Can anyone tell me anything about Xeelee and Culture?

[WhiteLion]

Hi everyone, I am intrigued by these two series (actually Xeelee should be a breed but I don't know which series), I read a bit of plot but I can't find photos and descriptions of the respective spaceships. Would anyone know how to give me some more info about it?

[NecronLord]

Honestly your best place for this is their Wikipedia pages for a listing of the novels, then reading the sources, both are series of novels and sci-fi and they're notably mentioned in the same context on this and other forums for their extremely impressive, compared to most space opera, abilities.

I suspect you're most interested in their military capabilities? A Culture Rapid Offensive Unit, their main response craft for a threat against them after the Idiran War, is capable of fighting an entire battle in milliseconds, attacking ships from light years away while it does it, and engaging thousands of targets at once, and using weapons with power up to the planet-destroying while it does so.

The Culture is opposed by various rival or comparable societies such as the Homomda, Idirans (with whom they fight a war in one book), Morthenvald as well as beings far superior to them on occasion.

[WhiteLion]

Thanks a lot for the information, could you tell me the name of some of their ship, so i can look for some fanart? Thanks again

[bilateralrope]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... ure_series
The Minds of The Culture choose their own name.

When talking about The Culture, consider that their prefered weapons against lower tech civilizations is not sheer firepower. They prefer to use Effectors to hack enemy computers by controlling individual electrons within those computers.

They also work on organic brains, through the Culture has a taboo against doing so. When one of the Minds ignored the taboo, it used its effectors to make someone experience every single death of a genocide he participated in. It took less than a second to do so.

[mr friendly guy]

There are some old threads on the board which gives you a bit of info on Culture capabilities. Like this one.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=7419

[WhiteLion]

Thanks a lot, I read them immediately

[Straha]

So, part of the setting of the Culture is that they're thoroughly post-scarcity and can change ships and design pretty much at whim, and do so with (sometimes) deep pleasure. Pictures and descriptions of the ships, though they show up in some of the stories, are therefore more reflective of the ship's particular whims (they are sentient) coupled with the desires of the crew than anything representative of the Culture.

Also, not to be that guy, but to focus on the descriptions of the ships in the Cultureverse misses the point of the books, which are very much about the people who live in that universe and the effects it would have on society and not about the capabilities of the ships or the design parameters.

[Lord Revan]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't it be quite accurate to describe both the Culture and the Xelee as "practically divine" compared to modern day humans?

As in their technology is so far ahead of ours that if they were real they'd seem like magic or the wrath of God rather opponents using technology we could understand.