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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2808 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 13, 2025

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?

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I am in the middle of the Culture series and feeling a loss of momentum. I enjoyed Player of Games, Consider Phlebus and to some degree Use of Weapons but it feels pretty underwhelming afterwards.

The State of the Art was a weird mix of short stories that barely kept me going. Had to skip ahead to Matter since the others aren't available in my library.. I'm finding Matter is also rather snoozeville.

Any other good ones? I really like being immersed in the Culture parts of the Culture universe but all of the rest is not that interesting.

State of the Art was pretty awful and threw me off bigly. The only story I liked was about that suit from the crash-landed guy.

If I were telling anyone else new to the series how to read it, I would say "skip it".

I do think it's a bit "overrated" as far as sci-fi goes. None of the books is going to change your life like some other 5/5 sci-fi, especially not the back half of the series. However, re-looking at the synopses for Matter/Surface Detail/Inversions/Look to Windward, I will say you still have some exciting books left. Hydrogen Sonata was a bit weaker, but still worth reading to complete things.

All that said, none of them are set primarily in the culture. If that's what kept you hooked, then be warned.

No love for Excession? That's got to be in my top 3 among the series.

I also loved Inversions, but IIRC it's about as far from the Culture parts of the Culture universe as you can get.

I found Look to Windward so uninteresting that I remember my annoyance with that better than I remember any of the plot.

Matter and certainly Surface Detail were both worth reading; perhaps better than Consider Phlebas, if you don't give the latter credit for introducing the whole universe.

Surface detail is great.

I second this, Surface Detail was my introduction to the Culture (though full disclosure it's also the only one I've read so far, doh ho ho).

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