Culture series

Now, before we get into the book itself, it came out in the year 2000, so it just sneaks in.

Where does Look to Windward sit within Ian M. Banks' oeuvre of work, and particularly within the culture series? Yeah.

So this

is, he writes a number of science fiction books, and most but not all are set in this, what becomes known as the culture.

It is a very beloved setting in contemporary science fiction.

These are cult novels.

And one of them is that So I guess we should jump back and talk a little bit about why I thought this would be a relevant book to talk about.

It's published 26 years ago.

Which one do I read? And he said, Player of Games.

And I went in not knowing anything about Ian Banks or this book, Player of Games, that's part of a series called The Culture Series.

But I read it and it blew my mind.

And I've read everything of Ian Banks ever since.

So I would say anything from The Culture Series is great.

But if people were going to just pick one, Player of Games is the top.

Wonderful.

You know, the Eldar and a whole bunch of other, uh, species that were either contemporaries of the Eldar, but not the Necrons and not the actual Old Ones because neither of those are going concerns at the moment.

A lot of really cool, like, hard sci-fi, Iain M. Banks' Culture-style alien concepts-

Mm-hmm

... that have never gotten models and will never get models.

Scarcity is everything.

And the culture of the Belters reflects that scarcity perfectly.

The source mentions they even have their own sociolinguistics.

Yes, Belter Creole.

You might think you get perfect peace, but what you actually get is a universe struggling with profound existential and moral friction.

Interesting.

We are stepping into the post scarcity utopia of Iain M. Banks' The Culture.

Okay, so this series consists of 10 standalone books published between, uh, 1987 and 2012, and to say this universe is vast is almost missing the point of the lore.

Let's talk about Iain M.

Banks and The Culture series.

The Culture is widely regarded as the most robust, thoroughly explored post-scarcity utopian setting in science fiction literature.

When we say post-scarcity, we really need to clarify what that means, because we aren't just talking about universal basic income.

We are talking about a civilization that has transcended the concept of material limitation.

Exactly.

The Culture is a multi-species anarcho-socialist galactic society.

They have access to infinite energy via hyperspace grids.

Uh, it will create all this wealth and abundance.

And the kind of, like, most optimistic case that you hear from some of the AI company CEOs, like Dario Amodei and Demis Hassabis, they talk about this sci-fi series called, uh, The Culture series by Iain Banks, who is this, uh, Scottish socialist who imagined this world, you know, thousands of years in the future, where, you know, you have, like, post-humans who are living in these kind of like libertarian socialist societies that are governed by these super intelligent, sentient minds that kind of run everything, and humans get to do whatever they want.

They have, like, incredible amounts of a-abundance and personal autonomy and, um, you know, technology and, and, like, health and, you know, drugs and, and whatever.

And it's like, sure, in so many ways, that's an improvement.

Yeah.

Except for the Culture series.

The Culture series I think actually kinda hit it right.

Most people do not live on planets in the Culture series.

Most of them live in space habitats.

Well, there you go.

Like there's really wild shit these people believe.

And the positive case they give is like this book series called The Culture Series by Ian Banks, who's a Scottish socialist.

And in it, it's far future humans or like post-humans are living these like idyllic societies where these super intelligent AIs just run everything.

And the humans just do whatever they want.