The muscular imagination of Iain M. Banks: a future you might want

Most of the drama in the books comes to pass when the ship-dominated Culture interacts with a "backwards and benighted," but still vital and expansionist, species.

It's just not a human future. It's a contrived future where humans are ruled by benign Gods. I suppose that for some people this would be a kind of heaven. For others, though...

In a way it's a sort of anti-Romanticism, I guess.

That respect of Banks always felt a bit handwavey as to the specifics. (I.e. good/freedom triumphs over evil/tyranny, because it's a superior philosophy)

At galactic-scale, across civilization timespans, it's not as apparent why that should hold true.

Would have hoped that Banks, had he lived longer, would have delved into this in detail.

Granted, Vinge takes a similar approach, constructing his big bad from an obviously-not-equivalent antagonist, sidestepping the direct comparison.

The closest I got from either of them was that they posited that civilizations that tolerate and encourage diversity and individual autonomy persist for longer, are thus older, and that older counts for a lot at galactic scale.

^ Note: I'm asking more about the Idiran Empire than an OCP.

It mixes the semi-absurdity and silliness of the absurdly powerful minds (AI in control of a ship), individual 'humans' in a post-scarcity civilization, and the deadly seriousness of games of galactic civilizations.

It also has an absolutely great sequence of the minds having an online conversation.

I do agree with his consider phelebas hesitancy. I still enjoy it, but it is clearly his early ideas and he's still sounding out his literary sci-fi tone and what the culture is. And you can skip the section where the protagonist gets trapped on an island with a cannibal. I think it was influenced by the sort of JG Ballard horror from the same period, and doesn't really work. He never really does something like that again in any of the culture books.

http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/a-few-questi...

In the "Reasons: the Culture" section of the appendices in Consider Phlebas there's the line, "The only desire the Culture could not fulfil from within itself. . . was the urge not to feel useless." In that need alone it is not self-sufficient, and so it has to go out into the rest of the galaxy to prove to itself, and to others, that its own high opinion of itself is somehow justified. At its worst, it is the equivalent of the lady of the manor going out amongst the peasants of the local village with her bounteous basket of breads and sweetmeats, but it's still better than nothing. And while the lady might—through her husband and the economic control he exerts over his estate and therefore the village—might be partly responsible for the destitution she seeks, piecemeal, to alleviate, the Culture isn't. It's just trying terribly hard to be helpful and nice, in situations it did nothing to bring into being.

I also love Consider Phlebas. Maybe because it was the first I read, but I’ve found it to be a great comfort read. Look to Windward and Player Of Games next. Use Of Weapons is always fantastic, but less fun.

His non-sci-fi fiction is great too. I loved Complicity and have read it many time. His whisky book is fantastic.

P.S. Robin Sloan is a wonderful science-fiction and fantasy writer. I was first introduced to him in the excerpts of Cambridge Secondary Checkpoint English exam papers, but only got around to reading his books many years later. I would recommend them to anybody.

Here is one suggestion that I think surpasses Banks in scope and complexity, and yes, perhaps even with a whiff of optimism about the future:

Hannu Rajaniemi’s Jean Le Flambeur/Quantum Thief Trilogy (2010 to 2014)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief

https://www.goodreads.com/series/57134-jean-le-flambeur

He manages plots with both great intricacy and with more plot integrity than Banks often manages. And he is much more of a computer and physics geek too, so the ideas are even farther out.

Probably also an HN reader :-)

Also set in a comparative near future. The main “problem” with the Quantum Thief trilogy is the steep learning curve—Rajaniemi throws the reader in the deep end without a float. But I highly recommend perservering!

That friend gifted me The Player of Games and Consider Phlebas from esteemed Folio Society (https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/the-player-of-games.html, https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/consider-phlebas.html), gorgeous editions, great paper, lovely bindings, great illustrations. I've been eyeing them for a while and it's so nice to have good friends who notice and are so generous.

We're already kinda cyborgs. We use our tools as extensions of ourselves. Certainly my phone and computer are becoming more and more a part of me.

A chess playing AI and a human beat a chess playing AI alone.

The future I'd like to see is one where we stay in control but make better decisions because of our mental enhancements.

With this logic, the most important thing now is not 'safe AI' but tools which do not manipulate us. Tools should, as a human right, be agents of the owners control alone in the same way that a hand is.

AI isn't separate from us. It's part of us.

Seeing it as separate puts us on a darker path.

The worlds that Alastair Reynolds builds in the Revelation Space series grips me the most though.

The conjoiners with their augmented, self healing, interstellar travelling yet still a little human characteristics is both believable but beyond the familiar all at the same time. Highly recommended

One of my favourites! Excession most of all though. Agree with starting with Player of Games.

However, the article has one point that I viscerally reacted to:

“we have been, at this point, amply cautioned.

Vision, on the other hand: I can’t get enough.”

Amen.

The audiobooks are absolutely the best way to enjoy Iain M Banks.

The Algebraist read by Anton Lesser one of the best audiobooks ever made.

Equal best with Excession read by Peter Kenny.

These two narrators are incredibly good actors.

I could never go back to the books after hearing these audiobooks.

Maybe most of space belongs to robots, and humans are left with the planets in the habitable zone.

  Let's play Maximum Happy Imagination.

  I'll start small.

  Flying cars.