Statistics:
Length of war: forty-eight years, one month.
Total casualties, including machines (reckoned on logarithmic sentience scale), medjel and non-combatants:
851.4 billion (\B1 .3%). Losses: ships (all classes above interplanetary) -
91,215,660 (\B1 200); Orbitals - 14,334; planets and major moons - 53; Rings - 1;
Spheres - 3; stars (undergoing significant induced mass-loss or
sequence-position alteration) - 6.
Historical perspective
A small, short war that rarely extended throughout more than .02% of the galaxy by volume and .01% by stellar population. rumours persist of far more impressive conflicts, stretching through vastly greater amounts of time and space… Nevertheless, the chronicles of the galaxy’s elder civilisations rate the Idiran-Culture war as the most significant conflict of the past fifty thousand years, and one of those singularly interesting Events they see so rarely these days.
It’s more that it is mind bogglingly huge by our standards, yet still a blip on the scale of the galaxy.
Yeeeah, I’m not so sure I’d opt for the Polity in third place. It has a lot of problems, and major population centers are regularly threatened. And their AIs go rouge with alarming frequency, but that’s probably a consequence of being force-grown for war. Plus, just… Prador. As a civilian, I’d rather face xenophobic Idirans over Prador any day.
Agreed, but honestly either is ok. I’d prefer the Minds ruling me to humans too.
The main thing that would scare me is the Megadeath scenarios from the Idiran war.
But that seems like a pretty rare thing. Also, they seem to be a lot better at the sex and drugs thing than ST, as well as how they handle crime.
Coming after these guys is Neal Asher’s Polity. It’s like Culture “lite”, And the robots are a bit less “extra”.
The appendix in Consider Phlebus put the Iridian war into interesting perspective.
Wasn’t it just one GSV on the Culture side basically fighting the whole war?
It’s more that it is mind bogglingly huge by our standards, yet still a blip on the scale of the galaxy.
Yeeeah, I’m not so sure I’d opt for the Polity in third place. It has a lot of problems, and major population centers are regularly threatened. And their AIs go rouge with alarming frequency, but that’s probably a consequence of being force-grown for war. Plus, just… Prador. As a civilian, I’d rather face xenophobic Idirans over Prador any day.