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Comment by aquir | Hacker News Reader

I think the best book in this subject is The Algebraist from Iain M. Banks. Highly recommended reading!

I believe somewhere in the Culture series books it is mentioned that many Culture ships also have gas dwellers as inhabitants. By neccesity in separate compartment from the usual terestrial-lineage passengers. I like to believe that alongside all the fractal complexity of Culture life depicted in the books they also have a paralel world with even more exotics. Maybe there is a gas-dweller equivalent of Contact going around Jovians galaxywide getting into all kind of schenanigans.

You remembered it well. Nasqueron Dwellers in The Algebraist

Yes. That is true. But I meant a smaller part. In Excession this part about the avatar of GSV Sleeper Service as it is contemplating offloading all of its cargo: "There was an extra, perhaps deeper melancholy at the thought that it would no longer be able to play host to the living things aboard; the creatures of the sea and the air and the gas-giant atmosphere, and the woman."

Previously in the same book it is implied that these "creatures of the gas-giant atmosphere" are animal level intellects. But my headcanon is that perhaps there are Culture ships with Nasqueron Dwellers or similar intelligent gas-dwellers with complex societies on-board.

You are absolutely right that The Algebraist is full of gas-dwelling creatures. But as far as I can recall while they have a "Culture" feel to them there are no direct Culture references in that book. But maybe I have missed something.

While I didn't specifically call it out, I also selected for exploration of Jupiter and Saturn specifically.

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