# In Iain Bank's 'Culture' novels, what is the Culture's relation to mankind on Earth?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [February 25, 2003, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361 "2003-02-25T06:29:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Badtz\_Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badtz_Maru)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2003, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/1 "2003-02-25T06:29:45Z")
This series of novels revolves around a galactic civilization called the Culture, which is mostly made up of various species of humanoids and sentient machines. Though there are various species of humanoids, most of them are described as being similar to humans on Earth. I thought at first that the first novel I read in this series was set many thousands of years in the future, but I found out in the end that it is set around the 13th century AD (there are excerpts from a history published for Earth in the 22nd century that use our dating system at the end of the book).
So, how is there an 8000+ year old civilization of essentially human beings scattered across our galaxy long before mankind left Earth? I see a few possible explanations.
My favorite idea is that humans left Earth sometime in our prehistory, spread rapidly, and speciated. This fits in with what I know of the setting so far, as many civilizations interfere with primitive races on other planets - maybe someone took some cavemen as pets and they got out of control.
Another possibility, which I’m not sure fits with the setting as I know it so far, is time travel - maybe humans from Earth travel back in time sometime in our future, and start over in our prehistory.
Then there’s the possible explanation that parallel evolution lead to humanoids evolving elsewhere in the galaxy, but I don’t think this fits with the setting, which is fairly ‘hard’ SF. This Star Trek-ish explanation doesn’t seem to fit, especially as the book has several believably alien alien species.
So, does this ever get explained? I know there is one novella where an agent from the Culture comes to modern-day Earth, but the collection it is in was checked out when I last went to the library - maybe it explains it. I know there are some fans of the series on this board (that’s why I decided to check it out), and I was hoping someone could explain it to me.
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### Author:  [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2003, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/2 "2003-02-25T06:40:59Z")
\ Iain Banks is the same guy as Iain M. Banks, who wrote “The Wasp Factory”. Everybody should read that book. “The Business”, on the other hand, can be missed. \, sorry.
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### Author:  [@Badtz\_Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badtz_Maru)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2003, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/3 "2003-02-25T06:43:26Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by 2trew \*
> \*\*\ Iain Banks is the same guy as Iain M. Banks, who wrote “The Wasp Factory”. Everybody should read that book. “The Business”, on the other hand, can be missed. \, sorry. \*\*
Actually, he uses his middle initial in his SF works, and uses just Iain Banks for his more mainstream novels, such as “The Wasp Factory”.
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### Author:  [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2003, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/4 "2003-02-25T06:46:42Z")
Sorry, I was assuming the OP was right. Heh, Wasp Factory is mainstream. I have to go hide now.
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### Author:  [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2003, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/5 "2003-02-25T09:17:53Z")
> [@](#):
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> My favorite idea is that humans left Earth sometime in our prehistory, spread rapidly, and speciated.
This is probably the most likely. Banks’ series has a series of “human” species, called “humans”, which are all closely related but often having significant changes (some are furry, some have different bodily proportions, some have more than two genders). But he doesn’t explain these closely-related species aside from pointing out that there’s a LOT of history to the galaxy, and the Culture has only been around for an eyeblink of it.
> [@](#):
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> Another possibility, which I’m not sure fits with the setting as I know it so far, is time travel
Nope. No mention of time travel in Banks’ books. In fact, the way he has his fictional universe set up pretty much rules out time travel in the sense that we typically imagine it.
For some good reading: [A Few Notes on the Culture](http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~stefan/culture.html)
… and…
[The Culture FAQ](http://www.mattstan.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/culture/culturefaq.html)
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### Author:  [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2003, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/6 "2003-02-25T12:02:15Z")
The novella “The State of the Art”, in the collection also entitled _The State of the Art_, is about a Contact team from the Culture exploring contemporary Earth. In that story, Earth is just one planet that happens to have an intelligent species that’s classifiable by the Culture as “human”.
AFAIK, the dates in, for example, _Consider Phlebas_ are standard Earth CE dates … indicating that the events of _Consider Phlebas_ actually took place some centuries ago.
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### Author:  [@Rue\_DeDay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rue_DeDay)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2003, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/7 "2003-02-25T12:52:46Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by SPOOFE \*
> **Nope. No mention of time travel in Banks’ books. In fact, the way he has his fictional universe set up pretty much rules out time travel in the sense that we typically imagine it**
Ha! The Out of Context Problem in _Excession_is ALL time travel, bay-bee! So neener, neener, neener!
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### Author:  [@The\_Clawman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Clawman)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2003, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/8 "2003-02-25T13:40:26Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by Rue DeDay \*
> \*\*Ha! The Out of Context Problem in _Excession_is ALL time travel, bay-bee! So neener, neener, neener! \*\*
But not time travel within the same “universe”. The OOCP only potentially allowed travel to younger and older “universes”.
/pointless nitpick
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### Author:  [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2003, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/9 "2003-02-25T15:21:30Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by Steve Wright \*
> **The novella “The State of the Art”, in the collection also entitled _The State of the Art_, is about a Contact team from the Culture exploring contemporary Earth. In that story, Earth is just one planet that happens to have an intelligent species that’s classifiable by the Culture as “human”.**
Yep. And instead of contacting us, Special Circumstances is monitoring to see what we will do to ourselves. We’re probably the cautionary planet for the Culture. ☹
> [@](#):
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> \*\*AFAIK, the dates in, for example, _Consider Phlebas_ are standard Earth CE dates … indicating that the events of _Consider Phlebas_ actually took place some centuries ago. \*\*
I hadn’t noticed that. Interesting.
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### Author:  [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2003, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/10 "2003-02-25T17:19:00Z")
To the best of my recollection, Banks has never dealt directly with the issue of which came first: Earth humans or Culture humans. My best guess is that in Banks’ universe, human-like species have developed independently in several locations. See _Against a Dark Background_, which takes place in a solar system explicitly stated to be at an enormous distance from any other habitable system, and _Inversions_, which involves a civilisation existing in the Culture’s sphere of influence but at a level of technology roughly equivalent to Earth’s Medieval period.
Glad to see someone else here has been reading these great novels.
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### Author:  [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2003, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/11 "2003-02-25T21:41:13Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by El\_Kabong \*
> **To the best of my recollection, Banks has never dealt directly with the issue of which came first: Earth humans or Culture humans. My best guess is that in Banks’ universe, human-like species have developed independently in several locations. See _Against a Dark Background_, which takes place in a solar system explicitly stated to be at an enormous distance from any other habitable system, and _Inversions_, which involves a civilisation existing in the Culture’s sphere of influence but at a level of technology roughly equivalent to Earth’s Medieval period.**
It’s interesting that the two books you mention actually have the least amount to do with the Culture. You can only recognize _Inversions_ as a Culture novel if you’ve read other Culture novels before (though there is one fairly obvious clue) and I don’t think that _Against a Dark Background_ is a Culture novel at all.
I agree that Banks never really explains why there are so many “human” species running around the galaxy (or beyond it; doesn’t _Player of Games_ take place in the Magellenetic Cloud?) but I’m not sure _Against a Dark Background_ makes a good example.
> [@](#):
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> \*\*Glad to see someone else here has been reading these great novels. \*\*
Yep. I really like Banks’ stuff. I’ll admit I just picked up a copy of _Look to Windward_ this weekend but I’m leaving for vacation Thursday and expect it to make great reading on the flight.
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### Author:  [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2003, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/12 "2003-02-25T23:09:20Z")
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> \*\*She leaned forward on the table. “Why do you look so similar to us? I know all the outworlders aren’t humanoid, but a lot are. How come?”
>
> “Well,” he said, hand at his mouth again, “It’s like this; the…” he belched. “…the dust clouds and stuff in the galaxy are…it’s food, and it’s food keeps speaking back to it. That’s why there are so many humanoid species; nebulae’s last meals repeating on them.”
>
> She grinned. “That simple, is it?”
>
> He shook his head. “Na; not at all. Very complicated. But,” He held up one finger. “I think I know the real reason.”
>
> “Which is?”
>
> “Alcohol in the dust clouds. Goddamn stuff is everywhere. Any lousy species ever invents the telescope and starts looking in between the stars, what do they find?” He knocked the glass on the table. “Loads of stuff; but much of it alcohol.” He drank from the glass. “Humanoids are the galaxy’s way of trying to get rid of all that alcohol.”\*\*
>
> _–from **Use of Weapons** by Iain M. Banks_
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### Author:  [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2003, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/13 "2003-02-26T00:09:32Z")
Or, perhaps, in my reckless enthusaism to contribute, I’ll just go ahead and post an enormous swath of copyrighted material.
So, please delete that bad boy if it poses a concern. Sorry, Mr. Banks. Everyone should buy at least one of his books, really.
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### Author:  [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2003, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/14 "2003-02-26T00:57:31Z")
> [@](#):
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> You can only recognize Inversions as a Culture novel if you’ve read other Culture novels before (though there is one fairly obvious clue) and I don’t think that Against a Dark Background is a Culture novel at all.
Well, I agree _AADB_ isn’t, but I think it takes place in the Culture’s universe, albeit in a location so distant that it is outside the Culture’s domain, if that makes any sense.
Mild hijack: fave Iain M. Banks SF novel? Of the Culture novels, probably _Use of Weapons_ (so come I didn’t remember that quote?). Of the non-Culture novels, probably _Feersum Endjinn_.
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### Author:  [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2003, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/15 "2003-02-26T00:59:41Z")
> [@](#):
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> You can only recognize Inversions as a Culture novel if you’ve read other Culture novels before (though there is one fairly obvious clue) and I don’t think that Against a Dark Background is a Culture novel at all.
Well, I agree _AADB_ isn’t, but I think it takes place in the Culture’s universe, albeit in a location so distant that it is outside the Culture’s domain, if that makes any sense.
Mild hijack: fave Iain M. Banks SF novel? Of the Culture novels, probably _Use of Weapons_ (so how come I didn’t remember that quote?). Of the non-Culture novels, probably _Feersum Endjinn_.
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### Author:  [@Badtz\_Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badtz_Maru)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2003, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/16 "2003-02-26T06:47:01Z")
Finished _Consider Phlebas_, knocked out part of _Excession_ today. There is mention of a planet that they believe may have been the homeworld of the ancestors of those who make up the Culture, and there are historical records of battles fought in it’s pre-industrial era app. 14,000 years ago. It shows that the Culture is somewhat uncertain of their origins, which seems unusual. Perhaps all the potential homeworlds of humanity were lacking a clear fossil record showing how they evolved there…also, in reading _Excession_ mention is made of how a certain artifact could be used to travel into a younger universe before there was an established galactic culture. I think Banks is hinting at both the time travel and the prehistoric astronauts explanation, unless in some book I haven’t read yet I find out about some Eccentric like _Meatfucker_ planting fake fossils on Earth and manipulating our minds.
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### Author:  [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2003, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/17 "2003-02-26T16:22:35Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by El\_Kabong \*
> **Well, I agree _AADB_ isn’t, but I think it takes place in the Culture’s universe, albeit in a location so distant that it is outside the Culture’s domain, if that makes any sense.**
True. Just because there are no Culture references in _AADB_ it doesn’t mean that it isn’t in the same universe. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and all that. Still, I tend to think of it as different.
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*Mild hijack: fave Iain M. Banks SF novel? Of the Culture novels, probably _Use of Weapons_ (so how come I didn’t remember that quote?). Of the non-Culture novels, probably _Feersum Endjinn_. \*\*
I’ll agree with you about _Use of Weapons_; great book, I never saw the “twist” at the end coming and the revelation of why chairs have such an effect on Cheradenine is one of the most memorable “oh sh\*t!” scenes I’ve ever read.
OTOH, I never managed to finish _Feersum Endjinn_, mainly because I got tired of trying to “reed fonetiklee”. Did he really have to write a third of the book like that?
I would have put _AADB_ as my favorite non-Culture book since I don’t consider it to be one. YMMV, of course.
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### Author:  [@gorillacus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gorillacus)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2003, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/18 "2003-02-26T16:27:26Z")
Great thread for great works.
Banks SF aside, Wasp Factory is an EVIL, EVIL book. You should all read it. Complicity, while not as grand is filled with quite cool revenge scenarios.
Banks has left the relationship between earth and the Culture deliberatly vague. I’ve gathered this from what interviews and articles I’ve read. My guess he doesn’t want to write himself into a corner.
Perhaps he will write that great novel that explains all the secrets of the culture. (unrestrained fanboy drooling)
Thanks all, off for tea with Ms. Sma…something about a job offer…
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### Author:  [@The\_Clawman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Clawman)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2003, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/19 "2003-02-26T16:34:15Z")
He’s the only SF author I really look forward to new work from. His conventional fiction can be damned good too. I recommend Espedair Street and The Crow Road.
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### Author:  [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2003, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-iain-banks-culture-novels-what-is-the-cultures-relation-to-mankind-on-earth/157361/20 "2003-02-26T16:51:45Z")
Of course, you know you’re moving in the wrong social circles when you read _The Wasp Factory_ and find yourself thinking “Didn’t I once share a flat with this guy?” (Meaning the protagonist, not Banks … )
I don’t think _Against A Dark Background_ is a Culture novel … that one lone star floating in intergalactic space is sufficiently interesting that a ship Mind would have been along to visit it, if there were Minds around in the _AADB_ universe. I think.