The Algebraist

Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 031656561X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Book Description
As complex, turbulent and spectacular as the gas giant on which it is set, this novel from Iain M. Banks is space opera on a truly epic scale. “An enormously enjoyable book, full of wonderful aliens, a sense of wonder and subtle political commentary on current events.” –Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) It is 4034 AD. 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. The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilization. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars. Seconded to a military-religious order he's barely heard of - part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony - Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer - a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he's ever known. “Banks is a phenomenon...writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance.” –William Gibson “Banks writes with a sophistication that will surprise anyone unfamiliar with modern science fiction.” –The New York Times For More from Iain M. Banks, check out: The Culture series: Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata

The Algebraist

Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 0748110054
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 421

Book Description
The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. With breathtaking imagination and extraordinary storytelling, they have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre. 'Banks is a phenomenon' William Gibson It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars but 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. The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilisation. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars. Abruptly seconded to a military-religious order he's barely heard of - part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony - Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer - a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he's ever known. Praise for the novels of Iain M. Banks: 'Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution' Independent on Sunday 'Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future' Guardian 'Jam-packed with extraordinary invention' Scotsman 'Compulsive reading' Sunday Telegraph Books by Iain M. Banks: Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata The State of the Art Against a Dark Background Feersum Endjinn The Algebraist Also now available: The Culture: The Drawings - an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks' Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

The Algebraist

Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 031656561X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Against a Dark Background

Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 0316075949
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 443

Book Description
From science fiction master Iain M. Banks comes a standalone adventure of one woman on the run in an isolated galaxy. Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilization based around the planet Golter. Now she is hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes that she is the last obstacle before the faith's apotheosis, and her only hope of escape is to find the last of the apocalyptically powerful Lazy Guns before the Huhsz find her. Her journey through the exotic Golterian system is a destructive and savage odyssey into her past, and that of her family and of the system itself.

Surface Detail

Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 0316180483
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 606

Book 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 witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture. Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful -- and arguably deranged -- warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war -- brutal, far-reaching -- is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it's about to erupt into reality. It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the center of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether. The Culture Series Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata

Matter

Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 031604072X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 415

Book Description
A novel of dazzling wit and serious purpose. An extraordinary feat of storytelling and breathtaking invention on a grand scale, it is a tour de force from a writer who has turned science fiction on its head. "Unexpectedly savage, emotionally powerful, and impossible to forget." —The Times In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime 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, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever. Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has changed almost beyond recognition to become an agent of the Culture's Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilizations throughout the greater galaxy. Concealing her new identity — and her particular set of abilities — might be a dangerous strategy, however. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else's war is never a simple matter. The Culture Series Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata

In the Orbit of Sirens

Author: T. A. Bruno
Publisher: Song of Kamaria
ISBN: 9781734647006
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 514

Book Description
Nightmarish machines have driven humanity into the depths of space. The survivors are forced to adapt to a planet filled with monsters.

Consider Phlebas

Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 0316095834
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 560

Book 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 Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction. The Culture Series Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata

Inversions

Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416583785
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
Originally published: London: Orbit, 1998.

Look to Windward

Author: Iain Banks
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743421922
Category : Caste
Languages : en
Pages : 500

Book Description
Eight hundred years after the most horrific battle of the Idiran war, light from its world-destroying detonations is about to reach the Masaq Orbital, home to the Culture. Major Quilan has supposedly come to take the exiled Composer Ziller back to their war-ravaged home world, Chel. But despite the major's civilized veneer, his true mission may be the death and destruction of an entire civilization.