Get best of the week

A few notes about Culture

Get ready for long and complicated offers. :-)
This is a note by the writer Ian M. Banks about Culture, the hero civilization of the eponymous series of his fantastic works “Culture”. (After reading which, you will learn, for example, what inspired the Neuralink neural lace of Ilona Mask and the names of SpaceX's self-propelled ocean barges used to land reusable rockets). The note is careless in places and reveals only a few aspects of Culture, but for lovers of the series - present and future - this hardly diminishes it.

First and foremost: There really is no culture. It exists only in my mind and in the minds of the people who read about it.

Having clarified this, we follow to the fact that ...

Culture is a group civilization consisting of seven or eight humanoid species, parts of which settled in outer space formed a kind of federation about nine thousand years ago. The ships and dwellings that formed the original alliance needed mutual support in order to gain and maintain independence from political power structures - mainly from structures of mature nation states and commercial concerns - from which they emerged.

The galaxy (our galaxy) in the stories about Culture is a long-lived place with many diverse life forms. Over its long and complex history, it has seen waves of empires, federations, colonization, extinctions, wars, dark ages (for certain species), revivals, periods of construction of megastructures and their destruction, as well as entire eras of favorable indifference and malicious neglect. In the times described in the stories about Culture, there probably are several tens of large space civilizations and hundreds of small, tens of thousands of species that can develop astronautics in the galaxy, and countless people who have already seen and done everything and now either retired but the isolated corners to reflect on are unknownor completely disappeared outside the ordinary universe for the sake of creating even less comprehensible to understanding realities.

In this era, Culture is one of the most energetic civilizations. After her education, which was not without vicissitudes, she randomly found herself in a relatively quiet period for the galaxy, where there were various other fairly mature civilizations, preoccupied with their own affairs, the remnants and relics of more ancient cultures, and - due to the fact that no one else is comparatively For a long time he did not bother with grandiose wanderings - with many interesting "undisclosed" star systems.

Culture in its history and in its current form is an expression of the idea that the nature of space itself determines the type of civilizations that will flourish in it.

The thought processes of a tribe, clan, country, or nation state are essentially two-dimensional; the nature of their power is determined by the same plane. Territory is extremely important to them; resources, living space, communication routes - everything is determined by the nature of the plane (the fact that the plane is actually a sphere does not matter here). This plane and the fact that the species in question is limited by it during its evolution determines the mentality of the terrestrial species. The mind of a water or bird species, of course, is a lot different.

In fact, our current dominant power systems cannot last long in space; after a certain technological level, it is entirely possible that a certain degree of anarchy is inevitable and in any case preferable.

To survive in space, ships / habitation must be self-sufficient, or almost self-sufficient; therefore, the power of the state (or corporation) over them becomes difficult if the wishes of the residents significantly differ from the requirements of the regulatory body. Enclaves on the planet can be surrounded, besieged, attacked; the superior forces of a state or corporation - hereinafter referred to as hegemony - tend to prevail. In space, it will be much more difficult to control the breakaway movement, especially if a significant part of it is based on ships or mobile dwellings. The unfavorable nature of the vacuum and the technological complexity of life support mechanisms will make such systems vulnerable to a direct strike, but this is, of course, fraught with the threat of the complete destruction of the ship / dwelling,which excludes their future economic contribution to the activities of the entity that is trying to control them.

The direct destruction of rebel ships or habitation - pour incentivez les autres ("for example, others") - of course, remains possible for the controlling party; but other rules of real rebel politics (realpolitik) also apply, especially in the case of a strange dialectic of dissent, which - to put it simply, indicates that except in the most repressive hegemony, if there are one hundred rebels in a sufficiently large population, all of whom are gathered and killed, then the next day the number of rebels is not zero, and not even a hundred, but two hundred, three hundred or more; it is an equation due to human nature that often puzzles the military and political mind. Thus, rebellion (as soon as cosmic movements and cosmic life activity become commonplace) becomes easier than possible on the surface of the planet.

But despite this, it is definitely the most vulnerable moment of the existence of Culture; the moment where it is easiest to say that everything would have turned out very differently, since the scale and sophistication of the methods of influence of hegemony - as well as its ability and will to suppress - enter the battle with the ingenuity, skill, solidarity and courage of rebellious ships and habitation. Indeed, it is assumed here that this moment has already been achieved and hegemony has won. ... but it is also assumed that - for the reasons given above - this moment will inevitably happen again, and if repressive forces need to win every time, then progressive elements need to be defeated only once.

Related to this is the argument that the nature of life in outer space - and its attendant vulnerability - means that although ships and habitation can more easily be independent of each other and from their ancestral hegemony, their crew - or inhabitants - will always know that rely on each other, as well as on technologies that allow them to live in space. Theoretically, this means that property and social relationships with long-term residence in space (especially for generations) will be fundamentally different from those typical of the planet. The interdependence necessary in an environment hostile in nature will require internal social cohesion, which will contrast with the external ease inherent in the relations between such ships / habitation. In short: socialism inside,anarchy between ships / habitation. Such an approximate result - in the long run - does not depend on the initial social and economic conditions that give rise to it.

Let me express here my personal conviction, which is now extremely fashionable, namely that a planned economy can be more productive - and more morally attractive - than an economy left in the hands of market forces.

A market with a “try it all and see what works” approach is a good example of evolution in action. This could lead to a completely morally satisfactory resource management system if there were absolutely no way to consider any living creature as one of these resources. The market, for all its (extremely ridiculous) difficulties, remains a crude and essentially blind system; without radical changes, fraught with a decrease in economic efficiency, which is claimed to be his most important advantage, he is by nature incapable of distinguishing the simple non-use of matter caused by technological redundancy from the acute, prolonged and mass suffering of conscious beings.

It is in the elevation of this deeply mechanistic (and in this sense perversely innocent) system over all other moral, philosophical and political values ​​and considerations that humanity most clearly demonstrates both its current intellectual [immaturity and] - because of gross selfishness, not hatred to others - some kind of synthetic villainy.

Intelligence that can look ahead beyond the next aggressive change can set long-term goals and move towards them; the same naive ingenuity that strikes the market in all directions can be - to some extent - directed so that when the market just shines (and feudalism flickers), it is planned like a laser beam to progressively and efficiently move towards agreed goals. However, what is extremely important in such a scheme, and which has never happened in the planned economies of our civilization, is the constant, direct and active participation of the masses of citizens in determining these goals, as well as in the development and implementation of plans for their achievement.

Of course, in any well-thought-out plan, there is a place for providence and chance, and the degree of their influence on the higher functions of a democratically designed economy will be one of the most important parameters that must be set ... but in the same way as the information accumulated in our libraries and institutions is undoubtedly outgrew (if not outweighed) the one that lives in our genes, and in the same way as we can - within a century after the invention of electronics - reproduce - with the help of machine mind - a process that took billions of years of evolution, we will also refuse once from the crudely directed whims of the market in favor of the accurate formation of a planned economy.

Culture, of course, went even further — its economy is so inseparable from society that it hardly deserves a separate definition; it is limited only by imagination, philosophy (and mores) and the idea of ​​the least wasteful elegance; a kind of galactic environmental consciousness combined with a desire to create beauty and good.

Ay, anyway; as a result, practice (as always) eclipses the theory.

As noted above, in addition to the nature of human inhabitants, as well as the limitations and opportunities due to living in outer space, another force acts in Culture - Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the stories of Culture, this is taken for granted. And unlike superluminal movements, this is not only likely in the future of our own kind, but perhaps inevitably (given the assumption that homo sapiens will avoid destruction).

There are, of course, arguments against the possibility of artificial intelligence, but they usually come down to one of three theses:

  1. – , , – , ( , ).
  2. – , , – , , ( , );
  3. ( , - , ). .

Of course, it is possible that real AIs will refuse to have anything to do with their human creators (or, rather, perhaps the human creators of their inhuman creators), but if we assume that they will deal with them - and the design of their software can be optimized in this respect - I would argue that it is quite possible that they will agree to help achieve the goals of their source civilization (we will return to this statement soon). At this stage, no matter how humanity changes itself through genetic manipulation, it will no longer be a species with a single type of consciousness. The future of our species will affect the future of the AI ​​life forms that we create; it will also depend on them and coexist with them.

Culture reached this phase around the same time it began to populate space. Her AI collaborates with people of civilization; their first task is simply to survive and develop in space; then, when the technologies necessary for this become commonplace, the task becomes less physical and more metaphysical, and the goals of civilization more moral than material.

In short, nothing and nobody in Culture is exploited. In fact, in terms of production processes, it is an automated civilization in which human labor boils down to something indistinguishable from a game or a hobby.

Also not a single machine is in operation; the idea here is that any work can be automated so as to ensure that it can be done by a machine well below the level of potential consciousness; which for us would be a stunningly complex computer running a factory (for example), AI Cultures would be considered as a calculator that is no more exploited than an insect pollinating a fruit tree, the fruit of which is later eaten by humans.

When a reasonable control of production or operation is needed, then the intellectual task behind it (and the relative ease of the effort required) will make this control interesting and enjoyable for both the person and the machine. The exact degree of supervision required can be set at a level that satisfies the demand arising from the nature of the members of civilization. People - and, I would say, those conscious machines that will willingly cooperate with them - do not want to feel themselves exploited, but also do not want to feel useless. One of the most important tasks in creating and maintaining a stable and internally prosperous civilization is to find an acceptable balance between the desire for freedom of choice in one’s actions (and freedom from mortal fear in one’s life) and the need to feelthat even in such a self-regulating utopian society, you still contribute something. Philosophy is important here, as well as proper education.

Education in Culture never ends; it may be most intense in the first tenth of an individual’s life, but it lasts until death (another topic that we will return to). Living in Culture is living in a deeply rational civilization (humanity can never achieve something like this; our history, perhaps, is not encouraging in this regard). Culture is very consciously rational, skeptical and materialistic. All and nothing is important. No matter how vast the Culture - thirty trillion people evenly scattered throughout the galaxy - it is finely scattered, exists only in this galaxy so far, and compared with the prescription of the universe, there was only a moment. There is life, there is pleasure, but what of this? Matter is for the most part non-living; living things are mostly unreasonable;and the cruelty of evolution preceding the emergence of the mind (and often following it) filled countless lives with pain and suffering. And even the universes perish as a result. (Although we will return to this.)

In the midst of all this, the average individual of Culture - a person or a machine - knows that they are lucky to be in the place and time in which they are. Part of their education, both primary and future, contains the understanding that creatures are less successful than themselves - though no less worthy from an intellectual or moral point of view - have suffered and continue to suffer in other places. In order for Culture to be preserved and not fall into mortal decline, it is necessary to regularly remind that its easy hedonism is not some kind of natural situation, but something desirable, hardly achieved in the past, not necessarily easily achieved, and requiring recognition and maintenance as in the present, so in the future.

Understanding the place of Culture in the history and development of life in the galaxy is what stimulates for the most part cooperative and - as Culture would call it - essentially a benevolent techno-cultural diplomatic policy of civilization; but the ideas behind it go deeper. Philosophically, culture as a whole accepts questions like “What is the meaning of life?” pointless. Such a question implies - in fact, requires - a moral basis in addition to the only moral basis that we can comprehend without resorting to superstitions (and thereby abandoning the moral basis that forms the language itself - and symbiotic with it).

In general, we create our own meanings, whether we like it or not.

The same self-reproducing belief system is also characteristic of AI Culture. The parameters within which they are designed (by other AIs over almost the entire history of Culture) are very broad, but they exist; AI Cultures are designed to want to live, want to experience, want to understand, and consider existence and their own thought processes to some extent satisfactory, even pleasant.

Human beings of Culture, having solved all the obvious problems of their common past, in order to be free from hunger, want, disease and fear of natural disasters and attacks, would consider an existence filled with pleasure only a little meaningless, and therefore they need the blessings of the Contact section (hereinafter “ Contact ”) to feel indirectly helpful. For AI Culture, the need to feel useful is for the most part giving way to the desire to experience, but it remains as a fairly strong incentive. The universe - or, at least in this era, the galaxy - is largely unexplored (at least by Culture) and stretches out in anticipation; her physical principles and laws have been thoroughly studied,but the results of fifteen billion years of chaotic action and interaction of these laws are not yet fully defined and evaluated.

According to Gödel from Chaos, a galaxy is, in other words, an extremely and limitless in nature interesting place; an intelligent playground for cars that know everything except fear and what is hidden in the next unexplored star system.

At this point, I think, you need to ask why some kind of AI civilization - and, possibly, any complex culture in general - wants to spread throughout the galaxy (or the universe, for that matter). It would be entirely possible to build a von Neumann machine, which would create copies of itself and over time, if it were not stopped, would turn the universe exclusively into its own copies. But the question arises: why? What's the point? We state this in terms that we can still consider frivolous, but to which Culture would have the wisdom to take seriously: where is the fun in this?

Interest - delight from experiences, from understanding - comes from the unknown. Understanding is a process, as well as a state, indicating a transition from the unknown to the known, from random to ordered ... A universe in which everything is already fully understood and where uniformity has replaced diversity, would be, I would say, an anathema for any AI that respects itself.

Probably only people find the von Neumann machine idea frightening, because we half understand - and even partially experience - the obsession with the idea that such designs represent. AI will think that the idea is crazy, ridiculous and - perhaps the most deadly - boring.

This does not mean that from time to time events related to von Neumann's machines do not happen in the galaxy (rather, by chance, and not by design), but something so rampant monomaniac is unlikely to be able to hold out before creatures with a sharper mind, who just want to change the software of the von Neumann machine a little and make friends ...

One of the ideas about Culture, as it is presented in the stories, is that it went through the cyclic stages of the mass merger of people and machines, and the stages (sometimes coinciding with the epochs of man-machine merger) of the general genetic modifications. The stories written at this point cover the period from about 1300 to 2100 AD - the era when people of culture returned (probably temporarily) to a more “classic” look in terms of relationships with machines and also their genetic potential.

Culture recognizes, welcomes and accepts fashion trends in such matters - however, long-term trends. There were times when people spent the bulk of their lives in what we would now call cyberspace, and times when people preferred to change themselves or their children through genetic manipulations, giving rise to various morphological subspecies. The remnants of different waves of such civilizational “modes” are found throughout Culture, and almost every person in Culture carries the results of genetic manipulations in every cell of his body; this is perhaps the surest sign of cultural affiliation.

Thanks to these genetic manipulations, the average person of Culture is born comprehensively healthy and has a significantly (although not to a great extent) more developed intellect than his basic genetic heritage suggests. This basic human heritage has undergone thousands of changes; in particular, blister-free corns and a blood clot filter to protect the brain are two of the less significant changes mentioned in the stories. The main changes with which a typical Culture person is usually born include an optimized immune system and improved sense organs; lack of hereditary diseases or defects; the ability to control their internal processes and the nervous system (pain, as a result, can be turned off); as well as the ability to survive and fully recover from injuries,which, without such genetic manipulation, will either be killed or permanently mutilated.

Also, the vast majority of people from birth have substantially altered glands in the central nervous system, known as “narcotic glands.” They, on command, release substances into the bloodstream that alter mood and sensory sensitivity. About the same number of Culture representatives have slightly altered reproductive organs - and the ability to control the nerves they use - to increase sexual pleasure. Ovulation in a woman occurs at will, and until a certain stage the embryo can be reabsorbed, interrupted, or delayed at a static point in its development; again, by the will of man. An intricate thought code, independently activated in a state similar to trance (or simply a steady desire, even if it is unconscious),within about a year will lead to a viral transition from one sex to another. The Convention - even tradition - in Culture during the period described so far in the stories implies that each person must give birth to one child in his life. In practice, the population is growing slowly. (And besides, sporadically, for the reasons of which we will come later).

It may seem to us that the idea of ​​the possibility of knowing how the opposite sex perceives sex, or of the possibility of getting drunk / smoking / flying away and all that just thinking about it (and of course, the drug glands of Culture do not cause unpleasant side effects or physiological dependence) is just the execution of subliminal fantasies. And indeed, in part this is the fulfillment of subconscious fantasies, but the fulfillment of fantasies is also the most powerful incentive for civilization, and perhaps one of its highest functions; we want to live longer, we want to live more comfortable, we want to live with less anxiety and more pleasure, with less ignorance and more understanding than our ancestors ... But the ability to change gender and change brain chemistry - without resorting to external technologies and without any boards - have more serious functions in Culture. Society,in which it is so easy to change the gender, quickly learns whether it relates to one sex better than to the other; over time, there will be more and more representatives of the same gender in the composition of the population who will be more profitable, and therefore the need for change - within society, rather than at the individual level - will presumably increase until some form of gender equality is reached and hence the quantitative parity. Similarly, a society in which everyone is free to spend a significant part of their time “out of their mind” will know that something is seriously wrong with reality, and (hopefully) will do everything possible to make this reality more attractive and less - in a derogatory sense - ordinary.over time, there will be more and more representatives of the same gender in the composition of the population who will be more profitable, and therefore the need for change - within society, rather than at the individual level - will presumably increase until some form of gender equality is reached and hence the quantitative parity. Similarly, a society in which everyone is free to spend a significant part of their time “out of their mind” will know that something is seriously wrong with reality and (hopefully) will do everything possible to make this reality more attractive and less - in a derogatory sense - ordinary.over time, there will be more and more representatives of the same gender in the composition of the population who will be more profitable, and therefore the need for changes - within society, and not at the individual level - will presumably increase until some form of gender equality is reached and hence the quantitative parity. Similarly, a society in which everyone is free to spend a significant part of their time “out of their mind” will know that something is seriously wrong with reality and (hopefully) will do everything possible to make this reality more attractive and less - in a derogatory sense - ordinary.until some form of gender equality is reached and hence quantitative parity. Similarly, a society in which everyone is free to spend a significant part of their time “out of their mind” will know that something is seriously wrong with reality and (hopefully) will do everything possible to make this reality more attractive and less - in a derogatory sense - ordinary.until some form of gender equality is reached and hence quantitative parity. Similarly, a society in which everyone is free to spend a significant part of their time “out of their mind” will know that something is seriously wrong with reality and (hopefully) will do everything possible to make this reality more attractive and less - in a derogatory sense - ordinary.

In the stories written at the moment, it is understood that, thanks to self-correcting mechanisms of this kind, Culture came to approximate stability in such matters thousands of years ago and is rooted in a kind of long-term civilizational “ main sequence ” that will remain in the foreseeable future for thousands of generations.

Which brings us to the duration of these generations and the fact that we can say that they even exist. People in Culture usually live 350-400 years. Most of their lives consist of a three-century plateau, which they reach — after a relatively normal rate of maturation in childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood — by an age that we can roughly correlate with our twenty-fifth birthday. During these three hundred years, they very slowly become older, then begin to age faster, and then die.

Philosophy, again; death is perceived as part of life, and nothing, including the universe, lasts forever. Trying to pretend that death is somehow unnatural is considered a bad temper; on the contrary, death is seen as the creation of life.

Although funerals, cremations, and other forms of body utilization that are common for us are known in Culture, the most common form of funeral is when the deceased, often surrounded by friends, visits a moving drone, which - using the technique of almost instantaneous transmission of a singularity remotely induced through hyperspace - removes the corpse from places of his last dormancy and places him at the core of the sun of his system, where the constituent particles of the corpse begin a million-year journey to the surface of the star to shine - perhaps - long after Culture itself has receded into the past.

None of this, of course, is obligatory (nothing in Culture is obligatory). Some people choose biological immortality; others transfer their identity to AI and die with a sense of happiness from continuing to exist elsewhere; still others go to the Warehouse to be awakened at more (or less) interesting times, or after every decade, or century, or thousand years, or at exponentially increasing time intervals, or only when it appears that something truly new is happening ...

Starships of culture - that is, all classes of ships above interplanetary - are reasonable; their Mind (complex AI, for the most part working in hyperspace to take advantage of the higher speed of light there) has the same relevance to the design of a ship as the human brain to the human body; Reason is an important part, and the rest is a system of life support and movement. People and independent drones (separate non-android type AIs with intelligence approximately equivalent to human) are not needed to control starships and have a status somewhere between passengers, pets and parasites.

The largest ships of Culture - besides some works of art and several Eccentrics - are General Contact System Ships. (Contact is a part of Culture that deals with the discovery, cataloging, research, evaluation and, if it is deemed appropriate, interaction with other civilizations; its essence and activity are described separately in the stories). GSK are fast and very large ships, measured in kilometers and inhabited by millions of people and cars. The idea behind them is that they fully represent Culture. Everything that Culture knows is known to every GSK; everything that can be done anywhere in the Culture can be done within or with the help of any GSK. From the point of view of both information and technology, they represent an extreme means (approx. Transl .:last resort ; something that is used when all other options have been exhausted) and act as holographic fragments of the Culture itself - the whole contained in each of its parts.

From our point of view, the capabilities of HSCs are at least the same as those of a large state and perhaps even an entire planet (with the proviso that even Culture prefers to extract matter rather than create it from nowhere; HSCs nevertheless require raw materials).

Contact, however, is a relatively small part of the entire Culture. The average Culture Citizen rarely encounters GSK or another Contact ship in person; the ships with which they usually interact are cruise ships; interstellar passenger ships transporting people from one abode to another and visiting the most interesting systems, stars, nebulae, holes, etc. in this place. Again, this kind of tourism is partly an established fashion; people travel because they can, and not because they need it; they could be at home and as if traveling to exotic places through what we would now call virtual reality, or they could send their information construct to a ship or other creature that would gain experience for them,and they themselves would later integrate the memories into their memory.

There were times, especially after the corresponding virtual reality technology was perfected to perfection, when the scale of real “physical” tourism drastically decreased, and in space at any given time during the period described in the stories (except for the most intense phase of the Idiran War) travel to a tenth of the citizens of Culture.

Planets are of little importance for the life of the average person of Culture; there are several handfuls of planets that are considered “home”, and several hundred others that were colonized (sometimes after terraforming) in the early period before the appearance of Culture itself; but only an insignificant part of the inhabitants of Culture lives on them (much more people constantly live on ships). More people live in Stones - hollowed out asteroids and planetoids (most of which are equipped with drives, and some - for nine millennia - are equipped with dozens of different, more advanced engines). Most people, however, live in larger artificial dwellings, mainly in Orbitals.

Perhaps the easiest way to imagine Orbital is to compare it with an idea that inspired it (it sounds better than saying “this is where I stole it from”). If you know what the World Ring is - invented by Larry Niven; Dyson Sphere segment - then just drop the shadow squares, squeeze this thing to about three million kilometers in diameter and place it in orbit around a suitable star, tilting it slightly towards the ecliptic; give it a spin to create 1G gravity, and this will provide you with an automatic 24-hour daily cycle (approximately; Culture day is actually a bit longer). An elliptical orbit provides seasonality.

Of course, the materials for the construction of something with a circumference of ten million kilometers, which turns around its axis in 24 hours, are far beyond all that we can really imagine, and it is quite possible that the physical restrictions imposed by the strength of atomic bonds, make the creation of such structures impossible. But if construction on such a scale is possible and the influence of such significant forces on such structures is permissible, then I would suggest that using the same rotation to create both an acceptable daily cycle and tangible gravity has elegance, which makes the idea by its nature attractive.

Usually, instead of building entire Orbitals in one go, Culture begins with Plit - pairs of plates of earth and water (plus full-fledged retaining sides, of course) with at least a thousand kilometers side, also rotating in orbit, connected to each other by tensor fields , and representing in their behavior sections of the completed Orbital; this approach provides more flexibility in responding to population growth. Further, you can add additional plate pairs until the Orbital is completed.

The attractiveness of Orbitals lies in their resource efficiency. Using the same amount of matter as a planet the size of the Earth (current population of six billion; mass 6x10 24kg), it would be possible to build 1,500 whole orbitals, each of which would have twenty times the surface area than the Earth, and the maximum population of which could be up to 50 billion people (Culture would consider the Earth at present approximately overpopulated twice although it would consider the ratio of land to water to be approximately correct). Of course, Culture does nothing as nasty as actually destroying planets to create Orbitals; by collecting wandering debris (for example, comets and asteroids) that are in every solar system and a collision that poses a threat to the safety of such an artificial world, you can build at least one full-fledged Orbital (an approach whose lean grace almost delights the average Reason). Matter from interstellar space in the form of dust clouds,brown dwarfs, etc. serves as another source of mass, which can be collected with minor consequences, to create several full Orbitals.

Whatever the source material, Orbitals are clearly much more effective in terms of providing living space than planets. Culture, as seen in The Use of Weapons, generally considers terraforming environmentally incorrect; virgin environment should be left as is; it's so easy to build paradise in space from so little.

To understand how the daily cycle occurs on Orbital, you can take an ordinary belt, fasten it so that it forms a circle, and set your eyes on one of the holes on the outside of the belt; if you look through the hole at the lamp and slowly turn the entire belt, you can get an idea of ​​how the movement of a star in the sky looks from Obital - although you will look pretty funny at the same time.

As indicated, the minimum width of the Orbital is usually about a thousand kilometers (two thousand, given the inclined and mostly transparent retaining sides, which usually rise about five hundred kilometers above the surface of the plate). The usual ratio of land to sea is 1: 3, so that on each Plate, provided that they are built with balanced pairs described above, a roughly square island rests in the middle of the sea at a distance of about two hundred and fifty kilometers from the coastline to the holding barriers. Orbitals, however, like everything else in Culture, are very different from each other.

What almost every Orbital has, whether it's only two Plates or a completed (“closed”) Orbital, is the Hub. As the name implies, the Hub is located in the center of Orbital, equidistant from all parts of the main circular structure (physically, as a rule, not adjacent to it). The hub is the place where the Orbital AI manager is usually located (often the Reason), who controls or helps control transport, production, service and support systems, acts as a communication hub for trans-orbit communication, a library and a common information center, and traffic control for arrivals, ships departing and passing nearby, and, as a rule, serving as the main connecting element of the Orbital with the rest of the Culture. During the construction of the Plate-Couple, the Hub, as a rule, controls the process.

The design of the Plate sometimes includes a deep - or strategic - structure of the surface geography, so the Plate itself has folds that form mountains, valleys and lakes; but more often, the surface of the Plate remains flat, and the strategic elements on the inner surface - created from the same material as the base of the Plate - are added later. With any of these approaches, the production and service systems of the slab are located in niches or cavities of the supporting structure, allowing the surface to take a rural look - after designing and positioning tactical geomorphology, adding water and air, conducting the necessary weather treatment and introducing the appropriate flora and fauna.

The base surface of the Slab is stitched with multi-barrel shafts providing access to production and service facilities, as well as subsurface transport systems. (Almost always they include closed single-pass concentrically rotating air locks, paired in series).

Inhabitance's fast transport systems, located on the outer surface of the base, operate in a vacuum, which gives them the benefits of no air resistance. The relatively uncluttered outer surface of the Orbital (flat, allowing systems to be close to the surface, or corrugated, requiring flange bridges under free mountain depressions) allows systems to be both highly productive and extremely flexible. The starting and ending points of the routes of the transport system for the same reason can be very accurate; the detached house or small settlement has its own mine, and in larger conurbations the mine is usually within walking distance.

Overground transport on Orbitals is usually used when the pleasure of such movement is in itself one of the reasons for the trip. Air travel is quite common (albeit much slower than subsurface), although individual Plates often have their own settings regarding the amount of air traffic that is considered optimal there. Following such guidelines is a matter of manners and is not formalized in something as primitive as laws.

Culture really has no laws; There are, of course, agreed forms of behavior; manners, as mentioned above. But there is nothing that reminds us of something like a legal framework. They may not talk to you, or invite you to parties, you can find sarcastic anonymous articles and stories about yourself in the information network; these are the usual forms of maintaining manners in Culture. The worst crime (to use our terminology), of course, is murder (defined as irrevocable brain death or, in the case of AI, complete loss of personality). The result is punishment, if you like, it is the provision of therapy, as well as what is known as the drone-slapper. All the drone-slapper does is follow the killer his whole life to prevent him from re-killing. There are less severe variations on this subject,when it comes to people who are just aggressive.

In a society where material scarcity is unknown, and sentimental value is the only true value, there are few reasons or circumstances for such actions that we would qualify as a crime against property.

There are megalomanders in Culture, but they are usually successfully redirected to extremely complex games; there are entire Orbitals where they play some of these philosophically primitive obsessive games, although most of them take place in virtual reality. For the adamant megalomaniac, a kind of status symbol is its own starship; most people consider it wasteful and also meaningless if the purpose of this is to completely detach from Culture and, say, elevate oneself to the rank of God or Emperor on some backward planet; a person can freely direct his ship (understandably, not controlled by AI) and even approach the planet, but Contact is equally free to follow this person wherever he goes and do whatever he sees fit to prevent him from causing anything either harmful or unfavorable to civilizations,with whom he makes - or tries to make - contact. This, as a rule, is depressing, and therefore games in virtual reality deliver much more satisfaction - down to the level of absolute immersion, in which the player must make real and lasting efforts to return to the real world, or even forget about its existence.

Some people, however, refuse such an option and completely leave Culture for a civilization that suits them better and where they can exist in a system that gives them the benefits they seek. However, the renunciation of Culture means a loss of access to its technologies, and again, Contact makes sure that such people join their chosen civilization at a level that guarantees that they will not have too much advantage over the original inhabitants (and reserves the opportunity to intervene, if it considers it appropriate).

Some of these frankly antisocial people are even used by the Contact itself, especially the section “Special Circumstances”.

The way culture creates AI means that few of them have similar personality disorders; such machines are given the choice between consent for reconstruction; a narrower function in Culture than they might otherwise have taken; or similarly limited exile.

Politics in Culture consists of referenda when questions arise; as a rule, anyone can propose voting on any issue at any time; all citizens have one vote. If the questions relate to a subsection or part of the entire habitat, all people and vehicles can vote, who can reasonably say that the results of the vote will affect them. Opinions and positions on problems are expressed mainly through an information network (naturally freely available), and it is here that a person can exercise the greatest personal influence, given that decisions made as a result of these votes are usually implemented and monitored by the Hub or other supervisory machine, and people act (usually on a rotational basis) more as intermediaries than in any managerial capacity; one of the few ruleswhich Culture adheres to with at least some care, is that a person’s access to power should be inversely proportional to his desire for it. The sad fact for potential politicians in Culture is that the levers of power are extremely widespread and very short (see paragraph on megalomanes above). The intellectual and structural coherence on the starship, of course, limits the number of possible voting outcomes, but, as a rule, even the most arrogant ships at least pretend to listen when their guests offer, say, to make a detour to enjoy a supernova flash, or increase by board area of ​​the park area.that the levers of power are extremely widely distributed and very short (see paragraph on megalomaniacs above). The intellectual and structural coherence on the starship, of course, limits the number of possible voting outcomes, but, as a rule, even the most arrogant ships at least pretend to listen when their guests offer, say, to make a detour to enjoy a supernova flash, or increase by board area of ​​the park area.that the levers of power are extremely widely distributed and very short (see paragraph on megalomaniacs above). The intellectual and structural coherence on the starship, of course, limits the number of possible voting outcomes, but, as a rule, even the most arrogant ships at least pretend to listen when their guests offer, say, to make a detour to enjoy a supernova flash, or increase by board area of ​​the park area.or increase the area of ​​the park zone on board.or increase the area of ​​the park zone on board.

Everyday life in Culture varies greatly from place to place, but there is a certain stability in it, which, depending on our personal temperament, can be considered either extremely pacifying or very annoying. We are still used to living in conditions of great change; we expect major technological advances and have learned to adapt - we even expect the need to adapt more or less continuously, updating (in the developed world) every few years our cars, entertainment systems and many different household items. Culture, by contrast, creates durable things; there are frequent cases where an airplane, for example, is inherited over several generations. Important technological advances still take place, but they usually do not affect everyday life sohow the invention of an internal combustion engine, aircraft heavier than air and electronics affected the lives of those who lived on Earth over the past century. Even the relative similarity of people who can be found on a typical Orbital - with a relatively small number of children and physically old ones - for us could enhance the feeling of similarity, although a scattering of genetically modified, morphologically unusual people could help compensate for this.morphologically unusual people would help to compensate for this.morphologically unusual people would help to compensate for this.

In terms of personal relationships and family ties, Culture can be expected to be full of all possible manifestations and options, but the most common way of life consists of groups of people of different generations united by weak family ties living in a semi-communal dwelling or group of dwellings; a child in Culture usually has a mother; possibly a father; most likely does not have a brother or sister; but has a large number of aunts and uncles, as well as various cousins. Usually the mother does not change sex in the first years of the child's life. (However, of course, if you want to confuse your child ...) In rare cases when the parent mistreats the child (which includes depriving the child of the opportunity to get an education), it is considered acceptable for loved ones - usually with the help of the appropriate Mind , ship or Hub AI,and in accordance with the small democratic process described above, to look after the subsequent development of the child.

In general, Culture does not actively encourage immigration; it is too much like a disguised form of colonialism. Contact prefers methods aimed at helping other civilizations in the development of their own potential in general, and is neither aimed at pumping out their best and brightest representatives, nor at turning such civilizations into miniature versions of Culture. However, individuals, groups, and even entire small civilizations sometimes nevertheless merge into the Culture, if there are good reasons for it (and if the Contact judges that this will not harm other interested parties in that area).

But the question of who and what is Culture, and who and what is not, is difficult to answer; as said in one of the books, Culture, as it were, spreads around the edges. There are still fragments - millions of ships, hundreds of Orbitals, whole systems - belonging to the fraction of the World, separated from the main part just before the start of the Idiran War, when ships and dwellings independently voted on the fundamental necessity of war; the minority simply declared its neutrality in hostilities, and the reintegration of the Peace fraction at the end of hostilities was never fully implemented; many of its representatives chose to remain outside the main body of Culture until it renounced the use of force in the future.

Gene fixation, which has created the potential for interspecific reproduction at the heart of Culture, is the most obvious sign of what a person could call a Cultural trait, but not everyone has it; some prefer to be more similar to the original people for aesthetic or philosophical reasons, while some are so different from this initial state of man that any cross-breeding is impossible. The status of some Stones and some (mostly very old) abodes is marginal for a number of reasons.

The most integral and uniform part of Culture is Contact - especially if we consider it on a galactic scale - but this is only a very small part of it; it is almost civilization within civilization, and it no more characterizes its environment than the armed forces characterize a peaceful state. Even in the expensive language of Culture, Maraine, not every person of Culture speaks, but outside the limits of civilization itself it is used quite far.

Names names in Culture play the role of an address if the person in question is where it grew up. Let's take an example: Balveda from “Remember Phleb”. Her full name is Juboal-Rabaroansa Perostek Alsein Balveda Dam T'Safe. The first part reports that she was born / raised on the Rabaroan Plate, in the Juboal star system (if the system has only one Orbital, the first part of the name will often be the name of the Orbital, and not the star); Perostek is the name given to her (almost always chosen by her mother), Alsein is the name she chooses (people usually choose names in their teens and sometimes change their names throughout life; Alsein is a graceful but fierce feathered predator, common on many Orbitals in the region where the Juboal system is included); Balveda is her last name (usually her mother's last name), and T'sif is the house / estate where she grew up.The appendix “sa” in the first part of her name would be translated into Russian as “ka” (approx. Transl .: feminine; m. Would be “in”) (in Russian, if we adopted the same nomenclature , we would start our names with "Solnechno-Zemlyanka / in"), and the part of the "ladies" is similar to the German "von". Of course, not everyone follows this naming system, but most adhere to it, and Culture tries to make the names of stars and Orbitals unique in order to avoid confusion.so that the names of the stars and Orbitals are unique in order to avoid confusion.so that the names of the stars and Orbitals are unique in order to avoid confusion.

Now, all of the above implicitly implies two stories. The first is the history of the emergence of Culture, which was much less simple and more problematic than might have been expected from its subsequent character; the second is a story that answers the question: why were all these similar humanoid species originally scattered across the galaxy?

Every story is too complex to be told here.

Finally, some of the already quite fictitious cosmology that explains the unlikely star engines mentioned in the stories. Even if you can assume all of the above about the humanoid appearance, which supposedly does not show any real greed, paranoia, stupidity, fanaticism or intolerance, then wait until you read the following ...

We recognize that the three dimensions of the space in which we live are curved; that spacetime describes the hypersphere, just as two dimensions of the length and width of the surface of an absolutely smooth planet are bent in the third dimension to form a three-dimensional sphere. In Culture stories, the idea is that - when you imagine the hypersphere, which is our expanding universe, instead of a growing hollow sphere (like an inflating beach ball, for example), imagine a bulb.

Of course, an expanding bulb, but still a bulb. Inside our universe, our hypersphere, there are whole layers of younger, smaller hyperspheres. And we, too, are not in the outermost shell of this expanding bulb; beyond our universe, there are older, larger universes. Between each universe there is something called the Energy Grid (I said that this is all fiction); I have no idea what it is, but this is what Culture Starships work on. And if it was possible to go through the Energy Grid to a younger universe, and then repeat it ... here we are really talking about immortality. (This is why two types of hyperspace are mentioned in the stories: infra-space inside our hypersphere, and ultra-space outside it).

Now we move on to the complex part; switch to seven dimensions, and even our four-dimensional universe can be described as a circle. So forget about the onion, imagine a donut. A donut with a very small hole in the middle. This hole is the Cosmic Center, the singularity, the great generating ball of fire, the place where the universes come from; and it existed not only at the time of the appearance of our universe; it exists all the time, and it explodes all the time, like some kind of cosmic car engine, producing universes like exhaust smoke.

When each universe arises, exploding, spreading and expanding, it - or rather, the circle that we use to describe it - goes gradually up the inner slope of our donut, like an expanding wave from a stone thrown into a pond. It passes through the upper part of the donut, reaches its farthest part along the outer edge, and then begins a long, tapering, curling movement back to the Space Center in order to be born again ...

Or at least if she's on that donut; the donut itself is hollow, filled with smaller donuts, where universes do not live that long. And outside it there are larger donuts, where universes live longer, and maybe there are universes that are not on donuts at all, and never roll back, but simply disperse into ... some meta-space? Where do their fragments eventually fall under the attraction of another donut and fall into its Cosmic Center along with the wreckage of many other scattered universes in order to degenerate into something completely different again? Who knows. (I know that this is all nonsense, but you have to admit that this is impressive nonsense. And as I said at the beginning, none of this is anyway, is it?)

Okay, enough of my reasoning.

Best wishes for the future,

Ian M. Banks
(Solar-Terran Ian El-Bonco Banks from North Queensferry)

This note was sent to the rec.arts.sf.written news group on August 10, 1994 on behalf of Ian M. Banks Ken McLeod.

Copyright 1994 Iain M Banks
Commercial use by agreement only.
Other uses, distribution, reproduction, tearing, etc. welcome when specifying the source.

More articles:


All Articles