I should put something here, right, so this community isn’t a completely deserted wasteland? (Imagine a howling wind sound effect plays here.) So, for any other fans out there, how did you encounter the series? Which books are your favorite?
I’ll start. I saw this series mentioned several times in different places across the Internet before I actually read it. Once when Scott Alexander mentioned it on his old blog. For those who don’t know him, he’s a blogger who mainly writers nonfiction but has some really interesting short stories out there. There’s a lot of Internet rationalists who seem to be obsessed with this series, or with AI utopias in general, and it’s a fascinating detail I could go on about for a while, but that’d be derailing the topic probably.
There were a few mentions on r/whowouldwin (hey, don’t look at me like that, some of the questions are pretty fun). Everyone there seemed to agree that the Culture was some epic leet OP civ that would curbstomp almost every other scifi setting. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t pique my curiosity. Between that and mentions by other rationalists and a general interest in reading about fictional AIs, it was probably inevitable that I’d check it out sooner or later. Didn’t hurt that the Wikipedia entry made it sound really interesting.
The first book I read was The Player of Games, because everybody said not to start with Consider Phlebas. After that, I was instantly obsessed. I read a bunch of Culture books in the next few days, no longer remember which ones or what order. My favorites are The Player of Games and Look to Windward, with Surface Detail a little further down. I honestly have mixed feelings on the plot/pacing of the other books, but the setting has always captivated me. It’s so rare for a genuine utopia to exist in science fiction. Dystopias are much more common, or “utopias” that appear to be perfect but psych! There’s actually a hidden catch that means it was a horrible miserable place all along! The Giver comes to mind.
Anyway, thoughts? What about you? Also welcome to Lemmy, on the off chance anyone even cares enough to see and respond to this, lol.
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I really enjoyed Excession because we get to see how the various Minds deal with eachother, and how they perceive eachother. The concept of putting up with idiosyncratic Minds until they do something verboten was neat.
Matter (I had written Inversions earlier but I’ve edited it because I misremembered which book had which plot) was cool because the book is kind of structured like the planet it takes place on. The story starts small in the core of the planet with the royal assassination, then opens up to include the wider universe.
Ultimately I found all the books enjoyable in some way. The two examples I gave are just the first things that sprang to mind.
Funny thing, Inversions is the only Culture novel I haven’t read. Matter was decent, but I was slightly peeved by how three of the subplots just get instantly cut off towards the end with
spoiler
the eldritch alien abomination escaping and killing everyone.
Also the ending had a lot of loose ends left untied - if it was like Surface Detail, which gave a brief summary of what happened to each character afterwards, I think it would’ve been much more satisfying.
Excession is decent too, though I remember its plot being a bit of an anticlimax. But the AI chat logs were pure gold. To this day I really can’t look at a single AI chat log anywhere without thinking of The Culture. Actually AIs in general automatically make me think of the Culture. I may be slightly obsessed, though.
I first read about it in the Wikipedia page about post-scarcity, as one of the fictional examples of it. It looked like the most detailed and advanced example of a post-scarcity civilization in fiction, and the Wikipedia page about the Culture series got me interested. That, and it’s the most pure example of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism in fiction.
Since reading the Wikipedia article on the Culture I’ve read A Few Notes On The Culture, Consider Phlebas, Excession, and am working through The Player of Games. Excession is by far my favorite so far.