Iain (M) Banks Related Art...

[Sriad]

With the power of the Wayback Machine, I have retrieved three CG images from the abyssal depths of web-pages past.

I'm really not sure what this one is. Ahah, it's the 'orrible flayed head thing from 'Feersum Endjinn'.



This may be an Effector of some sort:



And this is a very

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chair.

[The Grim Squeaker]

The Effector looks good, though the chair's "cushion" looks odd.
Good pics, source?

[Admiral Valdemar]

I always liked the old covers by Orion, the ones I have before their reprints last year. Now they seem duller and less related in ways, a bit like any children's' book adult cover version.

If you want BAD covers, then just look at anything by Baen Books. The Bolo novels have some wacky artists interpretations what they look like (though I doubt they ever read the books to get a description).

[Rye]

See that is how I almost exactly picture a Affronter to look like so I don't understand what Surlethe is getting at with Banks not being florrid enough in describing aliens, planets or ships.

What shape were those culture warships inside Pittance?

[Sriad]

The Effector looks good, though the chair's "cushion" looks odd.
Good pics, source?

I used the Internet Archive to find a few of the pictures that used to be hosted at http://www.excession.swinternet.co.uk/ , the defunct site Xalev posted earlier.

[Alan Bolte]

You want a bad cover, check out the recent title The Algebraist. Actual space squid. Totally unrelated to the book.

[The Grim Squeaker]

You want a bad cover, check out the recent title The Algebraist. Actual space squid. Totally unrelated to the book.

[Alan Bolte]

Yes, I know the UK cover was better.

[Big Orange]

See that is how I almost exactly picture a Affronter to look like so I don't understand what Surlethe is getting at with Banks not being florrid enough in describing aliens, planets or ships.

What shape were those culture warships inside Pittance?

They looked like metallic cylanders with hieroglyphic like patterns traced along their hulls.

[Rye]

The patterns were spirals from what I recall, but their overall shape was never really described. I imagined them to be big irregular upside down pyramidine things that looked sort of like the ship from flight of the navigator, covered in spirals.

The affront were better described, but I pictured them more like the Nihilanth from half life, only without the body and arms, (omnidirectional tentacle locations) with two beaks and snail eyes, with another balloon on top.

[XaLEv]

The patterns were spirals from what I recall, but their overall shape was never really described.

Sure it was.

The sixty-four ships stored in this hall were Gangster Class Rapid Offensive Units; slim segmented cylinders over two hundred metres tall and fifty in diameter.

[Rye]

Well, I'll shut the hell up, then!

[Big Orange]

The affront were better described, but I pictured them more like the Nihilanth from half life, only without the body and arms, (omnidirectional tentacle locations) with two beaks and snail eyes, with another balloon on top.

Nah, I imagine an Affronter when fully suited up would look similar to a Combine Advisor:

[Vanas]

Look to Windward has a description of a GSV that is good enough to make a drawing from, I'd say.



Of course, they're a lot more impressive on the inside.

If I could draw with any skill, the description in that book would be the one to use for a GSV

[Elheru Aran]

...Uh, what? Is that sphere behind the white cut-out supposed to be the GSV? That makes no sense...

[Surlethe]

It's pretty much a non-issue when Banks can be quite florrid on occasion and you could piece together what a GSV looks like, what some of the characters look like and what being on a Culture orbital is like.

I stand corrected that Banks' descriptions are good enough to objectively piece together a picture, but if I were right, my conclusion would be right, dammit!

[Admiral Valdemar]

Ships like the System class vessel Bora Horza Gobuchul were collections of ovoid like craft within a single massive (couple hundred klick long) field that was habitable. It was more like a small fleet than a single entity and we also know GSVs tend to have a triumvirate of Minds too. As for general shape, it depends on the class and I think we only really have the slab like Mountain class that was the Sleeper Service for proper description.

[Rye]

It's pretty much a non-issue when Banks can be quite florrid on occasion and you could piece together what a GSV looks like, what some of the characters look like and what being on a Culture orbital is like.

I stand corrected that Banks' descriptions are good enough to objectively piece together a picture, but if I were right, my conclusion would be right, dammit!

Banks DOES describe stuff (I know that some of his aliens have multiple arms, wings, etc), but it's really not as prevalent in his work as it is in others. I mean, the giant space cathedrals with broadsides and gunports of your average 40k description gives a lot more detail to my mind's eye than ships being described as cylindrical with spirals on the sides that make you go bog-eyed if you look at them too long. I mean, are they featureless aside from that? Do they have lights on them, or plates or normal-looking guns, does anything glow when they fight? I have no idea.

[Big Orange]

It's pretty much a non-issue when Banks can be quite florrid on occasion and you could piece together what a GSV looks like, what some of the characters look like and what being on a Culture orbital is like.

I stand corrected that Banks' descriptions are good enough to objectively piece together a picture, but if I were right, my conclusion would be right, dammit!

I win! (for once... )

[Vendetta]

What shape were those culture warships inside Pittance?

The most effective description of a Culture ROU comes in Use of Weapons.

"It looks like a giant dildo."

[XaLEv]

As for general shape, it depends on the class and I think we only really have the slab like Mountain class that was the Sleeper Service for proper description.

Hey now, Sleeper Service was a Plate class.

...Uh, what? Is that sphere behind the white cut-out supposed to be the GSV? That makes no sense...

Presumably the white cutout is the GSV.

The Sleeper Service's external appearance remained the same as ever; a silvery ellipsoid ninety kilometres long, sixty across the beam and twenty in height.

Here's a couple of cutaways of the Plate-class I made a while back, based on the dimensions given in Excession and The Player of Games:

Side view
http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/7471 ... assoq9.png

Top view
http://img468.imageshack.us/img468/3716 ... inttg7.png

The rectangle in the center is the main body of the ship. The ellipse is the outermost extent of the ship's external field structure. The blue in between is the atmosphere it carries. However, I'm not certain that the main hull of the ship is rectangular. The books are a bit vague on that part.

And here's the side view cutaway modified to represent the Sleeper Service after it went eccentric.

http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/5636/sleeperuv8.png

The brown at the top is its gas giant environment. The pale blue, as before, is terrestrial atmosphere, and the dark blue is water. The arrangement is just an estimate though, because the dimensions of the ocean and gas giant atmosphere was never stated exactly.

And, finally, the Excession itself:
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a139/ ... ession.png

All these pictures are 100 meters per pixel scale.

[NecronLord]

While fighting, they tend to have their outer fields as either near-perfectly absorbative or reflective, hence either being black or mirrored spheres.

Does that count as glowing?

Also, I imagined the pittance ships as giant dildos covered in a sort of fractal-pattern.

[Big Orange]

Also, I imagined the pittance ships as giant dildos covered in a sort of fractal-pattern.

They were actually "slim segmented cylinders", although most ROUs would definitely look much more streamline, pointed, arrow-like or sword-like in comparison to GCUs and GSVs. And the "dildo" comment was made by a idiotic Culture bimbo in Excession.

[Big Orange]

Any somebody over at Spacebattles.com, is doing CGI images of the cylindrical ROUs seen in Excession. Good, eh?

[Murazor]

For some reason, I'm quite fond of the Spanish cover for Excession. The ship design probably has no similarity whatsoever with any Culture design ever created by Banks, however.