Posted: Jan 21, 2011 12:12 pm
CarlPierce wrote:Definitely Player of Games....or any culture book.
Does beg the question what would a hyper intelligent ship mind think about?....designing the next even more intelligent ship or upgrading itself to infinity.
In "Excession" Banks introduces the idea of Infinite Fun Space. Many Minds are sufficiently powerful to run full-universe simulations which they can inhabit, often at the same time as maintaining a real-world presence. They amuse themselves with these simulations by exploring what they call "metamathical" scenarios; some sort of fictional, ultra high-level branch of mathematics. They seem to find this pastime most gratifying, and some even retreat into IFS full-time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_(The_Culture)#interests
Banks has also written a document called "A Few Notes on The Culture" which provides some interesting insights into a few issues that aren't explicitly covered in the books. I'd highly recommend giving it a look.
http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm