Somehow, it gets similar points across — similar to this essay, but deeper in feeling.
Let me also say the authors here have done really well with so short a format. To paraphrase my toddler son, I want more story!
I recently finally completed making my way through all of the Culture novels - thoroughly enjoyed every one, and was kind of sad to have reached the end!
Have you come across any other sci-fi authors that approach the style of Ian M. Banks? Otherwise, any recommendations for other sci-fi with the depth that the Culture series had?
"Iron Sunrise" and "Singularity Sky" come to mind. Maybe also "Quantum Thief".
What of the style / vibe / etc are you looking for more of?
If it helps, some fantasy authors I like are Joe Abercrombie, Terry Pratchett, Robin Hobb, Brandon Sanderson, Scott Lynch, Dave Duncan and Brent Weeks.
I like excellent character development, creative world-building and exciting stories that are plausible within those imagined worlds, wit that makes you laugh, good writing that has you marvel at the author's skill, and that special thing: immersive writing.
Beyond that, as a noob I don't know if there are sub-genres or particular styles of interest.
I had a quick gander at your suggestions, and the stories of Singularity Sky and Quantum Thief both sounds intriguing - I'll add these to my reading list, thanks :)
Dan Simmons (Hyperion saga, Olympus), Rameez Naam's "Nexus". Nick Harkaway's "Gnomon" is ridiculously good, and I basically buy anyone who wants one a copy of Cory Doctorow's "Walkway". Theodore Sturgeon is probably the closest SF I can think of to Pratchett, although he's Golden Era so suuuuper soft SF and doesn't have the humor. Bujold's "Vorkosigan" saga is one of the funnier SF books (while still being amazing and serious), and I hear good things about Scalzi's "Redshirts"
PS - Also checkout out what Hannu and Rameez get up to outside of writing, it's super cool.
You are the first person I've ever seen to mention that book. It is astonishingly and unreasonably excellent, and I recommend it every chance I get. I'm just beginning my first re-read now.
Also check out Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality for a rationistic fanfic crossover between scifi and fantasy if you haven't already.
You can probably use HN's search feature to find previous scifi reading recommendation threads for more.
These guys seem nice, and surprisingly already mentioned ethical implications early, so their corruption might take longer or develop along unexpected paths.
The aspect where exercising various powers requires coding time first could lead to some fun race-against-time scenarios. I do wish the featureless sphere had been a utah teapot instead.
I think leaving it at that point was the right choice for the story. But if I were to speculate what a continuation might look like it would involve Diane having planned all this all along to put right some tremendous wrong that happened to her and she is manipulating Tim in some way.
Ultimately I expect we'd come to the question of whether ten billion human brains in vats experiencing continuous ecstasy was better than something more like the current world or not.
It's hard to treat people below you worse when you know that he people above you will do the same thing if you do. It's an unstable equilibrium made stable by the fact it's already happened.
Put another way, you won't start tap dancing on someones head when you're in the middle of an infinite tower of tap dancers each standing on another tap dancers head.