KarlMrax

The Gzilt had been living with the idea of Subliming for centuries, generations. At first only a few people had thought it would be a good idea; then, gradually, over time, more and more had. Eventually you had the sort of numbers that would make the whole thing work, because to do it properly required serious numbers – preferably a whole civilisation.

In theory an individual could Sublime, but in practice only solitary AIs ever did, successfully. It took something as complex and self-referentially perfect as a high-level AI to have the cohesion to stand up to the Sublime alone; no normal biological individual could – you just evaporated in there. It was not utter annihilation – all the information you brought with you remained – but the persona, the individual as a functioning, identifiable and distinctive entity – that was gone. Civilisations, and the individuals within

KarlMrax

She shifted some wind-loosened hair out of her eyes and kept gazing up and around. A kilometres distant smudge might be a flock of birds; her familiar, Pyan, was probably flying with them, playing. Her eyes strained, magnifying the view as best they could; she could feel rings of tiny muscles warping the lenses in each eye, while other filaments altered the shape of her foveae. Were those birds – and of the right species? But the distance was too great. There might be a larger dark shape mixed in with the flock, but there might not. Even if there was, it might just be a larger bird being mobbed.

• Hydrogen Sonata, Chapter Two: (S -23)

KarlMrax

The Gzilt ship 8*Churkun – a battleship in all but name – kept the tiny alien vessel effectively crushed underneath it as it directed fire from a pair of its close-range, medium-power plasma chambers into the vessel, and – beneath it, beyond it – into the emptily glowing blue bowl of the crater facility, destroying the ship utterly and blowing the crater facility apart. The weapon-pulse was so strong it continued into the surface of the planetary fragment to a depth of several kilometres, blasting a brief, livid tunnel a hundred metres across vertically into the rock. A torrent of lava splashed out around the ship’s outermost protective fields as the tunnel collapsed, the spattering, cooling rain of molten rock following the pulverised, atomised debris of the Zihdren-Remnanter ship and the centre of the blue-glowing bowl as they too flew into the colour-wild skies above Ablate. At the boundaries of the world’s truncated horizon, some larger parts of the obliterated dome, still

KarlMrax

~… Drop the signal containment around me immediately! And desist from jamming my engine fields at once! I am about to initiate a full-power high-acceleration pull-away manoeuvre irrespective of your current interference, and any damage accrued either by myself or you will be your responsibility, not mine! The Zihdren-Remnanter and the Zihdren themselves will hear of this act of barbarism; do not make it worse for yourself!

~Release in full the information contained within the shielded substrate.

~… That my drive components have not just exploded thanks to your unwarranted barbarism is due more to my ability to finesse than your brutal use of overwhelming power. I am, as is now abundantly

KarlMrax

The two craft met within the blast-shadow of the planetary fragment called Ablate, a narrow twisted scrue of rock three thousand kilometres long and shaped like the hole in a tornado. Ablate was all that was left of a planet destroyed deliberately two millennia earlier, shortly before it would have been destroyed naturally, by the supernova within whose out-rushing sphere of debris, gasses and radiation it remained, like an arrowhead plunging ever downwards into the rising, roiling heat and sparks of a great fire.

Ablate itself was anything but natural. Roughly hewn as though sliced from some spherical cake, its tip and the first few hundred kilometres of its narrow end had, originally, been made up of the metallic material which had formed the very centre of the now-defunct small planet while its wider end – a rough

KarlMrax

Just who and what is and isn't Culture is something of a difficult question to answer though; as has been said in one of the books, the Culture kind of fades out at the edges. There are still fragments - millions of ships, hundreds of Orbitals, whole systems - of the Peace faction of the Culture, which split from the main section just before the start of the Idiran War, when ships and habitats voted independently on the need to go to war at all; the minority simply declared itself neutral in the hostilities and the re-integration of the Peace faction after the cessation of hostilities was never totally completed, many people in it preferring to stay outside the majority Culture as long as it did not renounce the future use of force.

• A Few Notes On The Culture

KarlMrax

Important technological advances still take place, but they don't tend to affect day-to-day life the way that the invention of the internal combustion engine, heavier-than-air flying machines and electronics have affected the lives of those who have lived during the past century on Earth.

• A Few Notes On The Culture

KarlMrax

Existing on the outer surface of the base material, an Orbital's rapid-transport systems operate in vacuum, with the resulting advantages the lack of air-resistance confers; the relatively uncluttered nature of the Orbital's outer surface (whether flat, allowing the systems to operate next to that surface, or corrugated, requiring sling-bridges under unoccupied mountain indentations), means that the systems can be both high-capacity and extremely flexible. Journey starting-points and destinations can be highly specific for the same reason; an isolated house or a small village will have its own access shaft, and in larger conurbations a shaft will usually be within a few minutes walk.

• A Few Notes On The Culture

KarlMrax

The design of a Plate sometimes incorporates the deep - or strategic - structure of the surface geography, so that the Plate medium itself contains the corrugations that will become mountains, valleys and lakes; more commonly, the Plate surface is left flat and the strategic structures on the inner surface - also constructed from Plate base material - are added later. Under either method, the Plate's manufacturing and maintenance systems are located within the indentations or hollows of the strategic structure, leaving the land surface free to assume a rural appearance, once the tactical geomorphology has been designed and positioned, the Plate's complement of water and air has been emplaced, the necessary weathering has occurred, and the relevant flora and fauna have been introduced.

• A Few Notes On The Culture

KarlMrax

One thing almost every Orbital - whether just two Plates or a completed ("closed") Orbital - does have, is a Hub. As its name implies, the Hub sits in the centre of the Orbital, equidistant from all parts of the main circumferential structure (but not physically joined to it, normally). The Hub is where the Orbital's controlling AI (often a Mind) usually exists, running, or helping to run, the Orbital's transport, manufacturing, maintenance and subsidiary systems, acting as switchboard for trans-Orbital communications, library and general information point, traffic control for approaching, departing and close-passing ships, and generally working as the Orbital's principle link with the rest of the Culture. During the construction phase of a Plate-pair, the Hub will normally control the process.

• A Few Notes On The Culture