Consider Phlebas

I was looking for some new science fiction to read, and I had never read anything from the Culture series before even though the series is classic science fiction. Went in knowing nothing about the series and blew through Consider Phlebas very quickly.

Thoughts

Great world building, I totally get why it’s considered a classic. The most memorable parts for me where the biological capabilities and the different races. What I found most interesting was the concept of “glanding”, i.e. that you can produce emotions and brain states by secreting chemicals on demand in your brain.

The later books go into more detail on this, or rather have this as a better backdrop, but the whole idea of post-scarcity and the human and Mind/AI collaboration was something I found very interesting.

Quotes

Everything about us, everything around us, everything we know and can know of is composed ultimately of patterns of nothing; that’s the bottom line, the final truth. So where we find we have any control over those patterns, why not make the most elegant ones, the most enjoyable and good ones, in our own terms?

Us with out busy, busy little lives,, finding no better way to pass our years than in competitive disdain.