
List of spacecraft in the Culture series - Tomte
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Culture_series
======
detaro
I also quite like
[https://twitter.com/cultureshipname](https://twitter.com/cultureshipname),
which tries to find texts that could be ship names in real life.

~~~
danpalmer
First tweet on the page: "I don't need a tie for gravitas".

Followed.

~~~
ethbro
At least Elon has enough names for his satellite constellation now.

~~~
arethuza
_Ravished By The Sheer Implausibility Of That Last Statement_

~~~
JulianMorrison
I'm entirely sure the Culture would name a whole line of ships after the Chuck
Tingle books.

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throwanem
I gather I'm pretty unusual among sf fans in not enjoying the Culture novels,
which I find maybe a little sere in their prose and a little too far gone in
their post-Singularity space opera to really resonate. I do like the ship
names, though.

I also suspect that series plays a heavy role in inspiring Howard Tayler's
webcomic _Schlock Mercenary_ , whose very humble beginnings I've had the
distinct pleasure of watching it far outgrow over the years. Definitely worth
a look for any sf fan, mil-sf fans especially.

~~~
latch
Not crazy about them either. For me, the issue is that they're basically gods
(level 8 civilisation) and everything just feels like one big deus ex machina.

Excession stood out as better than the rest.

~~~
Tloewald
Good call on Excession. I love the Culture books but can see why folks
wouldn't, but Excession is the best in my opinion because it reveals the
Culture's flaws and limitations. The rest of the time it's just invincible
good guys.

I feel Banks tried to write a novel about the Culture dealing with peer
civilizati0ns, but they a;ways ended up being significantly inferior and we're
back to Consider Phlebas (which is The Culture vs a clearly weaker
civilization).

~~~
lobster_johnson
I'd put Look to Windward in the "best of" category. It addresses with the
issue by introducing a character who has been personally, very poignantly
affected by the Culture's meddling, and seeks revenge for it, a bit like a
reverse Use of Weapons. It's also the only book to directly reference the
events of Consider Phlebas.

I also liked how Matter described a very-low-on-the-civilizational-ladder
(literally: It's a located on the lower level of a "shell world", an
artificial planetoid constructed of concentric layers of habitation, each home
to a different civilization) society whose players discover the Culture and
ultimately seek to improve on themselves, while the book concurrently
illustrates the other civilizations' underhanded attempts at playing the
Culture.

Minor nitpick regarding Consider Phlebas: The Idiran Empire are militarily
vastly superior to the Culture at the outset of the war.

~~~
hkt
Fun fact: "Consider phlebas" and "Look to windward" are both phrases appearing
in T S Eliot's poem "The Wasteland".

They're the only two titles drawn from the poem, so I find it particularly
interesting that you mentioned the way that they're more directly referential
than other works. Makes me think I should try a closer reading of both.

~~~
lobster_johnson
Yes, it's a "sequel" of sorts — in the weakest possible sense — to Consider
Phlebas, so it's not an accident that he used another line from the same poem.

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kpil
I have not yet come to terms with the fact that Ian is gone, and there will no
more spacecraft names for the rest of my life.

~~~
david-given
...did you know that in English, the names 'Ian' and 'Iain' are, in fact,
unrelated? It's a little-known fact that the word 'Ian' is actually an
abbreviation for the word 'Cyclopian' \--- which, as everyone knows, means to
have only one I.

(Stolen from Mr. Banks himself, when he came to my university to do a talk.
Still miss him.)

~~~
kpil
I blame my phone... Thanks for pointing it out. Of course it's Iain.

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hkt
A frank exchange of views is my favourite. Whenever I hear key terms in the
media I think they'd make good ship names. One example is how the BBC says "so
called Islamic state" \- if I ever own a boat (or a sentient AI) I might call
it that.

For those who miss Iain Banks, Ken McLeod is a good read. The Cassini Division
is a great post-singularity novel with interesting tech ideas and ideological
musings. Iain and Ken also wrote a book of poetry together which is worth a
read.

~~~
roryisok
I read Newton's Wake by Macleod last year and didn't like it much. Put me off
reading anything else by him.

I would recommend Charlie Stross to fill the void.

~~~
david-given
Newton's Wake is kind of variable. Some bits I like, some bits are meh.

If you feel like giving Macleod another try, I think his best books are _The
Cassini Division_ and _The Stone Canal_ ; they're part of a quartet, but these
two books are the best and are very much a thematic pair, and if you read one
you should read them both. (In part they show us the same setting from
drastically opposed viewpoints, both done sympathetically.)

Giant spaceships, explosions, god-like beings, wormholes through space and
time, sentient robots, non-sentient robots, maybe-sentient robots, full on
ultralibertarian capitalism, full on ultraliberal socialism, nanotechnology,
pre-, post- and intra-singularity technology, and some very big guns.

~~~
hirsin
The pre/intra/post singularity + econ systems is also filled masterfully by
Stross's Accelerando. It's available online on his website -
[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/accelera...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html)

~~~
roryisok
And Singularity Sky

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Balgair
Oh come on now HN, it's a short week for many of us, lets come up with some
ourselves! I'll start:

 _Not Enough Whimsy_

 _Independence Without Declarations_

 _Farmer 's Walk_

 _Wine and Cheese Night Ended Well_

Any others?

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
I keep a list of mine...

Agorophile

Illusory Lie

Lapse of Sanity

GSV Presence of the Void

Just Like a Simile

As Seen On TV

Indivisible Composite

Ad Nauseum

Cannon To The Left Of Them

Cannon To The Right Of Them

Volley'd And Thundered

Echo of a Dissipating Dream

Life's Dust Empire

Multifoliate Rose of Death's Dream Kingdom

Melancholia, Inspiration, Efficiency

Bigger Stick

Indifferent Caretaker

Still Life With Supernova

Guernica

Enthalpy's Shadow

Thevenin's Theorem

Kirchhoff's Laws

Stress-Energy Tensor

This Is Not A Name

This Is Not A Sentence

Majority Report

SSK(S(K(SS(S(SSK))))K)

(λx. λy. x y x) (λy. λx. y (x y x))

CAT GRP TOP SET FUN

Life's Dust Empire

Multifoliate Rose Of Life's Twilight Kingdom

Rat's Feet

Paralyzed Force

Gesture Without Motion

Falls The Shadow

Handful Of Dust

Vials of Ivory

The Change of Philomel

Turn The Wheel

Look To Windward

Consider Phlebas

HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

King of Kings

Look On My Ship, Ye Mighty, And Despair

Abandon Hope

Land of Thebes

Red Sails Wide

Plucked Hence From Poetry

Then Spoke The Thunder

Levity Sucks

If You Can Read This, You Are Literate

Purely Coincidental

~~~
Balgair
_This Is Not A Sentence_ , very good, paradoxes as names are fantastic

~~~
Pica_soO
-Guesswork Education

-Leaving the stove on

-Repent Datamining Chaingang

-Now you see me

-In war and fair

-moral Faultliness Seismograph

-Whatever it stakes

-1234 A.D. - dead hamsters Vengeance

-Value of Life Inflation

-No, not that ship

-Definitely dated You

-Will I am Tell Time

-Poach Reacekeeper

-Relative Directions

-Rocks thrown at sea

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mxfh
Quite sad to see that this level of inclusionism is only tolerated in some
niches of wikipedia at large.

Just have a look at @deletedWiki for the chances missed:
[https://twitter.com/search?q=list%20from%3Adeletedwiki](https://twitter.com/search?q=list%20from%3Adeletedwiki)

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proaralyst
I use these as hostnames. Easy to remember and there are enough so I won't run
out any time soon.

~~~
ilogik
Doesn't it take a long time to type? Or are you using the initials?

~~~
proaralyst
I try to pick short ones, but tab completion is a life saver.

Worth it to SSH into the Only Slightly Bent

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abakker
A small piece of Arcana - SpaceX uses some of these ship names for its landing
platforms. I've always appreciated that.

