kurtschiller

I think the question the series most addresses is "How do you manage a utopia?" and not "How do you get to a utopia for us, here, on Earth?" For instance there is a lot of thought given to how they resolve differences, how they deal with people who don't really like the utopia they live in, how do they deal with people's autonomy and freedom without harming others around them, etc. And so from that POV I think it is an interesting exploration of how and if people can live up to their ideals - how does the Culture justify taking action against neighbors in light of this radical view of freedom and autonomy? Can you ever truly live and let live, or is there a point where you NEED someone willing to get their hands dirty, etc.? I think all of those are things explored in the series.

But so much of our own politics and ideology is about the question of allocating resources - and that does not come up, because they have essentially an infinite amount. Nobody has private property, sure, but they have as much public property as they want, and so much of it that there's almost never any drive to compete for anything - attention, sure; favor, sure; but property, or money, or things, not really.

None of which is true in the real world, of course, and so yes I agree a lot of it does not really translate to "well, what do we do here and now?". It's more "What would we do if we got there?" I guess

In magazines the original intent was to catch the attention of people scanning through an issue, just flipping through - they might turn a page and suddenly see a big quote in large text that caches their interest, and so they will stop and read the article. I admit I don't know how useful it is on a website and I thought a bit about whether to include it - ultimately I left it becuse it felt "magazine-y" and part of the goal was for the site to feel more like a magazine, with issues, and less like a blog that scrolls endlessly. But I admit it is mostly an affectation that may not serve any real purpose.

Thanks for reading btw!

I didn't go into it much in the article but the Culture are very much not humans, although many of the species that went into them are human-ish - in the story where they encounter Earth, they mention having fewer toes and more finger joints than Earth-standard humans.

Also Banks would agree with you that the Culture does not fit with human nature - he has talked elsewhere (I think it's in the CNN interview I cite for one, but elsewhere too) about how fundamentally different they are in behavioral norms (partly due to extensive genetic engineering to change basic aspects of their cognition, which people may peg as dystopian but which Banks viewed as a positive thing).

Thanks, I'll correct this in the article. Appreciate it!

Good catch, thank you!

Thanks for reading! He's far and away my favorite author, and I'm happy so many people on here love his writing as much as I do.

(And I agree with people's comments that how much of a utopia it really is is up for debate, especially if you don't agree with Banks's views on economics & society. But to me his own personal intent was very clear.)

thanks for this! it's my site (I also wrote the piece) and unfortunately it seems like my hosting and/or config is struggling to keep up.