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ArisKatsaris comments on September 2013 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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Fanfiction Thread
Culture Shock, entertaining, though unfinished crossover between Harry Potter and Iain M. Banks' Culture, via r/hpmor.
For some reason, this appears to be among the only - two? three? - pieces of Culture fanfiction ever written. I have no idea why.
How would you know, given that you are not on Usenet or plugged into the SF fanzines of the '80s or '90s when Banks was huge?
So are there in fact lots?
My point here is more that you aren't looking under the proverbial lamppost, so the absence of evidence is not very strong evidence of absence.
Mm, I was mostly just hopeful. I've just been actually looking online and accumulating a list, fwiw. I'll post it here later.
There doesn't seem to be much of a fanfic tradition for literary SF. I'm not sure why; there's plenty of shared universe action going on, but it seems to be more a professional than an amateur phenomenon.
The obvious answer would probably be that literary SF doesn't have enough long-term focus on characters to be appealing to fanfic writers, but there's enough setting- or conceit-based fic in other genres that I'm not sure how seriously to take that. People usually don't write Lovecraft fic because they want to read more about Randolph Carter, for example.
Iain M Banks' Culture fanfic I could find
This is, literally, the lot. Additions welcomed.
-- and apparently there was one here which didn't make it into archive.org.
Why on earth did I think making a sweeping statement like that in the middle of LessWrong was a good idea? I am dumb, that's why. Thanks for all the counterexamples, folks! I only knew that in the first place because I wanted to read some a while back.
I still think the Culture fandom is unusually bereft of fanfic? Maybe I'm just spoiled by mega-popular stuff, though.
There's a fairly obnoxious Culture / WH40K fanfic going on right now in the GiantITP Media sub-forum, and it seems that the Banks fans there are eating it up so there's a decent chance it emulates his style well. Supposedly the author is going to collect and repost it to some Fan-Fic site in the next 20,000 years but don't count on it.
I never had the stomach to read much of it; the tone is pretty jarring for a 40K fan, the ideology of the Culture has always struck me as heinous and it led out of a flame-war which almost got me banned, so there were some emotions there. You might be interested though.
Link to page-o-links for story: http://sync.in/ep/pad/view/ro.f7Ii2bq8IM01rFxsOm/latest
Ah, it's been a while since I did that "find some damn Culture fanfiction, it has to exist" project. Thanks for the link
Yeah, me too. Still, the sheer number of the books I've read attests to the fact that they were astoundingly well-written, even so.
Of course, "we're evil but also kinda the good guys" seems like it would fit right into the 40k universe, eh? People always claim that's the theme of the Imperium, after all...
Yes, even taking into account that "enemies of the Culture always resemble modern Earth conservatives" seems to be a law of physics in the Culture universe. Must be the same parallel evolution that produces all those humanoid species.
One of the Doctor Who novelisations, The Also People, features the seventh Doctor visiting a civilisation, The People, that's pretty much the Culture with the serial numbers filed off. The People are so technologically advanced that they have a non-aggression treaty with the Time Lords (which the Doctor helped negotiate).
I'd expect writing the Culture is tricky to pull off. Banks has a pretty distinctive voice and reasonably solid worldbuilding that's is a lot less likely to make people go "ehh, I could write better" than JK Rowling's stuff for example. Also the part where it subverts most of the whole drama from conflict thing by being people with their shit together wielding superior technology makes finding a plot that works a bit harder.
You may be right, at that. Banks is an intimidatingly skilled writer. Although surely you would expect less-impressive "me too"s? Fanfic writers are usually fans of some stripe ... um, aren't they? I guess I don't really know much about fanfiction author demographics, at that.
Well, the novels mostly focus on "outsiders" looking inward at the Culture, such as those from other civs and Special Circumstances, right? They have plenty of conflict.
Just a reminder that he no longer exists.
Yeah, I guess I meant his skill is still intimidating, rather than he is still skilled. Or something. You got me.
I was really excited when you linked to this, as the Culture is one of my favorite sci-fi universes. Unfortunately, I forgot- I've already read all the fanfiction.
That's really very good. Harry is ridiculously overpowered, but the clever bit is the Culture as a character orvat qvfpbapregrq ng abg npghnyyl orvat evqvphybhfyl birecbjrerq va rirel erfcrpg sbe bapr. Pity it cut off so early.
I have a lot of great stories to recommend, and I tried to get a wide sampling of genres and authors. In no particular order:
Inviolate - A fiction of the DC Universe. Novel length. Complete. The base conceit is basically, "what would happen if Lex Luthor went sane?" It's a little bit like watching MoR Quirrell fight the entire DCU... with SCIENCE. The same author also writes Variant Strain, which is a Spiderman/Prototype story, novel length, ongoing. It's a very clever mix of the two source materials, and has a great deal of inside references to the Marvel universe while being mainly a retelling of a game with clever concepts and a pretty lousy plotline.
Fair Vote - A fiction of the Dresden Files, novel length. It's very interesting in that it's almost completely unrelated to any of the main characters in any of Jim Butcher's novels; everything in the book is almost entirely Original Content - which means that it's a great read both for fans of the series and for people who have never read a bit of it. The lack of connection to existing characters means that most people don't happen to stumble across this one - I think it has sixteen reviews in total, last time I checked. Definitely a fic which could use more recognition.
In Flight - A fiction of Fate Stay Night and Sekirei, novel length. Ongoing. I saw that Fate/Stay Night was mentioned in last month's thread; this is probably one of the best known fics including elements from it. Because it's a crossover fic, it does a lot of explaining setting elements, which makes it a pretty okay entry point into the series if you don't mind a few spoilers. It's action packed, and very, very funny. If you prefer a story without all the crossover and with a little less humor, you might want to try From Fake Dreams, which is a fairly well written variant of the 'time travel makes a character awesome' trope.
The Road To Cydonia A Ranma / X-COM fic. Trilogy length. Ongoing, but slow to update. Further crossovers with DCU through another author. This fic very successfully takes a very silly, heroic universe and throws it into the middle of one of the darkest tactical videogames ever written. There's a strong 'peanut butter and jelly' effect - watching the Ranma characters mature, and the X-COM universe become more epic, is very interesting. The story is also long, and crosses over with Lathis' The Titans and the Lost Boy, which is a Ranma / DCU fic. Altogether, it's probably several million words, all pretty enjoyable.
He Who Fights Monsters - a Rosario X Vampire fic. Novella length. Complete. A slightly gory deconstructionist fic of a story where the main character is a human sent to a school full of monsters. Instead of befriending them, he defends against them, with ... interesting results.
The Newest Challenger - A Street Fighter / Naruto crossover, novel length, nearly complete. The author, Kenchi, is (or claims to be) an amateur MMA fighter, which means that his hand-to-hand combat scenes are some of the most entertaining I've read anywhere. Also, the author is prolific, with about 3 to 3 and a half million words published so far. The stories are consistently funny, and action-packed; the one caveat that I would recommend is skipping any sex scenes, as they're not written to nearly the same level.
Shouldn't fics with 200 000 words count as novels, not novellas? Inviolate was great and Variant Strain looks also very good, but both are probably going to take most of a day if you start binging through them compulsively.
Thanks! My mental concept of them did not match their actual length. I updated the post.
How much do I need to know about the DC universe to appreciate Inviolate?
You should probably be at least a little bit familiar with it? There are many minor plot elements that derive from some of the more obscure comics or from recent events in the comics. I think the story was fun even not having seen all of the particular things that are being referenced, but there's certainly a great deal of DC-specific characters, and you'll probably enjoy it more being familiar with them.