The Culture Novels – An Opera of the Future

So for my first official blog post, I’ve decided to do a book review of my favorite series.

Epic and fantastical, compelling and imaginative, the Culture novels are a space opera of unparalleled scope and scale. Written by Scottish author Iain M. Banks, the series explores the vast interstellar civilization known as the Culture. Composed of both biological life and artificial intelligences, the Culture exists as a post-scarcity, anarchic, socialist, utopian society which has thrived in space for many thousands of years.

The series follows agents of Contact and Special Circumstances (SC), effective foreign policy groups within the Culture, as they interact and deal with both internal and alien conflicts. Orchestrated by the (nearly) omnipotent Minds – super sentient artificial intelligences housed within massive starships or planet sized ring-worlds called Orbitals – the Culture strives to undermine oppressive and dictatorial civilizations within the galaxy, liberating those effectively held hostage by their own governments. Being an “ideal-typical” liberal society, the stories follow the problems and paradoxes largely confronted by similar cultures.

Anyway, enough of the backstory, I recently finished reading the third novel in the series: Use of Weapons. In trying to not give too much away, the story follows Cheradenine Zakalwe, a former agent of Special Circumstances, as well as Diziet-Sma – a current agent of SC – and a drone artificial intelligence Skaffen-Amtiskaw, as they try to recruit Zakalwe for another “job.” While the novel itself is full of mystery and intrigue, with twists and turn compelling you to read more, the most interesting part of the novel is the way in which it is written. With alternating chapters following two interwoven plot lines; one chronologically-forward labeled narrative depicting the actions of Diziet and the drone, and the second reverse chronologically ordered narrative delving deeper into Zakalwe’s past… Needless to say, this is a book not easily put down.

The next book on my list is Excession: another novel in the series exploring what the Minds call an Outside Context Problem. If anyone has read the novels, I would love to discuss them sometime!

I would highly recommend the Culture novels to anyone interested in science fiction, space, and epic adventures taking place on a galactic scale.

I hope you enjoyed my first blog post and first review.

Use of Weapons

Excession

First!

First, I’d like to say thank you to everyone who reads my blog. I’ve never blogged before, so this will be a new experience all around. Given that my interests primarily lie around science, science-fiction, engineering, gaming… pretty much all things nerdy (the site title kind of gives that away too), I think the blog will revolve around those topics. Be it new discoveries in physics, research and developments in engineering, thrilling and compelling novels, or epic games, all are fair game.

Again, thank you for reading my blog – I look forward to your comments and feedback.

P.S. I would greatly appreciate it, if you think my site might be interesting to someone you know, if you would pass it on. It is very much appreciated – thank you.