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I've finished reading "Consider Phlebas" and, even though it's a relative old book, it blew my mind. The concepts the book introduce are amazing.

It talks about "The Culture", which is a society driven by the "Minds" which are superintelligent machines that live in huge ships or even planets, and guide mankind. More in depth explanation here

That is a concept familiar to many but not seen much in media. Mankind and machines working together, where machines help mankind achieve equality, freedom, and a high education for everyone? Never.

This particular book, "Consider Phlebas", talks about a war between mankind and an alien specie, where these aliens have religion and a vertical system, and they do not tolerete the ways of "The Culture". They are mostly like us today.

I really liked also, that human sociaty is completly distributed, in contrast of centralized governments. People can also choose when to die (we usually see immortals, but they do not have a choice most of the time). People can willingly get high, just using its mind. The culture's humans treat sentient machines as equals. Humans change gender multiple times over their lifetime. Machines go to univeristy, which at first it struck me like, wtf this doesn't make sense, but then I thought, well it might not be what we consider a university this days, right? Probably the "university" word has a new meaning related with education in the future.

What really got me, was that before going to war, humans and machines discussed a lot, and only after there was a concensus, it happened. And there was even a huge chunk of people that decided to left the culture because of this, which ironically, makes them even more part of the culture than before haha.

Contrary to current reality, where money drives wars, this can't happen to the culture because they don't use money, everything is provided thanks to machines. They went to war only to survive, and because they cosidered there would be less casualties than being coerced by aliens in the long term.

Also, it might look like any other book, but it shows that in war there are no winners.

I would like to point out that sci-fi media nowadays lack originality. They are mostly like the present day, but with ships. Or like ww2 in the future, some rebels/allies vs an opresive regime.

• The Expanse. This is the one I like the most, because is not that far into the future, and it's quite accurate.

• The Orville. This is a cheap copy of Star Trek. Trying to send a messege for people of the 90's. Seth Macfarlane characters would be much more comfortable in The Culture's universe. Good CGI though.

• Star Trek. Good but outdated. They still have a military/vertical organization. People want to become "the captain", or aim for titles and going up. This doesn't make sense, where their machines would make a much more precise job.

• Star Wars. Same story over an over. Nowadays seems to be catching up a bit. What keeps me hooked up is "The Force".

• The 100. It set in the future, but it's more about rebuilding society as is today.

• Battlestar galactica. People like us opening portals to other planets.

• Alien. If you remove the Alien thing, it's about a company owning the galaxy.

• Avatar. Europeans opressing Africans

• The fifth element. The chosen-one-by-chance cliche saving the galaxy. It was original back then though.

• Marvel's movies. Heroes fighting against a greater single individual evil.

I know it's a lot of simplification, but you get my point. I'm not saying is not a possible future also, but it's like the same idea is repeated over an over. And I'm also not saying that The Culture future is a paradise, just different, and would be cool to explore into it.

In most of these movies/shows we see two sides with the same structure, where there is a leader. And somehow there's always a military organization, same as the one in America nowadays. Sometimes being the good ones, and sometimes the bad ones.

I think this serie has the potential to be the next game of thrones, or at least it can become a cult tv show.

Sorry for my english if it's bad, I just want to discuss it with someone.

Peace!