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Contact (The Culture)
The Culture is a fictional interstellar post-scarcity civilisation or society created by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks and features in a number of his space opera novels and works of short fiction, collectively called the Culture series. In the series, the Culture is composed primarily of sentient beings of the humanoid alien variety, artificially intelligent sentient machines, and a small number of other sentient "alien" life forms. Machine intelligences range from human-equivalent drones to hyper-intelligent Minds. Artificial intelligences with capabilities measured as a fraction of human intelligence also perform a variety of tasks, e.g. controlling spacesuits. Without scarcity, the Culture has no need for money; instead, minds voluntarily indulge humanoid and drone citizens' pleasures, leading to a largely hedonistic society. Many of the series' protagonists are humanoids who choose to work for the Culture's elite diplomatic or espionage organisations, and interact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Culture Series
The ''Culture'' series is a science fiction series written by Scottish author Iain M. Banks and released from 1987 through to 2012. The stories centre on The Culture, a utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoid aliens, and advanced superintelligent artificial intelligences living in artificial habitats spread across the Milky Way galaxy. The main themes of the series are the dilemmas that an idealistic, more-advanced civilization faces in dealing with smaller, less-advanced civilizations that do not share its ideals, and whose behaviour it sometimes finds barbaric. In some of the stories action takes place mainly in non-Culture environments, and the leading characters are often on the fringes of (or non-members of) the Culture, sometimes acting as agents of Culture (knowing and unknowing) in its plans to civilize the galaxy. Each novel is a self-contained story with new characters, although reference is occasionally made to the events of previous novels. The Culture T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The State Of The Art
''The State of the Art'' is a short story collection by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1991. The collection includes some stories originally published under his other byline "Iain Banks", as well as the title novella and others set in Banks's Culture fictional universe. The non-SF stories in the collection are the only non-SF stories published under his Iain M. Banks name. Editions The collection was published in the US in 2004 by Night Shade Books, in hardback () and limited editions (). The limited edition contains work by Banks not found in the UK version. A Trade Paperback edition was printed in Canada in 2007 by Night Shade Books, () It contains the additional text 'A Few Notes on the Culture'. Contents * "Road of Skulls". Originally published in the anthology ''20 under 35'', Peter Straus (ed.) 1988, Sceptre, . *:Two men in a carriage travel over the eponymous Road of Skulls, to reach a distant City that seems to be constantly retreating and producin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consider Phlebas
''Consider Phlebas'', first published in 1987, is a space opera novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks. It is the first in a series of novels about an interstellar post-scarcity society called the Culture. The novel revolves around the Idiran–Culture War, and Banks plays on that theme by presenting various microcosms of that conflict. Its protagonist Bora Horza Gobuchul is an enemy of the Culture. ''Consider Phlebas'' is Banks's first published science fiction novel, and takes its title from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem ''The Waste Land''. A subsequent Culture novel, ''Look to Windward'' (2000), whose title comes from the previous line of the same poem, can be considered a loose follow-up. Plot summary The Culture and the Idiran Empire are at war in a galaxy-spanning conflict. A Culture Mind, fleeing the destruction of its ship in an Idiran ambush, takes refuge on Schar's World. The Dra'Azon, godlike incorporeal beings, maintain Schar's World as a monument to the world's ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Look To Windward
''Look to Windward'' is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 2000. It is Banks' sixth published novel to feature the Culture. The book's dedication reads: "For the Gulf War Veterans". The novel takes its title from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem ''The Waste Land'': ''Look to Windward'' is loosely a sequel to ''Consider Phlebas'', Banks's first published Culture novel. ''Consider Phlebas'' took its name from the following line in the poem and dealt with the events of the Idiran-Culture War; ''Look to Windward'' deals with the results of the war on those who lived through it. Plot summary The Chelgrians are a race of centaur-like cat aliens with three hind-limbs and a humanoid catlike torso. Major Quilan, a Chelgrian, has lost the will to live after the death of his wife, killed during the Chelgrian civil war that resulted from the Culture's interference. A high-ranked Chelgrian priest offers Quilan the chance to avenge the Chelgrians who d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big Brother (1984)
Big Brother is a fictional character and symbol in George Orwell's dystopian 1949 novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party, Ingsoc, wields total power "for its own sake" over the inhabitants. In the society that Orwell describes, every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities, mainly by telescreens (with the exception of the Proles). The people are constantly reminded of this by the slogan "Big Brother is watching you": a maxim that is ubiquitously on display throughout the novel. In modern culture, the term "Big Brother" has entered the lexicon as a synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance and a lack of choice in society. Character origins In the essay section of his novel ''1985'', Anthony Burgess states that Orwell got the idea for the name of Big Brother from advertising billboards f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Probation
Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offender, ordered by the court often in lieu of incarceration. In some jurisdictions, the term ''probation'' applies only to community sentences (alternatives to incarceration), such as suspended sentences. In others, probation also includes supervision of those conditionally released from prison on parole. An offender on probation is ordered to follow certain conditions set forth by the court, often under the supervision of a probation officer. During the period of probation, an offender faces the threat of being incarcerated if found breaking the rules set by the court or probation officer. Offenders are ordinarily required to maintain law-abiding behavior, and may be ordered to refrain from possession of firearms, remain employed, participate in an educational program, abide a curfew, live at a directed place, obey the orders of the probation officer, or not leave the jurisdiction. The probationer might be ordere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ostracism
Ostracism ( el, ὀστρακισμός, ''ostrakismos'') was an Athenian democratic procedure in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years. While some instances clearly expressed popular anger at the citizen, ostracism was often used preemptively. It was used as a way of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to the state or potential tyrant, though in many cases popular opinion often informed the choice regardless. The word "ostracism" continues to be used for various cases of social shunning. Procedure The name is derived from the pottery shards that were used as voting tokens, called ''ostraka'' (singular ''ostrakon'', ) in Greek. Broken pottery, abundant and virtually free, served as a kind of scrap paper (in contrast to papyrus, which was imported from Egypt as a high-quality writing surface, and was thus too costly to be disposable). Each year the Athenians were asked in the assembly whether they wished to hold an ostracis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Norm
Social norms are shared standards of acceptance, acceptable behavior by groups. Social norms can both be informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society, as well as be codified into wikt:rule, rules and laws. Social normative influences or social norms, are deemed to be powerful drivers of human behavioural changes and well organized and incorporated by major theories which explain human behaviour. Institutions are composed of multiple norms. Norms are shared social beliefs about behavior; thus, they are distinct from "ideas", "Attitude (psychology), attitudes", and "Value (ethics), values", which can be held privately, and which do not necessarily concern behavior. Norms are contingent on context, social group, and historical circumstances. Scholars distinguish between regulative norms (which constrain behavior), constitutive norms (which shape interests), and prescriptive norms (which prescribe what actors ''ought'' to do). The effects of norms can be det ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gender-specific Pronoun
A third-person pronoun is a pronoun that refers to an entity other than the speaker or listener. Some languages with gender-specific pronouns have them as part of a grammatical gender system, a system of agreement where most or all nouns have a value for this grammatical category. A few languages with gender-specific pronouns, such as English, Afrikaans, Defaka, Khmu, Malayalam, Tamil, and Yazgulyam, lack grammatical gender; in such languages, gender usually adheres to "natural gender", which is often based on biological gender. Other languages, including most Austronesian languages, lack gender distinctions in personal pronouns entirely, as well as any system of grammatical gender. In languages with pronominal gender, problems of usage may arise in contexts where a person of unspecified or unknown social gender is being referred to but commonly available pronouns are gender-specific. Different solutions to this issue have been proposed and used in various languages. Overview ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Binary Number
A binary number is a number expressed in the base-2 numeral system or binary numeral system, a method of mathematical expression which uses only two symbols: typically "0" (zero) and "1" ( one). The base-2 numeral system is a positional notation with a radix of 2. Each digit is referred to as a bit, or binary digit. Because of its straightforward implementation in digital electronic circuitry using logic gates, the binary system is used by almost all modern computers and computer-based devices, as a preferred system of use, over various other human techniques of communication, because of the simplicity of the language and the noise immunity in physical implementation. History The modern binary number system was studied in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries by Thomas Harriot, Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, and Gottfried Leibniz. However, systems related to binary numbers have appeared earlier in multiple cultures including ancient Egypt, China, and India. Leibniz was specifica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis
The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis , the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language. Linguistic relativity has been understood in many different, often contradictory ways throughout its history. The idea is often stated in two forms: the ''strong hypothesis'', now referred to as linguistic determinism, was held by some of the early linguists before World War II, (a debate between university professors) while the ''weak hypothesis'' is mostly held by modern linguists. * The ''strong'' version, or ''linguistic determinism'', says that language ''determines'' thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. This version is generally agreed to be false by modern linguists. * The ''weak'' version says that linguistic categories and usage only ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constructed Language
A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. A constructed language may also be referred to as an artificial, planned or invented language, or (in some cases) a fictional language. ''Planned languages'' (or engineered languages/engelangs) are languages that have been purposefully designed; they are the result of deliberate, controlling intervention and are thus of a form of ''language planning''. There are many possible reasons to create a constructed language, such as to ease human communication (see international auxiliary language and code); to give fiction or an associated constructed setting an added layer of realism; for experimentation in the fields of linguistics, cognitive science, and machine learning; for artistic creation; and for language games. Some people may also m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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