Sep 072012
 

An exhibition of art celebrating the centenary of Alan Turing, the father of computer science, opens this week at RGU’s Georgina Scott Sutherland Library. With thanks to George Cheyne.

2012 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing (1912 – 1954), one of the greatest minds Britain has ever produced.

From inventing the digital computer and helping to decode the German Enigma machine to founding the science of Artificial Intelligence, the world today would have been a very different place without Turing and his ideas.

This exhibition, which reflects Turing’s enduring influence on art and contemporary culture and has previously been shown at Kinetica Art Fair in London, brings together a number of important artists from digital art pioneers such as William Latham to emerging contemporaries such as Anna Dumitriu. 

Jane Kidd, curator of the RGU Arts and Heritage Collections says:

“This exhibition breaks down the artificial barriers between science and the arts.  

“RGU is at the forefront of Computing research today with the School of Computing and at the cutting edge of Art with Gray’s School of Art, so it’s great that we can bring both together in this exciting show to mark RGU’s participation in the British Science Festival.”

The exhibition is showing at the Georgina Scott Sutherland Library, Robert Gordon University, Garthdee Campus, Aberdeen from Wednesday 5th September until Friday 12th October, 2012.

Opening hours:
Monday to Thursday, 10am – 8-pm
Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 10am – 5pm

Apr 192012
 

Are you confused about which butter/margarine type spreads are healthy? Even if you aren’t then you probably should be! Craig Adams enlightens Voice readers.

Most people think they understand the difference between saturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated fat, yet there are two key pieces of information relating to these that the food industry has deliberately occluded.

Firstly in terms of health, monounsaturated is best, then polyunsaturated, then saturated right?

Not quite – not all saturated fat is bad. Some saturated fats are among the healthiest fats of all. Furthermore, fat can turn into something chemically nasty when you heat it, and saturated fat is more resistant to this change than the other types of fat.

Unless you restrict frying to low temperatures, it’s actually safer to fry food in a saturated fat such as butter or lard. Unfortunately, telling people that would not help increase the sales of cooking oil.

Secondly you may have observed that saturated fats are a solid grease, whereas unsaturated fats are oil? This is not mere coincidence, in fact it’s pretty much their defining trait. In order for an oil type unsaturated fat to become a spread, it somehow needs to be solidified. The reason that saturated fats are solid is because they are more saturated with hydrogen.

The process that makes a fat more solid is called hydrogenation, but it could just as easily be termed saturation… So in other words, to make an unsaturated fat more solid you saturate it, hence the issue with spreads.

Unfortunately because the public have been told that “saturated = bad” they’re probably going to look at the label, see how much saturated fat something contains, and judge it accordingly. Therefore the manufacturers tried to hydrogenate as little as possible, just enough to make it appear solid in the tub.

That’s why most of these spreads liquify almost on leaving the fridge; you’d be as well pouring oil on your toast! This is also where it turns nasty, because this “partial hydrogenation” has put the fat into an in-between state known as trans fatty acid, and trans fatty acid is very bad for you, much worse than saturated fat. Trans fatty acid kills.

Most products these days are labelled “Trans Fat Free!”… but that doesn’t mean they actually contain zero trans fatty acid. Oh no, no, no.

The politicians have allowed the manufacturers to label something “trans fat free” and even “zero trans fat”, provided it contains less than half a gram of trans fatty acid per serving.
That may not sound like much, but it’s 25% of the allegedly safe limit.

Since so many processed food now contain, ahem, “zero trans fat” there’s a high chance that you are unwittingly consuming way more than the 2g a day than may or may not be safe. Actually, let’s not beat around the bush, trans fatty acid is not safe.

Now here’s the ironic part. If you take an unsaturated fat, and you fully hydrogenate it, turning it into a saturated fat, there will be no trans fatty acid left in there. It will really contain zero trans fat, and actually be trans fat free. Although the now solid end result will be loaded with saturated fat, it’s not actually the bad kind of saturated fat, it’s just stearic acid, and your body will easily convert this back into a monounsaturated fat called oleic acid. No harm done whatsoever. It’s safe, and may even be healthy despite the saturated fat content.

Here is how to read the labels. Avoid anything that contains any: “trans fat”, “trans fatty acid”, “partially hydrogenated”, and plain old “hydrogenated” (because that is just marketing code for partially hydrogenated).

Anything containing “fully hydrogenated” is perfectly OK. The important part is “fully hydrogenated”. Now although a fully hydrogenated product will undoubtedly contain more saturated fat, this is a harmless type of saturated fat, so don’t be put off by it.

So just to clarify that last part: “fully hydrogenated” is safe whereas just plain old “hydrogenated” is a cunning marketing ploy, which really means “partially hydrogenated”, which is in turn just code for “trans fatty acid” – which kills.


100% fully hydrogenated products, although perfectly healthy, are extremely rare. This because the consumer is put off by the high saturated fat content.

Instead the manufacturer tends to thin out the hydrogenated fat with an unsaturated oil (yet more irony), in order to reduce the saturated fat content. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, provided you refrain from heating the end result.

Also on the perfectly OK list is anything containing un-hydrogenated oil. In other words oil that has been left alone. There are some ‘oils’ such as coconut oil and palm oil, which are already high in saturated fat, and fairly solid at room temperature, that don’t require any hydrogenation.

This is why there are more and more products using palm oil. Palm oil is fine, although not as healthy as coconut oil, and in its refined (as opposed to virgin) state it’s not particularly good for you, but it’s way better than a trans fatty acid. The main problem with palm oil is that people are tearing down rain forests to plant palm trees.

So what about butter? Well butter is a naturally occurring almost entirely saturated fat. It does contain some naturally occurring trans fatty acid, but this is thought to be of a harmless nature (a hypothesis that has not yet been scientifically verified).

The saturated fat in butter is not all the good type, but it’s not all the bad type either, and at least butter is a natural unprocessed food. There are some spreadable butters now that have been blended with oils thereby reducing the overall saturated fat profile. Butter may not be a health food, but it certainly won’t kill you either. It’s certainly among the best of a bad bunch.

There is one saturated fat product that is believed to be healthy – coconut oil. This only contains the good saturated fat, is natural, and usually unprocessed (but check the label). Coconut oil is the safest fat you can use for any sort of frying. It may however impart a slight coconut taste to the food, and it’s quite expensive.

On the plus side it possesses both antibacterial and antiviral properties, promotes weight loss, and can help prevent Alzheimer’s disease. It’s all but a superfood. There even exists coco-butter, which can be used as a (slightly coconutty) substitute for butter and other spreads.

So to summarise:

  • BAD = trans fat, trans fatty acid, partially hydrogenated, hydrogenated.
  • OK = fully hydrogenated or un-hydrogenated.
  • Butter is possibly healthier than most spreads, and safer for frying than cooking oil.
  • Coconut oil is a healthy solid fat, and the safest thing to fry with. It’s actually very good for you, as are coconut milk and coconut cream.

As an aside, the most nutritious oils, or unsaturated fats, are hemp oil, closely followed by flaxseed oil, so use these for salad dressings. Both of these oils should be stored refrigerated at all times, and it’s doubtful that you’ll find any refrigerated oil in a supermarket, so best use a health food shop.

And lastly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with eating avocados. They are high in healthy fats, very good for you, and even aid weight loss.

Feb 212012
 

With an armful of flyers promoting various pro ‘Retain Union Terrace Gardens’ groups, Aberdeen Voice’s Suzanne Kelly headed to the first of two ‘pizza parties’ thrown by the secretive ‘Vote For The City Gardens Project’ group.   Suzanne was  unable to give away more than four flyers – because less than a half dozen students turned  up to hear the pro CGP message.

If the promise of free food to students isn’t enough to lure more than 5 or 6 people, things are looking bleak for the VFTCGP, and bleaker still for PR agency, BIG Partnership.
VftCGP, on their official Facebook page, announced last week there would be two ‘free pizza!’ events thrown for students; a free pizza dinner was theirs and all they had to do was show up to hear a pro-City Garden Project lecturer – Paul Robertson.
At first most FB readers assumed this was a spoof thrown by the ‘Retain UTG’ groups – but no, this was actually someone’s idea of a vote-winner.

We all know the proverb about the incompetent who can’t even arrange a drinking session in a brewery; but I was unprepared for what must be the biggest non-event in history.

The Facebook invitations simply read:

“Free Pizza And Information Night! Come join us for free pizza and a chat with Paul Robertson about the City Garden Project on Monday 20th February, between 6pm and 7pm at the RGU: Union”.

Thinking back to my RGU course days, I thought a.  how insulted I would be at someone blatantly trying to buy my opinion – with pizza no less, and b.  how often I could have found a free meal very handy indeed.  This event would be packed.  The invites were also sent to staff and students.  I thought of a massive collective of outsiders and RGU students and staff competing for quickly-disappearing ‘American Hots’ and ‘Hawaiians’ before a slick presentation from BIG.

BIG must be making a huge amount of money from the referendum – it is doing some if not all of the official City Gardens Project group’s PR, as well as work for the ‘Vote for the City Gardens Project’ group.  This last group, VftCGP is allowed to spend and write whatever it wants without any external controls.

They were behind the A3 glossy colour brochure filled with ‘concept’ drawings in lurid pastel colours (or ‘vibrant and dynamic’ colours – depending on your outlook); these brochures were delivered not only to city voters, but also to shire non-voters.   Perhaps this was the first sign of many mistakes and gaffes to come?

I arrived late; it was 5:50pm.  Had I missed the free pizza? 

Would I get through the crowds?  Would I be admitted?  I went to the RGU Union reception desk, and was told the event was really only for RGU students.

“How many are already signed in?”  I asked.

“You’re the first one.”  came the reply.

It was explained that I needed to be signed in by a RGU Union member.  A tumbleweed rolled by.

Eventually a man arrived who explained he’d received the invitation which said nothing about it being only for students.  Is it possible that BIG didn’t get all the little details right – like who should be allowed in?  It seemed so.  The reception desk got in touch with someone – presumably the organisers and we were allowed to attend the event.  It was almost 6pm.

  A sea of empty chairs and a few sofas greeted our eyes.  We were the first two arrivals.

My friend and I went to the designated area.  The song by The Specials, ‘Ghost Town’ went through my mind.  Two students played pool further off.  A man tended the food/drink area. Three BIG PR  professionals (who looked like students to me) were fumbling with a screen, a laptop and a projector.

There was me and my new friend, who if possible was even more against the concept of building ramps over UTG than I was.

A sea of empty chairs and a few sofas greeted our eyes.  We were the first two arrivals. We sat in the back of 8 or 9 rows; the chairs of which had all been covered with a copy of The Granite Web newspaper, and a fetching postcard of the concept drawing captioned “Wish You Were Here?”.  It crossed my mind the organisers must have wished people were here, too.   But no one was.

My new friend explained to me his position against the CGP.  He had attended a meeting in the days of the consultation; Sir Ian Wood had addressed a group of Health & Social Sciences faculty and staff at the Garthdee campus.  My friend said:-

“I was there all that time ago, and Sir Ian Wood told a group of about 24 of us that if the consultation showed that people didn’t want the gardens developed, then he would walk away.  He walked away all right – and came back.” 

My new friend was not happy.

“I know people have their own opinions about what should happen to Union Terrace Gardens,” he said; “but I object to PR people muddying the waters.  Instead of corporate BS we need facts and honest debate.”

It was approximately 10 minutes after 6.  It was three people fumbling with technology, and my friend and I at the back.  Had any PR professionals come over to introduce themselves?  Welcome us?  Offer out any pizza?  No.

But what was this?  Two male students showed up.  They looked at eachother, then at the empty seats.  They sat in the front row.  As they didn’t seem to have been made welcome by the professional BIG team, I wandered over.

“I can’t buy you any pizza,” I explained; “and I can’t afford any print or radio commercials.  However, I’d like to offer you some literature just so you can see the other side to the coin.”

“I’m a social work student, and I’m not in favour of this plan.” one of them said.  He spoke about money, and seemed to know quite a bit about this nebulous scheme.

They took my literature.  One of the PR bods – a woman with dark hair, watched this little exchange between the student and I, and looked for all the world as if cold water had been poured on her.  It  kind of had.

It was 6.15 now.  There had been no welcome to the visitors.  There was no presentation ready to roll. 

There was a Lady Gaga video playing over the pool table which made as much architectural sense as the Granite Web newspapers thay lay unread and unwanted on the empty chairs.  And – there was no pizza.

What was that?  Three more people had arrived.  I repeated the procedure and gave them flyers too.  It seemed that was all they were going to get.

“Does anyone know how to work presentations?” one of the BIG  crew asked.  Answer came there none.

My friend admitted to me he knew all the ins and outs, as did I.  But by now things were getting poignant, and moved by pity for the fumbling threesome, I simply had to leave.

I made my farewells to my new friend, who promised to call me if anything exciting happened, if the numbers swelled, or if the pizza showed up.  I do not expect to hear from him.

“I went to that fly-through thing at the art gallery.  I really don’t know what decade they were trying to capture.”

I thanked him and headed off.  Just as I turned to leave, it seemed the three-man crew managed to power up the projector.  A yawn of excitement emanated from the four or five remaining hungry students.  Perhaps I’ve missed the public relations event of the year.  Well, there is always tomorrow at Aberdeen University at 6.30 pm.  Then again, I think I’l lbe washing my hair.

As I turned to leave, more than 15 minutes after the advertised start time, I think one of the three began to speak.  The film ‘Withnail and I’ came to mind.  At  the end of this film the unequalled Richard E Grant gives a rendition of Hamlet’s famed soliliquoy to a collection of animals at the Regents’ Park zoo.  He is brilliant, but there was no one there to appreciate his message.

Poor BIG.  Poor paying clients of BIG.  Richard E might have had no audience, but at least he had something important, heartfelt and honest to say.

Picture Credit: Renee Slater

 

 

 

 

 

Nov 042011
 

“Politics for beginners…with a green edge”. As a ‘young person’…this expression I always feel is a little condescending but nevertheless…as a ‘young person’ the world of politics can seem both inaccessible and unapproachable. So I was pleasantly surprised this weekend when I made the effort to go along to the Scottish Green Party conference which was held at the University of Aberdeen. Bex Holmes reports. 

So, what was this conference all about, you maybe asking?

Well every year like most political parties’, the Scottish Greens hold an annual conference in which members can get together and have a good old natter about the world’s pressing issues including those happening locally.

There is of course a bit more to it than that, such as getting your head around voting for new policy motions and various other in-house processes. Most of which baffled me, but I’m ‘young’ so I can get away with being a bit clueless now and again!

Aside from all these formalities however Patrick Harvie MSP gave a keynote speech which really made me stop and think. Everything he said reminded me of why I had not only sought to become more active in politics in the first place but why I choose to join to the Scottish Greens over all others.

He highlighted the Scottish Government’s contradictory policies on energy and climate change. Yes, our climate change targets are awesome and a step in the right direction. But (and that’s a big but) they are completely undermined by our continued support of the fossil fuel industry. Simple as!

More eloquently put of course by Mr Harvie:

“Alex Salmond now has a very clear and simple choice – he must either fail on Scotland’s much-vaunted climate change targets, or he must drop his unconditional support for the fossil fuel industries…First, the new coal-fired power station at Hunterston must be blocked. Then he must rule out shale gas extraction, which his Energy Minister has refused to do.

“Then, because CCS can never be applied to most uses of oil anyway, he must drop his support for dangerous deepwater oil drilling in Scottish waters…The challenge with fossil fuels is not to burn all the reserves we already know about, let alone to go looking for more. The priority has to be energy efficiency and renewables.”

Basically, it’s a bit loony of the SNP to think that they can run a high-carbon and low-carbon economy at the same time. They have to choose.

You maybe thinking at this point…ah what does she know? She’s young and evidently a bit naive. Well, I maybe naive in the ins and outs of politics but I know enough as an Environmental Scientist that Scotland has a responsibility to curb our emissions. Both for the sake of those in developing countries who unfortunately will bare the brunt of climate change but also our children, and our children’s children.

We need to take action now which must be integrated into the whole of society including our financial system. This brings me onto another thing that reiterated my choice in the Scottish Greens. I was delighted that an emergency motion was passed supporting the Occupy movement.

Speaking at the conference and representing Edinburgh’s Green Councillors Cllr Steve Burgess said;

“Greens support Occupy Edinburgh in their call for a new economic system that will reduce inequality and protect the planet’s shared resources that we all depend on.  It’s early days for this movement but this up welling of dissatisfaction is a welcome indication that even people in democratic countries are feeling disenfranchised.”

Yes indeed, there are load of us ‘young people’ out there who are disenfranchised. I dare say maybe ‘young people’ have always been disenfranchised but with few job prospects and soaring higher education fees, is it any wonder that we tend to be a grumpy bunch?! So I was also glad there was a fringe event with the ‘young greens’ whose main aim is to support members between the ages of 13-30 and discuss their problems and concerns.

Having a network of ‘young people’ across the country will help enable us to raise the profile of issues which disproportionately effect young people, including social housing, jobs and education. As well as the dire state of our health as a nation…there’s that big ‘A’ word that just won’t go away…alcohol.

Other activities included workshops on canvassing, which basically means being very smiley, saying hello and actually talking to you out there…the voters.

To sum up my experience of the Scottish Greens conference as a ‘young person’ and political novice – it was fun!

I learnt a lot and more importantly it has motivated me to become even more involved with politics. To these ends I will endeavour to stop hiding behind my veil of cluelessness and get savvy about things because frankly, there’s a lot of stuff that affects me and my future which I think most politicians completely miss.

Not because they don’t care but because they are privileged having never come across these issues in their own lives.

So this is my small call to arms. ‘Young people’ we do actually need you! You can actually make a difference! Register to vote. Do a little reading on political parties…as a member of the Scottish Greens of course I will be biased here but seriously look at what the parties are actually saying in their manifestos. How will it affect you?

Most importantly, VOTE. And if one day you’re wondering what more you can do, why not join a political party and become actively involved? I took that leap and for me it was well worth the effort. 

 For further info, contact: Scottish Greens Aberdeen And Aberdeenshire Working Group

Oct 212011
 

Former RGU Principal Dr David Kennedy, whose background is in the sciences has believed for a long time that we are destroying the world around us. In another extract from his conversation with Voice’s Suzanne Kelly he talks of his horror at what we are destroying in the name of progress.

Dr Kennedy and I discussed where the world may be heading, and I mentioned Albert Einstein, who said:

“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Dr Kennedy Continues:

“Emily Spence of Massachusetts  http://smirkingchimp.com/author/emily_spence and I corresponded on a number of issues: global warming, environment, overpopulation. The sad thing is the only sustainable communities we know of are the primitive ones we have destroyed. People on some of the remote Philippine islands lived entirely sustainably. They met their needs until the outside world impinged on and destroyed their way of life.

“However, we want more and it doesn’t matter how much we get, we still want more. It comes from the pleasure centres of the brain. Gambling and winning gives you a kick and so you go on. How can a man like Bill Gates, whose wealth could feed his family for generations, still want more? This causes me to despair. There is a weakness in the human brain or perhaps it is how nature defends itself and we may be on the way to destroying ourselves.

“How quickly is it all going to come? People talk about planning and planning horizons. The Romans had the idea of looking at things after every 5 years. As a manager in education I had to plan ahead as to what we needed, what courses we would offer, how many students would there be, and what resources would be needed. I took the areas I knew most about, and looked at 10-yearly intervals. At the time I did this, the changes in education were colossal and totally unpredictable. In the 70s there were ten colleges of higher education in Scotland, and they were like sacred cows. Scotland was proud of having had the highest literacy rate in the world.

“On coming to the 80s, dramatic changes were occurring in education. For a start, demographics – the birth rate. In the 1980s the number of colleges of education began to shrink. Some closed; some merged. In the 90s, most had disappeared, Northern College of Education here in Aberdeen being the last survivor. Now there are none.

“The same was true in nursing. I came to the conclusion that you might be able to guess what would happen in five years, but accurately forecasting for ten years ahead was absolutely impossible. The rate of change in technology is so incredible only a fool would predict what things will look like ten years from now.”

Dr Kennedy has a track record of concern for the environment and ecology. Apart from protesting over Trump’s honorary degree award, what are some of the issues that concern him most, locally and further afield?

“I’m very interested in what happens internationally. Governments swither over the issue of global warming. Scientists tell them that it is real; big business tells them it is a myth, and governments sit and fiddle while the earth warms and climates change dramatically.”

“As you might have guessed, I am a strong environmentalist with a long and deep concern about what we are doing to the biosphere on which all life depends. Biologists have known for decades about the acidification of the oceans and consequential damage to coral reefs and the communities that live on them.

“Likewise, we are poisoning the land by excessive use of chemicals, the production of which depends heavily on fossil fuel energy. With a rapidly rising population, human life will soon find it difficult to feed itself. Hence one of my concerns is about the short-sighted use of good farmland for house building.

“Just as disastrous is the pollution of the atmosphere with harmful radiation from nuclear power stations, by depleted uranium and gases emitted when burning fossil fuels, while at the same time tropical rainforests that absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen are being destroyed. Lack of rainfall in the Amazon basin, because of climate change, could result in its eventual desertification and the release of trillions of tons of carbon dioxide presently bound up as wood cellulose.”

In future extracts from this interview, we will carry Dr Kennedy’s views on how personal standards and values have had far-reaching consequences. No interview with this former university principal would be complete without establishing his views on education. That too will feature in Voice soon.

May 052011
 

As part of Word 2011 Book Festival in Aberdeen which runs from 9th to 15th of May, Celebrated Scottish writer Iain M Banks will be appearing at 7pm on Friday 13th May in the Arts Lecture Theatre, King’s College.

Aberdeen Voice is grateful for permission to reproduce the following article  entitled ‘The Culture’ which appeared recently in Democratic Green Socialist online magazine.

Is there more to some science fiction than meets the eye? Steve Arnott takes a personal look at the ‘Culture’ novels of Iain Banks and argues that leftie sceptics of the genre are missing out on something big.

‘Perspective, she thought, woozily, slowly, as she died; what a wonderful thing.’ – ( Last line, Chapter One, Surface Detail ) – Iain M. Banks

‘I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to keep them safe from us and let them devour themselves; I wanted maximum interference; I wanted to hit the place with a program Lev Davidovich would have been proud of. I wanted the junta generals to fill their pants when they realised the future is – in Earth terms – a bright, bright red.’ ( Diziet Sma, The State of the Art ) – Iain M. Banks

‘…it all boils down to ownership and possession, taking and having.’ – ( The drone Flere-Imsaho summing up the feudal-capitalist society of Azad, The Player of Games ) – Iain M. Banks

I read Iain Banks’ newest Culture novel Surface Detail recently.  Feeling I’d just read something exhilarating, deep and satisfyingly unique, and contradictorily wanting more of the same, I took the opportunity of systematically re-reading all of the Banks Culture novels – some for the fourth or fifth time. Having made mutterings since the inception of Democratic Green Socialist online magazine about writing something on the Banks Culture universe, the inexhaustibility of these radical novels finally convinced me it was long past time to put fingertips to keyboard pad, and share my thoughts on the Culture with other readers of the DGS.

Not the least motivation for me doing so is that many on the left in Scotland seem mainly or wholly ignorant of these titanic, richly layered literary and philosophical works, even though they are authored by one of Scotland’s leading popular writers. Thus they are unable to participate in a meaningful discourse about the important – and genuinely revolutionary – ideas and concepts they embody and contain.

If you have never read any of Iain Banks’ Culture novels previously I hope this short essay can act as a bit of a primer and goad, and lead you to those books. If, like me, you’re already a fan, then I hope it might spark the beginnings of a discussion group on the left about the Culture.

What are the Culture novels? And what is the Culture? (I’ll stop using italics at this point).

Most readers of books are aware that Iain Banks publishes his non-genre novels under that name, and uses the middle initial M. when publishing his science fiction output.  The Culture novels and novella represent the greater part of that science fiction output and are, in order of publication, Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, The State of the Art, Excession, Inversions, Look to Windward, Matter and Surface Detail.

All of Banks’ science fiction is of a mind numbingly consistent quality – they are wide screen, intelligent space operas, thrillers that are both comic and tragic in turn, redolent with dizzying philosophical and scientific ideas painted on a universal canvas, splendidly baroque, grotesquely violent, but always with intimate, human, recognisable stories at their core. The Algebraist, for instance, would be a good example of a great Iain Banks science fiction novel that isn’t necessarily a Culture novel. But here I want to talk exclusively about the Culture, Banks’ greatest character, and surely his highest intellectual creation.

The Culture is the communist/anarchist/socialist/libertarian (delete/add according to taste) civilisation that is both background and protagonist in the loose and diverse group of Culture novels. A galaxy spanning, highly technological meta-civilisation that is both pan-human and pan-species, in which artificial intelligences (in many ways superior) are the civic equals of their biological counterparts, and in which men and women routinely meddle with their genes and enhance and change their body shape and sex, the Culture is a ‘Player’ in galactic terms; one of a small group of galactic civilisations who have evolved way beyond middling stellar empires or republics to where they are either approaching the possibility of Sublimation (throwing off all remaining material shackles and effectively becoming ‘something else’), or are busy (when not having plain good old-fashioned hedonistic fun) trying to do good in galactic terms by their own moral lights.

The Culture is in the latter category. Most folk remember ‘Star Trek’ and its off-shoots, and the famous ‘Prime Directive’ which forbade the Captains’ Kirk or Picard of the Federation to interfere in developing cultures. Both the Culture and the Federation are egalitarian societies that have abolished disease, poverty, war and money, but whereas the Star Trek Federation worldview is informed by 60’s, 70’s and 80’s progressive liberalism and cultural relativism, the Culture is an utterly bolshevik creation, informed by historical materialism, social critiques of capitalism and oppression, and a view of all things in the universe as being fundamentally transient and processal in nature.

Although it agonises about it and tries to do it using minimal possible force, the Culture is an interferer par excellence in emerging and developing cultures on planets and habitats throughout the galaxy.

When I first read that book back in the late eighties I was blown away by the spectacle and scale, the dark violence and inexorable sense of doom

Through the sometimes clandestine, sometimes open agency of its ‘contact’ and ‘special circumstances’ sections, it actively seeks to shorten the time civilisations will spend in a state of primitive barbarism, whether feudal, capitalist, or in state or religious tyrannies, (and sometimes mixtures of all of these), and help them progress to more enlightened and egalitarian states of being.

It is in the interstices of this pan-stellar revolutionary/evolutionary narrative, the doubts and moral shadings of the enterprise, its rewards and contaminations, that Banks finds his characters and his stories.

We were first introduced to the Culture through the eyes of one of its enemies; the Changer Horza Bora Gobuchul, a mercenary working for the religiously fanatic Idirans at war with the Culture, in the now classic of the SF canon, Consider Phlebas.

When I first read that book back in the late eighties I was blown away by the spectacle and scale, the dark violence and inexorable sense of doom. In the era of Star Wars, Aliens and Blade Runner I absorbed it as a wide screen space opera that would surely out do all others if ever made into a film.

All of Banks’ science fiction work has that hugely visual, imaginative cinematic quality – not just in the sense of making the page disappear before your eyes and immersing you utterly in his story, but in the literary sense of showing not telling his deeper themes. And deeper themes there are in all of his work.  Though there is no lack of talky philosophical discourse between Banks’ protagonists, it is principally through the plot and development of the characters themselves, the tragic/redemptive weave of their pasts, presents and futures that we find a truly humane richness and a reflection of our own lives. Reading and re-reading Consider Phlebas I became aware that this wasn’t just the ultimate science fiction action movie in print but a more mythic and multi-layered tale. In following Horza’s journey through war, death, the hope of new life and irredeemable loss, we see his prejudices against the Culture and machine intelligence gradually undermined, until he realises he’s been fighting on the wrong side all along.

Banks followed up this stunner of a novel with another immediate classic. The Player of Games introduces us to Culture society and the machinations of its dirty tricks section Special Circumstances from within. Jernau Gurgeh is one of the great Game players of Culture wide renown, with a life devoted to the study and winning of games picked up from planetary and stellar civilisations throughout the galaxy.

Living a comfortable life of academic luxury on a Culture Orbital (a circular ribbon of diamond hard material 3 million kilometres in circumference, 10 million kilometres in diameter and a few thousand kilometres across its inner surface – few Culture citizens live on anything as primitive as a planet), Gurgeh is inveigled by Special Circumstances to travelling to the Empire of Azad, a cruel feudal capitalist stellar empire, to play the game of Azad, a game on which the whole society is modelled and run and which determines the station of every one of its subjects.

The Culture is physically vast beyond our capacity for imagination

Think Graham Green meets Blade Runner meets Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, together with devastating social critique and an apocalyptic set piece climax, and all compressed into a shortish novel, a breathless, beautifully written narrative best read in a single evening.

Here’s the thing; all of Banks’ Culture novels are different – different characters, different stories, different storytelling techniques. Both the Culture oeuvre and the Culture universe are too vast to encompass in a short essay. Suffice to say the classically written two viewpoint, two plot narrative of Inversions is a much easier read for the relative newcomer than the multi-narrative, high tech Excession, and though both are fantastic novels that deeply reward the attentive reader, the reader will benefit from having already introduced herself to the Culture through the earlier novels. Look to Windward is a deceptively simple, yet tricksy tale, an exquisitely observed tragi-comedy of manners; Matter a return to epic scale and high adventure.

Yet there are also common themes which seem almost instinctively knitted into all of the Culture stories, and which are worth drawing attention to.

Perspective. The Culture is physically vast beyond our capacity for imagination. It is the pinnacle of what we might imagine a future socialist society to be, super technological, superabundant, superhuman, morally enlightened, profoundly egalitarian and long since moved from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. It has existed for thousands of years and will continue to exist for thousands of years, but it is only one of a number of galactic meta civilisations, and it too will fade away, collapse or transform itself into something different. All things come into being and pass away.

Our Earth, our world, is part of the Culture universe, but only incidentally, in the passing, as it were, as one of the multitude of barbarian primitive planets observed but not yet contacted. The events of Consider Phlebas occur ‘far, far away’ at the time of the Crusades. The Culture’s Contact section comes across us in AD 1977, in the novella The State of the Art, but decides not to intervene in our mixed up primitive society, and instead treat us as a kind of control experiment, clandestinely observed, to see whether we make it out of barbarism by ourselves, or destroy the planet by ourselves. The class struggle is universal but we are one speck of dust in a galaxy teeming with life and conflict.

Politics, and the price of doing good. Left politics runs through all the Culture novels like an invariable, but infinitely applicable, mathematical constant, and not in the bad “you’ll have three bowls of cold socialist realist porridge a day, young man”, kind of way.

This is not Doctor Who. The universe is not saved every week by waving a sonic screwdriver and ‘reversing the polarity’

Rather, Banks allows the politics to be a kind of emergent phenomenon, something that is created from the narrative, the moral questions and exigencies of character and plot, the observation of societies and the multifarious nature of the sentient conscious beings that populate the Culture universe.

As in his so-called ‘mainstream’ novels, it is very clear that Banks is an original, non-dogmatic thinker who has imbibed in his education much left wing discourse, and sipped of the notion of revolution and social progress as a moral categorical imperative.  The clear theme that runs throughout the Culture novels is the price to be paid when persons, singularly or collectively, attempt to do good, or to maintain good in the face of reaction. That price may be physical destruction or emotional disintegration, it may be moral compromise or the shattering of cosy cherished beliefs, but there is always a price to be paid. Leading characters die, or become disillusioned, or are used for higher purposes. This is not Doctor Who. The universe is not saved every week by waving a sonic screwdriver and ‘reversing the polarity’.  There is real death, real failure, real suffering. The redemptive aspect comes from doing what is right for wider social progress on an interstellar scale.

Human nature in ‘Utopia’. Banks’ Culture has often been referred to be critics as a utopia – mistakenly in my view. Literary utopias are all blank slate/human putty endgames from Revelations to Thomas More and onwards. They assume that human nature is flawed either because of some form of original sin or because society isflawed. The Utopia cleanses humanity of these flaws and either allows their ‘true’ humanity to shine through or makes them into the New Man. Dystopias are the cynic’s/realist’s response where attempts to make the New Man fail with disastrous, frightening, totalitarian consequences.

The Culture is neither Utopia or Dystopia because human nature in Banks’ vision is not a blank slate or human putty to be perfected or damned. Or more correctly ‘person’ nature – whether that person is human basic, human enhanced, machine or alien – arises from its evolutionary and contingent history and the very nature of sentience and social being itself. The lives of persons can be enormously enriched by a better society, but they do not become wholly New.

The protagonists of the Culture remain recognisable. They have fears and flaws, loves and hatreds, pettinesses and jealousies, egotistic personal drives and altruistic self-sacrifice; this is a mirror that holds up human nature as a complex constant. The new civilisation is about creating a better place for the great Bell curve of sentient beings to live their diverse lives in, not about creating a trillion Stakhanovite Aristotles in some endpoint socialist paradise.

When Iain Banks appeared on The Book Show recently he appeared to argue that artificial divisions between literary, mainstream novels and the genre novel can be misleading. He made the point that the literary novel itself is a genre novel with its own sets of rules and suppositions. Perhaps Banks himself has been hamstrung by the artificial division he himself (or his publisher) has created between the science fiction writer Iain M. Banks and the mainstream novel writer Iain Banks.

Or, just perhaps, Banks has been enjoying a near three decade long private joke at the assumptions and labellings of the critics. His ‘mainstream’ work is very fine, of that there is no doubt – The Wasp Factory, Espedair Street, The Crow Road and Whit are all excellent reads. But I would argue that Bank’s greatest contribution to literature are his Culture novels, and that perhaps that will only be finally seen and understood in the fullness of time.

Further, I would argue that the left has ignored the Culture as a potential source and reference point for discourse and that Banks, in his Culture novels, whether instinctively, or consciously, or a bit of both, has made a major theoretical contribution to socialist and progressive thought. The idea of fiction as a source of theory may be new and alien to many readers, but in this particular case I believe it to be true.

But an essay on a whole body of work can give only a flavour – and a flavour through the perceptions of one person at that. The proof of the pudding is in the reading. Go spacewards, young barbarians, and find new worlds.

Oh, and one final, teasing thought. What if something like the Culture actually existed?

Read more about Iain Banks at http://www.iain-banks.net/
For more info on Word 11 Festival, See: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/word/