![]() ![]() Many of the artificial intelligences – Minds – are space ships. Part of the fun of Culture stories is the ironic, self-mocking tone of the Culture. ![]() Even if Special Circumstances’ meddling doesn’t always work out for the best. Most of Banks’ novels involve Special Circumstances, even if it isn’t always obvious. And where those other species present a threat to the Culture, or are so outrageous as to offend the Culture’s loose norms, then there’s a part of Contact that isn’t bound by Contact’s usual moral strictures: Special Circumstances. The informal, loosely structured government of the Culture has a division that deals with those other species: Contact. While immensely powerful, the Culture has its rivals, and is surrounded by a number of other, less advanced species. Refreshingly, the Culture is not earthlings in fact, in an earlier short story, the Culture made brief contact with Earth and decided to pretty much leave Earth to itself for now. Banks has envisioned what he calls a “post-scarcity” society, so technologically advanced that there is no money, little traditional economy, and everyone has pretty much anything they want. The Culture is a galaxy-spanning society of multi-species humanoids and Minds, artificial intelligences that are all too human. ![]() ![]() Banks writes science fiction set in his Culture universe. ![]()
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