This true, but I’m convinced the original poster knows this and is using the term ironically.
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gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•We need to escape the Gernsback ContinuumEnglish6·4 days agoEveryone is entitled to their own readership of Banks. I’m not saying mine is the one and only. But the Culture is supposed to be a background character, even if Banks spends a lot of time in the later novels “explaining” it. But if the reader only focusses on the lore, they’ll miss the quite good characters and psychology that Banks was good at too.
My personal favorite is Use of Weapons, where the focus is on the people doing the Culture’s dirty work. In one scene, Zakalwe
spoiler
spends an inordinate time trying to protect a useless aristocracy from being wiped out by a revolution, only to find out his side was meant to lose for some inscrutable Mind-directed reason. This kind of shit happens all the time to him, and as he’s basically a deeply traumatized individual he’s able to keep doing it.
In Look to Windward
spoiler
Contact goes too far along the path of optimizing “help backwards civilization” and manages to create a genocidal civil war. The survivors decide to try to destroy a Mind (and the Orbital it’s managing), and you know, you kind of get why.
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•We need to escape the Gernsback ContinuumEnglish14·5 days agoAlso the Galactic Empire as an anti-scientific hellhole with secret police surveillance.
Witness good old Hari Seldon unveiling his plans on Trantor:
It was not a large office, but it was quite spy-proof and quite undetectably so. Spy-beams trained upon it received neither a suspicious silence nor an even more suspicious static. They received, rather, a conversation constructed at random out of a vast stock of innocuous phrases in various tones and voices.
[Seldon] put his fingers on a certain spot on his desk and a small section of the wall behind him slid aside. Only his own fingers could have done so, since only his particular print-pattern could have activated the scanner beneath.
[…]
“You will find several microfilms inside,” said Seldon. “Take the one marked with the letter T.”
Gaal did so and waited while Seldon fixed it within the projector and handed the young man a pair of eyepieces. Gaal adjusted them, and watched the film unroll before his eyes.
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•We need to escape the Gernsback ContinuumEnglish20·5 days agoSome dweeb:
I would recommend “Consider Phlebas” by Iain Banks, which is part of the Culture series of novels. Very formative for me, and I read that while I was writing Theme Park. And I still think it’s the best depiction of a post-A.G.I. future, an optimistic post-A.G.I. future, where we’re traveling the stars and humanity reached its full flourishing.
The protagonist of Consider Phlebas is working for the Culture’s enemies, a theocratic empire that has slaves literally bred for loyalty, and the conflict they’re engaged in ultimately kills billions of sentient beings. Most of the thoughts about the Culture are his, and he basically decries them as the ultimate wokesters. No wonder HN nerds prefer The Player of Games in which a smart nerd like themselves get recruited as an agent to bring down an empire a bit like our own by being really really good at games.
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•The New York Times published a hit piece on Mamdami, citing CrémieuxEnglish24·5 days agoPicked up by a relatively mainstream US politics blog:
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•Nate Soares: "Buy my book or everyone dies'English11·10 days agoLW was pushing this book hard - multiple posts by Habryka, custom color scheme on the front page. Granted, it’s perfectly in line with the site’s “mission” but several people commented on it.
In the meantime, I hope Nate finds happiness as an author b/c he doesn’t seem to find it by trying to use DOOM as a pretext to get laid:
it’s circled back to LW so expect a bunch of people showing up going ACTUALLY
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EhE2jsiMcqGPRjd9a/papetoast-s-shortforms?commentId=AgG8ZM8kP98TKoW7J
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•Wake up babe, new "in this moment I am enlightened" copypasta just droppedEnglish7·23 days agopls let me know who thinks Ringworld is ”hard SF” so I can punch them
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•Wake up babe, new "in this moment I am enlightened" copypasta just droppedEnglish10·23 days agospoilers for a number of works follow
Hyperion - mankind lives in uneasy competition with semi-hostile AIs. Wars between human factions have already killed billions. The Earth is destroyed by a science experiment dropping a black hole into the core. The farcaster (teleportation) network causes ecological disasters on multiple planets.
Dune - after catastrophic wars between humans and AIs, computers are forbidden. The only way to travel interstellar distances are via the monopoly of the Guild navigators. Society is explicitely feudal. Our hero protagonist disrupts this, establishing a theocracy in a war that kills billions. His successor holds humanity in societal stasis for millenia, to induce the Scattering that will preserve it from similar societies in the future. Of course, billions die during this period.
Foundation - humanity collapses into a new Dark Age. Presumably, trillions die.
Ringworld - I read it long ago but it was so 70s I’ve basically blotted it out. The wiki summary indicates it’s not so bad unless you’re stranded on the Ringworld itself.
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•Steven Pinker in race-science podcast shockerEnglish14·1 month ago“Shocker”, yeah right. Least surprising appearance ever.
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•Where Scoot makes the case about how an AGI could build an army of terminators in a year if it wanted.English18·2 months agoOh man this is peak venture capitalism crossed with Factorio - valuations are actually cash, and a factory is a black box where you just upload new software and other stuff comes out.
Let’s take your average holder of car manufacturer stock. You’re holding the stock because you believe the car manufacturer will continue making competitive products, and you’ll get either dividends or higher valuations. Then OpenAI pitches up and offers you - what? They don’t even have stock! Even if they did, you’re exchanging a stake in something known for stake in an enterprise that have never made any cars, and when asked what kind of business plan they have they look shifty. No fucking way anyone will sell their stake for less than double what they have, especially if they find out the factory they’re selling is gonna produce machines that will kill us all.
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•Where Scoot makes the case about how an AGI could build an army of terminators in a year if it wanted.English6·2 months agoWow he looks even dorkier in video than in photos.
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•Death and the Gorgon - Greg EganEnglish8·2 months agoYes the rationalists are an incredibly large market and their opinion can make or break an author, sure you betcha
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•Death and the Gorgon - Greg EganEnglish4·2 months agoThanks for posting this, it was entertaining.
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•shocked that anyone could be so uncouth as to accuse our boy Cremieux/Lasker of *plagiarism* goodness meEnglish6·2 months agoletthemfight.gif
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•China and AGI: A New Yellow Peril and Red ScareEnglish11·3 months ago“The CCP is worse than Hitler because at least Hitler was elected” is… a take
Gonna put that down to really really bad historical knowledge
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•Is Scott and others like him at fault for Trump... no it's the "elitist's" fault!English17·3 months ago“We convinced the dumbest people in the country that our made-up problems were real, and now we have a sad because they took us seriously.”
gerikson@awful.systemsto SneerClub@awful.systems•Effective Altruism’s Democracy Problem (Gone Utilitarian!)English14·3 months ago“I no longer believe that effective altruism and democracy are compatible”.
Anywhoo, did not know the scaling of voting power to karma before. Interesting.
oh god has he spawned???
More on Banks and Elon’s terrible reading of his books
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/07/apes-do-read-banks-elon-they-just-dont-understand-him
edit from the comments I see the meme that The Player of Games is the Culture book to start with is prevalent there too. Oh well.