The Culture
|
|
This article is about the fictional universe. For the main article on culture, see culture.
The Culture is a fictional anarchic, socialistic and utopian society created 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 citizens
Biological
The Culture is a posthuman society, which originally arose when seven or eight roughly humanoid space-faring species coalesced into a quasi-collective -- a "group-civilisation" -- ultimately consisting of approximately thirty trillion sentient beings. Although the Culture was originated by humanoid species, subsequent interactions with other civilisations have introduced many non-humanoid species into the Culture (including some former enemy civilisations).
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 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 and The Player of Games as "The Culture's favourite breakfast drug", and presumably resembles caffeine. "Quicken", mentioned in Excession, puts experiences in slow motion. Other such self-produced drugs include "Calm", "Gain", "Charge", "Diffuse", "Somnabsolute", "Focus" and "Crystal Fugue State".
For all these genetic improvements, 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".
Artificial
As well as humans and other biological species, sentient artificial intelligences are also members of the Culture. These can be broadly categorised into "drones" and Minds.
"Drones" are generally comparable in size and intelligence to the Culture's biological members. While artificial, drones are very individual, with their own personalities and quirks. Like biological citizens, Culture drones 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 their occupation, and some (chosen later in life by the citizen themself) denote specific philosophical or political alignments, or make other similarly personal statements. See the article on Diziet Sma for a good example of the nature of names in the Culture. A common feature of drones is the possession of "force fields" (or "auras") that both protect the drone, and allow it to manipulate objects. These fields can be visible and their colour reflects the emotional state of a drone.
"Minds", by contrast, are considerably more powerful than the Culture's other biological and artificial citizens. Typically they inhabit and act as the controllers of large-scale Culture hardware such as ships or space-based habitats. As such, Minds are usually identified with and known by the same name as the physical object they operate and live within. Unsurprisingly, given their duties, Minds are tremendously powerful: capable of holding millions of conversations simultaneously with any of the humans that live aboard them, while running all of the functions of the ship or habitat. To allow them to perform at such a high degree, they exist partially in hyperspace to exploit the "faster" physics there.
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:
- Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The
- Just Testing
- Of Course I Still Love You
- Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence
For the more militant craft (particularly those built in times of war) the names retain the Culture's sense of humour, but frequently add a tinge of menace:
- Frank Exchange Of Views
- Killing Time
- Irregular Apocalypse
It is likely that these names reflect the Culture's profound distaste of war and resultant refusal to offer euphemisms over the true purpose of military craft. Since the Mind concerned chooses its own name this may sometimes even indicate a degree of self-hatred over its purpose for existence. For more information on the Culture's ships and Minds in general see: Mind (The Culture). A more complete list of Minds' names can be found there.
As a sidenote, the fact that artificial intelligences are accepted as citizens of the Culture was a major factor in the Idiran-Culture War, which is explored in Consider Phlebas. This granting of citizenship has other more general consequences. For instance, although there is a high degree of automation within Culture technology, to avoid the exploitation of sentient lifeforms, this is achieved by non-sentient technology unless absolutely necessary.
The culture of the Culture
The Culture is a symbiotic society of AI’s (Minds, Drones) and humanoids, who all share equal status. As mentioned above, all essential work is performed (as far as possible) by non-sentient devices, freeing sentients to do only things that they enjoy.
It is also a post scarcity society, where technological advances mean no-one wants for any material goods. As a consequence, the Culture has no need of economic constructions such as money (as is apparent when it deals with civilisations in which money is still important).
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.
A faction within the Culture, Contact, is responsible for its interactions (diplomatic or otherwise) with other civilisations. While the Culture is normally pacifist, Contact additionally acts as its military arm in times of war (e.g. the Idiran-Culture War). Within Contact itself, a faction exists to deal with special circumstances.
There are no laws in the Culture. Social norms are enforced by convention ("good manners"), and the all-seeing eye of your nearest Mind. While in theory this could lead to a Big Brother style surveillance society, in practice social convention among the Minds prohibits them from watching, or interfering, in citizen's lives unless there is severe risk to them.
Most of the Culture's population lives in huge space ships such as GSV ("General Systems Vehicles") that can hold millions, or Culture Orbitals that can hold hundreds of billions or more.
It has been argued that the role of humans in the Culture is nothing more than that of pets, or parasites on Culture Minds, and that they can have nothing genuinely useful to contribute to a society where every scientific truth has been discovered, every ailment cured, and where every thought can be read.
On the other hand, the Culture can be seen as fundamentally hedonistic – one of the main objectives for any being is to have fun. Minds are constructed, by convention, to care for and value human beings. While a General Contact Unit (GCU) does not strictly need a crew (and could construct artificial avatars when it did), a real human crew adds richness to its existence, and offers some (very) light distraction during otherwise dull periods.
Of course, the massive freedoms enjoyed by humans in the Culture are only available because Minds choose to make them so. Nevertheless, social convention within the community of Minds makes it impossible, as well as abhorrent, that these freedoms should be curtailed. The freedoms are such that all are free to leave the Culture when desired, sometimes forming new societies with Culture ships and Minds, most notably the Elench.
Comparisons
Comparisons are often made between the Culture and the 20th and 21st Century Western civilization(s), particularly their interventions in less-developed societies. These are often confusing especially with regard to the Author's assumed politics. The Culture is a utopia carrying significantly greater moral legitimacy than the West's, by comparison, proto-democracies. While Culture interventions can seem similar at first to Western interventions, especially when considered with their democratising rhetoric, the Culture operates completely without material need, and therefore without the possiblity of baser motives N.B. This is not to say that the Culture's motives are entirely altruisitic; a peaceful, enlightened universe is in the Culture's enlightened interest. Furthermore the Culture's ideals -in many ways similar to those of the left liberal perspecive today- are to a much larger extent realised internally in comparison to the West. In short, the Culture is a utopia, a lot better morally than today's civilizations.
Novels
The Culture novels are comprised of (in publishing, and mostly chronological, order):
- Consider Phlebas
- The first Culture novel, its central protagonist is working for the religious Idirian Empire against the Culture. A rich, although basically linear story, taking place against the backdrop of the galaxy-spanning Iridian War.
- The Player of Games
- A brilliant, though decadent, games player from the Culture is entrapped and blackmailed by Special Circumstances to work as their agent in the brutal Empire of Azad. Their system of society and government is entirely based on an elaborate board game.
- Use of Weapons
- A non-linear story about a Culture mercenary called Zakalwe. Chapters describing his adventures for Special Circumstances are intercut with stories from his past, where the reader slowly discovers why this man is so troubled.
- The State of the Art
- A collection of short stories (some Culture, some not) and a Culture novella. The (eponymous) novella deals with a Culture mission to Earth in the 1970s.
- Excession
- Culture Minds discover an Outside Context Problem: something so strange it could shake the foundations of their civilization.
- Inversions
- Seemingly a Special Circumstances mission seen from the other side - on a planet whose development is roughly equivalent to 13th Century Europe.
- Look to Windward
- Sequel of sorts to Consider Phlebas. The Culture has interfered in the development of the Chel with disastrous consequences. Now, in the light of a star that was destroyed 800 years previously during the Idirian War, plans for revenge are being hatched.
External links
By Iain M. Banks:
- A Few Notes on The Culture (by Iain Banks) (http://nuwen.net/culture.html)
- Notes on Marain, the language of The Culture (by Iain Banks) (http://homepages.compuserve.de/Mostral/artikel/marain.html)de:Kultur-Zyklus