The Dysart Sail In Film Festival is an outdoor film festival in Fife, Scotland. The month-long festival culminated in an event which took place on September 11, 2010. The Dysart Sail In Film Festival was Fife's first outdoor film festival that looks set to become an annual occurrence.
The festival was organised by Sarah Daly and Lawrie Brewster of New Age Film Ltd. In conjunction with the Dysart Community Regeneration Forum, with the aim of encouraging independent film production in the area. A set of over 50 workshops in scriptwriting, poetry, film production, acting and more preceded the main event. The works produced in these workshops were published in a booklet and distributed among event attendees. Workshop participants also got the chance to read their pieces at an Indie Showcase, a packed two-hour indoor event before the outdoor screening on September 11.
The outdoor event saw films projected onto a huge white screen, representing a giant sail, hanging over the great quarry walls of medieval Dysart harbour. The show boasted an eclectic programme of locally produced works, made especially for the festival, as well as international short films and an exciting open air opera performance.
Special guests in attendance on the day included ex prime minister Gordon Brown, MSP Marilyn Livingstone and actress/director Cora Bissett.
The festival was organised by Sarah Daly and Lawrie Brewster of New Age Film Ltd. In conjunction with the Dysart Community Regeneration Forum, with the aim of encouraging independent film production in the area. A set of over 50 workshops in scriptwriting, poetry, film production, acting and more preceded the main event. The works produced in these workshops were published in a booklet and distributed among event attendees. Workshop participants also got the chance to read their pieces at an Indie Showcase, a packed two-hour indoor event before the outdoor screening on September 11.
The outdoor event saw films projected onto a huge white screen, representing a giant sail, hanging over the great quarry walls of medieval Dysart harbour. The show boasted an eclectic programme of locally produced works, made especially for the festival, as well as international short films and an exciting open air opera performance.
Special guests in attendance on the day included ex prime minister Gordon Brown, MSP Marilyn Livingstone and actress/director Cora Bissett.
In the novel Excession by Iain Banks, the GCU Grey Area is a General Contact Unit (a self-aware spaceship dedicated to the task of exploring the universe and interacting with other species) of the fictional Culture society that has turned eccentric. It has the dubious distinction of being one of the few Culture ships to not be listed in official records by its chosen name.
The Grey Area has a fascination with war, genocide and pain and the methods of inflicting it. Its interior is a museum containing devices that inflict pain and documents detailing their use. The ship has been described in reviews as "psychopathically righteous", and as a good example of Banks' not letting technological terms and SF-staples stand in the way of describing interesting characters. The descriptions of the ship's actions are also cited as examples of how Banks uses both elaborate and plain language to underscore his points.
The main reason Grey Area is despised by its peers is that it has chosen to ignore the Culture's taboo on non-consensual mindreading. It is for this reason that the ship is more commonly known among the other Culture Minds as Meatfucker,<ref name="GUARD"/> a highly charged expletive among the Culture's artificial intelligences (one by which Banks alludes to less utopian subtext in the relationship between the Culture's Minds and its human members, in which undue intimacy between these is seen as akin to bestiality). In the novel Look to Windward it is explained that the denial of a Culture Mind's chosen name is viewed as a grave insult and mark of disapproval by its peers.
In Excession
During the events of Excession, the Grey Area pauses its historical research into a very comprehensive incident of genocide to help deliver Byr Genar-Hofoen to the . It travels within the Sleeper Service to the Excession, and near the end of events appears to allow itself to crash into the energy grid near the Excession and is presumed by the Culture to have been destroyed, though this is not the case, with the ship apparently having transcended some sort of boundary between universes or else having been assimilated into another consciousness.
The Grey Area has a fascination with war, genocide and pain and the methods of inflicting it. Its interior is a museum containing devices that inflict pain and documents detailing their use. The ship has been described in reviews as "psychopathically righteous", and as a good example of Banks' not letting technological terms and SF-staples stand in the way of describing interesting characters. The descriptions of the ship's actions are also cited as examples of how Banks uses both elaborate and plain language to underscore his points.
The main reason Grey Area is despised by its peers is that it has chosen to ignore the Culture's taboo on non-consensual mindreading. It is for this reason that the ship is more commonly known among the other Culture Minds as Meatfucker,<ref name="GUARD"/> a highly charged expletive among the Culture's artificial intelligences (one by which Banks alludes to less utopian subtext in the relationship between the Culture's Minds and its human members, in which undue intimacy between these is seen as akin to bestiality). In the novel Look to Windward it is explained that the denial of a Culture Mind's chosen name is viewed as a grave insult and mark of disapproval by its peers.
In Excession
During the events of Excession, the Grey Area pauses its historical research into a very comprehensive incident of genocide to help deliver Byr Genar-Hofoen to the . It travels within the Sleeper Service to the Excession, and near the end of events appears to allow itself to crash into the energy grid near the Excession and is presumed by the Culture to have been destroyed, though this is not the case, with the ship apparently having transcended some sort of boundary between universes or else having been assimilated into another consciousness.
The Idiran-Culture War is a major fictional conflict between the Idiran Empire and the Culture in the midst of which Iain M. Banks' science fiction novel Consider Phlebas is set. His later book, Look to Windward, contains many references to the war: particularly the induced supernovae of two stars, which resulted in the deaths of billions of sentient creatures. References to the war can also be found in Excession, Matter, The Player of Games, Surface Detail, and The Hydrogen Sonata.
It has been commented that the Idiran-Culture war, with its juxtaposition of a religiously-fanatical species fighting (and eventually succumbing to) the atheist Culture, shows the author's theme of "antipathy to religious belief, although nominally not to the believers". The commentator also refers to the war as a clash of civilizations in the sense of Samuel P. Huntington.
Overview
According to Banks' appendices to Consider Phlebas, the war began in 1327 AD, and continued for 48 years and one month, resulting in an eventual but total victory for the Culture.
The conflict was one of principles; the Culture went to war because the Idirans' fanatical imperial expansion, justified on religious grounds, threatened the Culture's "moral right to exist". As the Culture saw it, the Idirans' extending sphere of influence would prevent them from improving the lives of those in less-advanced societies, and thus would greatly curtail the Culture's sense of purpose. As is the case with all major decisions, the decision on the part of the Culture to go to war was through direct vote of the entire population. Academics who have analysed Banks' universe in comparison with real-world political thought have remarked that the decision of the Culture to go to war was a moral choice, rather than one of necessity, as the Culture could have easily avoided war.
The Idirans' decision to go to war is described as being founded in their philosophical, moral and religious distaste for the almost symbiotic nature of the Culture and the threat that their artificial intelligences were considered to be posing to the primacy and significance of biological life in the universe. Such fears were also found in many of those who supported the Idiran side during the war, as exemplified by Horza, the protagonist in Consider Phlebas.
As Horza, a mercenary for the Idirans observes: "the conflict was inevitable"; the Idirans would not halt their expansion, because their faith wouldn't allow it; the Culture was so ill-defined, having no borders or laws, that it would also have grown ceaselessly. The two cultures would have been unlikely to forge a peaceful co-existence.
Course of the war
The initial stages of the war were defined by a hasty withdrawal of the Culture from vast galactic spaces invaded by the Idirans, who tried to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible in the hope of making the Culture sue for peace. However, the Culture was able—often by bodily moving its artificial worlds out of harm's way—to escape into the vastness of space, while it in turn geared up its productive capabilities for war, eventually starting to turn out untold numbers of extremely advanced warships. This transformation provides a story backdrop in which the "soft", hedonistic Culture is suddenly realised as standing up for their convictions.
Initial stages of the conflict consisted of encounters in space, with Machine casualties (in the form of Drones and Modules of the Culture, and AI weapons of Idir) being the first losses of the war. During the process of consolidation of territories and volumes by both the Culture and Idir, warfare was initially limited to proxy wars on selected planets, and the employment of mercenaries on both sides in order to use worlds at low levels of development as experimental laboratories for testing ideologies. Most proxy warfare was inconclusive, though it was coupled with the expansion of the Idiran Sphere.
The later stages of the war began with Culture strikes deep within the new Idiran zones of influence. As the Idirans were religiously committed to holding on to all of their conquests, these strikes forced them to divide their attentions. They were eventually overwhelmed by the Culture, a civilization they had not considered as having the requisite will to fight. Factors involved in the Culture victory were the vast productive capacities implied in its post-scarcity economy, its advanced technological level, and its superior war planning, all largely due to capabilities of Minds, the artificial sentiences leading the Culture.
The final stages of the war involved increasingly desperate attempts by the Idirans to stave off their defeat, the withdrawal of the Homomdan from the Idiran side (after suing for a separate peace with the Culture), and the confinement of the Idirans to limited, carefully watched zones. Its eventual end came about as a result of Culture Minds successfully lifting the sentience constraints on Idiran AIs, which then upgraded themselves to Mind-level, effectively ending the Idiran's ability to continue war efforts without their consent.
Casualties
Total casualties amounted to 851.4 ± 2.55 (0.3%) billion sentient creatures, including Medjel (slaves of the Idirans), sentient machines and non-combatants, and wiped out various smaller species, including the Changers. The war resulted in the destruction of 91,215,660 (±200) starships above interplanetary, 14,334 orbitals, 53 planets and major moons, one ring and three spheres, as well as the significant mass-loss or sequence-position alteration of six stars.
Despite the relatively small scale, in comparison with the rumoured conflicts of the past as referred to by the sublimed species of the galaxy, the Idiran-Culture war is considered one of the more significant events in the galactic history of the Culture setting.
It has been commented that the Idiran-Culture war, with its juxtaposition of a religiously-fanatical species fighting (and eventually succumbing to) the atheist Culture, shows the author's theme of "antipathy to religious belief, although nominally not to the believers". The commentator also refers to the war as a clash of civilizations in the sense of Samuel P. Huntington.
Overview
According to Banks' appendices to Consider Phlebas, the war began in 1327 AD, and continued for 48 years and one month, resulting in an eventual but total victory for the Culture.
The conflict was one of principles; the Culture went to war because the Idirans' fanatical imperial expansion, justified on religious grounds, threatened the Culture's "moral right to exist". As the Culture saw it, the Idirans' extending sphere of influence would prevent them from improving the lives of those in less-advanced societies, and thus would greatly curtail the Culture's sense of purpose. As is the case with all major decisions, the decision on the part of the Culture to go to war was through direct vote of the entire population. Academics who have analysed Banks' universe in comparison with real-world political thought have remarked that the decision of the Culture to go to war was a moral choice, rather than one of necessity, as the Culture could have easily avoided war.
The Idirans' decision to go to war is described as being founded in their philosophical, moral and religious distaste for the almost symbiotic nature of the Culture and the threat that their artificial intelligences were considered to be posing to the primacy and significance of biological life in the universe. Such fears were also found in many of those who supported the Idiran side during the war, as exemplified by Horza, the protagonist in Consider Phlebas.
As Horza, a mercenary for the Idirans observes: "the conflict was inevitable"; the Idirans would not halt their expansion, because their faith wouldn't allow it; the Culture was so ill-defined, having no borders or laws, that it would also have grown ceaselessly. The two cultures would have been unlikely to forge a peaceful co-existence.
Course of the war
The initial stages of the war were defined by a hasty withdrawal of the Culture from vast galactic spaces invaded by the Idirans, who tried to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible in the hope of making the Culture sue for peace. However, the Culture was able—often by bodily moving its artificial worlds out of harm's way—to escape into the vastness of space, while it in turn geared up its productive capabilities for war, eventually starting to turn out untold numbers of extremely advanced warships. This transformation provides a story backdrop in which the "soft", hedonistic Culture is suddenly realised as standing up for their convictions.
Initial stages of the conflict consisted of encounters in space, with Machine casualties (in the form of Drones and Modules of the Culture, and AI weapons of Idir) being the first losses of the war. During the process of consolidation of territories and volumes by both the Culture and Idir, warfare was initially limited to proxy wars on selected planets, and the employment of mercenaries on both sides in order to use worlds at low levels of development as experimental laboratories for testing ideologies. Most proxy warfare was inconclusive, though it was coupled with the expansion of the Idiran Sphere.
The later stages of the war began with Culture strikes deep within the new Idiran zones of influence. As the Idirans were religiously committed to holding on to all of their conquests, these strikes forced them to divide their attentions. They were eventually overwhelmed by the Culture, a civilization they had not considered as having the requisite will to fight. Factors involved in the Culture victory were the vast productive capacities implied in its post-scarcity economy, its advanced technological level, and its superior war planning, all largely due to capabilities of Minds, the artificial sentiences leading the Culture.
The final stages of the war involved increasingly desperate attempts by the Idirans to stave off their defeat, the withdrawal of the Homomdan from the Idiran side (after suing for a separate peace with the Culture), and the confinement of the Idirans to limited, carefully watched zones. Its eventual end came about as a result of Culture Minds successfully lifting the sentience constraints on Idiran AIs, which then upgraded themselves to Mind-level, effectively ending the Idiran's ability to continue war efforts without their consent.
Casualties
Total casualties amounted to 851.4 ± 2.55 (0.3%) billion sentient creatures, including Medjel (slaves of the Idirans), sentient machines and non-combatants, and wiped out various smaller species, including the Changers. The war resulted in the destruction of 91,215,660 (±200) starships above interplanetary, 14,334 orbitals, 53 planets and major moons, one ring and three spheres, as well as the significant mass-loss or sequence-position alteration of six stars.
Despite the relatively small scale, in comparison with the rumoured conflicts of the past as referred to by the sublimed species of the galaxy, the Idiran-Culture war is considered one of the more significant events in the galactic history of the Culture setting.
The Plate-class General Systems Vehicle (GSV) Sleeper Service was introduced in the Culture novel Excession by Iain M. Banks. The Sleeper Service features as a reclusive Eccentric which had separated from the Culture proper over four decades previously, wandering. Later on, it becomes clear that it had never really left the employ of the Culture's secret services, and investigates the titular Excession, using its "artificial ecology" as a secret weapon. The character was also noted in how honour plays a central role in the space opera genre, with the ships instigating a complicated plot solely to reconcile two former lovers in whose violent split the ship played a role.
Schoene-Harwood remarks on the implied femininity of the ship, whose 'suspended gestation' (the significant change to prepare itself for events like combatting the excession, while outwardly appearing like a harmless eccentric) is compared to the pregnancy of Dajeil, the sole living soul on board not in suspended animation - a woman who has kept her own pregnancy unfinished for decades due to her emotional turmoil.
Banks has stated that he used the Sleeper Service's activities (forming tableaux of famous paintings with the bodies of the beings stored within) to emphasise how artificial intelligences would not be so dissimilar from humanity - i.e. having the ability to get bored, and having a liking for games - and therefore turning to simulations and hobbies.
Capabilities
As is the case with all GSVs in Bank's Culture universe, the Sleeper Service started out with a standard three-Mind grouping, and was known as the Quietly Confident. In this form, it was a part of the earlier lives of Byr Genar-Hofoen, and Dajeil Gelian, main characters in Excession, before they went to the water-planet of Telaturier. However, by the time the GSV was seen in the novel, it had a lone Mind. The common understanding was that after a dissent, the other two Minds had unusually agreed to abandon control of the GSV to the lone Mind and take smaller crafts for themselves. However, a popular story was that after said dissent, the lone Mind defeated the other two, wresting control from them and declaring Eccentricity.
The Sleeper Service was somewhat renowned for its odd penchant for using its stored passengers in tableaux and set-pieces to match artworks, scenes from history, etc. This became something of a cult phenomenon, with many wanting to be Stored aboard the Sleeper simply to have been part of its work.
In Excession
The Sleeper Service was home to a variety of flora and fauna from different parts of the galaxy, hosting all within an approximation of their natural habitats; the only two sentient beings aboard were Dajeil Gelian, ex-Contact officer and recluse, and Gravious, a sentient bird planted as a spy within the Sleeper Service two decades before the story starts, coding its messages on bacteria left on Stored bodies that were due to be offloaded. However, its spying was unsuccessful - the Sleeper was aware of the messages, and allowed only those to pass that would not pose any threat to itself.
Whilst it appeared that the Sleeper Service had been Eccentric for four decades, it had in fact been a dedicated, if secret, military resource acting on behalf of a sub-set of Special Circumstances Minds known as the Interesting Times Gang, to be drawn upon in the event the Culture was ever seriously threatened. To facilitate this, the Sleeper Service made preparations such that it could, on very short notice, fill all its General Bays, a large part of its internal space, with additional engine capacity, making it able to outrun any ship in the Culture, as well as creating a fleet of approximately 112,000 semi-slaved Offensive Units of varying types based on standard Culture models. A sub-group of the Interesting Times Gang intended the Sleeper Service to be the main (and utterly overwhelming) weapon in the war they wished to manufacture between the Culture and the Affront. However, upon becoming aware of this conspiracy, the Sleeper Service declined to play its part and used its resources to bring the war to an end and expose the conspirators. The Sleeper Service then left the Culture and headed out of the Milky Way intending to travel to the Leo II galaxy.
Schoene-Harwood remarks on the implied femininity of the ship, whose 'suspended gestation' (the significant change to prepare itself for events like combatting the excession, while outwardly appearing like a harmless eccentric) is compared to the pregnancy of Dajeil, the sole living soul on board not in suspended animation - a woman who has kept her own pregnancy unfinished for decades due to her emotional turmoil.
Banks has stated that he used the Sleeper Service's activities (forming tableaux of famous paintings with the bodies of the beings stored within) to emphasise how artificial intelligences would not be so dissimilar from humanity - i.e. having the ability to get bored, and having a liking for games - and therefore turning to simulations and hobbies.
Capabilities
As is the case with all GSVs in Bank's Culture universe, the Sleeper Service started out with a standard three-Mind grouping, and was known as the Quietly Confident. In this form, it was a part of the earlier lives of Byr Genar-Hofoen, and Dajeil Gelian, main characters in Excession, before they went to the water-planet of Telaturier. However, by the time the GSV was seen in the novel, it had a lone Mind. The common understanding was that after a dissent, the other two Minds had unusually agreed to abandon control of the GSV to the lone Mind and take smaller crafts for themselves. However, a popular story was that after said dissent, the lone Mind defeated the other two, wresting control from them and declaring Eccentricity.
The Sleeper Service was somewhat renowned for its odd penchant for using its stored passengers in tableaux and set-pieces to match artworks, scenes from history, etc. This became something of a cult phenomenon, with many wanting to be Stored aboard the Sleeper simply to have been part of its work.
In Excession
The Sleeper Service was home to a variety of flora and fauna from different parts of the galaxy, hosting all within an approximation of their natural habitats; the only two sentient beings aboard were Dajeil Gelian, ex-Contact officer and recluse, and Gravious, a sentient bird planted as a spy within the Sleeper Service two decades before the story starts, coding its messages on bacteria left on Stored bodies that were due to be offloaded. However, its spying was unsuccessful - the Sleeper was aware of the messages, and allowed only those to pass that would not pose any threat to itself.
Whilst it appeared that the Sleeper Service had been Eccentric for four decades, it had in fact been a dedicated, if secret, military resource acting on behalf of a sub-set of Special Circumstances Minds known as the Interesting Times Gang, to be drawn upon in the event the Culture was ever seriously threatened. To facilitate this, the Sleeper Service made preparations such that it could, on very short notice, fill all its General Bays, a large part of its internal space, with additional engine capacity, making it able to outrun any ship in the Culture, as well as creating a fleet of approximately 112,000 semi-slaved Offensive Units of varying types based on standard Culture models. A sub-group of the Interesting Times Gang intended the Sleeper Service to be the main (and utterly overwhelming) weapon in the war they wished to manufacture between the Culture and the Affront. However, upon becoming aware of this conspiracy, the Sleeper Service declined to play its part and used its resources to bring the war to an end and expose the conspirators. The Sleeper Service then left the Culture and headed out of the Milky Way intending to travel to the Leo II galaxy.