The long overdue 'favourite Culture ship name' thread

[Idaho]

The Algebraist. Isn't in the lead is a bloke and it The Culture

GS(v)

The Algebraist suffers from a different problem - that of being one of the most long winded and tedious sf books ever written. Gas bags who have parties on Jupiter? Fuck off

 

[DotCommunist]

Have you read The Prefect yet? Post-plague your description fits, but pre-plague...



I'd have to disagree - that's a GCU name, surely? GSVs tend toward slighty less flippant names...

oh yeah, pre plague demarchy was a different beast entirely, what with it's voluntary tyrannies etc.

 

[Brainaddict]

GSV Keep Digging

GCU No really, I insist

ROU There's no need to be rude

GOU Talking is the best way to resolve a conflict but that's not where my expertise lies

ROU Hard Place

 

[xenon]

OH yeah I like Lapsed Pacifist. A ROU IIRC.

-
ROU Feel free to panic.
VFP. Ready when you are.
GSV. Matter under-mind.
GCU. I'm sure that wasn't there last time.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Use of Weapons is the best Culture book, and I say that without having read two of them. Read it now if you haven't. Leave whatever you are doing and read it.

Why did you make me read that book you bastard? Urgh...just...urgh

 

[Santino]

Why did you make me read that book you bastard? Urgh...just...urgh

That dawning realisation...

 

[Brinxmat]

The Culture novels are some of the only sci-fi I can read. I enjoyed most of the Rama series, I enjoyed the Night's Dawn Trilogy, but the Culture novels are excellent. Saying that I've only read 2, Consider Phlebus and Excession

Do "Player of Games" next, I pray you...

 

[Brinxmat]

The Player of Games has the best list of ship names. (It also happens to be my favourite Culture book.)

The many highlights from that book are:

Screw Loose, Flexible Demeanour, Just Read The Instructions, Of Course I Still Love You, Limiting Factor, Cargo Cult, So Much For Subtlety, Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence, Youthful Indiscretion and Kiss My Ass

 

[Random]

iirc it was M John Harrison who started the whole thing with space ships having funny names like My Ella Speed and Liberal Power in The Centauri Device

 

[likesfish]

rou say hello to my little friend

 

[DotCommunist]

Do "Player of Games" next, I pray you...

This, or Inversions.

Inversions has a wonderful subtlety.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Player of Games is the worst Culture novel. It's still great mind you, but it hasn't got anything like the depth of Use of Weapons or Excession.

The descriptions of the Azad games feel like I could have written them, except that I'd have shitcanned them for being too dull.

 

[xenon]

bump

Just cos I'm rereading some M Banks lately. Hydrogen Sonata at present.
LOU. Caconym.
UE. Mistake Not...

etc.

And then you always make up more of your own.

VFP. Flattening the Curve
LSV. About Time.
GCU. Didn't you get the Memo
ROU. Not my Problem
GCU. Well, someone Had to
ROU. Expeditious use of Exotic Nasties

As you were...

 

[prunus]

bump

Just cos I'm rereading some M Banks lately. Hydrogen Sinata at present.
LOU. Caconym.
EU. Mistake Not...

etc.

And then you always make up more of your own.

VPF. Flattening the Curve
LSV. About Time.
GCU. Didn't you get the Memo
ROU. Not my Problem
GCU. Well, someone Had to
ROU Expeditious use of Exotic Nasties

As you were...

The Mistake Not... indeed - but give it the dignity of its full name (spoiler for The Hydrogen Sonata):

Spoiler

Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath.

 

[David Clapson]

Who chooses the names? The minds?

 

[existentialist]

Who chooses the names? The minds?

Yep.

 

[The Octagon]

Apparently the planned Culture series on Amazon has been effectively scrapped.

In two minds about whether I mind (aha) given the scope and CGI needed.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Apparently the planned Culture series on Amazon has been effectively scrapped.

In two minds about whether I mind (aha) given the scope and CGI needed.

I wasn't hopeful tbh. Either about it ever getting made or being any good if it did. Altered Carbon has taught me to be wary of cult sci-fi stuff being adapted for TV.

 

[weltweit]

I missed this first time around. Am a fan of the books, think I have read them all now.

 

[yield]

Ken MacLeod helped make Use of Weapons, which is still my favourite.

Good old Guardian interview with Iain Banks here

It was my pal Ken MacLeod who asked to read it again, in the mid-80s. I told him he was mad. He took it away, read it, then said he reckoned there was a good novel in there struggling to get out. I told him he was mad again. Undaunted, he revealed a plan: use a much simpler, two-strand structure, with – and this was the clever bit – one strand going forward in time and the other going back, both leading to their own climax, at the end.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Need to read Use of Weapons again.

 

[DotCommunist]

I'm just reading one of his non M books 'Stonemouth' which I haven't read before. A much missed writer. ROU They Don't Make 'Em Like That Anymore.

 

[mojo pixy]

Consider Phlebas blew my tiny mind, it was the first IMB book I read. Excession blew it again and for a while I got totally obsessed with the mind-communication-code some of it is written in. And then The Algebraist did it again (gas giant creatures who hunt their own young ffs...)

In Use of Weapons there's a GSV called Size Isn't Everything that's 50 miles long or something.

I've been writing fantasy/sci-fi stories and one of my favourite bits is thinking up characters' names, but after reading this thread my contribution is

GCU No Authority Here
GSV We Make it, You Break It
ROU Unquantifiable Hazards

Unquantifiable hazards is from a strange sign on a tree by the river in Bristol.
I'm sure the truth behind it is probably way less interesting than it appears.



/random crap

(there goes another possible GSV name...)

 

[strung out]

Consider Phlebas blew my tiny mind, it was the first IMB book I read. Excession blew it again and for a while I got totally obsessed with the mind-communication-code some of it is written in. And then The Algebraist did it again (gas giant creatures who hunt their own young ffs...)

In Use of Weapons there's a GSV called Size Isn't Everything that's 50 miles long or something.

I've been writing fantasy/sci-fi stories and one of my favourite bits is thinking up characters' names, but after reading this thread my contribution is

GCU No Authority Here
GSV We Make it, You Break It
ROU Unquantifiable Hazards

Unquantifiable hazards is from a strange sign on a tree by the river in Bristol.
I'm sure the truth behind it is probably way less interesting than it appears.

View attachment 254882

/random crap

(there goes another possible GSV name...)

Is that tree down on the Avon Valley by Hanham? If so, I run past it regularly - never stopped to read the sign though!



You're right, good name for a Culture ship.

P.S. If you haven't already, read Look to Windward. Perhaps my favourite Culture novel.

 

[mojo pixy]

Is that tree down on the Avon Valley by Hanham?

Yes, somewhere between the lane down from Hanham, and Conham River Park.
EtA - nice picture of the place!

P.S. If you haven't already, read Look to Windward. Perhaps my favourite Culture novel.

I enjoyed that one too, don't remember it as well maybe because I only read it once. Look to Windward is part of the same poem Consider Phlebas comes from, isn't it? The Waste Land by TS Eliot IIRC

 

[xenon]

Ha, so that's where it's from. I remember it was your tagline for ages Mojo.

 

[mojo pixy]

Ha, so that's where it's from. I remember it was your tagline for ages Mojo.

till Jackie Weaver came along and inspired a change