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Finished Player of Games. That was surprisingly short. I enjoyed it, but definitely not my favorite Culture novel. Good and clever but not great. Interesting to contrast with other game-themed books like Glass-Bead Game and Ender’s Game.
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Now on to Consider Phlebas. Nice to be reading it at #6. It will feel like a prequel and I’m a big fan of prequel narratives.
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Finished Consider Phlebas last night. Easily the worst so far, but still worth it for getting the backstory of the world. It is both technically weaker than later novels and less inventive. Has a color-by-numbers feel. Player of Games too. The rest feel organic by contrast.
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Status: Use of Weapons: A- Hydrogen Sonata: A Look to Windward: A Matter: A+ Player of Games: B Consider Phlebas: B- To go: State of the Art Excession Inversions Surface Detail
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Surface Detail has the most direct philosophical exposition and plot-extraneous world building among the books I’ve read so far. Mildly tedious. Also not particularly enjoying the detailed description of hells. Reminds me of Dante’s Inferno (which I also found tedious).
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“[Simulationism creates] a kind of lassitude through acceptance that could be exploited. There were few better ways of knocking the fight out of people than by convincing them that life was a joke” —Iain M. Banks in Surface Detail
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Kinda fun to learn about non-SC divisions of Contact. Quietitude is a nice concept for an afterlife intelligence agency.
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Ok SC still steals the show in the end. Surface Detail is a B-. Some really ambitious world-building compromised by long stretches of rather tedious scene descriptions.
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This is the most overtly socialist-polemic of the novels so far, and somewhat weakens it. Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints is probably one of the most anthropomorphic ships ever. Almost too human to be fun, though it acts properly ship-like towards the end.
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yeah, Surface Detail's insistence on Bad Things happening somewhat endlessly got rather tedious, and there's only so long one can spend with remarkably unpleasant characters
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I highly recommend Excession next. Very focused on the Culture itself and inter-Mind politics. I haven't read the other 2 candidates, but Excession is my favorite of all of them so far.