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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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TechTakes
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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What is it with Rats extolling The Player of Games above other Culture novels? It's the one HN likes best too. It's probably the only one I've not re-read. Maybe it's how the main character is kinda seduced by the parody of patriarchal capitalism in the culture he's coerced to infiltrate.
Personally I think Use of Weapons is the best one.
i would think they didn't read it carefully, and/or until the end, and don't realise that ultimately it's gurgeh's revulsion at azad's societal rules, and him fully embracing the culture's values, that allows him to win and burn the empire to pieces.
Obvsly you've read the novel more than I have considering your nick... I might have to give it another go.
OTOH I'd rather re-read the non-M novels first, especially Espedair Street.
tbh i used mawhrin-skel just because i needed a new drone, and twitter (at the time) bonked my skaffen-amtiskaw persona – i named the murdering british soldier that cannot be named in the united kingdom (david james cleary); i definitely value other culture books more than player of games. :-)
Yah Skaffen is the best drone, obvsly.
Thx for the reference to Soldier F, didn’t know about his case.
this modern example of censorship is pretty wild: uk actively enforces this ban despite the fact the sdlp mp for foyle, colum eastwood, used his parlliamentary privilege to get cleary's name into hansard, and at the time i still had a twitter account, the tweets naming the bastard were either reported or sweeped by some internal search. you won't see cleary's name mentioned on reddit either.
@gerikson I second Use of Weapons, but I also like Excession and the Hydrogen Sonata, where the Culture has to do some self-reflection.
I honestly went off M-Banks after finding out Bezos and Musk were huge fans. Bit unfair Banks is dead so he can't rip those assholes a new one. (wonder if Veppers in Surface Detail is inspired by one of them)
edit it's been ages since I've read this books so I've been checking the plots on Wikipedia. For Surface Detail we get
🤮
@gerikson Veppers was *totally* a vicious parody of Elon Musk. (Iain despised billionaires—in American political terms he was an unabashed communist.)