Everyone should read at least two Culture books - but DON'T start at the beginning!
The Culture is Iain M. Banks' sci fi masterpiece - a futuristic society where benevolent AI minds provide humans whatever life they choose. Across the nine books you explore the Culture through their interactions, conflicts, and meddling with other space-faring civilizations. When the series is at its best it's full of action and adventure, and once the dust settles you're left with some extremely interesting ideas about what it means to be happy and have agency in a utopian society.
As always, no spoilers until the end when we get into the full plot explanation and discussion.
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This episode is sponsored by Moonrising by Claire Barner, published by Simon and Schuster and available here.
If you want to jump around, here are the timestamps for the episode: