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CanadienneBacon It's a pretty loosely connected 'series', and despite the fact that hundreds of years pass, that's more interesting as trivia than it is important as history. Most of the books are pretty self-contained, and if you're only going to read one,
Consider Phlebas really isn't the best candidate. I mentioned it specifically because so many people do read it first, and it's not a good entry point. Read it second if you're a stickler for chronological order, but I recommend breaking that tendency for at least this one book.
...It's not such a bad book, really. But it mostly takes place outside the Culture, and if you only have time for one, well...
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Shayuri @
GlassEye Have you read the series? What would you consider the high points?
How about this, for a start? A theme. The word of the day...is 'change'. Changing bodies and minds, yours or someone else's, through persuasion or genetic engineering. Changing whole worlds, politically and/or physically, terraforming as art. Changing places-- I like the idea of a small ship, traveling the galaxy in search of something they never quite find. The Culture, by way of Cowboy Bebop. Episodic stories set against a larger, strongly personal arc.
I don't quite know how to set that up other than to suggest you aim for it, though. A little overambitious? Maybe.
Carrying on... You shouldn't feel like you all *have* to be part of SC, Contact, or the Culture. The books take a lot of time examining the Culture from the outside, from the perspective of its enemies, outliers and skeptics, or just those people who left paradise, whatever the reason. On the other hand, an excuse to indulge in all the pleasures and wonders of a Culture orbital or General Systems Vehicle-- that could be fun, too. What I want to capture is something of the scope and scale of the series, the amazingness of the universe, and that has more to do with the character's personality than what they do. You should play glamorous SC sexpots, wisecracking heavily armed drones, barbarous societally backward aliens, and nobodies suddenly recruited by the Culture for one of their unfathomable plots-- but that's just for a start.
The eponymous Player of Games, for example, is just that: protagonist of the book Gurgeh, a man from the Culture who has dedicated his life to playing, studying, and winning various games of skill and chance. He's taciturn, scholarly, and a complete noncombatant. He is nevertheless, the Culture's champion in a war against a burgeoning (pretty nasty) stellar empire they could not have won by their own standards-- which is to say, they could have won conventionally very handily, but the toll in enemy lives and the resentment it would have fostered would have made it largely Pyrrhic. But by playing the empire's game-- entirely literally-- they might win on another battlefield altogether. Hearts and minds, right?
Rambling again. That's enough for now. How's that strike everyone?
