Technology determines the possibilities of society. It doesnt matter whether you start out from a fascist state or a communist state or a free-market state. – Iain Banks
My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is. – Iain Banks
Torture is such a slippery slope as soon as you allow a society or any legal system to do that, almost instantly you get a situation where people are being tortured for very trivial reasons. – Iain Banks
A lot of what the Culture is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens. – Iain Banks
The way you want to respond is to ask a question: Is this technology directly relevant to our hedgehog concept? If the answer is YES, then we want to become pioneers, not in the technology, but in the application of that technology specifically linked to our hedgehog concept. – James Collins