Am reading a commentary on the Culture and am reminded that Banks wrote eight novels on how utopia can be literally murderous and deeply confused, and the takeaway in Silicon Valley was “woooo let’s build AGI, but with cute names” https://social.coop/@luis_in_brief/111365158533348438

@luis_in_brief what’s the commentary? I love Banks’ stuff

@CatherineFlick https://a.co/eSqnq6G

@luis_in_brief Banks has long been a favorite mine, will have to check out Kincaid's book.

I was always struck by how *boring* the Culture is. The books are never just about the Culture — they are about its interactions with outside, distinctly less utopian, civilizations.

Still...wouldn't it be fun to travel the galaxy on a smart-ass ship?

@corbet It's so boring he basically doesn't talk about it at all in most of the books. It's very, very deep background.

Which makes sense, but if he'd not been taken from us early, I wonder how he would have dealt with today's social moment; I can imagine a novel about a moment where the Culture is roiled by internal protest, not just by external (c|C)ontact.

(And reminder that I threaded a partial re-read that I need to embloggerate: https://social.coop/@luis_in_brief/109977362624419235)

@corbet For example, I mentioned this a while back: the Culture does, apparently, have politics! We're shown results of that politics, and even causes are somewhat discussed, but we're never told how politics *happens*. https://social.coop/@luis_in_brief/110059695878624169

@luis_in_brief I thought I'd read some comment by Banks in which his own judgment of the Culture was pretty harsh. It wasn't in his final interview with the Guardian, though, so maybe I'm imagining it.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/15/iain-banks-the-final-interview

@luis_in_brief In general my impression was that part of what he does in the Culture novels is an implicit critique of utilitarianism, or any simple ethical system. You just don't get a system where you can settle ethical problems in advance.

There's a feeling you get that the Culture is kind of stuck in a particular state. It doesn't "sublimate", it claims not to dominate, but it actually does. The villain in Consider Phlebas had a point, even if he was more wrong than right.

@foolishowl I think that's basically right as a nuanced read of them.

The problem is that lots of readers aren't nuanced. They took away "ringworlds cool, AI good, of course sophisticated vaguely liberal utilitarians can lord it over their neighbors".

@foolishowl Banks himself seems to have vacillated. Again, I wish we could read new work from him in the current moment—what would he make of BLM? What would he make of reparations?

I'd like to be certain he'd have written thoughtful takes on what happens when an advanced society faces legitimate internal self-critique, but I fear it's entirely possible he'd take that critique as so many European men have: an attack on their left-liberal self-perception, responded to very defensively.

@foolishowl I hope someone has written fanfic in the style of a journal paper from an anti-colonialist academic in the Culture :)

@luis_in_brief I've thought it interesting that Iain Banks, like Charles Stross, are both leftist science fiction writers from Scotland, which has an interesting position with respect to imperialism and colonialism, given the rising movement for Scottish independence. Charles Stross certainly has opinions on the matter.

@foolishowl Have you read any Ken Macleod?

@luis_in_brief I think I read The Sky Road, which I partly misunderstood at the time I read it, as I didn't understand it was an "alternate history" to his own prior novels, so I didn't get the context entirely, and I read The Execution Channel, which I don't really remember.

I had mixed feelings about The Sky Road, as I was recovering from the experience of being in a Trotskyist group, so a lot of that rang true, but it also felt very insular, as Trotskyism often does.

@foolishowl Yeah, I think you have to read them more as thought experiment (almost perhaps as possible far pre-histories to Culture?) than anything else.

@foolishowl (I ask because, besides your fediverse bio, he was a HS classmate of Banks’ so part of the leftie Scot SF triumvirate.)

@luis_in_brief Interesting. I didn't realize they were so close.

@foolishowl Yeah. I think also his literary executor but not sure.

@foolishowl Related, in case you missed it: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/111385939814116541