With how AGI is going, he might essentially live again. Banks of interconnected artificial intelligence network modules, or IAIN-M banks, could continue his work.
This was a wonderful essay on the Culture. I will share it with my friends who have still not yet tried the series. In regards to citizens in Culture's post scarcity society: I got the impression that many of the Special Circumstances members are those who are not satisfied with the offered utopia and seek a Special Circumstances position to provide some missing conflict in their lives and possibly see still other societies and options.
Good video. However you missed that even though the books deals with the clash philosophical icebergs, it also deals with issues on a trivial interpersonal level and is shot through with sharp and self deprecative humour. He was gone too soon.
I have considered picking up the series. Does it address why people are okay with subordinating themselves to AI? To me that’s the main issue I have with premise. Some people do desire to dominate other people and from the premise you list it seems to assume that impulse doesn’t exist?. The idea of benevolent god like AI is a great premise but I’d want the series to directly address that rather just begin this being accepted and moving in to other things. If the answer is the AI aren’t in charge and so they don’t need to address that issue because everyone’s free. I just find that a little far fetched and I would want main premise to be addressed before you start talking about the socialist utopia.
Good video. However you missed that even though the books deals with the clash philosophical icebergs, it also deals with issues on a trivial interpersonal level and is shot through with sharp and self deprecative humour. He was gone too soon.
All this is true but could create the impression that Banks’ writing is somehow impenetrably cerebral. Let us remember- he could right a cracking good story! Real page turners. Whereas the Expanse series are page turners, they cannot be said to tackle such huge concepts with such quality of writing whilst being thoroughly entertaining. Banks’ sense of humour is perhaps the aspect of his work I miss the most. A wonderful writer and - as far as I can see - a jolly nice chap to boot.
My favourite author - first came across Excession, found it hard going to grasp some concepts but very rewarding and never looked back, but has stopped me from trying new authors for fear of disappointment! I am just gearing up to do the Dune series again (last read in late 80's) - my memory is the later books weren't so great - we'll see...
Banks' books would make a 10x better series or movie than Roddenberry's view of the future. It's a complete and total mystery why it hasn't been pounced on by TV/movies.
I've read three of Iain's novels : The Wasp Factory, which was a subtle horror story. Walking on Glass, which consisted of three novellas told in non-linear style - one of which is SF, with beings that bare a striking resemblance to Ewoks..... Against a Dark Background, which is a non-Culture SF novel I liked them all - they say that Consisder Phlebas is similar in tone to Against a Dark Background, so that will be where I'll start in my exploration of the Culture.....
What Banks gives us (besides kick-ass stories) is an alternate way of looking at the world, very different from the assumptions we have from the society we live in today. "Thought-provoking" doesn't begin to say it!
I just finished The Player of Games .. again .. it's one of those stories that I return to every few years. Consider Phlebas is "disturbing" at some points, much more so than The Player of Games. Personal choice and freedom is taken to the extreme.
I so very much struggled through that book. It spend way to much time on random events in a game we never got any overview of the rules of. I literally could not bring myself to care about it at all. But all the rest was stuck in between of pages of consideration of what was basically random noise.
@@slaapt I believe there was a subtle point to not getting an "overview" of the game's rules. The game of Azad was (I'm paraphrasing here) complex enough to become indistinguishable from the game of life. The native people of Azad spent a lifetime mastering it and, if memory serves, Gurgeh spends a couple of years on the Limiting Factor coming to terms with its basics, while traveling towards Azad. Him being a highly enhanced Culture player (this quality being in his name, Morat, which is Marain for Player) that is quite proficient and experienced in complex games. Us poor unCultured readers couldn't even dream to grasp the very foundations of the game in the few pages Banks could have dedicated to their explanation. The true point of the novel, I believe, was to show how a superficially fair social structure that in appearances gives everyone a shot to fulfill their dreams can in fact be rigged from the very beginning in order to privilege a select few at the expense of everyone else. All done with Banks' delightful, if dark, humor and his penchant for playing games both with his characters and readers.
Thanks - great discussion. My favorite is Excession, some bad-ass AIs struggling with themselves, meaning and us! And a hint that there is something else beyond... Read it three times and will do a fourth in the Spring. I would love for other authors to write epics inside this series, let us know if you know of any. Keep up the good work!
The culture series which I am starting is praised for renewing interest in serious realistic scifi, after star trek + star wars often are accused and derided correctly as dumbing down scifi as a intellectual study and subject in order to appeal to the masses. Hard scifi fans cannot like star trek or doctor who etc
Love and miss Banks he was such a wonderful writer. The culture novels are something I love to come back to and read again. As well as all the great points in this video I also loved the ship names! Ethics Gradient, Attitude Adjuster, Sleeper Service, Frank Exchange Of Views (Psychopath class dROU). So many more 😊
There is nothing "utopian" about being an utterly worthless pet to the all-powerful tyrant-AIs "The Minds" and *knowing* it. Such a horrific thing would have to be completely secret from the general population. It's a great *distopian* setting however, and when I read it initially, it felt like really clever satire in that regard. It's kind of like when you hear people from the WEF in Davos talk about the most horrific things that they want to do to humanity, and you might laugh at first thinking it's all clever, sarcastic or satirical humor, only to learn later they were being *dead* serious...
Imagine being so insecure that you'd rather live in an actual dystopia. Go ahead and stay in the capitalist hellscape if it makes you feel strong. I'll gladly be a pet of the Minds if it means I get the freedom to do whatever the hell I want rather than feeding some asshole CEO lol
No your wrong the story should be canny Scotsman does brilliant Sci Fi makes lots of money tragically dies before his greatest work is produced. The end. Love your channel by the way
I think the Culture and Culture humanoid protagonists have personal standards beyond hedonism: to stop the most hurtful cases of humanoids preying on each other.
Can anyone help me, I read a sci-fi book about 20 years ago, they were on a massive space ship, like a colony looking for a planet to live on, and it's very factiony, there was a lot of conflict in fact the main character spends time in the brig, and then they get a signal from a planet, go down to look, and find loads of people slaughtered so brutally that they just leg it and get away as fast as possible, but then they figure out that whatever killed the people is following them and catching up, and they end up sacrificing the ship to try to kill the mystery evil beings when they board. Does anyone know this book? It was really scary.
Thank you for an excellent overview from a new subscriber. The Culture series had a profound influence on my view of society and the complex issues we face. He helped me in many way to take a 'top down' view, and to keep myself free of the sort of conceptual thinking that blinds one to Reality. I loved his sense of humor, which finds its greatest expression in 'Feersum Endjinn' as about half of it is written in [what I take to be] Scottish dialect - absolutely hysterical, and highly recommended as a by-way springing off from the rest of his works.
Great overview, though I don’t think it’s fair to rate the Minds as infallible. They are profound in capability, certainly (I love the one contemplating the scale of its extra-dimensional substrate), but the proof of their existence as independent life lies in their varied, contradictory motivations and their many flaws, not the least of which is the occasional tendency toward ego. That some of them destroy themselves in fits of embarrassment over wrong-doing is a demonstration of this. Were they infallible, that wrongness would not come to pass. Instead, I see them more akin to superior colleagues, with some of them feeling that sense of superiority a bit too much. Somewhat like Greek demigods, perhaps: incredibly powered beings who coexist with humanity but suffering the same flaws, sometimes to much more pronounced impact.
Some think anarchy would be fine if people have everything they want. It would be worse than if we were all poor. People would have access to larger recreational explosives and more of them. Everyone would race supercars at whatever speed they wanted. They'd all have weaponized subwoofers to smash windows and eardrums, and blinding headlights to permanently damage retinas. No radio or internet would work, because without regulation, people would blast each other off the air for fun. They'd all have the most powerful routers to cut through the noise, but with that much noise there would be no point. People would drive tanks and set off tactical nukes for fun. An infinitely wealthy anarchy would be absolute hell. There's another kind of freedom. One which regulates away the freedoms that people don't want others to have. I don't want people to murder me, so I don't want to have the freedom to do that to others. I don't want to live surrounded by guns, so I don't want the freedom to have a gun. I don't like noise and air pollution, so I don't want the freedom to create them. Every individual's freedom comes at a cost to others. Because of this, any utopia would have to be well regulated, unless it's an anarchist utopia. The people have to agree on which freedoms to sacrifice based on their cultural values. Any culture which believes their values are universal will more often see other cultures violating human (or alien) rights.
Banks IS my favorite science fiction author of all time, but… yes. The Culture requires magic to work. You can’t get there from here. As smart and sophisticated as he was, Banks was a Socialist, convinced that, in a century that had seen Socialists create little other than an ocean of blood, Socialism leads to a just society. He wasn’t alone, of course… Diziet Sma, in The State of the Art, speaking of a possible Special Circumstances intervention on 1970s Earth: “I didn’t want to keep them safe from us and let them devour themselves; I wanted maximum interference; I wanted to hit the place with a program Lev Davidovitch [Trotsky] would have been proud of. I wanted to see the junta generals fill their pants when they realised that the future is - in Earth terms - bright, bright red.”
It sounds like you assume because "anarchy" means there are no rulers (no King, President, Dictator etc.) there would also be no politicians making "laws/rules" and no "law" enforcement of those "laws/rules".
@@patrickunderwood5662 > Not magic, just a number of AIs with near godlike powers and a generous supply of slap drones, preferably with acerbic wits and extremely perverse senses of humor! 🤪
@@Sci-FiOdyssey> So have you made a review of it yet?, is it worth buying a copy?, it's stupidly expensive where I live so some guidance would be appreciated.
There's a psychological need that the Culture actively works to leave unfulfilled: the need fro a lot of people to dominate/ crap on other people. WHich is why fascism always finds minions willingto do their dirty work. In the back of their heads those minions believe they'll be in charge of the "underclasses". In the meantime, they get to bust heads and feel good about that. Thus far, despite my best efforts, I didn't read Banks. Does he address this question in any book?
I read one or two of his books in this vein or series and found them to be incredibly poor quality. I cannot get my head around the almost universal praise I hear every time his books are talked about. Fair enough, there's plenty of sci-fi ideas and a sense of adventure and significance eg philosophy in the books I read but they seemed like very shallow treatments at best and very ham-fisted in treatment especially with their influence and effect on the stories in the couple of books I read. I'll pass and move on searching elsewhere for sci-fi stories.
The ache of losing him hasn't dulled after 11 years. He was gone too soon.
Call me crazy but for some confusing reason at first I thought you were speaking of Darrell himself and almost fainted, damn pronouns 😅
that is so very true
I can't believe Banks has been gone so long
the only problem with the Culture books and Banks' work in general is there is no more of it.
With how AGI is going, he might essentially live again. Banks of interconnected artificial intelligence network modules, or IAIN-M banks, could continue his work.
@@JB52520no.
What both blows my mind and leaves me relieved at the same time, Hollywood hasn’t found him. Yet.
This was a wonderful essay on the Culture. I will share it with my friends who have still not yet tried the series.
In regards to citizens in Culture's post scarcity society: I got the impression that many of the Special Circumstances members are those who are not satisfied with the offered utopia and seek a Special Circumstances position to provide some missing conflict in their lives and possibly see still other societies and options.
Incredible video. I’m prioritizing this series.
Good video. However you missed that even though the books deals with the clash philosophical icebergs, it also deals with issues on a trivial interpersonal level and is shot through with sharp and self deprecative humour. He was gone too soon.
Probably the best Culture video on YT
I didn't know how much I needed this! 💝
I have considered picking up the series. Does it address why people are okay with subordinating themselves to AI? To me that’s the main issue I have with premise. Some people do desire to dominate other people and from the premise you list it seems to assume that impulse doesn’t exist?. The idea of benevolent god like AI is a great premise but I’d want the series to directly address that rather just begin this being accepted and moving in to other things.
If the answer is the AI aren’t in charge and so they don’t need to address that issue because everyone’s free. I just find that a little far fetched and I would want main premise to be addressed before you start talking about the socialist utopia.
It's a symbiotic relationship.
Everyone's life is massively improved by having super powerful AI running things.
Excellent video - you're really good at this mate.
Good video. However you missed that even though the books deals with the clash philosophical icebergs, it also deals with issues on a trivial interpersonal level and is shot through with sharp and self deprecative humour. He was gone too soon.
Has everyone forgotten the meaning of the word utopia.
All this is true but could create the impression that Banks’ writing is somehow impenetrably cerebral.
Let us remember- he could right a cracking good story! Real page turners. Whereas the Expanse series are page turners, they cannot be said to tackle such huge concepts with such quality of writing whilst being thoroughly entertaining.
Banks’ sense of humour is perhaps the aspect of his work I miss the most.
A wonderful writer and - as far as I can see - a jolly nice chap to boot.
The Culture is kind of a critique on colonialism, told by someone who has never faced any personal hardship.
My favourite author - first came across Excession, found it hard going to grasp some concepts but very rewarding and never looked back, but has stopped me from trying new authors for fear of disappointment! I am just gearing up to do the Dune series again (last read in late 80's) - my memory is the later books weren't so great - we'll see...
Richard Morgan, Alistair Reynolds...
Isn’t it strange that nobody ever made a movie of the Culture? Though if anyone did, they’d probably make a mess of it
They are too big and detailed for a film and the TV series never made it's way into production.
Amazon was making a show but the Banks estate changed their minds and backed out
Should really be a must read for all humans.
Banks' books would make a 10x better series or movie than Roddenberry's view of the future. It's a complete and total mystery why it hasn't been pounced on by TV/movies.
There was talk about making Consider Phlebas...imagine making Excession....
I've read three of Iain's novels :
The Wasp Factory, which was a subtle horror story.
Walking on Glass, which consisted of three novellas told in non-linear style - one of which is SF, with beings that bare a striking resemblance to Ewoks.....
Against a Dark Background, which is a non-Culture SF novel
I liked them all - they say that Consisder Phlebas is similar in tone to Against a Dark Background, so that will be where I'll start in my exploration of the Culture.....
What Banks gives us (besides kick-ass stories) is an alternate way of looking at the world, very different from the assumptions we have from the society we live in today. "Thought-provoking" doesn't begin to say it!
I just finished The Player of Games .. again .. it's one of those stories that I return to every few years. Consider Phlebas is "disturbing" at some points, much more so than The Player of Games. Personal choice and freedom is taken to the extreme.
I so very much struggled through that book. It spend way to much time on random events in a game we never got any overview of the rules of.
I literally could not bring myself to care about it at all. But all the rest was stuck in between of pages of consideration of what was basically random noise.
@@slaapt I believe there was a subtle point to not getting an "overview" of the game's rules. The game of Azad was (I'm paraphrasing here) complex enough to become indistinguishable from the game of life. The native people of Azad spent a lifetime mastering it and, if memory serves, Gurgeh spends a couple of years on the Limiting Factor coming to terms with its basics, while traveling towards Azad. Him being a highly enhanced Culture player (this quality being in his name, Morat, which is Marain for Player) that is quite proficient and experienced in complex games. Us poor unCultured readers couldn't even dream to grasp the very foundations of the game in the few pages Banks could have dedicated to their explanation. The true point of the novel, I believe, was to show how a superficially fair social structure that in appearances gives everyone a shot to fulfill their dreams can in fact be rigged from the very beginning in order to privilege a select few at the expense of everyone else. All done with Banks' delightful, if dark, humor and his penchant for playing games both with his characters and readers.
NIce insight: the reflections from Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books.
Thanks - great discussion. My favorite is Excession, some bad-ass AIs struggling with themselves, meaning and us! And a hint that there is something else beyond... Read it three times and will do a fourth in the Spring. I would love for other authors to write epics inside this series, let us know if you know of any. Keep up the good work!
Great video and looking forward to finishing the series
The culture series which I am starting is praised for renewing interest in serious realistic scifi, after star trek + star wars often are accused and derided correctly as dumbing down scifi as a intellectual study and subject in order to appeal to the masses.
Hard scifi fans cannot like star trek or doctor who etc
Star Trek is proper sci-fi.
Love and miss Banks he was such a wonderful writer. The culture novels are something I love to come back to and read again. As well as all the great points in this video I also loved the ship names! Ethics Gradient, Attitude Adjuster, Sleeper Service, Frank Exchange Of Views (Psychopath class dROU). So many more 😊
Great videos! Keep the culture content coming. Also, what’s the music you use the background in these vids? it’s very soothing, sci fi style.
🤍
I've found that the only problem with The Culture is it makes other writers seem blinkered. Banks gets under your skin.
Thank you for the sound summation of the series, I have seen much longer reviews that have put me off looking at Banks.
There is nothing "utopian" about being an utterly worthless pet to the all-powerful tyrant-AIs "The Minds" and *knowing* it. Such a horrific thing would have to be completely secret from the general population. It's a great *distopian* setting however, and when I read it initially, it felt like really clever satire in that regard.
It's kind of like when you hear people from the WEF in Davos talk about the most horrific things that they want to do to humanity, and you might laugh at first thinking it's all clever, sarcastic or satirical humor, only to learn later they were being *dead* serious...
Imagine being so insecure that you'd rather live in an actual dystopia. Go ahead and stay in the capitalist hellscape if it makes you feel strong. I'll gladly be a pet of the Minds if it means I get the freedom to do whatever the hell I want rather than feeding some asshole CEO lol
No your wrong the story should be canny Scotsman does brilliant Sci Fi makes lots of money tragically dies before his greatest work is produced. The end.
Love your channel by the way
What I learned from the culture is, even utopia has problems...
I think the Culture and Culture humanoid protagonists have personal standards beyond hedonism: to stop the most hurtful cases of humanoids preying on each other.
Read the first book. Alien race of dogs? GTGOH.
Can anyone help me, I read a sci-fi book about 20 years ago, they were on a massive space ship, like a colony looking for a planet to live on, and it's very factiony, there was a lot of conflict in fact the main character spends time in the brig, and then they get a signal from a planet, go down to look, and find loads of people slaughtered so brutally that they just leg it and get away as fast as possible, but then they figure out that whatever killed the people is following them and catching up, and they end up sacrificing the ship to try to kill the mystery evil beings when they board. Does anyone know this book? It was really scary.
That's my lunchtime entertainment sorted 👌
Thank you for an excellent overview from a new subscriber. The Culture series had a profound influence on my view of society and the complex issues we face. He helped me in many way to take a 'top down' view, and to keep myself free of the sort of conceptual thinking that blinds one to Reality. I loved his sense of humor, which finds its greatest expression in 'Feersum Endjinn' as about half of it is written in [what I take to be] Scottish dialect - absolutely hysterical, and highly recommended as a by-way springing off from the rest of his works.
When i first heard about this book series i scoffed at it because the person explaining it to me left out the philosophical questions it raises.
Post-scarcity makes anything possible.
Great overview, though I don’t think it’s fair to rate the Minds as infallible. They are profound in capability, certainly (I love the one contemplating the scale of its extra-dimensional substrate), but the proof of their existence as independent life lies in their varied, contradictory motivations and their many flaws, not the least of which is the occasional tendency toward ego. That some of them destroy themselves in fits of embarrassment over wrong-doing is a demonstration of this. Were they infallible, that wrongness would not come to pass.
Instead, I see them more akin to superior colleagues, with some of them feeling that sense of superiority a bit too much. Somewhat like Greek demigods, perhaps: incredibly powered beings who coexist with humanity but suffering the same flaws, sometimes to much more pronounced impact.
I found the series very immersing.
More Anarchist than socialist
Some think anarchy would be fine if people have everything they want. It would be worse than if we were all poor. People would have access to larger recreational explosives and more of them. Everyone would race supercars at whatever speed they wanted. They'd all have weaponized subwoofers to smash windows and eardrums, and blinding headlights to permanently damage retinas. No radio or internet would work, because without regulation, people would blast each other off the air for fun. They'd all have the most powerful routers to cut through the noise, but with that much noise there would be no point. People would drive tanks and set off tactical nukes for fun. An infinitely wealthy anarchy would be absolute hell.
There's another kind of freedom. One which regulates away the freedoms that people don't want others to have. I don't want people to murder me, so I don't want to have the freedom to do that to others. I don't want to live surrounded by guns, so I don't want the freedom to have a gun. I don't like noise and air pollution, so I don't want the freedom to create them. Every individual's freedom comes at a cost to others. Because of this, any utopia would have to be well regulated, unless it's an anarchist utopia. The people have to agree on which freedoms to sacrifice based on their cultural values. Any culture which believes their values are universal will more often see other cultures violating human (or alien) rights.
Banks IS my favorite science fiction author of all time, but… yes. The Culture requires magic to work. You can’t get there from here. As smart and sophisticated as he was, Banks was a Socialist, convinced that, in a century that had seen Socialists create little other than an ocean of blood, Socialism leads to a just society. He wasn’t alone, of course…
Diziet Sma, in The State of the Art, speaking of a possible Special Circumstances intervention on 1970s Earth: “I didn’t want to keep them safe from us and let them devour themselves; I wanted maximum interference; I wanted to hit the place with a program Lev Davidovitch [Trotsky] would have been proud of. I wanted to see the junta generals fill their pants when they realised that the future is - in Earth terms - bright, bright red.”
It sounds like you assume because "anarchy" means there are no rulers (no King, President, Dictator etc.) there would also be no politicians making "laws/rules" and no "law" enforcement of those "laws/rules".
@@patrickunderwood5662 > Not magic, just a number of AIs with near godlike powers and a generous supply of slap drones, preferably with acerbic wits and extremely perverse senses of humor! 🤪
Gosh I miss his worlds.
Ok, you just made me want to read them again (use of weapons is one of my fav)
Mine too. Gets me every time!
14:00
I just can't get enough of the Culture series. I love it. Got the The Culture: Drawings book as a gift 🤩
I got that too 🤩
@@Sci-FiOdyssey nerd 😘
And proud!
@@Sci-FiOdyssey> So have you made a review of it yet?, is it worth buying a copy?, it's stupidly expensive where I live so some guidance would be appreciated.
I'm re-reading 'Consider Phlebas' now. It's really good!
First!
Hi, your thumbnails need improvement! want to know what improvement.
Honestly despite all the interesting technology in the culture I could never finish a single book in the series cuz I was just so bored by the story
There's a psychological need that the Culture actively works to leave unfulfilled: the need fro a lot of people to dominate/ crap on other people. WHich is why fascism always finds minions willingto do their dirty work. In the back of their heads those minions believe they'll be in charge of the "underclasses". In the meantime, they get to bust heads and feel good about that.
Thus far, despite my best efforts, I didn't read Banks. Does he address this question in any book?
The book "Surface Detail" addresses a situation and ideas in that way.
@@alistairmackintosh9412 thatnk you, I just added it to my reading pile
I read one or two of his books in this vein or series and found them to be incredibly poor quality. I cannot get my head around the almost universal praise I hear every time his books are talked about. Fair enough, there's plenty of sci-fi ideas and a sense of adventure and significance eg philosophy in the books I read but they seemed like very shallow treatments at best and very ham-fisted in treatment especially with their influence and effect on the stories in the couple of books I read. I'll pass and move on searching elsewhere for sci-fi stories.
He would have winced to hear you mispronounce his adopted middle name 😉