I do have a copy of Consider Phlebas on hand, and reread it, along with Player of Games before writing this post. Wikipedia can say what it likes, but the term “Sublimed” is certainly never used, nor anything like the concept of “deliberately refused hard takeoff” implied. The Culture is advancing its base technology level as implied by the notion of an unusually advanced Mind-prototype, capable of feats thought to be impossible to the Culture’s technology level, being lost on Schar’s World. “Subliming” is an obvious later graft which simply doesn’t fit the world depicted in the earlier novels.
It’s questionable how relevant any of this is, since we are arguing over a ficton—but the original Culture does not have anything akin to Subliming and I am criticizing it on those grounds.
I do have a copy of Consider Phlebas on hand, and reread it, along with Player of Games before writing this post. Wikipedia can say what it likes, but the term “Sublimed” is certainly never used, nor anything like the concept of “deliberately refused hard takeoff” implied. The Culture is advancing its base technology level as implied by the notion of an unusually advanced Mind-prototype, capable of feats thought to be impossible to the Culture’s technology level, being lost on Schar’s World. “Subliming” is an obvious later graft which simply doesn’t fit the world depicted in the earlier novels.
It’s questionable how relevant any of this is, since we are arguing over a ficton—but the original Culture does not have anything akin to Subliming and I am criticizing it on those grounds.