Textos Metafóricos; Cultura, Anarquía Organizada; IV.

Iain Banks (born on 16 February 1954 in Dunfermline, Fife) is a Scottish writer. He writes mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks, and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, including the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies. In 2008, The Times named Banks in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"

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Politics

A strong awareness of history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence.^[8]

In late 2004, Banks was a member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Prime Minister Tony Blairimpeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In protest he cut up his passport and posted it to 10 Downing Street. In an interview in Socialist Review he claimed he did this after he "abandoned the idea of crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns."^[9] He relates his concerns about the invasion of Iraq in his book Raw Spirit, and the principal protagonist (Alban McGill) in the novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale confronts another character with arguments in a similar vein.

Banks is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society (see Quotations) and a Distinguished Supporter of the Humanist Society of Scotland. He has spoken out in support of Scottish independence.^[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks

The Culture

The Culture is a fictional interstellar anarchist, socialist, and utopian^[1][2] 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.

Overview

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,

In vesting all power in his individualistic, sometime eccentric, but always benign, AI Minds, Banks knew what he was doing; this is the only way a liberal anarchy could be achieved, by taking what is best in humans and placing it beyond corruption, which means out of human control. The danger involved in this imaginative step, though, is clear; one of the problems with the Culture novels as novels is that the central characters, the Minds, are too powerful and, to put it bluntly, too good.^[3]

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture

List of ships of the Culture setting

This is a list of spaceships found in the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks. Most ships in this list are members of The Culture, the hybrid society featured in many of these novels. In this setting, each Culture ship, and some others, is also an artificial intelligence with a distinctive personality. Many of these ships are significant characters in the novels.^[1][2]

Naming

The machine intelligences called Minds (and, as a consequence, the Culture starships that they inhabit) usually bear names that do a little more than just identify them. The Minds choose their own names, and thus they usually express something about a particular Mind's attitude, character or aims in their personal life. Warship names are similar in retaining the whimsical nature, though the humour tends to be more cynical and threatening.

Banks composed many of the Culture ships' names very carefully to express the attitude of the ship's Mind, and a few names contain puns where both meanings are appropriate to the ship's attitude. A few of the ship names, like variations on "gravitas" are also installments inrunning gags.

Some ships' names hint at their purpose, but in a way that is not clear until near the end of the book. For example, Sleeper Service is asleeper agent whose cover is a "sleeper service" in a suspended animation pun on the transportation service offering.

A Momentary Lapse Of Sanity *

A Series Of Unlikely Explanations

A Ship With A View*

Ablation*

Absolutely No You-Know-What

Abundance Of Onslaught

Advanced Case Of Chronic Patheticism *

All The Same, I Saw It First *

All Through With This Niceness And Negotiation Stuff *

Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory *

Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The

Appeal To Reason

Arbitrary

Armchair Traveller

Arrested Development*

Attitude Adjuster

Awkward Customer *

Bad for Business

Big Sexy Beast

Bodhisattva, OAQS

Boo!

Bora Horza Gobuchul

Break Even

But Who's Counting? *

Cantankerous

Cargo Cult

Clear Air Turbulence

Congenital Optimist

Conventional Wisdom *

Credibility Problem*

Charitable View

Charming But Irrational *

Death and Gravity

Demented But Determined *

Determinist

Different Tan

Don't Try This At Home

Dramatic Exit, Or, Thank you And Goodnight*

Dressed Up To Party

Eight Rounds Rapid

Eschatologist (temporary name)

Ethics Gradient

Excuses And Accusations*

Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall

Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints

Fasilyce, Upon Waking

Fate Amenable To Change

Fine Till You Came Along *

Fixed Grin

Flexible Demeanour

Fractious Person

Frank Exchange Of Views

Frightspear

Full Refund (Ex-'MBU 604')

Funny, It Worked Last Time...

Furious Purpose

Germane Riposte *

God Told Me To Do It*

Gravitas Free Zone

Gravitas, What Gravitas?

Gravitas... Gravitas... No, Don't Help Me, I'll Get It In A Moment...

Grey Area (AKA Meatfucker)

Gunboat Diplomat

Halation Effect*

Hand Me The Gun And Ask Me Again *

Happy Idiot Talk*

Heavy Messing

Helpless In The Face Of Your Beauty*

Hence the Fortress

Heresiarch*

Hidden Income

Highpoint

Honest Mistake

Hundredth Idiot, The

Hylozoist

I Blame My Mother

I Blame The Parents *

I Blame Your Mother

I Said, I've Got A Big Stick*

I Thought He Was With You

In One Ear *

Inappropriate Response *

Injury Time *

Inspiral, Coalescence, Ringdown

Invincible

Irregular Apocalypse

It'll Be Over By Christmas

It's Character Forming

It's My Party And I'll Sing If I Want To

Jaundiced Outlook

Just Another Victim Of The Ambient Morality*

Just Passing Through

Just Read The Instructions

Just Testing

Killing Time

Kiss My Ass

Kiss the Blade

Kiss This Then *

Labtebricolephile

Lacking That Small Match Temperament *

Lapsed Pacifist *

Lasting Damage

Lasting Damage I

Lasting Damage II

Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill

Limiting Factor

Limivorous

Little Rascal

Liveware Problem

Long View

Low Gravitas Warning Signal

Lucid Nonsense *

Me, I'm Counting

Messenger Of Truth

Minority Report*

Misophist

Nervous Energy

Never Talk To Strangers

No Fixed Abode

No More Mr Nice Guy

No One Knows What The Dead Think

Not Invented Here

Not Wanted On Voyage*

Now Look What You've Made Me Do *

Now We Try It My Way

Now, Turning to Reason, & Its Just Sweetness

Nuisance Value

Of Course I Still Love You

On First Seeing Jhiriit

Only Slightly Bent

Partial Photic Boundary

Peace Makes Plenty

Pelagian

Perfidy*

Piety

Poke It With A Stick *

Pride Comes Before A Fall *

Prime Mover

Problem Child

Profit Margin

Prosthetic Conscience

Pure Big Mad Boat Man

Qualifier

Quietly Confident,

Ravished By The Sheer Implausibility Of That Last Statement

Reasonable Excuse

Recent Convert

Reformed Nice Guy *

Resistance Is Character-Forming

Revisionist

Riptalon

Rubric Of Ruin

Sacrificial Victim*

SacSlicer II

Sanctioned Parts List

Scar Glamour

Screw Loose

Seed Drill

Sense Amid Madness, Wit Amidst Folly

Serious Callers Only

Shoot Them Later

Size Isn't Everything

Sleeper Service

So Much For Subtlety

Sober Counsel

Someone Else's Problem *

Soulhaven

Space Monster

Steely Glint

Stood Far Back When The Gravitas Was Handed Out

Stranger Here Myself*

Subtle Shift In Emphasis

Sweet and Full of Grace

Synchronize Your Dogmas*

Tactical Grace

The Ends Of Invention

The Hand of God 137

The Precise Nature Of The Catastrophe*

The Usual But Etymologically Unsatisfactory

Thorough But ... Unreliable *

Total Internal Reflection

Trade Surplus

Transient Atmospheric Phenomenon

Ucalegon

Ultimate Ship The Second

Unacceptable Behaviour

Undesirable Alien*

Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence

Uninvited Guest

Unwitting Accomplice*

Use Psychology

Very Little Gravitas Indeed

Vision Of Hope Surpassed

Vulgarian

We Haven't Met But You're A Great Fan Of Mine *

Well I Was In The Neighbourhood*

What Are The Civilian Applications?

What Is The Answer and Why?

Wingclipper

Winter Storm

Wisdom Like Silence

Within Reason

Xenoclast

Xenoglossicist

Xenophobe

Yawning Angel

You May Not Be The Coolest Person Here *

You Naughty Monsters

You Would If You Really Loved Me*

You'll Clean That Up Before You Leave

You'll Thank Me Later*

Youthful Indiscretion

Zealot

Zero Credibility *

Zero Gravitas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_(The_Culture)