Iain Banks
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
When sex slave Lededje Y'breq is murdered by a politician on the planet Sichult, the artificial intelligence running one of the Culture's immense starships resurrects her so she can seek revenge. Meanwhile, the Culture is uneasily watching the conflict over whether to preserve virtual Hells for the souls of "sinners" or give them the release of death.
Author
Series
Culture Universe series volume 3
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks and military action. The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought. The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved...
4) The quarry
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Kit doesn't know who his mother is. What he does know, however, is that his father, Guy, is dying of cancer. Feeling his death is imminent, Guy gathers around him his oldest friends - or at least the friends with the most to lose by his death. Paul - the rising star in the Labour party who dreads the day a tape they all made at university might come to light; Alison and Robbie, corporate bunnies whose relationship is daily more fractious; Pris and...
5) Stonemouth
Author
Language
English
Description
Stewart Gilmour must confront his past when he returns to Stonemouth, Scotland, for the funeral of a local patriarch during a supposed temporary truce between crime families.
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Surface Detail is among Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, a breathtaking achievement from a writer whose body of work is without parallel in the modern history of science fiction.
It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters.
It begins with a murder.
And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.
Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing...
It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters.
It begins with a murder.
And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.
Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing...
Author
Series
Culture Universe series volume 1
Language
English
Description
The first book in Iain M. Banks's seminal science fiction series, The Culture. Consider Phlebas introduces readers to the utopian conglomeration of human and alien races that explores the nature of war, morality, and the limitless bounds of mankind's imagination.
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal,...
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal,...
Author
Series
Culture Universe series volume 2
Language
English
Formats
Description
The Culture — a human/machine symbiotic society — has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy.
Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game. . . a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed,...
Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game. . . a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed,...
Author
Language
English
Description
Frank, no ordinary 16-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. His father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale and Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations: Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did...
10) Consider Phlebas
Author
Series
Culture Universe series volume 1
Language
English
Description
"The first book in Iain M. Banks's seminal science fiction series, The Culture. Consider Phlebas introduces readers to the utopian conglomeration of human and alien races that explores the nature of war, morality, and the limitless bounds of mankind's imagination. The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The...
Author
Series
Culture Universe series volume 8
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
In a distant-future, highly advanced society of seemingly unlimited technological capability, a crime is committed within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one--maybe two--people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever. Only the sister is not what she once...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"The Culture — a human/machine symbiotic society — has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game. . . a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh...
13) Inversions
Author
Series
Culture Universe series volume 6
Language
English
Description
"On a backward world with six moons, an alert spy reports on the doings of one Dr. Vosill, who has mysteriously become the personal physician to the king despite being a foreigner and, even more unthinkably, a woman. ... Elsewhere, in another palace across the mountains, a man named DeWar serves as chief bodyguard to the protector General of Tassasen."--Jacket.
14) The algebraist
Author
Language
English
Description
The time is 4034 A.D. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year as he searches for a secret that has remained hidden for half a billion years.
Author
Series
Culture Universe series volume 4
Language
English
Description
The first ever collection of Iain Banks' short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, 'The State of the Art'. The stories range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale.
20) Look to windward
Author
Series
Culture Universe series volume 7
Language
English
Description
Eight hundred years after two suns were exploded in order to end a war, "light from the first explosion is about to reach the Masaq' Orbital, home to the Culture's most adventurous and decadent souls. There it will fall upon Masaq's 50 billion inhabitants, gathered to commemorate the deaths of the innocent," and on Major Quilan, an emissary from the war-ravaged world of Chel.--Jacket.