Amazon to adapt Ian M Banks culture series into a series.

Glaucus

Glaucus

Glaucus

Man of Honour
Joined
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Man this sounds great. Amazon do great work on series. No timeline given though and just the first book announced.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180221005519/en/
Amazon Studios today announced it has acquired the global television rights to the Culture’s first novel Consider Phlebas. The famed space opera by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks features Banks’ fictional interstellar utopian society, the Culture. The series will be adapted by Dennis Kelly (Utopia, Matilda) with Plan B Entertainment (World War Z, 12 Years a Slave, The Big Short, Moonlight, Feud) slated to produce and the Estate of Iain Banks attached as Executive Producer.
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Just saw this announced elsewhere, fantastic news and could work very well. Fingers crossed that it delivers! I think of all the Culture novels this is probably the easiest to put into video, I just can't see how the scale, tech and power of some of the Culture drones and warships in later novels could ever be portrayed.
 
Wow; just seen this thread. Goodness gracious me. This could be utterly epic considering the content of the books. Please don't balls it Amazon!

(Amazon et al, take a peek at Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series too, kthxbye).
 
In a way i am a little sad this is happening, This is my number 1 author period.

SO...

Whatever the budget is it needs to be doubled.

Use the chaps who did the castings for game of thrones to pick the actors.

Balls this is up and i will boycott AMAZON for the rest of my days.
 
The Culture books are my favourite scifi and Banks is one of my favourite authors so I really hope Amazon do a good job with this adaptation as I'd love to see more of the books realized.
 
Sounds good, but I love this series and it's insane randomness makes me believe the TV execs would be scared to stay true to it and it could end up a shell for their own made up stories.
 
I love the Culture books, but to be fair, although they take place in the Culture universe, only some of them are actually Culture. Even the first book is barely Culture. It actually completely follows a Shaper agent during the Culture-Idiran war, with the only mcguffin that he is after a lost Culture Mind AI.

Really only "Player Of Games" (which mostly takes place outside the Culture) and "Excession" are Culture books that are all about the Culture and not set in some other setting. In most of them, the hi-tech Culture is merely a bit of background, or a character or two, and I did find myself wishing for a lot more Culture than I was getting.

It's not like the Alastair Reynolds, Charles Stross or Neal Asher books where it's all about the settings and characters. Banks Culture novels can be like "Oh this happens in a Culture universe, but it's inside a massive hollow planet where everyone thinks they are living a medieval life" or "this is a person who is from the Culture, but they are hiding on a backwards planet, where they have to hide who they are and what they can do". If you're after high-tech space-opera, most of the Culture books are actually meagre offerings.
 
To a degree, everything is planned and controlled by a MIND(s) and to a degree the MINDS to me are the culture.
 
SPG said:
To a degree, everything is planned and controlled by a MIND(s) and to a degree the MINDS to me are the culture.
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But if that's half a dozen pages out of four hundred that take place in a medieval setting... that's a historical fantasy to me, not a hard sf space opera. I can't point at Lord Of The Rings, say that takes place inside a giant alien computer simulation at the beginning of the movie/book, and claim it's a sci-fi story for the hours of orks, hobbits and elves.
 
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