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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2900 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 15, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I'm reading Surface Detail, the 8th culture novel. I'm pretty far in and fairly disappointed so far. I'm comparing it to Matter which I just finished. It's apparently poorly thought of, but I'm comparing the vivid imagery of the eternal, subterranean war in the latter with the simplistic, extended exposition for each new element in Surface Detail.

I'm close to finishing the series at this point, hoping that Hydrogen Sonata isn't a poor sendoff.

yeah I love the Culture series but sadly some of the later ones are pretty lackluster

I'd love to hear your opinions of Hydrogen Sonata when you're done. I didn't like Matter as much as Surface Detail, but I thought both of them were a noticeable step down from The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Excession, or Inversions, and I never got around to reading Hydrogen Sonata at all. Of course, I might have stopped from the get-go after Consider Phlebas if I hadn't previously been assured by a friend that better sequels were to follow.

Do author's works have the same "bathtub curve" for failure probability that engineered products do? Not quite for the same reasons, but for similar ones? Their first book(s) are done without enough practice, so have issues due to lack of experience. Then they hit a personal Golden Age. Then when their stock of good original ideas starts to wear out they either dig into the mediocre original ideas or they get repetitive.

I thought Hydrogen Sonata was an okay novel (by Bank's standards). I read it after exhausting the others and I wished the Culture had a better send-off. If I had to pick favorites it would be either Player of Games or Excession. Perhaps Matter as a third.

On the other hand, if you're done with the Culture, the Algebraist is really good even if it's not set in the main universe.

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