I’m on my second pass and it’s really grown on me. It’s totally ridiculous, but it doesn’t take itself seriously enough for that to be a negative. In fact I kind of adore it, trashiness and all. Kind of Verhoeven-like.
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wow the world is getting pretty great (mostly).
If they just go with something like the British accented droid voices from Star Wars (C-3P0, K-2SO) I think it’d work out OK.
My concern based on experience however is that all that slam-bang-space-opera-action sort of sets you up to expect more of it in the following books and while you certainly do get some of that, it’s less common than the first book would have you believe.
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I hope this is good, but so much of the Culture isn’t really visual. How do you portray glanding? Or a mind?
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Plenty of tits in Banks’ universe. Don’t sweat it.
Wha? But how? It’s 10 tangentially related books taking place over aeons! And Banks isn’t around to do it right. I’m willing to be surprised though. It’ll at least be nice to see an anarchist society in pop colture.
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Just so long as someone doesn’t insist that one of the “robots” has to be comic relief.
I mean, it would be comical if some primitive told a drone member of Special Circumstances that “we don’t serve their kind”, and it had some bored knife-missiles along, because, heh, knife-missiles.
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The Culture are communists? Well, I suppose so, but I just thought of them as Post Scarcity.
The Scottish Space Opera alumni of note have a splendidly left-wing bias that leaves reality in the dust.
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The only purpose was making them seem so unappealing that Horza’s stealing the shuttle that was waiting to rescue those that might have had second thoughts seem less like a crime. Part of this is that Bora Horza Gobuchul is not really a sympathetic figure, or rather he’s a guy who does some really, really shitty things and gets away with it because those on the receiving end are shown as being pretty shitty themselves.
One thing worth noting is that Consider Phlebas can get away with using Culture ships as little as possible, making them seem like godlike entities that Horza wants to avoid at all costs. However, it will be hard for the show runners to resist showing ships talking to each other, as it is a popular part of the novels and modern movies and series seem to be all about fan service.
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Whatever voice I try to conjure up in my mind comes out sounding like something from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Culture AIs may choose something big and boomy, because they would appreciate the cliche. But I can equally imaging warships with tiny squeaky voices (or unnerving child-like whispers) because they would be entertained by that.
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In some ways the Culture is post-scarcity, but they are decidedly anti-capitalist as well. They just leave distribution up to the Minds running the orbitals and ships and so on and have done away with money. You want to travel? Talk to a ship, but you can’t buy a ticket and wave it in its avatar’s face. Want a bigger place to live? Good luck trying to bribe the Orbital’s mind or any of its drones, they will decide on their own if you deserve it or not, relying also upon votes by the rest of the population to buttress their decisions.
The Minds are the ultimate politburo.
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It’s explicit in (I think) “The State of the Art”, where one of the Culture characters becomes enamoured of the idea of actually owning something (more from the novelty of the concept rather than any particular acquisitiveness on his part), and the ship humours him by creating something (a gem, IIRC) to be his very own.
It’s interesting that Banks usually depicts a left-winger’s view of utopia, while Ken MacLeod often does a left-wing take on dystopia: e.g. the neo-Blairite cuddly authoritarianism of Intrusion, and the anarcho-capitalism of The Stone Canal.
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Ah, but by then you’ve come to appreciate all the uniquely Banksian non-slam-bang-action stuff, and that’s what you look forward to most in the following books.
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No mention that Dennis Kelly is showrunner? his previous, Utopia, was one of the best, most stylish skiffy* TV shows of recent years
*to borrow a Banksian phrase
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Even the Libertarian Futurist Society loves it. Their award isn’t jokingly called the “Prometheus Award for best Scottish Socialist SF” for nothing.
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Whilst I’m looking forward to this, it’s a bit unsettling how many Libertarian types like Bezos and Musk seem to have latched on to aspects on Banks’ work, whilst ignoring the explicit socialist element. I wonder if Amazon will manage to keep the socialism intact in this adaptation. I really hope it does well though.
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I’m less worried because I don’t think Bezos will be on the writing team. He also wants to make money too, which he won’t do by pissing off Culture fans.
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Game of thrones has a philosophy? It’s the most nihilistic TV I’ve ever watched.
Isn’t nihilism a philosophy?
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