Iain Banks Culture Series Galaxy | Worlds of Speculative Fiction (lecture 18)

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This is the eighteenth session in a new series of monthly lectures and discussions, featuring Dr. Gregory Sadler, and hosted by the Brookfield Public Library. The series focuses on philosophical themes in the works and world of selected classic and contemporary fantasy, science fiction, horror, and other speculative fiction genre authors.
We continue the series by focusing in this session on the classic science fiction author Iain Banks, and his Culture series of novels
You can get the books we are discussing at the links below:
Consider Phlebas - amzn.to/2D23kTI
Player of Games - amzn.to/2r4xjsC
Use of Weapons - amzn.to/2D3f4Fk
Authors we have covered in the series so far are J.R..R. Tolkein, A.E. Van Vogt, C.S. Lewis, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Roger Zelazny, Ursula K. Leguin, Michael Moorcock, Philip K. Dick, Mervyn Peake, George R.R. Martin, Philip Jose Farmer, Madeline L'Engle, Douglas Adams, Anne McCaffrey, Orson Scott Card, Iain Banks, H.P. Lovecraft, William Gibson, C.L. Moore, Octavia Butler, Jorge Luis Borges, Fritz Leiber, Robert Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, Andre Norton, Arthur Clarke, Robert Howard, Gene Wolfe, C. J. Cherryh, Jack Vance, Edgar Allan Poe, G.K. Chesterton, Lewis Carroll, Tanith Lee, Gordon Dickson, August Derleth, Karl Edward Wagner, Aldous Huxley, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, China Mieville, Walter Miller, Cordwainer Smith, Liu Cixin, R. Scott Bakker, Stanislaw Lem, Neal Stephenson's, Philip Pullman, Olaf Stapledon, Veronica Roth, J.G. Ballard, Dan Simmons, Andrzej Sapkowski, Kim Stanley Robinson, N. K. Jemisin, Terry Pratchett, and Steven Erickson
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#Philosophy #Worldbuilding #SpeculativeFiction #Literature #Analysis #Books #Culture #IanBanks #ScienceFiction #Humanity

[@euanmcaleece402]

Artisan work, playing of games, physical achievement, even art has meaning in the culture

[@SMacCuUladh]

art has meaning in every culture that has art.

[@Second247]

Great discussion! i've read one book from Culture and it was certainly one of most enjoyable Scifi book i've read and one of the few which has offered me plenty to think about humanity, future and technology. And based on your discussion i don't seem to be only one.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Yes, it turned out to be some really excellent reading!

[@brianmonks8657]

I think that Banks was not talking about liberal vs conservative ideology when he said that US sci-fi was too conservative. I think he was talking about being too conservative in imagining future political structure, economics, etc. Look at Star Wars, there was an emperor, money, etc. Everything is too familiar to us now. How different would every thing be with very high tech, the available resources of countless star systems, etc.? That's why the Culture is so different than the old sci-fi where everything is similar today, just with space ships, ray guns and aliens added. The other thing is the discussion about A.I. in the Culture. My impression is that the A.I.s originally were human personalities uploaded (like the A.I.s the Gzilt had in the Hydrogen Sonata), not independently designed or spontaneously created. New A.I. personalities are created in the culture, but by mixing traits from the human uploads, and some randomness so that they can be unique individuals. This is why the Minds in the culture act so human, with a wide range of human emotions. Minds can be kind, cruel, helpful, or any very human personality.

[@GregoryBSadler]

I'm pretty sure he did mean the political/cultural sense of "conservative", having done the background research. Moorcock says similar stuff earlier on. . . No reason why there can't be multiple senses of the term in play, though.

[@sonoftakeshisan5929]

Traditionally in Scotland we are conservative ( small c) while simultaneously having socialist values of community. That we created the Labour/Unionist movement which went on to forge the National Health Service and welfare state. The character of Judge Dredd was also created in Scotland at the same time. Scotland discovers oil and gas yet the Conservative Party made sure Scotland saw no immediate benefit. Shipyards that once created the ships that would traverse the known universe of the British Empire were closed. Coal mines were being run down. New semi conductor industries most notably IBM came to Greenock at the same time. All this can be seen in his narratives.

[@davidwilson6577]

Iain Banks was politically and socially very liberal, and the society at the focus of his long running sci-fi series was more politically and socially liberal than the Star Trek federation. But the stories always questioned whether this was ideal, if there is an ideal philosophy etc. He did a great job of allowing anyone of any political persuasion to absorb the points he was making without being preachy or definitive.

[@davidwilson6577]

I should say 'M' Banks, I've only read Espedair Street and Transition from his 'just Iain Banks' books, and I hear Wasp Factory is more political.

[@Low_commotion]

@@davidwilson6577 To use the 4-quadrant political compass, both Banks & the Culture embodied left-libertarianism. This is not to say he was pro-capitalist, since "libertarian" isn't used the way we typically think of the word. Rather, one consistent theme of the Culture is that it maximizes individual choice & minimizes control from authority (both public or private). Given that it was also socially transgressive for its time & even today, that lands it squarely in the bottom-left section of the political compass.

[@Daoland-Everywhere]

I very much like this series and the discussion. I am trying to create a storyline around wilderness as a civilization and humanity seeing only its own exeptionalism and nature as something to conquer, which in Bank's culture series seem to have been completed. But in the context of the discussion on altruism, a Tibetan Lama friend suggested that to be fully selfish, there are so many details to be taken into consideration that selfishness and altruism eventually are indistinguishable. It sometimes seems to me that Banks projects something like this in the culture.

[@danielrafferty4108]

Hope you got the chance to read The Wasp Factory Gregory. It is indeed quite a ride.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Not yet.

[@SMacCuUladh]

walking on glass is better than his first novel, the wasp factory.

[@johnhicks5059]

@@SMacCuUladh hmmm ... but they are completely different. twf is about gender ... wog is about the dream state of humans and identification

[@SMacCuUladh]

@@johnhicks5059 the wasp factory isn't about gender ffs have you actually read the book?

[@johnhicks5059]

@@SMacCuUladh really not ? c'mon ! it is totally ... turns out the narrator was born a girl did you not pick that up ?

[@blindstagehand]

Iain Banks writes regular fiction, Iain M Banks writes si-fi ~ they are the same person, but if you're talking about the Culture series, stricly speaking, you are talking about Iain M Banks... :!

[@GregoryBSadler]

Yep.

[@eliglor9863]

Any recommendation on which book to start reading the Culture series? I've heard you can sorta start anywhere in the series.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Then why not start at the start?

[@eliglor9863]

I'll take that and dive in head first! The only friend I have who tried reading the Culture series said they hated Consider Phlebas. But they were rather vauge as to why, the term "ghastly" was used alot when I asked about it. But then again, I'm a R. Scott Bakker fan. Just discovered your channel from the Prince of Nothing videos you have going. Cheers!

[@shocka144]

@@eliglor9863 Sometimes you don't realise how good something is until you reach the end, then when looking back you realise. A re-read then happens :)

[@scottgray4534]

Check KZbin for that some good arguments for reading it different ways are out there so find which way want to match you. What order should I read the culture series should bring some for you to choose from.

[@blindstagehand]

Start with The State of The Art, which is a series of short stories and a novella which takes up half the book which is The State of The Art ~ it's an excellent story of aliens visiting Earth with a nice twist because they do end up eating us! My favourite M Banks book is not culture though, it's called The Algerbraist and it's excellent.

[@alexmeyer7986]

Hi Dr. Sadler, is a discussion of Hyperion planned? If not, I would love for you to consider it. Thank you, and as always, great video.

[@GregoryBSadler]

I do my planning for the next year towards the end of the present year - if the series is renewed

[@GregoryBSadler]

I do my planning for the next year towards the end of the present year - if the series is renewed

[@cerbing666]

My though exactly.

[@SIVA6619]

@@GregoryBSadler I know its late now.. but Hyperion would still be very interesting !

[@GregoryBSadler]

TheMylesky Yes, very late

[@semianonymousraccoon2950]

The description of Heinlein as left-wing struck me as odd, but then I realized he was left-wing as a younger man and became a radical right-wing libertarian in his later years. It's actually understandable, as he ate government food when younger but later made enough money that he had to actually pay taxes and became a bit... stingy about extending that same help to others.

[@euanmcaleece402]

Nice work. SC 12843

[@PurpleWarlock]

Dr. Sadler, sorry to pester but could you check out an old British spy TV show: The Sandbaggers? Some episodes are on youtube (guessing in not very legal ways). kzbin.info/www/bejne/onzKkKdjhdebp80 First episode is excellent. It's about how MI-6 got the task of helping Norway's secret service rescue agents in Soviet Territory for an economic favor.

[@johnhicks5059]

the wasp factory is perfect reading for the non binary age