Humanoids

"Martin Lewis" <martin.RemoveThis@theculture.org> wrote in message
news:57c159f8.0406080225.1e10af17@posting.google.com...
 > Banks discussion on rec.arts.sf.written starting here:
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<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=2ih7s3Fn7kevU1%40uni-berlin.de" target="_blank">http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=2ih7s3Fn7kev...40uni-b</a>

Looks like the usual stuff. No, Banks has never made up a reason why there
are so many humanoids from different planets in his books.

Some people in that thread were writing about how "deathist" the Culture is,
in terms of a large majority of its human citizens choosing to die after 400
years. I don't think that any of them came up with the reason why the
Culture would believe in this. The Culture is highly opposed to what Banks
calls Hegemonizing Swarms -- entities whose main purpose is to
self-replicate. Over galactic time scales, a steadily and quickly growing
society will use up all the easily available matter. If Culture citizens
choose never to die, then they are making their society into a long-term
Hegemonizing Swarm that would crowd out other societies. (This is also why
they frown on people having too many children.) Yes, the Swarm effect would
only happen far into the future, but it's the principle of the thing that
matters -- the Culture would quickly lose cohesion and disappear as a
society if it weren't for its principles.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->