Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

I think I read my first Culture book more than 20 years ago. I still remember the delight at the chase scene through the GSV. It reminds me of the shopping mall chase from the Blues Brothers in a way (and I am by no means the first to make that comparison).

Some of the ideas expressed are just amazing. I still use and love the phrase "Outside Context Problem". Excession, while not as universally popular as the (excellent) Player of Games, is still one of my favourite books.

I haven't read the last one yet. I almost can't bring myself to, in a way. Because after that, that's it. It's incredibly sad that we lost Banks so soon, obviously for his friends and family, but I would've loved to continue reading what he would have written.

Other commenters mention the dystopian future many authors project. The other end of the spectrum is dominated by nauseating projections of America utopias like in Star Trek.

For a very different yet immersive world I'd highly recommend people pick up either the Merchanter or the Foreigner series by CJ Cherryh.

I can understand your feelings, but i suspect you'll find The Hydrogen Sonata a fitting book to cap the series. There's a neat demonstration of what fairness really is worth at the end that's just ... I don't know, poetical. There's a sense of finality and closing that fits nicely.

But perhaps I just need to revisit the books again, if only to revisit Sleeper Service.

That's cool, I've never seen anyone recommend The Hydrogen Sonata so left it to last, along with Inversions.

For all the fixation on his comment about American Libertarianism, Banks's politics seem fairly standard post-Thatcher Scottish to me. After what that PM did to Scottish communities many Scots apparently feel they have little in common with the direction English conservatives are taking the UK.

Banks was a supporter of Independence and famously cut up his British Passport and sent it to Downing Street in protest of the Iraq invasion.

IMO you can see his politics all over the Culture; from the entire tragedy of Look To Windward to the wee things.

Politically he was pretty close to Charlie Stross, I think (himself hardly a Thatcher fan). It's also apparent in his non-sci work.

Here is an interesting article by Ken MacLeod (another excellent Scottish SF author) and long time friend of Banks:

http://kenmacleod.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/use-of-calculators....

"what mattered was to keep the utopian possibility open by continuing technological progress, especially space development, and in the meantime to support whatever policies and politics in the real world were rational and humane"

Slightly off-topic, if someone is interested in works of MacLeod, what's a good starting spot?

Has to be The Star Fraction - which is the first book in two series!

The chase scene is in "Consider Phlebas", in case anyone is wondering.

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