The Culture

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For the main article on culture, see culture.

The Culture is a fictional anarchic, socialistic and utopian society invented by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks and described by him in several of his novels and shorter fictions. Banks's second Culture novel, The Player of Games is widely considered to be the best introduction to the Culture.

Contents

Culture "humans"

The Culture originally came about when seven or eight roughly humanoid space-faring races coalesced into a rough collective -- a "group-civilisation" -- and ultimately consists of approximately thirty trillion sentient beings. Little uniformity exists within the Culture. Its citizens are such by choice, they are free to join, leave, and rejoin or indeed declare themselves to be, say, 80% Culture. Techniques in genetics are advanced to the point where human bodies are freed from built-in limitations: a severed limb grows back, bodies can be gender reassigned according to whim, automatic reflexes such as breathing can be switched to conscious control, bones and muscles adapt quickly to changes in gravity without the need to exercise them.

Hormonal levels and other chemical secretions can also be consciously monitored and controlled. Furthermore, the humans of the Culture are equipped with drug glands in the base of their skull which secrete on command any of a large selection of chemicals, from the merely relaxing to the mind-altering: "Snap!" is described in Use of Weapons as "The Culture's favourite breakfast drug," and presumably resembles caffeine. "Quicken," mentioned in Excession, puts experiences in slow motion. Other effects include "Calm", "Gain", "Charge", "Diffuse", "Somnabsolute", and "Crystal Fugue State".

For all these genetic perfections, the Culture is by no means eugenically uniform. Human members vary in size, colour and shape as much as ourselves, and there are further differences: in the novella The State of the Art, it is mentioned that a character "looks like a Yeti," and that there is variance among the Culture in minor details such as the number of toes or of joints on each finger. It is mentioned in Excession that "the tenor of the time had generally turned against... outlandishness and people had mostly returned to looking more like people over the last millennium", previously "as the fashions of the intervening times had ordained - people... had resembled birds, fish, dirigible balloons, snakes, small clouds of cohesive smoke and animated bushes."

Other citizens

As well as humans, Minds - sentient artificial intelligences - are also members of society. Each ship or space-based habitat contains at least one Mind which is usually identified with and known by the same name as the physical object it runs and inhabits. A Mind is tremendously powerful: capable of holding millions of conversations simultaneously with any of the humans that live on board, while running all the functions of the ship or habitat. The fact that Minds are accepted as citizens of the Culture was a major factor in the Idiran-Culture War, which is explored in Consider Phlebas.

"Drones" are usually more comparable to humans in terms of intelligence, although the Culture creates machines of widely varying intellectual capacity.

Both drones and humans generally have lengthy names, often with seven or more words. Some of these words specify the citizen's origin (place of birth or manufacture), some his occupation, and some (chosen later in life by the citizen themself) denote specific philosophical or political alignments, or make other similarly personal statements. See article on Diziet Sma for a good example of human or drone names in The Culture.

As far as Minds are concerned (and particularly ship minds), they are known by the type of their ship (GCU, GSV, etc.) and by a (generally rather whimsical) name chosen by the mind itself. For ships intended for mostly peaceable purposes, these tend toward the comic:

  • The Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival
  • Just Testing
  • Of Course I Still Love You
  • Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence

but for the more militant craft (particularly those built in time of war) the names retain The Culture's sense of humour, but add a tinge of menace:

  • Frank Exchange Of Views
  • Killing Time
  • Irregular Apocalyse

For more information on Culture's ships and Minds in general see: Mind (The Culture). You will also find a more complete Minds' list there.

The culture of the Culture

The Culture has a shared language in Marain. The Culture believes (or perhaps has proved) the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that language affects society, and Marain was designed to exploit this effect. A related comment is made by the narrator in The Player of Games regarding gender-specific pronouns in English. Marain is also regarded as an aesthetically pleasing language.

Whilst the Culture is normally pacifist, a faction within the Culture exists to deal with special circumstances.

Most of the Culture's population lives in artificial structures such as GSV ("General Systems Vehicle") ships that can hold millions, or Culture Orbitals that can hold hundreds of billions or more.

Novels

The Culture novels are comprised of (in publishing, and mostly chronological, order):

External links

By Iain M. Banks


References

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