1.8 Lovecraft was already released. It's just waiting.I hear 1.7 "Lucas" is going to deal with trade and federations.
[Twitter] 1.6 To be Named 'Adams'
- Thread starter Tim_Ward
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Well, Starship troopers is really Heinlein's only work that got "big" so to speak. Most everything else has more or less faded from public and even geek memory outside of a handful of quotes. Of course a lot of Heinlein's stuff was essentially smut with a big nudism and zero-g sex kink running through it so in the sexually conservative era that he was most active in it's easy to see why it'd never attract the kind of attention Starship troopers did. As for Starship Troopers itself, its probably one of those works a lot better known for the ideas that it presented than the actual content of the work itself. Insectoid Hive Minded enemies who rely on weight of numbers, power armored super soldiers, somewhat crypto-fascist military democracies and rather more openly fascist views of external conquest and conflict. Those sorts of ideas are things people can pretty readily attribute to Heinlein but I'd bet you that most people wouldn't be able to recognize any of the characters' names, tell you what the plot was, or do any analysis of the themes. If they do, chances are they're remembering the Starship Troopers movie which was basically Paul Verhoeven taking a big dump on everything the book advocated.
Wow laws mostly enforced by soft means such as peer pressure. How truly dystopic.
And pardon me for bringing up other Sci Fi/Space Opera/Space Fantasy but by the general standards of the space supergenre the culture's atrocities are pretty weaksauce on the evil-o-meter. Star Trek's federation has probably caused more harm with much less excuse (to be entirely fair though, a lot of the worst things the federation has done are born more out of bad writing than making any serious points) and even compared to a lot of openly idealized societies in the genre the Culture still generally comes off smelling like roses.
You're going to have to reveal some serious baby eating grade evil to have the Culture rank towards the blacker end of the gradient scale of morality in a genre that's given us not just the openly baby eating evil set of villains like the Daleks, the Legions of Chaos, or the Galactic Empire but also a bunch of supposed good guys who can't stop either directly or indirectly giving the skull throne twelve + digit contributions.
It is flawed yes, but compared to most major societies portrayed in space based fiction it's about the best you can get without looking for fiction that tries to imagine a functioning left-anarchist space society. Of course a lot of that is due to the Culture being one of the rare examples of a post-scarcity society examined in any particular detail in the genre as generally most writers tend to avoid post-scarcity due to it being a rather scary event horizon where past that point all the rules of society change so completely that it can be hard to connect to anything.
Uh... also, that's probably the number one reason why he's terrible. Do you think I was writing about his popularity?
That's something someone who thinks it Heinlein was good would write. Also, the argument isn't that Culture is a dystopia. It's that Culture is intentionally written as something that appears utopian, but actually isn't, and is quite horrible to many. It's the entire point of the thing. Banks is a master of fridge horror.
Culture committed genocide and started the worst war of the galaxy its set in, destroying entire solar systems and employing scorched earth strategy, because they were worried a different culture might pose a threat. It eradicated a species because they would be too good at spying. It routinely subjugates and converts other cultures. You've not been reading those books attentively enough. Even most minds in the book share a certain disgust at the Culture. Oh, and fun fact: Culture is anti-immigrant. No, really. You're supposed to stay in the hole you were born in and fix it.
But it does have free cookies and effortless gender change, so I'm in. I'm not going to ignore that getting converted into a mind is "frowned upon" as pretentious and pretty much guarantees expulsion from culture.
(If you can't see the obvious parallels between Culture and the British Empire, I don't know how I can help you).
(edit: in b4 "British Empire was a utopia")
(edit: in b4 "British Empire was a utopia")
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At this point I feel like the towels are soaked with water and coiled into ropes, so I think I'll go away for a while
If you read the rest of my post you'd see that I'm saying that not only is he basically a one note author who only really has a single successful title, but even that title isn't actually all that well known. People have heard of it and know the basic ideas presented in it but finding someone who actually read and liked the book is a lot harder.
As a left-anarchist, my ideal society is probably something that would be strange, alien, and probably rather frightening to a lot of people. Post-scarcity is a scary event horizon where if you approach it with any real depth it's always going to produce something that makes a great many people uncomfortable.
This is a genre where the most well known unambiguously good characters in Luke Skywalker and Optimus Prime have both been responsible for wasting entire planets/artificial planetoids full of personnel many of whom were probably just innocent orderlies and workers. Where people like the Federation in Star Trek or the Doctor have probably been responsible for more genocides in the space of a few seasons worth of content than the culture has been in its entire history. Where the most unambiguously good hero I can name off of the top of my head; someone who's done the fewest morally questionable things, is Samus Aran in Metroid who's still responsible for wiping out more than a few species entirely; species of debatably sapient monsters who threatened to end all other life in the universe; but species nonetheless.
In a genre where the Imperium of Man is a legitimate protagonist, the Culture is never going to rate very highly on the atrocity scale. Not very many of their crimes are particularly stand out abhorrent to the average person in a liberal democracy in any way but sheer scale. They're very objectionable much like America or Britain's interferences in less developed countries have often been, but they lack the sheer malevolent sadism or callous disregard for the lives of other beings that takes to rank with the worst of them in the Space fiction evil-o-meter.
I'm not saying the Culture is unambiguously good, I'm saying that trying to paint it as particularly evil by the standards of Space based fiction is silly when you have tons of societies that literally feed off of the suffering of other sapient life and indulge in evil for evil's sake. It comes off as nicer than a rather disturbing number of societies portrayed in no uncertain terms as heroic but due to the author either failing at writing or having a set of values that are rather incongruent to the average person end up coming off as pretty horrific.
I give up. (edit: that's why I'm always afraid to admit to being an anarchist)
If your starting position is to try and convince me that the Culture is particularly evil in Science Fiction/Space Fantasy when the Dark Eldar exist and the Doctor in Doctor Who has a few entire universes' worth of people for his body count (and is still portrayed as a hero you should root for which is the creepiest thing) you're always going to fail.
I am pretty sure Lem's pedigree is good enough according to every expectation to make him suitable for an extension.
Seveneves from Stephenson and Aldrin's Encounter with Tiber are smart enough achievements in themselves. Also Aldrin was the 2nd human on the moon. Which is kind of coool.
Neither was intended as a utopia. They're not written to be utopias. Claiming that IoM is a "legitimate protagonist" is ignorant of the entirety of WH40k lore. Claiming that Culture is intended to be read as a utopia is ignorant of Banks writing and stated opinions. Me staying in this thread is probably futile. EDIT: also, your bar for what constitutes a utopia is really, really low.
Not only that, but I'm kinda sad that the idea of picking a less famous yet still established writer would be bad. I mean, Leckie or Reynolds would be great (other than the minor issue that they're still alive, but devs can ask the CK2 team for help with that).
The IoM has in recent years become increasingly portrayed as increasingly less ambiguously good in one of my more disliked shifts in the tone and feel of 40k's lore. As of the return of Guilliman the Imperium has more or less become a heroic protagonist in full. A flawed one, but still one portrayed as in the right and just; rather than simply being a less terrible option for humanity than being the slaves of Chaos or slaughtered by assorted xenos. Meanwhile the Tau have gone from being an example of why the Imperium is wrong to actually being worse than the Imperium in a lot of ways because the Imperial fanboys complained to GW enough for the Tau to get a bunch of "revelations" that showed them to be mustache twirling villains while the Imperium gradually become more heroic and good. But then people wanting to root for what are supposed to be fascists in space opera shouldn't surprise me after all since we still get a billion and one Galactic Empire apologists in every single star wars community.
I've not directly stated the Culture to be a Utopia, simply one that is often held as one by many. I'm also not arguing that it is umabiguously heroic and good, just that even at its worse it is a lot better than a huge portion of science fiction is at its moral best. Of course this is pretty easy when Science Fiction is absolutely riven with apologism for fascism to comical proportions so any series that doesn't portray a democratic society of some sort; whether liberal or more rarely of the socialist or anarchistic variety; as ineffectual idiots who need to be saved by a hard man who can make the hard decisions (while hard) is going to come off as rather unusual.
Even Oligarchic societies like the Culture are a breath of fresh air in a genre choking with advocacy for autocracy. Whether its unintentional like Mass Effect where the reason why everyone seems to be an incompetent idiot who needs shepard to make all their choices for them is out of Bioware's general method of making the player feel like they have agency, or whether its very intentional; the genre is infested with autocracy as being portrayed as the best way if the autocrat is a good and wise person. I myself have been critical of the culture on other forums as my preferred ideal society would be considerably more democratic (leaning more towards subconscious consensus) and I find the fact that the minds essentially keep organics as pampered pets who have no defense if the Minds ever decided they were a waste of resources to be something that not enough culture fans criticize.
But I don't think trying to place the culture at the same level as the general space society in fiction is doing Banks' work any service. I mean, just compare them to Star Trek's federation, perhaps the pop-sci-fi (as in sci fi that's generally well known outside of the geek community) society most often compared to the Culture and the Culture comes off as a lot better than the Federation. Of course I generally attribute this to Star Trek being a complete mess continuity wise with countless different authors with irreconcilable viewpoints producing a horribly schizophrenic entity (also my general distaste for hypocrisy in writing, while I do agree with anti-militaristic viewpoints; if you're going to preach the pacifist gospel while being a massive flaming hypocrite about it you're going to get far more scorn from me then a fictional work that never questions violence as a solution to a problem; I don't agree with that viewpoint but I can at least appreciate the honesty and good god does Star Trek have issues with being incredibly hypocritical with its professed messages), but I just can't quite find it in me to list the culture along with the "evil" societies in Space fiction.
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Except the IoM even at it's worst always was "the better choice". A lot of the bad stuff they do, they started doing out of pure necessity. Because they are dealing with forces who would ruthlessly exploit it if they did not. Which means at best they were always morally grey extremists where the end justifies the means at their core. With people being people and roughly settling everywhere on the score and on the hierarchy.
The Tau were never "truly good", they were always religious fanatics at best with what they saw as good intentions and something far more sinister at worst. Their situation also COULD NOT LAST as they expanded and slowly were exposed to the same problems the IoM was. Including various species who will ruthlessly exploit their "openness" and rot the entire thing from the inside. Which means it was always clear that something was eventually going to give.
The Tau were never "truly good", they were always religious fanatics at best with what they saw as good intentions and something far more sinister at worst. Their situation also COULD NOT LAST as they expanded and slowly were exposed to the same problems the IoM was. Including various species who will ruthlessly exploit their "openness" and rot the entire thing from the inside. Which means it was always clear that something was eventually going to give.
By not understanding that the Imperium was always meant to be seen as "good", shows how little you do know 40k. The tragedy of the entire affair is that by modern metrics, the Imperium is awful, horrid, and rightly condemned. But by examining the greater context of the 40k universe, the Imperium is shown to be doing well, and is acting as best a "good guy" as it can. The horror is that the Imperium does awful things and is less evil than the vast majority of the factions. When an extremely dark shade of gray is the lightest you have, things start to look different.
Especially coupled with the Imperium of the 30k and the ideals it espoused, and the reforms that Roboute is sure to make, the 41st Millennia Imperium is atrocious, but is one of the biggest "goods" in the galaxy. This is the horror and the tragedy of the 41st Millennia.
There's been a very marked shift in the tone of 40k from showing the Imperium as simply a less terrible option to showing it as uncritically on the side of light as the setting exploded in popularity. The 40k of yesteryear showed the Imperium as a dysfunctional hellhole with the worst of fascism and feudalism combined in an endless morass of inefficiency and pointless brutality for the sake of brutality. However as the setting started getting more and more popular the setting grew less and less critical of the Imperium. What started out as a parody of fascist rhetoric by showing the kind of hellhole the universe would have to be for fascists to be right about literally anything gradually became more of a standard Space Opera protagonist civilization but with more religion and more skulls and more xenophobia. Space Marines went from bloodthirsty psychopaths to heroic soldier-knights, the Imperial Guard has pretty much shifted away from comically obsolete world war one/early second world war tactics meant to be as wasteful of human life as possible to essentially being a modern army and since Ibram Gaunt and Ciaphas Cain became popular more and more commissars started becoming more benevolent like them when they were supposed to be an exception.
Meanwhile the Tau were basically the opposite. When they were first introduced they were far more heroic and positively portrayed than they are now since they were meant to be more of a standard science fiction civilization in 40k's brutal gothic space fantasy. They were meant to stand out amidst the brutality with shining optimism and cooperation and a very unusual (for the setting) aesthetic and emphasis on precision ranged combat with generally practical(ish) weapon systems. However there were people who almost immediately started complaining that the Tau were out of place (missing the whole point), that they were "too good", and generally whining loud and long enough to get GW to start putting in more and more darkness to the Tau. Now the Tau ethereals are mustache twirling villains and the Tau Empire is probably more negatively portrayed than the Imperium is on average.
It's much like what happened to the Galactic Empire in the EU before thankfully all the fascist apologist trash from the EU was forever jetissoned from Star Wars canon. Empire fanboys started to do the writing for the EU and started to do a lot more of the buying. So the Empire went from the original vision of a pointlessly brutal jackbooted regime with no redeeming qualities that blew up planets full of innocent people for the sole purpose of terrorizing people into submission to a force for order while the New Republic became a blisteringly incompetent bunch of morons incapable of making decisions or stopping the Galaxy from falling into constant crisis; in effect making the Empire right. Which was pretty thoroughly disturbing.
While the Imperium is considerably more justified than the Empire; I find the tonal shift in the Imperium's portrayal kind of offputting, and it's why I like Horus Heresy authors who try to portray the Emperor as quite simply wrong and that his way was in fact, not the best way or even necessarily a good or even workable way. Like the existence of the Interex in the Horus Heresy setting or the Diasporex largely served to show that the Imperium could very well be wrong about literally everything. You had much more liberal societies living in peace with xenos who were integrated into their societies and who were quite capable of fighting against Chaos without any need for the Imperium's brutality. The Interex could mass produce supersoldiers who could fight on even if not superior terms with space marines without needing to rip small boys away from their homes and could preserve and advance technology without any need for the Mechanicus' dogma.
To the point where Chaos found them enough of a threat to make sure that Horus would destroy the Interex and make their way of doing things forgotten. Chaos found the Interex's way of life far more threatening than the Imperium. Chaos is quite happy to have the Imperium exist, feeding it endless misery and negative emotions. If the Interex achieved a similar degree of success the Chaos Gods would starve. Hence working to actively annihilate the Interex while merely setting up a ten thousand year stalemate with the Imperium.