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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1091 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 8, 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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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on the Iliad, Dialectic of Enlightenment and McLuhan's The Classical Trivium. Picking up Nudge: The Final Edition.

I got to the middle of Use of Weapons and I am kinda doubting if I'm going to finish it. I've pretty much guessed the main reveal already (it became so painfully obvious at some point that I broke down and checked it and yes, it was exactly what I thought) and the story is somehow not that engaging for me, and in general the Culture kinda looks pretty assholish to me at this point, not sure if it was the intention of the author or my biases. I know a lot of people like The Culture series, would you advise me to persevere or try another book or just look elsewhere entirely? I read Player of Games before, and it was kinda obvious how it's going to end (I mean you don't set up the whole thing to lose at the end, right?) and there also were a reveal which I thought was kinda meh but overall it was ok, not super-excellent but also I didn't feel like I need to force myself to go on. With this one, I am kinda struggling.

Player of Games and Use of Weapons have a somewhat similar dark vibe, and I could definitely see someone disliking those while liking other parts of the series. Maybe try Excession if you want to give the series one last chance? But frankly it sounds like the series just isn't for you, and you should switch to something else, and IMHO that's perfectly fine. It's a culturally influential (rimshot) series, but it's not the only or the best sci-fi book series out there.

in general the Culture kinda looks pretty assholish to me at this point, not sure if it was the intention of the author or my biases

The contrast between the general "which party should we go to next" culture of the Culture and the "what asshole tricks are we going to need to pull next to keep these people's parties from being ruined" culture of Special Circumstances is definitely intentional by the author, as is at least some of the way the assholishness "leaks" out of that supposedly self-contained organizational apparatus. IMHO the series would have been insufferable if you took away its insufferable characters, though; with just the external conflict it would have come across as just another Mary Sue "look how the universe becomes more awesome when more people think like me" Utopia story.

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