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The Sleeper Service provided an invaluable service to humanity, but also treated them as curiosities in a way. I doubt any of the humans on board were aware that they'd be held in sleep, but only to be arranged into historical dioramas for the duration.

Actualy, most of the people on the Sleeper Service had requested to be allowed on board so they could be part of its "art". At one point in the book, one of the people in stasis wakes up in the middle of a replica battle, and comments to the SS's avatar on how the massive scene must make it very proud.

Yup. The SS didn't mistreat anybody.

Indeed. IIRC, people even had the option of not being in its dioramas, though most of the people who went on the ship went purely to get in them in the first place.

GrahamKennedy wrote:Yup. The SS didn't mistreat anybody.

As a rule, no, although the Yawning Angel apparantly considered the mass-Displacement stunt the SS pulled to get rid of its passengers a somwhat risky one.

True, though given the circumstances that could probably be excused.

The Culture in general shies away from using displacement on people. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, there is a one in eighty three million chance that any given displacement will "send you off to a different dimension, or something".

I never said the SS mistreated anyone. I said that it treated humans more as curiosities, or even beloved pets, more than as respected peers.

I don't see how it did that. It used them in works of art, sure, but so what? As stated earlier, most of them volunteered for storage so that they could take part in that. And does it really matter how a person is posed anyway? Is standing in a field holding a rifle more disrespectful than lying in a metal box somewhere?

Plus don't forget that the entire thing was done not because the Sleeper Service found it jolly good fun, but to maintain a cover story as an Eccentric ship, so that it could serve as a deniable backup in an extreme crisis.

OK, now I'm going to have to read Excession next, just to figure out what the hell you guys are talking about.

In some ways Excession was my least favourite Culture book. Most of the major characters are ships, so a large part of the novel consists of what are basically text messages that they are sending to one another.

That said, it has some cool stuff. It's interesting to see the Culture face something that it can't handle for once, and the Affront are a fabulous species!

I'm not sure I'd call Excession my least favourite, but I agree it's not up at the top. It's still an excelent read, though.

I found the form of the ships' messages to be a little tedious, but the actual content was as good as any human-to-human coversation.

And yes, the Affront were great. Just the idea of a species calle the "Affront" is great.

I found the method of communication between the Minds somewhat ammusing. I was reminded a lot of internet exchanges.

Mikey wrote:I found the form of the ships' messages to be a little tedious, but the actual content was as good as any human-to-human coversation.

And yes, the Affront were great. Just the idea of a species calle the "Affront" is great.

I like the name too - now I'll have to see who these "Affront" are. (have the book but can't read it quite yet)