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Comment by yourapostasy | Hacker News Reader

> ...(Culture series is dying for a film adaption).

There was a recent discussion in /r/TheCulture about who Culture fans would like to see direct a movie adaptation of one of the books [1]. I'm dubious a live action film could be successful and at the same time live up to one of the books; it would take some mighty fine screenwriting to not slip into excessive expository minutiae about The Culture, and so much of the attraction of the books to many fans was the reader wasn't repeatedly hit over the head with explanations of the setting.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCulture/comments/62g6mk/if_you_c...

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I could see Use of Weapons or The Player of Games work. Most of the rest of the books are too... weird to get right in a 2-hour movie format.

I'm pretty sure Banks said that he'd like Consider Phlebas to be made into a movie - he even offered to rewrite the ending to make it more upbeat.

I do think Use of Weapons could make a splendid movie - but it might be tricky hiding the basis for the twist at the end?

I suspect all of the books are too weird for mainstream audiences at this time, though I would love to be proven wrong. Glanded designer drugs, gender changes by thought, AGI at millions to billions multiple of a human intellect, Grid energy,... As the list goes on, it would be too easy to veer into fantasy-like depictions, because to date there have been no major successful science fiction movies set in a post-scarcity environment. And Banks' Culture is unabashedly, raucously, bawdily post-scarcity.

Any movie treatment of The Culture runs the constant risk of only getting the glossing highlights reel version that Dune received, and I'd be concerned that the mechanics of the story setting, neat as they are, in a movie would get in the way of telling the real story of Banks' more interesting themes via his incisive commentary delivered by holding up The Culture mirror-like, comparing to our own civilization.

> it would be too easy to veer into fantasy-like depictions, because to date there have been no major successful science fiction movies set in a post-scarcity environment.

The earliest science fiction I recall set in a post-scarcity environment is "Star Trek: TNG". Granted, the socio-economic impact of replicators is not a focus of the series or the movies, replicators are more of background/world-building device ("Tea, Earl Grey, hot")

Sorry, I should have phrased it as a positive-outcome post-Singularity environment. Mainstream audiences might not grasp the nuance between post-scarcity and post-Singularity, but when I read the series for the first time, the Mind-level AGI figured prominently in setting The Culture apart from Star Trek. Around that axle, Banks wound into his setting near-unlimited, near-free energy (the Grid), galaxy-spanning capable FTL (1-200,000+ X speed of light), carefully-orchestrated anarchy as a practical and efficient "government", and all the other accoutrements. It is amazing Banks didn't readily yield to the temptation to use the Minds as a deus ex machina, and instead showed how they would also grapple with their own limitations, frustrations, doubts, etc.

Even more important than the sheer existence of the Minds was their egalitarian disposition and relationship to their pan-human co-citizens, and interesting tangentials like the Minds' polite yet firm declination to Sublime. I will sorely miss Banks' weaving of the tales of the proto-Culture, and how the early Minds came about to that position.

> Sorry, I should have phrased it as a positive-outcome post-Singularity environment. Mainstream audiences might not grasp the nuance between post-scarcity and post-Singularity

Post-scarcity and post-singularity are orthogonal - The Culture is both, Star Trek TNG is post-scarcity only, Rapture of the Nerds[1] (Stross & Doctorow) is post-singularity only.

1. http://craphound.com/rotn/Cory_Doctorow_and_Charles_Stross_-...

Consider Phlebas is what comes to mind right away. As I recall, Banks said that the book came about when he saw Star Wars and thought "I can do better," and it's already a movie-ish story.

Use of Weapons might work too. I can't see Player of Games translating to the big screen well, though. So much of it is about the game itself and the protagonist's thinking around it. And I do think the rest would be hopeless.

How, exactly, would you handle the ending of Use of Weapons?

Nice! I've never seen that subreddit before, will dive into that thread.

After posting that comment I spent a while wondering which novel would be best to jump start that sort of franchise and agree it's tricky to condense a novel into a movie. A lot of science fiction probably works better as a mini series or full TV series (could be interesting to have Culture take an approach like American Horror Story where each season is a self-contained story)

> A lot of science fiction probably works better as a mini series or full TV series...

If only animation automation got sufficiently good and economical enough that long-form (40+ hours) video storytelling was practical for more stories. I sometimes wonder if there is a Sapir-Whorf-style equivalent hypothesis for how we exchange our stories, where the storytelling modality (starting with just the time length our formats allow, but going much further afield with complexity management/expectations, formulation of models, etc.) shapes how our aggregate civilization thinks.

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