robot in most cases (which in turn suggests that the Culture's post-scarcity nature contributes twice over to the fact that its citizens no longer have to live their lives as wage slaves with a fraction of their time available to their own interests). There's nothing terribly ennobling about even working on a farm or sewing clothes in a sweatshop, let alone about the entirely unnecessary middleman tasks that most of us are stuck doing just because that's all the work we could find.

You don't like the Culture - that's fine. Plenty of people within the novels don't like the Culture including its own citizens, but despite the control you claim that they exert over them, they're completely free to renounce citizenship and leave (and quite large numbers have done).

Indeed, not only will the Culture let you leave, they'll even let you take a bunch of their stuff if you want (not the *really* good stuff, but quite excellent nonetheless). I can see the point of feeling like that they're like an indulgent uncle who gives you all the candy you want, but a lot of that "candy" is really very empowering tools to chart your own destiny, and as long as you don't come out acting like a Hegemonizing Swarm, they're pretty okay with you defying their preferences and even mouthing off about them.

[willpell]

Having edited my previous post to take it down a notch where I was getting more personal than necessary, I will add this. If there is one thing I definitely do not care for about the Culture, its that the extent they go to in respecting others' preferences is a bit over the line (though I consider that more reasonable than going over the line in NOT doing so). I mean, mind-reading is about the worst thing they can conceive of short of mass murder, but the Gray Area is known for doing it, and all the other Minds do is give this ship a dirty name. Youd' think they'd at least demand it have its effectors removed or reduced in power or something; apparently the Culture is fairly toothless when it comes to prosecuting crimes, even if it is extremely good at discouraging them from occurring in the first place. That doesn't always cut the mustard and we know it; someone drew the parallel to the Federation of Star Trek before, and it really hits home there too, as it's another case of where there seems to be no mechanism for preventing bad things from happening other than the assumption that they just won't, which doesn't hold much water from where we sit.

So yeah, if you're gonna pick on The Culture, that's a much more serious fault in their M.O. than just "they make people soft by giving them too much happiness." There's a big gulf between idealism and naivete, and the Culture seems to be at least partly on the wrong side of that gap.

[Chen]

Having edited my previous post to take it down a notch where I was getting more personal than necessary, I will add this. If there is one thing I definitely do not care for about the Culture, its that the extent they go to in respecting others' preferences is a bit over the line (though I consider that more reasonable than going over the line in NOT doing so). I mean, mind-reading is about the worst thing they can conceive of short of mass murder, but the Gray Area is known for doing it, and all the other Minds do is give this ship a dirty name. Youd' think they'd at least demand it have its effectors removed or reduced in power or something; apparently the Culture is fairly toothless when it comes to prosecuting crimes, even if it is extremely good at discouraging them from occurring in the first place. That doesn't always cut the mustard and we know it; someone drew the parallel to the Federation of Star Trek before, and it really hits home there too, as it's another case of where there seems to be no mechanism for preventing bad things from happening other than the assumption that they just won't, which doesn't hold much water from where we sit.

Thing is punishment is generally just a form of vengeance and/or deterrent. Ideally you have a justice system that rehabilitates and brings the person back into society as a useful member. You imprison someone to keep them from causing more harm to society. In the case of the Grey Area, I have to assume people are aware of its stigma and know they may be subject to mind reading if they are aboard it and/or interact with it. There is no need to separate it from society unless it starts doing things that people cannot protect themselves from.

I'm not really sure why you brought the Federation into it since I'm pretty sure they have prisons and the like and do send people there. For sure its mentioned on a few DS9 episodes, like where the Doctor's father gets sent to jail or when Eddington is held in a cell.

[willpell]

The deterrent part is the thing that seems to be missing. And Star Trek's version of criminal justice was lacking at best. Both universes just assume that most people will get along, as if crimes of passion, lashing out due to stress, pathological greed where even post-scarcity resources aren't enough for you, or all manner of other deeply rooted psychological issues can simply be handwaved away. I know the idea is that everyone is very well-raised and well-adjusted, but we see nothing of how they got that way, it's just assumed. And it's a much more egregious example in ST, because that's only 4 centuries or so into the future, and humanity has not been significantly altered by science, so there ought to be people with abnormal brain chemistry or the like every once in a while. Unless medical screens are compulsory, some people would avoid them or falsify them, and avoid detection for several years until one day they can grab a phaser rifle and take out everyone on the bridge ending with themselves. That sort of thing happens once in our society and the entire nation freaks out and takes wildly exagerrated security precautions for years or decades thereafter, but we're supposed to believe that nowhere in Starfleet is the possibility even considered.

[Chen]

Deterrence is not really needed if the examples of crimes are crimes of passion or are extremely rare as is. It would imply they have some manner of deterrence that is already working quite well.

Really I find it far more likely we just don't see any of the normal criminal behavior and such with the Federation because its rare we sure purely Federation interactions on the show. There are plenty of episodes with penal colonies and the like. People get arrested, sent to the brig and such but we don't often look into standard federation planets. DS9 did delve a little more into it and it did show how people were imprisoned and the like. Despite their stance against genetic engineering, I believe they did mention that many genetic defects and the like are screened for (its just the enhancement they don't agree with for whatever reason).

I imagine for the Culture this type of screening/manipulation is even more common. Crimes of passion do exist even there, but considering the functional immortality of the citizens I suspect there are "loose" punishments because the impact of almost any crime is not nearly as severe as nowadays. They talk of making a drone follow you to ensure you don't continue to violate the law (basically harming others) as close to their most severe punishment. Frankly it seems pretty effective to me. If someone can be productive in society except they sometimes do X, as long as we prevent them from doing X, society can still benefit them. In our society today we decide someone does X we lock them away and prevent them from doing most things, because we don't have the capability of only preventing them from doing X. The Culture does not seem to have such an issue.

[grolim]

The deterrent part is the thing that seems to be missing. And Star Trek's version of criminal justice was lacking at best. Both universes just assume that most people will get along, as if crimes of passion, lashing out due to stress, pathological greed where even post-scarcity resources aren't enough for you, or all manner of other deeply rooted psychological issues can simply be handwaved away. I know the idea is that everyone is very well-raised and well-adjusted, but we see nothing of how they got that way, it's just assumed. And it's a much more egregious example in ST, because that's only 4 centuries or so into the future, and humanity has not been significantly altered by science, so there ought to be people with abnormal brain chemistry or the like every once in a while. Unless medical screens are compulsory, some people would avoid them or falsify them, and avoid detection for several years until one day they can grab a phaser rifle and take out everyone on the bridge ending with themselves. That sort of thing happens once in our society and the entire nation freaks out and takes wildly exagerrated security precautions for years or decades thereafter, but we're supposed to believe that nowhere in Starfleet is the possibility even considered.

Or maybe altered brain chemistry is easily cured for the most part. I do imagine medical screenings are done quite often with all the beaming around and visiting other planets. Many of the shows mentioned the regular physicals people on the ships had. With tricorders etc I would imagine your basic physical is far more comprehensive than today's best medicine can do and probably would take less than 5 minutes out of someone's day.