> We see brief glimpses in Player of Games (at its very start) and perhaps Inversions (the story about when they were kids) but mostly it's all SC all the time.

Was The State of the Art SC? Been a while since I read it.

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tialaramex 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The short story "The State of the Art" ? Yes, Diziet is a Special Circumstances agent - we also see her in Use of Weapons. Some of the other shorts in the collection of that name aren't set in the Culture. you can probably say "A Gift From the Culture" isn't about SC per se, but it also isn't really about the Culture.

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arethuza 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Pretty sure it was a regular "boring" Contact GCU - the Arbitrary.

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tialaramex 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The thing about boring things is that if they're in your exciting story it might well be because they aren't boring. The actual British spy building next to the river Thames, Vauxhall Cross - looks exactly like the one in the Bond movies, but it's just an office building with higher than usual security. Bond can launch a speedboat to chase bad guys, but actual employees will be sat in a meeting moaning about the catering or the train delays.

Presumably the Arbitrary is just an ordinary contact ship, but Diziet is definitely not an "ordinary" member of contact. She's the one who recruited the guy in Use of Weapons, the one whose name is not actually Zakalwe.

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arethuza 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes I know she is also in UoW and is in SC then, but I don't know if she is in SC in SoTA. From what I remember to get into Contact you have to apply, but to go from Contact to SC you have to be wait to be asked?

	▲	tialaramex 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well, in my favourite Culture novel the SC agent doesn't even realise. Yime has apparently chosen to keep her status even from her future self, being I guess mind-wiped or given selective amnesia so in her mind she's important because she chose not to be in Special Circumstances but it turns out that's just even deeper cover.

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blobcode 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Some of the stories could plausibly have SC involvement (the story of the same name is most likely) - but I don't think it's explicitly mentioned anywhere.