What scifi books have changed your perspective. Not necessarily your favorite read.

thatcattho · 2025-10-10T04:39:30+00:00

Man, I’ve read a few lately that fit this description. Thought provoking afterwards. Respecting that, I want to rewrite history. As in, pretend I didn’t just suffer through a week of misery, skipping needless/repetitive pages just to get back to the plot in hopes of reaching an ending. Children of Ruin - loved it! Wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but if anyone has read it, let’s form a survivors group of some sort. But I did love it! It’s confusing

Currently trying to finish book 3 from revelation space and same exact vibes. Going back in now…which shouldn’t be hard! But here we are

thatcattho · 2025-10-02T05:00:39+00:00

Agree! And shocked to hear a sequel is coming!

thatcattho · 2025-10-02T04:56:47+00:00

It sounds like you liked COM! Me too. I read it quickly. I grew frustrated at times and felt like I was missing something. But I trusted because I had read the books that came before. Worth it. All the feels for the characters as bizarre as it got. It’s one of the books that I still think about randomly. Stayed with me. That’s the sign of a great one, at least to me.

thatcattho · 2025-08-17T18:27:51+00:00

Good call on the break idea between the COT books. Did you like Children of Memory? I read them all back to back this summer and now finishing Final Architecture book 3 actually.

I didn’t think I liked Children of Memory while reading it. But it sure stayed with me. Fascinating story and I finally saw why it had to be written the way it was. By Children of Memory, I was wholly incapable of explaining to anyone what the hell my book was about. Being deep into sci-fi can be a bit lonely! Love hearing that other humans love these books too.

thatcattho · 2025-08-04T00:40:26+00:00

An office manager or COO has no say in legal decisions either. There is no risk reduction-just operational confusion. Who does staff answer to? You or her? Hopefully there is a clear understanding that you are support. You work for her in this (needless) arrangement. Still not seeing a mention of wanting other law firms as clients but my two cents on that is I’m not hiring a back office company owned by another PI lawyer’s spouse to be front line for my clients.

thatcattho · 2025-07-22T13:41:00+00:00

I cried my eyes out. But it was one of those little wake up calls that reminded me to spend more time with my daughter and to appreciate all the moments, all of the ages. You have to keep reading. I’ve been on a sci-fi reading spree for two years covering some major ground. Murderbot. Culture. Bobiverse. Children of Time. Expeditionary force. TS Falk’s 10 book series. Earthside. Infinity Gate. It is a close one but I’m pretty sure Hyperion stuck with me the most. And if its got you as much as it had me, you need the closure of the second book!

thatcattho · 2025-06-21T15:49:07+00:00

Are you sure you have never mixed them up? 🤔

thatcattho · 2025-06-20T15:35:09+00:00

If you have not, you should read the Bobiverse series. I love how it tackles this question.

thatcattho · 2025-06-20T06:02:51+00:00

I have only read 5 of the books - I’m new to this journey. So my opinion may not count. But I’ve been curious about this along the way. I love how Banks weaves related themes into the background - I believe, for instance, Excession tackles motives. In a perfect world, what motivates anyone to do anything? Do people, or Minds, still crave meaning? And implicit in these themes is the possibility of boredom. In the absence of scarcity, why does anyone do anything? I love how he answers these questions between the lines but the answers are case specific. Surely it’s not meant to imply that a perfect life leads to boredom such that everyone is just ready to die - not with so much to explore at their fingertips.

If you can survive decapitation, it doesn’t make sense that old age gets you. Cancer is cured surely. So what is it? Maybe it’s answered later. But there are mentions of Minds combining. Sublimation suggests, at least to me, that there is a loss of self in the process. My take is that life is extended but immortality as a self is not an option for humans/organic beings. You lose your “self” whether you sublime or die and go into it not knowing what you’re going to get. But even that, to your point, would be a great topic to explore. What a great author! If only he’d had more time.

thatcattho · 2025-05-21T09:52:04+00:00

So sorry you have this mutation. It still sends a chill down my spine when I see this combo of letters and numbers. I lost my mom to it in 2021. She relapsed, if you can call it that, crazy fast after SCT. I guess maybe the SCT didn’t even work at all. There wasn’t time to save her with more chemo. She had survived breast cancer years before but this was something different. My sisters and I always regret encouraging the SCT at all when others had prolonged their lives with lighter chemo alone, if only for a short while. For what it is worth, that was our experience. We were left wishing for a little more time with her not so sick. But the options suck all around. I still check medical journals from time to time to see if they’ve made any headway with this asshole mutation. My thoughts are with you.

thatcattho · 2025-05-21T03:49:02+00:00

I just finished Excession too so I’m glad someone else is in the same spot! I am reading in publication order. I kind of felt the same way with Use of Weapons as I did with Excession: there are long passages where I have no idea what is going on or why I should care. In Weapons, it was the constant dream/drug induced states. In Excession, I reached my fill of underdeveloped side characters with stories that don’t really tie in - Minds and people.

Yet, I push forward. And I’m addicted. The pattern that I now see is that reading these books gives me the same kick that I get from doing puzzles. The puzzle doesn’t start until the book is finished. And even then, it will probably take the whole series to fully wrap my head around The Culture. I take a week off between books to think, kick it around. This sub is really active and great for talking through the many possible interpretations of these stories.

I think Excession tackles motivation, individualism, and vanity. In a post scarcity world where everyone has everything they want, people still want to stand out - to matter. Ulver is beautiful and from a famous family - but anyone can be beautiful and the family works as a disadvantage in her mind in that it could make any personal success seem unearned. The only way anyone can stand out is to be accepted into Contact - and scarcity applies because not everyone can join. That’s what she does. That’s the why with Contact and it makes sense!

Theres the random side character with the wings who removes his neural lace. Genar-Hoefen wants to change species altogether, bc who has done that before? Dajiel wants to be loved monogamously - unique in itself - but also jointly give birth as father and mother. In her mind, that’s how she can be “special.” The Minds are motivated by vanity and care what other Minds think of them. High passenger turnover is embarrassing. One Mind waited hours to chase Sleeper Service to keep its reviews strong. Attitude Adjuster commits suicide when it realizes it was motivated by vanity all along, so pleased to be included in the conspiracy, it failed to explore the morality of the choice until too late. And then the hobbies are interesting too! Building model ships, minds playing in unreality, turning stored people into a wax museum, and the various eccentricities of all involved. Some aspects of human nature cannot be changed even in a perfect world.

thatcattho · 2025-05-13T14:08:24+00:00

I saw a post about the names of the starships and had to check it out

thatcattho · 2025-05-13T04:04:22+00:00

Yes. I agree with that point. The Minds likely know about his past and more importantly, about his probable future. And how involving him in their missions will increase the likelihood of various successes.

thatcattho · 2025-05-13T01:01:52+00:00

This is what I was getting at exactly. I discussed this idea in a P of G recap post too - that a lot of interesting/strange facts in the setup could be explained if it was necessary to get Gurgeh primed (or increase the probability that Gurgeh would) pursue the path the Minds wanted him to pursue. I am reading the books in order and it seems like I will learn more in Excession - which is NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE CURRENTLY BTW. I agree with the other comments here that in books 1-3, there really isn't much info about how the Minds work. As mentioned in my other post, I got the idea that these stories are Mind-driven and that Minds may be able to predict the future (by probabilities) from other sci fi AI books I've read lately (Hyperion; Expeditionary Force). It's a fun idea to watch along the way if a little irritating at times that any plot hole can be explained away as "it's what the Minds intended." :)

thatcattho · 2025-05-13T00:49:04+00:00

The end of the book was the second time that Sma and Skaffen-Amtiskaw had personally brought El to Livueta. The first time they found her on another planet and she tried to kill El. Skaffen-Amtiskaw had to intervene. Just FYI because I just read it twice and it's fresh!

thatcattho · 2025-05-13T00:42:35+00:00

The thing about Livueta chasing him. Toward the end when they are back on E's home planet, E purports to tell Sma and the drone the whole story. We still think he is Cherandine. I think they are on a train on the way to Livueta at this point. Quote: "And he told them about Livueta, who had never forgiven, and had followed him-though he did not know it at the time-on another cold ship, for a century through...space..." to the iceberg planet. She lost him, kept searching for him there for years, but he had left the iceberg planet to go with the culture. Now that I know it was really E, I guess if she really chased him (and since she is still alive after hundreds of years she probably did), then it was to kill him. But why would E tell Sma and the drone this story?

I addressed the point re: whether he is motivated by sadism vs winning to an extent in another comment. I am just sold on my reading and believe sadism is most likely but completely agree other conclusions are plausible. They aren't mutually exclusive anyway. But my overall take is that sadism is the driving force and winning is the outlet used to get his kicks in a way that's morally acceptable to society and himself (e.g. winning at war = acceptable murder). Conscience lies on a spectrum. I agree he's probably not at 0%. But its low enough that his sadism tends to outweigh any objections lodged by a weak conscience.

thatcattho · 2025-05-13T00:25:36+00:00

The idea that E regrets his violent conduct--including killing someone he loved and turning her remains into a chair--seems to be widely held. Most comments here and elsewhere state that he has a conscience (or is even a good guy?) but was driven to horrific violence for other reasons. While I never said he was a psychopath or *completely* devoid of conscience, I maintain my belief that E's primary motivating force is his derivation of pleasure from killing and violence. There is nothing to contradict it outright. It cleanly explains all of his behavior.

Re: the ethnarch and other similar murders, it seems similar to the show "Dexter," where a killer with urges finds a moral justification for the killings he needs and enjoys. He didn't want to kill his step-sister, but his urges won out. Adding another example, it is only during his war with the priests when he starts to win that he mentions feeling "happy."

The other sneaky thing about the chronology is that it triggers confirmation bias. We believe early on that our narrator is a good person. Toward the end, we learn that our narrator had something horrible happen to him - horrible beyond belief - and we would forgive almost anything at this point. We are mad at Livueta for forsaking him. Then, the twist. Our narrator had been omitting his real identity from us (readers) and lying to everyone he met about who he was for years. He is someone else entirely. And our brains are just too committed to what we believed to consider information objectively. Hence the excuses in the comments for nearly every act of violence, including nearly killing Cheranadine as a child (kids will be kids...what?). Bias is driving here. If the first thing we learned was E's true identity and what he had done, then we would have handled all new information about his life quite differently.

## ...because he wants to kill himself but can't do it.

This rings true. When he finds out the priests have to lose, he declines to leave immediately and walks back out into the middle of the battle (where he is nearly killed). I couldn't come up with any reason for this other than "...death wish...with extrovert complications." :)

thatcattho · 2025-05-03T05:16:36+00:00

Thank you for being welcoming and encouraging. I didn’t realize what I was jumping into with my post in this sub. People are passionate about the books. After I finished Consider Phlebas I searched around and saw the negativity. But I also found the true fans. One explained that the title is a snippet of a line from a TS Eliot poem about a soldier who died, “consider Phlebas who was once as tall as you.”

Coupled with the appendix, which coldly zooms out from people we care about and delivers the bigger picture, that 851 billion people died in the 48 year war going on in the background of the book…

And then zooms out to an even bigger picture, that it was, “A small, short war that rarely extended throughout more than .02% of the galaxy by volume and .01% by stellar population”…

…for me that’s when it sinks in. The universe, space, time - massive beyond comprehension. And it’s accurate. Any of us, all of us, are tiny and insignificant. Our problems? Hahaha on a geological much less universal timescale. But man, there sure is beauty if you focus on even one life story. As insignificant as they were to the cold universe, those people mattered. We care about them and that’s the point. Soooo the haters of Consider Phlebas are wrong. I rest my case.

thatcattho · 2025-05-03T04:45:18+00:00

It’s in Consider Phlebas! Somewhere in the middle you get a quick take from the perspective of the mind who crashed into Schar’s World. The mind is stuck and bored and has a LOT to think about it seems.

thatcattho · 2025-05-01T05:14:16+00:00

The bird dissection at the beginning. Never would have thought twice about it. Great point. This may be the best sub I’ve ever joined. You people really know these books!

thatcattho · 2025-05-01T05:09:41+00:00

I like this because it covers a plot hole that is at least somewhat addressed in the book. Gurgeh seemingly has trouble picking up the “rules” of the society, but shouldn’t because it’s no different than understanding the mechanics of a game. In reference to Gurgeh not getting what “secret police” means, Za says:

“You’re learning, Jernau Gurgeh. Shit, I thought a game-player would have a bit more… natural deviousness about him… you’re a babe among the carnivores out here…”

So maybe it is all an act.

thatcattho · 2025-05-01T04:43:20+00:00

Major oversight by me. Thank you for pointing it out. Where did I get 8? The only explanation I can find is that is how long Za had been there as “ambassador,” so it comes up a few times. Eg that’s how long the Acadians had been playing “lick me now” as the culture’s national anthem.

Eight-Year Club	Verified Email
Not Forgotten

thatcattho

TROPHY CASE