I would recommend “Consider Phlebas” by Iain Banks, which is part of the Culture series of novels. Very formative for me, and I read that while I was writing Theme Park. And I still think it’s the best depiction of a post-A.G.I. future, an optimistic post-A.G.I. future, where we’re traveling the stars and humanity reached its full flourishing.

The protagonist of Consider Phlebas is working for the Culture's enemies, a theocratic empire that has slaves literally bred for loyalty, and the conflict they're engaged in ultimately kills billions of sentient beings. Most of the thoughts about the Culture are his, and he basically decries them as the ultimate wokesters. No wonder HN nerds prefer The Player of Games in which a smart nerd like themselves get recruited as an agent to bring down an empire a bit like our own by being really really good at games.

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Yeah that got me as well. We barely hear anything in the book about how the Culture actually functions. Fucker's not read it and just grabbed the first name off the list.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Much the same mistake I (and many others) made trying to get into the series! Although I have to say that I'm still one of the philistines that gerikson brings up who's read Phlebas and Player of Games and not much else.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 23 hours ago

Everyone is entitled to their own readership of Banks. I'm not saying mine is the one and only. But the Culture is supposed to be a background character, even if Banks spends a lot of time in the later novels "explaining" it. But if the reader only focusses on the lore, they'll miss the quite good characters and psychology that Banks was good at too.

My personal favorite is Use of Weapons, where the focus is on the people doing the Culture's dirty work. In one scene, Zakalwe

spoiler

spends an inordinate time trying to protect a useless aristocracy from being wiped out by a revolution, only to find out his side was meant to lose for some inscrutable Mind-directed reason. This kind of shit happens all the time to him, and as he's basically a deeply traumatized individual he's able to keep doing it.

In Look to Windward

spoiler

Contact goes too far along the path of optimizing "help backwards civilization" and manages to create a genocidal civil war. The survivors decide to try to destroy a Mind (and the Orbital it's managing), and you know, you kind of get why.