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Excession

Praise for the Culture series: 'Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution' Independent on Sunday 'Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future' Guardian 'Jam-packed with ...

Author: Iain M. Banks

Publisher: Hachette UK

ISBN: 0748110003

Category: Fiction

Page: 464

View: 779

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The fifth Culture book from the awesome imagination of Iain M. Banks, a modern master of science fiction. Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared. Now it is back. Praise for the Culture series: 'Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution' Independent on Sunday 'Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future' Guardian 'Jam-packed with extraordinary invention' Scotsman 'Compulsive reading' Sunday Telegraph The Culture series: Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata Other books by Iain M. Banks: Against a Dark Background Feersum Endjinn The Algebraist
Literary CriticismPosted on

Iain M Banks

faces a situation in which its own General Systems Vehicles and Orbitals are as dugout canoes to the ironclads the Excession can presumably call upon. As Ulver Seich puts it to the drone Churt Lyne about the Excession: “'So this thing ...

Author: Paul Kincaid

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

ISBN: 0252099567

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 200

View: 909

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The 1987 publication of Iain M. Banks's Consider Phlebas helped trigger the British renaissance of radical hard science fiction and influenced a generation of New Space Opera masters. The thirteen SF novels that followed inspired an avid fandom and intense intellectual engagement while Banks's mainstream books vaulted him to the top of the Scottish literary scene. Paul Kincaid has written the first study of Iain M. Banks to explore the confluence of his SF and literary techniques and sensibilities. As Kincaid shows, the two powerful aspects of Banks's work flowed into each other, blurring a line that critics too often treat as clear-cut. Banks's gift for black humor and a honed skepticism regarding politics and religion found expression even as he orchestrated the vast, galaxy-spanning vistas in his novels of the Culture. In examining Banks's entire SF oeuvre, Kincaid unlocks the set of ideas Banks drew upon, ideas that spoke to an unusually varied readership that praised him as a visionary and reveled in the distinctive character of his works. Entertaining and broad in scope, Iain M. Banks offers new insights on one of the most admired figures in contemporary science fiction.
ComputersPosted on

AI Narratives

14.2.2 Excession In The Player of Games , the frame narrative reveals the governing algorithms_SC's operations — which both sustain and challenge the Culture's promise of transcendent sovereignty . In Excession ( 1996 ) , the inevitable ...

Author: Stephen Cave

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISBN: 0192586041

Category: Computers

Page: 448

View: 208

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This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real Artificial Intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue. Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. These chapters explore the revealing pre-history of key concerns of contemporary AI discourse, from the nature of mind and creativity to issues of power and rights, from the tension between fascination and ambivalence to investigations into artificial voices and technophobia. Part II focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first-centuries in which a greater density of narratives emerge alongside rapid developments in AI technology. These chapters reveal not only how AI narratives have consistently been entangled with the emergence of real robotics and AI, but also how they offer a rich source of insight into how we might live with these revolutionary machines. Through their close textual engagements, these chapters explore the relationship between imaginative narratives and contemporary debates about AI's social, ethical and philosophical consequences, including questions of dehumanization, automation, anthropomorphisation, cybernetics, cyberpunk, immortality, slavery, and governance. The contributions, from leading humanities and social science scholars, show that narratives about AI offer a crucial epistemic site for exploring contemporary debates about these powerful new technologies.
Artificial intelligencePosted on

Excession

Diplomat Byr Genar-Hofoen has been selected by the Culture to undertake a delicate and dangerous mission.

Author: Iain Banks

Publisher:

ISBN:

Category: Artificial intelligence

Page:

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Diplomat Byr Genar-Hofoen has been selected by the Culture to undertake a delicate and dangerous mission. He is to investigate a 2,500-year-old mystery: the sudden disappearance of a star fifty times older than the universe itself. There is only one way to solve the problem. He has to steal the soul of the long-dead starship captain who first encountered the star, and convince her to be reborn. What he discovers could lead the universe into an age of peace, or to the brink of annihilation.
Literary CriticismPosted on

The Culture Series of Iain M Banks

Excession. and. Inversions. The first four Culture books were space operas of the planet-focused persuasion. The stories featured plenty of ships and plenty of Minds inside them, but the majority of the action and the entirety of the ...

Author: Simone Caroti

Publisher: McFarland

ISBN: 1476620407

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 252

View: 943

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This critical history of Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels covers the series from its inception in the 1970s to the The Hydrogen Sonata (2012), published less than a year before Banks’ death. It considers Banks’ origins as a writer, the development of his politics and ethics, his struggles to become a published author, his eventual success with The Wasp Factory (1984) and the publication of the first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas (1987). His 1994 essay “A Few Notes on the Culture” is included, along with a range of critical responses to the 10 Culture books he published in his lifetime and a discussion of the series’ status as utopian literature. Banks was a complex man, both in his everyday life and on the page. This work aims at understanding the Culture series not only as a fundamental contribution to science fiction but also as a product of its creator’s responses to the turbulent times he lived in.
Literary CriticismPosted on

A Companion to Science Fiction

Iain M. Banks likes convoluted and interwoven plots and at least one of the games to be played with Excession is to guess the number of stories. There are two supra plots: an “excession” or Out of Context Problem has appeared in a ...

Author: David Seed

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

ISBN: 0470797010

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 632

View: 385

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A Companion to Science Fiction assembles essays by aninternational range of scholars which discuss the contexts, themesand methods used by science fiction writers. This Companion conveys the scale and variety of sciencefiction. Shows how science fiction has been used as a means of debatingcultural issues. Essays by an international range of scholars discuss thecontexts, themes and methods used by science fiction writers. Addresses general topics, such as the history and origins ofthe genre, its engagement with science and gender, and nationalvariations of science fiction around the English-speakingworld. Maps out connections between science fiction, television, thecinema, virtual reality technology, and other aspects of theculture. Includes a section focusing on major figures, such as H.G.Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ursula Le Guin. Offers close readings of particular novels, from MaryShelley’s Frankenstein to Margaret Atwood’sThe Handmaid’s Tale.
FictionPosted on

Excession

'Excession' est le quatrième volet du cycle de la Culture dont les trois précédents, Une forme de guerre, L'Homme des jeux et L'Usage des armes ont été publiés dans la même collection.

Author: Iain Banks

Publisher: LGF/Le Livre de Poche

ISBN: 9782253072416

Category: Fiction

Page: 633

View: 153

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Au plus profond de l'espace interstellaire, loin des volumes ordinairement fréquentés par la Culture, vient de surgir une Excession, objet extraordinaire qui semble défier toutes les lois connues de la physique, déborder la raison, et provenir d'un univers supérieur, transcendant. La Culture, cette société galactique, décentralisée, hédoniste, altruiste, cynique, anarchiste, prodigieusement riche et efficace - composée d'humains et autres intelligences biologiques, mais aussi et peut-être surtout d'Intelligences Artificielles - ne peut ignorer ce défi. D'autant qu'une espèce cruelle et belliqueuse, les Affronteurs, tente de profiter de la situation. Excession est le quatrième volet du cycle de la Culture dont les trois précédents, Une forme de guerre, L'Homme des jeux et L'Usage des armes ont été publiés dans la même collection.
Literary CriticismPosted on

The Culture of the Culture

As with Gurgeh, Excession traces Genar-Hofoen's conflicted relationship with the Culture in a narrative of dissatisfaction, rejection, conflict, and a form of resolution; yet it is a personal, romantic relationship rather than a ...

Author: Joseph S. Norman

Publisher:

ISBN: 1789621747

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 272

View: 445

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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' is the first critical monograph to focus 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 S. 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.
Literary CriticismPosted on

Future Wars

19 Iain Banks, Excession (London: Orbit, 1996), 51. 20 Ship names, chosen by the Ships themselves and also changed by them when considered appropriate, are usually indicative of their personal philosophy and personality; hence, ...

Author: David Seed

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

ISBN: 184631755X

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 302

View: 903

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This timely book investigates fiction that speculates about wars likely to break out in the near or distant future. Ranging widely across periods and conflicts real and imagined, Future Wars explores the interplay between politics, literature, science fiction, and war in a range of classic texts. Individual essays look at Reagan's infamous “Star Wars” project, nuclear fiction, Martian invasion, and the Pax Americana. The use of future war scenarios in military planning dates back to the nineteenth century, and Future Wars concludes with a US Army officer's assessment of the continuing usefulness of future wars fiction.
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Novels by Iain M Banks

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.

Author: Source Wikipedia

Publisher: University-Press.org

ISBN: 9781230612157

Category:

Page: 48

View: 309

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Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Commentary (novels not included). Pages: 47. Chapters: The Culture, Consider Phlebas, Excession, Idiran-Culture War, Orbital, The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, The State of the Art, Look to Windward, Diziet Sma, Inversions, Feersum Endjinn, Against a Dark Background, Culture series, List of species, List of ships, Ship types, Mind, Special Circumstances, Matter, Surface Detail, GSV Sleeper Service, The Algebraist, The Sublimed, Bora Horza Gobuchul, GCU Grey Area, Contact, GSV Bora Horza Gobuchul, Perosteck Balveda. Excerpt: The Culture is a fictional interstellar anarchic, socialist, and utopian society created by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks which features in a number of science fiction novels and works of short fiction by him. The Culture is characterized by being a post-scarcity society (meaning that its advanced technologies provide practically limitless material wealth and comforts for everyone for free, having all but abolished the concept of possessions), by having overcome almost all physical constraints on life (including disease and death) and by being an almost totally egalitarian, stable society without the use of any form of force or compulsion, except where necessary to protect others. Minds, powerful artificial intelligences, have an important role to play in this society. They administer this affluence for the benefit of all. As one commentator has said, The novels of the Culture cycle, therefore, mostly deal with people at the fringes of the Culture: diplomats, spies, or mercenaries; those who interact with other civilizations, and who do the Culture's dirty work in moving those societies closer to the Culture ideal, sometimes by force. In this fictional universe, the Culture exists concurrently with human society on Earth. The time frame for the published Culture stories is from roughly AD 1300 to AD 2800, ..
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The Culture

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.

Author: Source Wikipedia

Publisher: University-Press.org

ISBN: 9781230512181

Category:

Page: 46

View: 657

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Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 44. Chapters: Consider Phlebas, Excession, Idiran-Culture War, Orbital, The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, The State of the Art, Look to Windward, Diziet Sma, Inversions, Culture series, List of species, List of ships, Ship types, Mind, Special Circumstances, Matter, Surface Detail, GSV Sleeper Service, The Sublimed, Bora Horza Gobuchul, GCU Grey Area, Contact, GSV Bora Horza Gobuchul, Perosteck Balveda. Excerpt: The Culture is a fictional interstellar anarchic, socialist, and utopian society created by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks which features in a number of science fiction novels and works of short fiction by him, collectively called the Culture series. The Culture is characterized by being a post-scarcity society (meaning that its advanced technologies provide practically limitless material wealth and comforts for everyone for free, having all but abolished the concept of possessions), by having overcome almost all physical constraints on life (including disease and death) and by being an almost totally egalitarian, stable society without the use of any form of force or compulsion, except where necessary to protect others. Minds, powerful artificial intelligences, have an important role to play in this society. They administer this affluence for the benefit of all. As one commentator has said, The novels of the Culture cycle, therefore, mostly deal with people at the fringes of the Culture: diplomats, spies, or mercenaries; those who interact with other civilizations, and who do the Culture's dirty work in moving those societies closer to the Culture ideal, sometimes by force. In this fictional universe, the Culture exists concurrently with human society on Earth. The time frame for the published Culture stories is from roughly AD 1300 to AD 2800, with Earth being contacted around AD 2100, though the Culture had...
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The Future of Business

Definition The term was coined by the late author Iain Banks in his science fiction novel Excession. There he describes the OCP as, “an event, which to those affected by it have no previous frame of reference to it, or indeed have even ...

Author: Rohit Talwar

Publisher: Fast Future Publishing Ltd

ISBN: 0993295819

Category:

Page: 591

View: 553

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The Future of Business explores how the commercial world is being transformed by the complex interplay between social, economic and political shifts, disruptive ideas, bold strategies and breakthroughs in science and technology. Over 60 contributors from 21 countries explore how the business landscape will be reshaped by factors as diverse as the modification of the human brain and body, 3D printing, alternative energy sources, the reinvention of government, new business models, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and the potential emergence of the Star Trek economy.
Business & EconomicsPosted on

Risk Budgeting

That is, is the risk budget excession just the starting point of a conversation, which need not necessarily lead to a change in the portfolio? If the risk budgets indicate a change in asset allocation is needed, should this be carried ...

Author: Neil D. Pearson

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

ISBN: 1118160835

Category: Business & Economics

Page: 336

View: 834

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Covers the hottest topic in investment for multitrillion pension market and institutional investors Institutional investors and fund managers understand they must take risks to generate superior investment returns, but the question is how much. Enter the concept of risk budgeting, using quantitative risks measurements, including VaR, to solve the problem. VaR, or value at risk, is a concept first introduced by bank dealers to establish parameters for their market short-term risk exposure. This book introduces VaR, extreme VaR, and stress-testing risk measurement techniques to major institutional investors, and shows them how they can implement formal risk budgeting to more efficiently manage their investment portfolios. Risk Budgeting is the most sophisticated and advanced read on the subject out there in the market.
Literary CriticismPosted on

Space and Beyond

Excession ( 1996 ) , set five hundred years later , finds the Culture faced simultaneously by three challenges . Two come from outside the Culture : First , the militant Affronter culture , so - called because everything they do is an ...

Author: Gary Westfahl

Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group

ISBN: 9780313308468

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 207

View: 292

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Although the exploration of space has long preoccupied authors and filmmakers, the development of an actual space program, discoveries about the true nature of space, and critical reconsiderations of America's frontier experiences have challenged and complicated conventional portrayals of humans in space. This volume reexamines the themes of space and the frontier in science fiction in light of recent scientific and literary developments. Included are the observations of noted science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Gregory Benford, James Gunn, and Jack Williamson, along with contributions from leading scholars in the field.
PhilosophyPosted on

The Middle Voice of Ecological Conscience

It is an excession beyond beings, but not an excession beyond being, whatever at a later stage of his thinking, for example in "Time and Being', may call to be said about es gibt, Ereignis, and the torn edge between being and beings ...

Author: John Llewelyn

Publisher: Springer

ISBN: 1349216240

Category: Philosophy

Page: 303

View: 762

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The Transgressive Iain Banks

Culture envoy to Azad in The Player ofGames, even seems to show some sympathy for the Empire; and Genar-Hofoen takes it furthest by “going native” and actually becoming an Affronter in Excession. Of course this suggests that these kinds ...

Author: Martyn Colebrook

Publisher: McFarland

ISBN: 0786442255

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 208

View: 833

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"This collection of 12 new essays draws together prominent literary experts to explore the importance of Scottish writer Iain (M.) Banks, both his mainstream and science fiction work. The essays are divided into four thematic areas: the Scottish context,the geographies of his writing, the impact of genre, and a combined focus on gender, games and play"--Provided by publisher.