The Sword and Laser discussion

I haven't seen any posts yet, so I thought I'd start one off. Maybe it was too hard to read with all the fireworks going on. I'm 31% in, and enjoying it for the most part. More the shiny sf stuff than the gruesome parts. I think Veronica is going to need some diagrams of some of the Big Dumb Objects. I wouldn't mind that either. I hear the tone is different in the later Culture novels. Sometimes I have to reread something here and there for clarity. I think it's more boring if you just don't understand something. It seems more like an episodic sf Gulliver's Travels with Horza travelling everywhere. And Horza is like a friend with an opposing political view, an Anti-Culturer. Maybe we should start a thread with physics questions lol.

"The Clear Air Turbulence swung through the shadow of a moon, past a barren, cratered surface—its track dimpling as it skirted the top edge of a gravity well [Which gravity well?]—and then down toward a cloudy, bluegreen planet." - p53

"ever since the CAT had matched velocities and curve with the big Orbital, and turned off its own AG, the craft and the Company had been under the same fake gravity of the construction’s spin—slightly more, in fact, because they were stationary relative to the base but further out from it. [Aren't they closer to the center?]" - p118

Hah, this is great. Okay, first off, the violence in the book turned me off pretty quickly. I nearly bailed on the Culture books due to this one. There's also a grotesque game played in the middle of the book which I thought was the same game in the second book, "Player of Games." Anyhoo, this book has "first in a series" jitters and the rest were decent to pretty good. I rated them 3 or 4 stars, mostly 3. But decent insomnia reads. Derivative of Niven in many ways, especially with the small-Ringworld Orbitals, but worth a read.

Now, as to specifics, I would like to have some fun. Both those passages seem clear to me.

* The gravity well is the moon that the ship had just gone past. The ship gets to the top of that gravity well on its way back up from the moon's surface, and then into the planet.

* Fake gravity - Orbitals have docking under the surface of the ring. So it's further out and with slightly higher rotational gravity. For this one I may be benefiting from reading more Culture books, as docking comes up several times.

I guess they must have been outside the ring. But it seemed like they were in the clouds looking at the water.

Sam: [Sam enters a room where Nick is up late watching TV] What's this?
Nick: I'm not sure.
Sam: What's it about?
Nick: I don't know.
Sam: Who's that?
Nick: I think the guy in the hat did something terrible.
Sam: Like what?
Nick: You're so analytical! Sometimes you just have to let art flow over you.

— The Big Chill

I’m 4% in. Should I pause and go read the appendices, dramatis personae, etc, or just keep plowing?

I thought Chapter 2 was pretty cool. Aliens and space.

I'm about a third of the way through. Overall, I like it. I did not enjoy The Eaters chapter.

As for the physics of it all, I just let it wash over me. I've never been able to picture the Big Dumb Objects in SF books. I concentrate on characters and plot.

I think the main character is interesting. Kind of a bastard but practical. I respect that.

I liked the concept of the plates too in the first state of play chapter.

Chris wrote: "As for the physics of it all, I just let it wash over me."

When I was looking at interviews Banks gave to see how he pronounced Phlebas, he said that the physics is just made up in order get from point A to point B. And like a lot of series which grew up during that era, he later added stuff that he had to retcon into previous books, such as nanotechnology. (Niven did the same thing with Known Space. In a later book he was like, “Oh, btw, this whole time all the autodocs have used nanotech to work their magic, I just never specifically mentioned it over the previous 30 years.”)

So I definitely wouldn’t stress too much about how things work. The Culture is no more scientifically accurate than Star Trek or Star Wars.

Read this way back when and I had forgotten how this is very much a straight forward adventure story. It doesn't have any of the features that make the other Culture books so memorable i.e. interludes and banter between the ships minds and multiple POVs.

Great comments everyone. I think I underestimated the ideas here. Sometimes it seemed like a rambling Space Opera with too many characters. There were a few spots where I took a break. Not sure about the cannibal blob on the deserted island though. But I appreciate the flipping of the perspective more.

Eric wrote: "Great comments everyone. I think I underestimated the ideas here. Sometimes it seemed like a rambling Space Opera with too many characters. There were a few spots where I took a break. Not sure abo..."

the what now

Just finished-- thought the characters and adventures were solid but I agree with the "space opera" description.

I did not have the gross out factor others reported from Chapter 6(which I found interesting because I thought this group had also read Harrow the Ninth?). I would've liked more of the dynamic between Horza and Balveda and their backstory.

I may try the next one now that I've learned this is a series, but I hate feeling like I just read 1000+ pages for a thought experiment. Parts were fun, but too much of this dragged for me. With no pay off at the end, I gave it a 2-star rating.

Jessica wrote: "
I did not have the gross out factor others reported from Chapter 6(which I found interesting because I thought this group had also read Harrow the Ninth?)..."

True. Compared to Black Leopard, Red Wolf, this didn’t really move my squick meter much.

Jessica wrote: "Just finished-- thought the characters and adventures were solid but I agree with the "space opera" description.

I did not have the gross out factor others reported from Chapter 6(which I found i..."

Jessica - note that this isn't a series in the sense of story arcs across books. It's several books with a very similar setting. The only 2 that are really related at all are this and Look To Windward.

Player of Games, the 2nd book, has nothing to do with this and is entirely Culture centric. It's also a much better intro to what the rest of the books are like, IMO, which is why I disliked Tom choosing this. If you dislike Player as well, I'd say that the series might not be for you, but I'd not judge the entire series by this book.

Gave up on it.
I was digging it until he got picked up by the pirates. Stuck with it a bit longer, but once they arrived at the big ringworld or whatever, I lost interest and kept losing interest. Gave up a little later in the story once they were in the tunnels on that other planet.