On 5/10/06, Richard Baker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Charlie said:
> But yes, that's the idea of the books, I think. Let's face it, the
> vast vast majority of the Culture's citizens (both flesh and
> machine) live happy hedonistic lives - it's the edges where the
> Culture meets other civs and the underbelly where people conduct
> nefarious schemes where the interesting stories are going to happen.
One puzzling thing is that Banks advances arguments, most notably in
"A Few Notes on the Culture", that something like the Culture is a
very strong attractor for space-based civilisations in the limit of
increasing technology. Given this, why are there other societies with
generally equivalent technology that differ markedly from the Culture
in terms of social organisation? The Homomdans, for example, have
ships and I'm pretty sure also Minds, and yet are an old-fashioned
Empire so far as I recall. Indeed, except for Culture offshoots like
the Zetetic Elench there's no mention of any other civilisations that
even approximate to the Culture's social model.
Could it be that all such cultures are assimilated into the Culture
itself?
Rich
GCU Hedonism Gradient
If I remember correctly, the Culture is a fuzzy political entity at best.
Culture like societies are Culture, unless they decide not to be and
then they have to keep saying that yes, they're exactly like Culture,
but they're not and the Culture itself doesn't care one way or the other.
Jean-Louis
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