The Culture/Fridge

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Fridge Brilliance

• The title of The Culture has a clever double-meaning. The obvious interpretation is that it refers to the protagonist Gurgeh, and indeed, the title is a translation of a sobriquet he uses as one of his names. However, it can also be interpreted as referring to The Culture/Special Circumstances. They cleverly set things up so that they could use Gurgeh as a pawn in their "game" to take down the Empire of Azad. This kind of double-meaning is echoed in Use of Weapons, which refers both to the Heroic Sociopath protagonist's ruthless military genius, but also to how the Culture uses him as a weapon to accomplish less than ethical plans.- Jordan.
• The game theory concept of the "open-ended iterated prisoner's dilemma" states that the logically optimum course of action when dealing with a totally unknown entity is to lead off with a minor but benign gesture and then to tailor your responses to mirror the other entity's responses re: cooperation or noncooperation. Now think back to the plot of Excession, and you will realize this is exactly what the Excession was doing. The GSV Sleeper Service even Lampshades this briefly.