Mind (The Culture)
In Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, starships, planets and orbitals have their own Minds: self-conscious, hyperintelligent machines originally built by humanoid species but which have outsmarted their creators by several orders of magnitude since then.
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Overview
Although the Culture resembles a utopian anarchy-like society, Minds most closely approach the status of leaders or gods. As independent, thinking beings, each has its own character. Some seem more aggressive, some more calm; some don't mind behaving a bit mischievously, others simply demonstrate curiosity about whatever remains unknown in the surrounding universe. But above all they tend to behave rationally and benevolently in their decisions.
As mentioned before, Minds can serve several different purposes, but Culture ships and habitats have one special attribute: the Mind and the ship or habitat are perceived as one entity; in some ways the Mind is the ship, certainly from its passengers' point of view. It seems normal practice to address the ship's Mind as "Ship" (and an Orbital hub as "Hub"). However, a Mind can transfer into and out of its ship 'body', and even switch roles entirely, becoming (for example) an Orbital Hub from a warship.
More often than not, the Mind's character defines the ship's purpose. Minds do not end up in roles unsuited to them; an antisocial Mind simply would not volunteer to organise the care of thousands of humans, for example. On occasion groupings of two or three Minds may run a ship. This seems normal practice for larger vehicles such as GSVs, though smaller ships only ever seem to have one Mind.
Banks also hints at a Mind's personality becoming defined at least partially before its creation or 'birth'. Warships, as an example, are designed to revel in controlled destruction; an eagerness to achieve glorious death also seems characteristic. The presence of human crews on board warships may discourage such recklessness, since in the normal course of things, a Mind would not risk damage to beings other than itself.
Ship varieties
The Culture constructs several types of starships:
- GSV - General Systems Vehicle. These ships, the largest Culture vessels, have lengths measured in tens of kilometers. They serve as habitats for the Culture's species, factories of other ships and more. Classes include Plate class, Continent class, Ocean Class and others. In 'The State of the Art' Sma comments that a GSV is to the Culture, what a city is to a civilization on Earth.
- MSV - Medium Systems Vehicle
- LSV - Limited Systems Vehicle
- GCU - General Contact Unit. These ships form part of the Culture's Contact section. They specialise in interaction with species and civilizations outside the Culture. They sometimes act controversially - as, for example, GCU Grey Area which reads and interacts with humanoid minds using its effector. (Other Minds frown on this behaviour.) In general, similar controversy attaches to Contact as a whole - and especially to its Special Circumstances section.
- GCV - General Contact Vehicle (?)
- ROU - Rapid Offensive Unit. As the name suggests, these ships function as immensely powerful killing machines. Of course, as Minds, they do not act as merciless, blood-thirsty beasts; but simply with deadly effectiveness in their potential task.
- LOU - Limited Offensive Unit
- dROU or Very Fast Picket - a demilitarised ROU used as very fast courier ships
- Eccentric - Minds that have become... a bit odd. Eccentric ships will have their own hobbies or indulgences: for example, the GSV Sleeper Service, which makes living tableaux out of its Stored passengers. ("Stored" in the Culture means to enter voluntary dormancy, usually with some stipulation as to when you would like to be revived.) Eccentric ships seem to exist on the periphery of the Culture, still members but not entrusted with missions or consulted in other matters.
- Elencher - Members of the Zetetic Elench, a splinter group and arguably no longer part of the Culture proper.
- Ulterior - Members of the Culture Ulterior, an umbrella term for all the no-longer-quite-Culture factions.
Non-ship Minds might include:
- Orbital Hubs - An Orbital is a smaller version of a ringworld, some 3 million kilometres across, orbiting a star; people live on the inside surface of them, in a planet-like environment.
- Rocks - Minds in charge of planetoid-like structures, built/accreted from the earliest times of the Culture
- Stores - Minds of a quiet temperament run these asteroids, containing vast hangars, full of mothballed military ships. Some Rocks also act as Stores
- University Sages - Minds that run Culture universities/schools (every Culture citizen has quite an extensive education)
Ship characteristics
All Culture ships have an 'electromagnetic effector', a very powerful, precise and versatile tool (or weapon).
Ships can manipulate matter (apparently including transmutation of one substance to another) and construct structures and machines on the nanotechnology scale.
Larger ships can construct smaller ships inside their General Bays (general-purpose holds or storage areas).
Ships often, though not always, interact with their crews through avatars. These semi-sentient creatures or drones, 'slaved' to the ship's Mind, seem to provide a more 'human' interface for passengers. A Mind may have one avatar, a few or hundreds, all talking to different people at the same time, without degrading the Mind's performance of its other tasks. Minds evidently have high processing speeds.
Culture ships run on engines which allow them to travel at faster-than-light speeds. The acceleration and maximum attainable speed seem to depend on the ratio of the mass of the ship to the volume of its engines. These engines do not use reaction mass and hence Minds need not mount them on or even expose them to the surface of the ship. As with any other matter aboard, ships' Minds can gradually manufacture extra engine volume or break it down as needed. Banks has evolved a (self-confessedly) semi-technobabble system of theoretical physics, using such concepts as 'infraspace', 'ultraspace' and the 'energy grid', to describe the ships' acceleration and travel.
Culture Minds also have Displacers, essentially tools for teleportation using mini-wormholes. As there is a small risk associated with Displacement, they tend not to be used to move sentient beings unless urgent.
Minds' names
Minds (and, as a consequence, Culture starships) usually bear names that do a little more than just identify them. The Minds themselves choose their own names, and thus they usually express something about a particular Mind's attitude, character or aims in life. They range from funny to just plain cryptic. Some of the memorable Minds might include:
- GSV Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The
- A Series Of Unlikely Explanations
- A Ship With A View
- LOU Attitude Adjuster
- Superlifter Charitable View
- GSV Death and Gravity
- GCU Different Tan
- GSV Ethics Gradient
- GCU Fate Amenable To Change
- ROU Frank Exchange Of Views
- Funny, It Worked Last Time
- God Told Me To Do It
- GCU Grey Area
- also nicknamed Meatfucker by fellow Minds for reading and otherwise tampering with humanoid minds (privacy is one of the ultimate values in the Culture).
- Heavy Messing
- GSV Honest Mistake
- Irregular Apocalyse
- GCU It's Character Forming
- GCU Jaundiced Outlook
- Just Testing
- ROU Killing Time
- GSV Limivorous
- LSV Misophist
- GSV No Fixed Abode
- GSV or MSV Not Invented Here
- Of Course I Still Love You
- GCU Problem Child
- GSV Quietly Confident (see Sleeper Service)
- GCU Reasonable Excuse
- GCU Recent Convert
- Resistance Is Character Forming
- LSV Serious Callers Only
- Eccentric Shoot Them Later
- Eccentric Sleeper Service
- famous for taking aboard people wanting to become "suspended" and woken up some other time. It used those people to make immense replicas of famous historical events - e.g. battles. It previously bore the name Quietly Confident.
- GSV So Much For Subtlety
- GCV Steely Glint
- GCU Tactical Grace
- Ultimate Ship the Second
- GCU Unacceptable Behaviour
- Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence
- GSV Uninvited Guest
- GSV Use Psychology
- GSV What Is The Answer And Why?
- GSV Wisdom Like Silence
- GSV Yawning Angel
- GSV Zero Gravitas