2008-05-21 13:39 UTC Would you like to live in the Culture?

If you haven't read Iain Banks' books about The Culture you should be ashamed.

I've seen it referred to as dystopic some places, though I never found it that way, and this is what Iain Banks had to say about it himself in a reasonably interesting recent CNN interview:

Iain M. Banks: Good grief yes, heck, yeah, oh it's my secular heaven ... Yes, I would, absolutely. Again it comes down to wish fulfillment. I haven't done a study and taken lots of replies across a cross-section of humanity to find out what would be their personal utopia. It's mine, I thought of it, and I'm going home with it -- absolutely, it's great.

CNN: What's it like, being a humanoid as part of the Culture?

Iain M. Banks: It's pretty great being a human in the Culture, with the drug glands and enormously long orgasms. You can change sex if you want to, and you have total control over pain, and blister-free callusing. That wasn't one of mine, that was Ken MacLeod, my chum and fellow SF scribbler -- "I've just thought of a good improvement for the human body: Blister-free callusing!" -- so I made a particular point of putting that in ...

Blister free callusing is something I'd welcome after gym this morning...



About me

E-mail: vidar@hokstad.com Skype: vhokstad
Twitter: vhokstad
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I was born April 21st, 1975, in Oslo, Norway. Since 2000 I've been living in London, UK. I'm married and we just had our first child, Tristan Ikemefuna Hokstad.

I'm working for Aardvark Media as Director of Technology. I'm also currently on the board of SpatialQ, a startup in the GIS space, and an advisor to Skoach, a startup doing a time management app for people with ADD.

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