So these are fucking good books. Use of Weapons continues

banks is shit. science fiction based on hippy ideology is inherently mediocre. his popularity makes him basically the sociological version of star wars.

>>9593183
Specify your trolling if you want to make it more effective.
Better to make a fist than a slap, right?

Anyways, what I love about the Culture series is that despite it featuring a Utopian society as a centrepiece, it is vehemently critical of that so called "Utopia"
Quite "anti-Hippy"

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>>9592979
Really enjoyed Player of Games. Banks does a good job of showing the ugliness that lies beneath the facade of beauty.

Use of Weapons is next on my list.

Regarding the series as a whole - I like how all the books are only loosely connected. They all take place in the same universe, but are stretched out over hundreds/thousands of years. The only constant is the Culture itself.

>>9593183
> be Gurgeh
> travel to another galaxy
> fuck up an empire for the fun of it
>
> hippy shit

try harder, but try harder somewhere else. i hear /pol/ is easy.

I've not read any Iain M. Banks but I have read everything by Iain Banks. Is he any good?

>>9593216
>The Greeks had two meaning for it: 'eu-topos', meaning the good place, and 'u-topos' meaning the place that cannot be.

>>9592979
only read Consider Phlebas and Player of Games

desu Phlebas is a mediocre book at best but Player of Games is one of the best sci-fi novels I've ever read

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>>9592979
Was it worth the investment OP?

I read pic related and it nearly killed me, but damn. It was a fantastic series. And apparently one of Peter's worst ones.

Is this series as good or better than Night's Dawn?

>>9593997
culture isn't really a series in the same sense
you can read the books almost in whatever order you feel like

the quality of the books varies but imho the best (Player of Games and Use of Weapons) are easily better than Night's Dawn

>>9594009
Then I'll probably read Player of Games, thanks. My friends dad creamed his jeans over Phebius but I wasn't super interested.

>>9593183
>>9593216
>>9593960
banks said in an interview that the culture was pretty much hippies in space. it's the same one where he describes his involvement in an antiwar protest.

stop being contrarian idiots.

>>9594548
>banks said in an interview that the culture was pretty much hippies in space
He can say it all he likes but that's not what he wrote
The average Culture citizen is a peace loving hippy hedonist
But the Culture itself as a meta-organization is hardly peace loving.
So many of the books are about the Minds instigating conflict.

>>9593763
Use of Weapons is the best of the series in my opinion.
It's absolutely brilliant in its use of themes.

>>9594962
>But the Culture itself as a meta-organization is hardly peace loving.
>misreading this badly

>>9592979
>Use of Weapons continues to blow me away

Idk, I think he did a little too much of the "culture people can rearrange their minds like machines which is cool but I'm always going to describe human minds as really simple machines" thing in Use of Weapons

>>9594548
Yes, they're space hippies, but the characters he writes about are in the space hippie CIA and do coups and shit.

>>9595033
um, why are you telling me things i already know?

also whats your point?

>>9595041
There isn't a CIA in actual hippie ideology is the point

>>9595011
Yes, yes. They do it for the Greater Good (tm) but it doesn't change the fact that if there needs to be a war for a greater peace, they'll start that war every time.

Use of Weapons also implied that the Culture creates these necessary interventions through its intervening

>>9595024
That's intentional.
Skaffen-Amtiskaw and Zakalwe are both machines created by the Culture to solve its problems for it.

>>9595049
there isnt a cia in the founding fathers ideology either

you're an imbecile who isn't capable of thinking

>>9595457
So you'd say a book about the CIA was based on the founding fathers' ideology?

>>9595581
fuck off shitposter

I thought Consider Phlebas was alright but nothing spectacular. Is Use of Weapons considerably better?

>>9596297
The narrative is less organized than Consider Phlebas but the symbolism and thematics with regard to the rest of the series is really good

Read The Player of Games before Use of Weapons though.
You need a good feel for what the Culture is before you can appreciate Use of Weapons

>>9594966
>It's absolutely brilliant in its use of themes.

things plebs say

ooh need to reread that one for sure thanks for the reminder. think ive done most of the culture twice now but weapons was early on.

Excession was really good too

track related (trust me is good)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV9J13509r8

Culture series is some of the only genreshit I will read

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>>9593763
tfw your country is too cold and dark year round to read in your underwear with natural light and fresh air

>>9594548
Diziet "Shoot anything that moves" Sma was a hippy?

Cheradenine "make a chair out of my sister" Zakalwe was a hippy?

"oh, no, they worked for Special Circumstances, they were different, but everyone ELSE was a hippy."

also, i'd want to see a citation for that quote.

>>9593183
This, especially when so many of the issues of a post scarcity communist society are handwaved away with "it just works!"