StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Dartzap wrote:I have looked for about two years for Culture related art, and there is Nothing, all that's been see is the artwork on the front of the books.

Big Orange wrote:Well at least they are honest book covers and have images that are totally unrelated to the plot - I mean how does this book cover here relate to the Japanese/German occupation of North America?

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Big Orange wrote:Well at least they are honest book covers and have images that are totally unrelated to the plot -

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Nah man, that's an awesome cover. Totally different period and aesthetic aspects...

Those other ones are just blah because they're literally nothing.

Keevan_Colton wrote: Yes but since there is no fucking castle and the climax of the book is a fucking cocktail party in a detatched house in fucking suburbia...I'm rather happy they dont have an accurate picture, though I'd prefer the book didnt exist instead

Big Orange wrote:Bullshit, the Consider Phlebas cover shows the Clear Air Turbulence coming in to orbit the oribital where Horza and the other characters raid the uber-cruise liner that sails the orbital's ocean.

The Man in the High Castle on the otherhand just shows totally unrelated psychedelic trippy gibberish that has nothing to do with the Japanese Empire or the Third Reich.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:

Big Orange wrote:Bullshit, the Consider Phlebas cover shows the Clear Air Turbulence coming in to orbit the oribital where Horza and the other characters raid the uber-cruise liner that sails the orbital's ocean.

I was specifically refering to the second Use of Weapons and Player of Games covers. They just simply scream "generic no-name 1980s sci-fi."

...nobody does them like that anymore.

Keevan_Colton wrote:

...nobody does them like that anymore.

With bloody good reason.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:

Keevan_Colton wrote:

...nobody does them like that anymore.

With bloody good reason.

A shame. We have truly become tarnished from a golden age...

Keevan_Colton wrote: The book was shite and so was the cover.

Rye wrote:Banks doesn't really describe culture stuff, so I can understand why it would be a ball ache to draw it.

Big Orange wrote:

Rye wrote:Banks doesn't really describe culture stuff, so I can understand why it would be a ball ache to draw it.

I think Banks descriptive enough and I can visualise the characters and locations sufficiently enough in my mind’s eye.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:

Big Orange wrote:Bullshit, the Consider Phlebas cover shows the Clear Air Turbulence coming in to orbit the oribital where Horza and the other characters raid the uber-cruise liner that sails the orbital's ocean.

I was specifically refering to the second Use of Weapons and Player of Games covers. They just simply scream "generic no-name 1980s sci-fi."

Surlethe wrote: Yes, but how florid are his actual descriptions? Just because you have the imagination to visualize his characters and locations doesn't mean that there's actually enough information there to accurately depict Banks' creations; it could just as easily indicate that you're good at filling in the blanks.

Big Orange wrote:Well I'd say Banks is florrid enough, but his descriptions are not dumbed down and you can fill in the descriptive blanks without being wide off the mark.

Surlethe wrote: That's just the problem: the descriptive blanks themselves mean that there's lots of room for interpretation, and hence you're unable to judge when you've actually hit the mark! You're doing nothing to dispel my remark that the reader's ability to visualize the Culture and its artifacts does not mean Banks' descriptions are sufficient for an artist to actually paint or draw them.

The (Demilitarised) General Offensive Unit Limiting Factor had arrived under Ikroh that afternoon. Gurgeh had gone down to the transit gallery to inspect it. The craft was a third of a kilometre long, very sleek and simple looking; a pointed nose, three long blisters like vast aircraft cockpits leading to the nose, and another five fat blisters circling the vessel's waist; its rear was blunt and flat.

'Orbitals are on a different scale from our own space habitats; Masaq', like most Culture Orbitals, has a diameter of approximately three million kilometres and therefore a circumference of nearly ten million kilometres. Its width at the foot of its containing walls is about six thousand kilometres. Those walls are about a thousand kilometres high, and open at the top; the atmosphere is held in by the apparent gravity created by the world's spin.
'The size of the structure is not arbitrary; Culture Orbitals are built so that the same speed of revolution which produces one standard gravity also creates a day-night cycle of one of their standard days. Local night is produced when any given part of the Orbital's interior is facing directly away from the sun. They are made from exotic materials and held together principally by force fields.

The average fully grown Affronter consisted of a mass the shape of a slightly flattened ball about two metres in girth and one and a half in height, suspended under a veined, frilled gas sac which varied in diameter between one and five metres according to the Affronter's desired buoyancy and which was topped by a small sensor bump. When an Affronter was in aggressive/defensive mode, the whole sac could be deflated and covered by protective plates on the top of the central body mass. The principal eyes and ears were carried on two stalks above the fore beak covering the creature's mouth; a rear beak protected the genitals. The anus/gas vent was positioned centrally under the main body.

To the central mass were attached, congenitally, between six and eleven tentacles of varying thicknesses and lengths, at least four of which normally ended in flattened, leaf-shaped paddles. The actual number of limbs possessed by any particular adult male Affronter one encountered entirely depended on how many fights and/or hunts it had taken part in and how successful a part in them it had played; an Affronter with an impressive array of scars and more stumps than limbs was considered either an admirably dedicated sportsman or a brave but stupid and probably dangerous incompetent, depending entirely on the individual's reputation.