excessionanother fantastic book in the culture series. the story centers around the culture's reaction to a so-called "outside context problem":
The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbors were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests.
excession pretty much consists of three concurrent threads: some cloak-and-dagger shit between the hyper-intelligent AI minds that run the culture, some idiot space boomer who loves space nazis, and lore. lots and lots of lore.
i found this to be a much more confusing read than phlebas or player or games. the cloak-and-dagger shit between the minds was sort of hard to follow. but banks is kind enough to provide a summary at the end in the form of blunt-force character exposition.
hella good. 9/10.
the spy who came in from the coldtbh there's really not a lot i can say about this one without giving away spoilers. if you like slow-burn spyshit that is mostly just a long series of conversations, then you'll really like this. i loved it.
also hella good. 10/10 tbh.