Discussion questions:
What new books are you reading?
Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?
Question of the week:
What are your favorite publishers?
Enjoy!
(I do this so people here can talk about things other than politics so enjoy yourselves.)
Discussion questions:
What new books are you reading?
Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?
Question of the week:
What are your favorite publishers?
Enjoy!
(I do this so people here can talk about things other than politics so enjoy yourselves.)
Colour me surprised. Phlebas was the one book I’ve read, and Player was the one I started and dropped. Largely because of how obnoxiously US-lib it all felt, long before I knew how to put it to words.
But to learn this about Banks is something very new. Thanks!
The aspect of Phlebas that I really liked was the futility of the protagonist. Meanwhile, Player was interesting in the perspective of how life can lose meaning if there is no actual challenge in it. There are definitely lib aspects to Banks work with him being a product of western culture, but I tend to look past that.
Soviet authors had made the same case much better. Meanwhile the Player made the apparent protag sound exactly like the western bourgeoisie, or even aristocrats from ye olde days - suffering, because he has nothing more to wish for, because all his needs has been sated. Oh woe is me, my life is too awesome!
Sure, but the context is that the protagonist lives in a post scarcity society where AIs can do anything a human can do better. Self actualization is an interesting problem in that scenario. Soviet sci-fi did a great job exploring post scarcity societies to be sure, but I don’t recall this particular problem’s been addressed there. Generally, humans were the drivers of things and any robots were envisioned at best equals as opposed to superiors.
It’s not about robots being superior, but more in terms of “what makes life worth it?”. A good example would be Strugacky’s “Monday begins on Saturday”. Spoilers, but the “wizards” essentially find their productive labour (scientific research of magic) to be more captivating than having “fun” the usual way (partying, drinking). Likewise, in Bulychev’s “Adventures of Alice” a scientist uses “laziness gas” to subdue some space pirates. He notes that he is seemingly unaffected, because he values different things in life than they do ( again, productive behaviour). This is a chidlren’s book, mind.
With Banks it seemed that the premise was “Well AI solved all of our problems and woes, so now we have to purposefully find things to stir us and also we got into a war because we had to”. Which is an unbelieveably USian view. Now, I suppose it sounds like I am berating your choice of literature - that was not the intention. Those books just make me angry for some reason.
Right, but scientific research or any other work is predicated on the idea that a human can make a meaningful contribution. The premise in the Culture is that AIs are vastly superior to human intellect, and so it’s not really possible for a human to do something that an AI can’t do better and faster. I suppose it could be a like a hobby where you try to understand concepts for your own personal interest. It would be akin to people making artisanal crafts for things that can be produced industrially.
One way to address the problem would be transhumanism where people become uplifted to the same intellectual level as machines. However, that creates the obvious problem of writing a story about characters who are no longer human or relatable to us. In fact, my one big criticism of the series would be that the Minds that are supposed to be intellectually superior to humans behave no different from humans. There is also the same problem with all the aliens effectively having human style intellect.
I also agree with the war being a choice, although unlike US, the Culture is not the instigator of the war. Yet, it does have the whole USian superiority vibe and the way Culture sees itself is very much the way US does today. I also prefer the types of societies envisioned in Strugacky’s novels.
And I definitely don’t mind criticizing the series. I thought it had some good ideas, but it’s got plenty of flaws as well.
Another couple of series dealing with similar themes that I thought was better done are the Nanotech Succession and the Inverted Frontier. Both take place in the same universe and explore a post scarcity transhumanist society. I’d say the vision there is much closer to the old Soviet sci-fi.