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Does The Culture possess FTL communication?


Iain M. Banks's Culture has the ability to travel faster than light (up to 233,000 c) with infraspace engines built from exotic nanomatter, but can it also transmit communication supraluminally?



Edit to be clearer: I realize that they can communicate by messengers/couriers, but what I want to know is if they can transmit massless data, such as electromagnetic waves or indeed light, faster than light. Due to the nature of their physical hyperdrives that can move matter faster than light, it's not clear that they can do the same with something without mass, or even if they can propel mass that doesn't have its own drive attached to it.



Answer



Yes, although the speed of communication is ill-defined it appears to be very fast indeed, many multiples the speed of light and capable of being sent ahead of ships moving at very rapid velocities.


There's a good, if somewhat flowery, analogy provided in Surface Detail



The only reality-based restriction the galactic house modelled accurately was that produced by the deeply annoying fact that even hyperspacial light did not travel with infinite speed. To carry on a normal conversation with another Mind, one had to be in the same room and reasonably close to it. Even two Minds being within the same vast room but on opposite sides created a noticeable delay as they shouted back and forth.


Being any further away meant sending messages. These usually showed up as gently glowing symbols flickering disembodied in the air in front of the recipient, but – subject to the witheringly prodigious imaginations of Minds in general and the particular and quite possibly highly eccentric predilections of the sender in particular – could show up as almost anything. Swift-moving ballets consisting of multiply-limbed aliens, on fire and throwing shapes which just happened briefly to resemble Marain symbols (for example) were by no means unknown.



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