Subliming in the Culture-verse...

[Big Orange]

The Culture and the Homomda are both big and bad, being among the most advanced Involved powers in the Milky Way. But as hinted at in A Few Notes on the Culture, Consider Phlebas, and especially in Excession, those two Involved societies are massively dwarfed by far greater alien races that are either totally extra-galactic or multi-dimensional or much older Milky Way natives that have Sublimed themselves into being extra-galactic or multi-dimensional.

But what are the Sublimed exactly? What are their powers? And are their different modes and methods of Subliming (ie evolving into pure energy, eternally move into hyperspace or simply leave the bounds of the galaxy ala B5's First Ones)?

[NecronLord]

They're generic god races.

They probably look like glowing hovering squids.

There's a line in Excession which expresses it well, "They've shown no sign of stepping into the playground and taking away the toys" over the confrontation between the Culture and the Affront.

[Vendetta]

The Sublimed are your standard transcendent star-child types. Most of them, beyond a few initial fits of ego like spelling their names out in black holes or such tend to lose interest in the physical universe.

Sometimes it happens species wide, sometimes only to some members.

The only notable exception to the norm of universal disinterest is the Chelgrian sublimed, who set about creating and managing the Chelgrian version of the afterlife, on discovering that it did not exist already.

[NeoGoomba]

I've only read Excession, but I was under the impression that Culture citizens could sublime at a time of their choosing, but it was viewed as being esoteric or odd to do. If thats a correct assumption, what was the process that someone in the Culture had to go through if they wanted to sublime?

[Mlenk]

If I remember correctly, a Culture citizen ultimately has four choices pertaining to life and death. They can live out their approx. 400 years and die, they can have their age stabilized (effectively becoming immortal perhaps), they can be stored and then woken up whenever the set criteria that they specified occurs, or lastly, they can Sublime.

So it seems that once a civilization gets to a stage like the Culture's, they can do so at will if they so choose. However, I don't recall Banks ever going into detail the process of Subliming outside of it being a pan-civilizational event when it does occur. One of the few standouts is the Culture because (if I remember correctly) they think that when an entire civilization decides to Sublime at once, it seemingly is an act of coercion to the very independently-minded Culture.

[DPDarkPrimus]

There is no set process for transcending the state of physicality and existing purely as energy.

[NeoGoomba]

There is no set process for transcending the state of physicality and existing purely as energy.

Okay....so how then does it happen in the Culture-verse? Is it tech-dependant? Spiritual? Evolutionary? Different methods for different races?

[andrewgpaul]

It's never been discussed in any of the novels how races, groups or individuals Sublime. The only species mentioned by name, IIRC, are the Dra'azon (Consider Phlebas; one has taken over a world as a Planet of the Dead, and somehow kept in a fixed state, as some sort of toy/museum exhibit) and the Chelgrian-Puen (???) which included Chelgrians from all social castes, and who are unique for hanging around to assist their non-Sublimed spcies-mates.

[Vendetta]

There is no set process for transcending the state of physicality and existing purely as energy.

Okay....so how then does it happen in the Culture-verse? Is it tech-dependant? Spiritual? Evolutionary? Different methods for different races?

Very possibly all of the above. The Culture has been at the point, technologically and socially, where Subliming has been possible for about the last seven thousand years. It's mostly their propensity for meddling and interfering that has kept them from doing so.

[Gil Hamilton]

Yeah, I got the impression that the Culture as a general rule feels that Sublimed races, for whatever reason, do not tend to interact much with the galaxy and thus it would be irresponsible as citizens and neighbors of the galaxy to up and leave.

[Tasoth]

For some reason, my memory wants me to believe that age stabilization is typically used as a reward or payment in The Culture for some particularly phenomenal deed. The only person I can think of who has it is Cheradenine and he went through some pretty dramatic shit to get it.

[The Grim Squeaker]

For some reason, my memory wants me to believe that age stabilization is typically used as a reward or payment in The Culture for some particularly phenomenal deed. The only person I can think of who has it is Cheradenine and he went through some pretty dramatic shit to get it.

Cheradinene Zakalwe was a non culture citizen originally.

[Sriad]

For some reason, my memory wants me to believe that age stabilization is typically used as a reward or payment in The Culture for some particularly phenomenal deed. The only person I can think of who has it is Cheradenine and he went through some pretty dramatic shit to get it.

It's readily available to Culture citizens, but for cultural (lower case c) reasons most humans choose to die or move into long-term storage after four-hundred-ish years rather than face Immortal's Ennui. It is implied that some Culture people don't, though I don't recall that we've met any.

I seem to recall that another way out of life is uploading yourself into a Mind as a minor component, though I couldn't say which book I might have read that in...

[NecronLord]

I believe it's actually a quip about three people (drones?) merging to form the basis of a Mind.

[Big Orange]

They're generic god races.

They probably look like glowing hovering squids.

There's a line in Excession which expresses it well, "They've shown no sign of stepping into the playground and taking away the toys" over the confrontation between the Culture and the Affront.

Resurrecting a semi-dead thread, I think it would be pretty trite if the Sublime are just generic energy beings, but still have a physical presence on the material plane but are possibly as far above a Culture Mind, as a Culture Mind is above a normal person or lesser AI. I'd say most of the civlizations that Sublimed are no longer within the bounds of the Milky Way, now far, far away in a distant galaxy cluster or different universe (like the Excession, which seemed like a Sublimed entity that showed it's presence to lesser beings).

[Rye]

The Dra Azon, IIRC are mentioned in Consider Phlebas which seems to imply locality, and in Excession the quasi-ascended (but dull) are painted as glowing people on the verge of sublimation. The narrative in Excession had lots of times it could've referred to the Excession as similar to the sublimed, but it wasn't done, it was pretty clear that it was "just" altogether different from anything they knew.

The overall impression of the sublimed is of godly ascended beings who have lost all mortal perspective and thus have moved off into different types of existence, perhaps maintaining a minimal presence occasionally (which would no doubt be religion-causing to such lower creatures as ourselves).

[Brain_Caster]

It seems to me the Sublimed are primarily a plot device that Banks uses to explain why the galaxy isn't overcrowed with hyper-tech civilizations like the Culture: Most simply bugger of to "somewhere else" on reaching that level.