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Full Description
In a career that spanned over thirty years, Iain M. Banks became
one of the best-loved and most prolific writers in Britain, with his space
opera series concerned with the pan-galactic utopian civilisation known as "the
Culture" widely regarded as his most significant contribution to science
fiction. The Culture of "The Culture" focuses solely on this series, providing a comprehensive, thematic analysis of
Banks's Culture stories from Consider Phlebas to The Hydrogen Sonata. It explores the development of Banks's political, philosophical and literary
thought, arguing that the Culture offers both an image of a harmonious
civilisation modelled on an alternative socialist form of globalisation and a
critique of our neo-liberal present. As Joseph Norman explains, the Culture is
the result of an ongoing utopian process, attempting through the application of technoscience to move beyond obstacles to progress such as imperialism, capitalism, the human condition, religious dogma, patriarchy and crises in artistic representation. The Culture of "The Culture" defines Banks's creation as culture: a
utopian way of doing, of being, of seeing: an approach, an attitude and a
lifestyle that has enabled, and is evolving alongside, utopia, rather than an
image of a static end-state.
Contents
Introduction
1. Interventions, Imperialism, the Technologiade
2. Thinking the Break: The Culture as Postscarcity Utopia
3. Senescence, Rejuvanessence, and (Im)mortality: The Culture and the Posthuman
4. Feminist Space Opera and the Handy Man
5. Secularism, Humanism and the Quasi-religious Culture
6. Art in Utopia and Utopian Art: the Culture of 'the Culture'
Conclusion
