However, this will not happen immediately. Several very different books and two boxes of DVD's have arrived as Christmas or birthday presents and meanwhile I have also been diverted into reading a volume by Richard Dawkins belonging to another family member.
Back to comparing Iain Banks with Anderson:
in Banks' first Culture novel, a human species whose members can change their appearance to impersonate others was artificially generated for espionage purposes, as happened in Anderson's The War Of Two Worlds;
Anderson imagined (i) interstellar civilizations and (ii) civilizations producing abundant wealth for every individual. Banks' Culture is both (i) and (ii). Everyone has access to everything so that money and economic competition are redundant. Imperialism is an archaic form of social organization usually transcended before a species achieves faster than light travel which, of course, is necessary for any interstellar imperialism although, as we might expect, the Culture wages war against a religious imperialism in volume I and encounters another interstellar empire in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud in volume II.
It will be interesting to see how the author sustains such a series over so many volumes. Already, volumes I and II, despite their common background, present entirely dissimilar aspects of Culture society.
5 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday! Just wanted to send you a short note to let you know I am now back home from visiting my brother and his wife in Hawaii. And, to add an Andersonian note, I gave my sister in law a copy of THE VAN RIJN METHOD as a Christmas gift, collecting many of Anderson's stories about Nicholas van Rijn.
I've not read any of the books of Iain Banks, however. I fear I'm not as up to date with more recent SF as I should be. I would argue with you, however, that "imperialism" is not necessarily archaic. An empire, however it might be named and governed, can arise from a mix of reasons. From plain old self aggrandizing conquest, or the need to provide its parent society with security and freedom from attack by both wild peoples and civilized aggressors. Which is what we see in Anderson's Terran Empire.
Sean
Sean,
Welcome back. I was quoting Banks' Culture when I described Empires as "archaic." I will be posting more here this year but at nothing like the previous rate which really was rather excessive. After the holidays, including five parties, the last of them at our place yesterday, and a bad cold, I am easing back into normal life for a retired person.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Sorry about the bad cold and I hope you enjoyed the holiday parties! If Banks is postulating some kind of "end of history" scenario where mankind will attain a "perfect" society which will last indefinitely, then I, like Poul Anderson, will remain skeptical. In his four "Harvest of Stars" books Anderson gave us some speculations about what an "end of history" society might be like. AND then showed how flawed it would likely be.
Sean
Sean,
I am not sure where the Culture series goes over its many volumes but it does show some social problems. Vols I and II are set many centuries apart. A character in Vol II says, "Illegal, if you remember what that means." Imagine that.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Now, THAT I will be extremely skeptical about, a society which does not know the concept of "illegal," and hence, of course, crime. It's an emprically proven fact that mankind is most DEFINITELY imperfect and prone to crime and evil. So, barring the advent of Our Lord in the Second Coming, I don't in the least believe any human society will be so perfect that "illegal" will become a forgotten word and concept.
Sean
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