# The Culture *The Culture* is the series of novels by [[Iain M. Banks]] — beginning with *Consider Phlebas* (1987) and including *The Player of Games*, *Use of Weapons*, and *Excession* — depicting the most fully imagined post-scarcity utopia in science fiction. It is the source of the names on [[Elon Musk]]'s SpaceX droneships. ## What it is The Culture is a galaxy-spanning civilization with no money, no conventional government, and no scarcity, administered benevolently by superintelligent AIs called **Minds**. Humans live in freedom and abundance; the AIs handle governance without coercion. Banks was explicit that the Culture embodied his own left-wing, anti-capitalist politics, and he was openly hostile to American libertarianism. The Culture's ships are sentient and give themselves comic names — *Of Course I Still Love You*, *Just Read the Instructions*, *A Shortfall of Gravitas*. ## Why it matters here [[Elon Musk]] named SpaceX's autonomous droneships after those ships — a "posthumous homage to Banks" — and identifies as "a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks." The irony is the whole lesson: the Culture is a money-less, AI-governed, anarcho-communist society, the opposite of a billionaire-led market order, and Banks despised the politics now associated with his most famous fan. The Culture is the central case in [[Science Fiction and the Tech Elite]] for keeping a vision's grandeur while discarding its values. ## See also - [[Iain M. Banks]] — the author - [[Elon Musk]] — the most prominent borrower - [[Science Fiction and the Tech Elite]] — the hub