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Comment by jaqalopes | Hacker News Reader

Consider Phlebas was such an odd entry point into the Culture series. In a way it makes more sense as a prequel, to be read after you understand the world and the general conceit of the series. In fact, I think Consider Phlebas is better upon rereading than it was going in cold. In this light, I'm kind of surprised I went on to read the other books after starting with this one. But, I'm incredibly glad I did, and I recommend them to anyone with an interest in far-future sociological sci-fi.

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It's a fun action novel; I loved the part with the cult on the island. But yeah, it has nothing on Player of Games.

Consider Phlebas was my third Culture novel after Use of Weapons and Player of Games. I very much enjoyed it, but definitely didn't enjoy the Island cult bit!

Its a acquired taste.. it was a fascinating insight though, into a luxurious, post-scarcity societies tolerance for extremes, as long as they all did what they did out of choice, not even a machine could overrule them.

I love, how the tragic choices of the "organics" are mirrored hinted as part of the PTSD of the orbital in "Look to the winward", which can "relive" the destruction of orbitals, ships and worlds in the idiran war in perfect detail. It could have zapped the mindstates of the mortals, like the meat-fucker (Sleeper Service), but choose to not do so out of respect for the choices.

The whole book part of the orbital, was a careful flashed out testing of the extremes of a highly hedonistic, machine governed society thrown in a "culture" war against religious zealots and it explored those themes well.

> meat-fucker (Sleeper Service)

The GCU nicknamed meat fucker’s chosen name was the Grey Area. It was a protégé of the GSV Sleeper Service.

Reread, you are absolutely right. Shame. I mixed up a machine that is mostly engine and dioramas with a machine that is mostly brainscans and genocide-drama.

Use of Weapons is typically what I recommend as the first book to read, it was mine, and it was mind blowing. The Chair...

This is a consistent complaint I have about that whole series. Banks clearly enjoys writing action sequences, and is very good at it, and they are a poor fit for the stories of the series. They're tonally out of place with the setting, throw off the pacing, and require extravagant plot contortions to allow for them.

Booo! Banks loves writing action sequences and some of us love to read them. If you want to read "brainy" sci-fi you can always someone else like, like... Olaf Stapledon? Or Alfred Bester?

But the Culutre has drones armed with knife missiles armed with micromissiles armed with miniature jedi ninjas with chainswords shooting death rays from their eyes. So there.

That's funny. I found the cult stuff so unnecessarily unpleasant (the phrase "torture p*rn" comes to mind) that I haven't read any of the other books.

A lot of Banks's non-sci-fi fiction is... well, I wouldn't describe it as torture porn, but it's graphic and violent.

Have you read the other books in the Culture series? If so, is the island a particular low point violence-wise, or is that the norm for most of them?

I've read most (all of them? Except Feersum Endjinn, it was just too hard to read to enjoy it - but that's me) and I do think Banks has a lot of violent and sometimes gruesome parts. The Archimandrite Luseferous springs to mind (not part of the culture series, more an anti-culture book, it feels like the mirror universe in Star Trek, E.g. in DS9, but it's so culture-like, I include it).

Yes. Interesting question. I’d say that in terms of the goriness of the writing, the island is particularly bad.

Thematically though, in terms of the series overall, violence, oppression, genocide, torture, are all fairly common, although not as gruesomely depicted for the most part.

I felt it a good introduction for the same reason as it was the first written book: Banks didn't know how to tell a story about the Culture without trying to attack the Culture and find its flaws and outsiders. The edition I read even had a foreword to that effect. Obviously, he found far more interesting outsiders and flaws as the series progressed, but it is still interesting to see that "bootstrap moment" in Consider Phlebas as he works to find the right hooks in a way that feels almost like "in real time".

Your comment makes me wonder if I should give the series another chance. I only read Consider Phlebas and didn't continue with the series because I found the book so frustrating. It felt like there was a ton of context missing. I kept expecting it to provide some details about the culture that would justify the protagonist's antipathy towards it, but a coherent explanation for his world view never materialized.

Excession is spectacular. The focus is on the machine intelligence as opposed to the people.

Totally. I've re-read excession multiple times and it's still my favorite.

That’s where I started and it’s still my favorite. Hooked me hard.

That was my experience, but I am glad that I tried again. Player of Games is much more explicit in the world building (almost too much), and then a good balance is found in Use of Weapons. So I always recommend reading those two first before circling back to really understand the value of Consider Phlebas as an outside view on the Culture (and really, The West).

Please do - Consider Phlebas is good in its own way, but it's a lot different from the rest of the series.

Player of Games is a great entry point, but I think Surface Detail might be my favorite. It might be my favorite sci-fi book I've ever read, in fact.

I hope you will try other entries in the series! Player of Games and Excession are big favorites of mine, but they're quick reads and if you have the time I would really encourage all of them in order of release!

Yeah, I would pick up another book in the series. Consider Phlebas is set in the same universe but almost seems like a different genre.

There are books which are fully juiced on their first reading. All of Banks' novels have additional liquid to savor after several pressings.

I like your analogy, but I need help seeing how it applies to Consider Phlebas. From my perspective, the story is pretty arbitrary. The aliens have arbitrary features that have no internal reason for they must inevitably be that and not something else. Similarly for characters and plot points. There's a ringworld, but with none of Niven's exploration into the nature of a ringworld. (Fair enough, just borrow from Niven, it just doesn't add any juice.) The gambling game and island cult are interesting, but both are deeply grotesque and kind of counter-examples of treating people well. The Culture seems like Progressivism plus American self-assured knowledge that their system of life is obviously the only right way to behave. (Not arrogance, which is putting down others, or cockiness which has naivite, but just the lack of introspection to even see other perspectives. It reminds me of the smart bombs the US talked about in the Iraq War, as if a "righteous" war with weapons that only killed hostiles and not innocents is morally acceptable. I'm somewhat sympathetic to that idea [assuming it were implementable], but I can also see how that is not terribly compatible with the idea of a peaceful nation promoting democracy, but the messaging did not seem to have any cognitive dissonance.) I do think managing to make the Culture feel like modern America, but two or three decades prior is pretty impressive, but I don't see what extra juice there is. There is no critique of the Culture as far as I can tell (or any justification, for that matter), it just IS and everyone else has to deal with it.

I guess I just don't see where any extra juice is going to come from. Canticle for Leibowitz has a beautiful meditation on human nature. Diaspora shows several very non-arbitrary forms of life, discusses disobeying a person's expressly stated values to save their life, and touches on the consequences of immortality and immortality alone. In comparison, I struggle to see how Consider Phlebas is anything other than solid C-grade sci-fi.

You seem to be doing what movie critics do to movies.

Does everything need to be a criticism, play on or comparative or something? Does everything need some deeper meaning?

It's a fun action sci-fi book. Do you question the motivations of Sam-I-Am in Green Eggs and Ham? Why does he insist so much? Where did this food come from? Does he have an ulterior motivation? Is this a reflection on 1970s conservatism in the UK and societies inability to adventure and explore?

It was literally a story about space pirates. You seem to be expecting Walden.

What a weird way to describe it, but it is true that his writing is something you stop to admire on its own from time to time.

> Culture series

They’re not really sequential stories. You wouldn’t miss much by reading Surface Detail before Use of Weapons, except for a couple of callbacks.

I just finished reading Consider Phlebas, and am starting Player of Games now! I tried to find reading order lists online and most just recommended publication order. I hope I didn’t ruin anything.

There are _largely_ no spoilers. I think Look to Windward might have very minor ones for Phlebas, but largely the novels are all set in the same universe, but more or less standalone.

It's true that it's an awkward entry point, but it's not necessarily a bad one. It's the worst book of the series imo, so if I wanted someone to read the whole series I wouldn't start them there.

But it also covers events that are directly or indirectly significant to the plot or setting of... most... of the other books. So if you are going to read them all, you get more out of the rest for having read it first.

Good to hear you think its one of the weaker ones, I didn't love it personally. (I thought the setting was awesome but struggled a little bit with the motivations of most of the characters). I've heard enough good things about the series however to know I am going to read most/all of them! Which book if your favorite?

I remember liking Look to Windward and Excession a lot, I think because they're centrally about the lives and motivations of the minds. For that reason though they may be better later, once you've got more exposure to and questions about their actions and experiences.

Surface Detail also really stuck with me for its unique conflict & setting. It's about a war over the fates of people unwillingly uploaded into a simulation of hell after their deaths. With the soldiers being continually "reincarnated" back into different iterations of the same fight. Banks has a really unsettling edge to a lot of his stuff that is just barely kept out of view in a lot of the culture books, but this one he just lets it rip and it's very effective.

I started recently with Consider Phlebas and loved it. I then read Surface Detail (not sure why I read that next) and found it pretty disappointing and disjointed comparatively. I'm hoping more of the books are closer to Consider Phlebas as I read onwards.

A few months ago I did the same thing you did, and I enjoyed Player of Games a lot more.

The ending of Consider Phlebas was a bit of a trainwreck in my opinion :)

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