Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth, Scotland. After five years in exile, his presence is required at the funeral of local patriarch Joe Murston, even though the last time Stewart saw the Murstons he was running for his life. An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth, with its five-mile beach,[...]
It was one of the less glorious incidents of the Idiran wars that led to the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported. Now, 800 years later, the light from the first of those deaths has reached the Culture's Masaq' Orbital. A Chelgrian emissary is dispatched to the Culture.[...]
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 r[...]
In a world renowned within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one man 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 me[...]
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 po[...]
It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. 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 [...]
The first ever collection of Iain Banks's short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, The State of the Art. This is a striking addition to the growing body of Culture lore, and adds definition and scale to the previous works by using the Earth of 1977 as contrast. The other stories in[...]
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 or military action. The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but[...]
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Within the cosmic conflict, there was an individual crusade: deep within a fabled labyrinth lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it.[...]
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, [...]
Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilisation 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[...]
Count Sessine is about to die for the very last time ...Chief Scientist Gadfium is about to receive the mysterious message she has been waiting for from the Plain of Sliding Stones ...And Bascule the Teller, in search of an ant, is about to enter the chaos of the crypt ...And everything is about to [...]
Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared. Now it is back. 'Banks is a phenomenon ...wildly successful, fearlessly creati[...]
IIn the winter palace, the King's new physician has more enemies than she at first realises. But then she also has more remedies to hand than those who wish her ill can know about. In another palace across the mountains, in the service of the regicidal Protector General, the chief bodyguard, too, ha[...]
Mikä alkaa todellisuudessa, päättyy todellisuudessa. Galaksissa soditaan Helvettien olemassaolon oikeudesta. Näennäisesti Kulttuuri seuraa sotaa sivusta mutta värvää mukaan Lededje Y'breqin, paenneen orjan, jonka perimää on muokattu niin että hän on kauttaaltaan fraktaalikuvioiden peitos[...]
Scifin mestarin tuorein suomennos.Iain M. Banks on luonut kokonaan uuden linnunradan, hänen uusi, suurten mittojen avaruusoopperansa vie lukijan kauas tulevaisuuteen, sotilaallis-uskonnollisen Mercatorian hallitsemaan aikaan. Lyhytikäiset rodut - kuten ihmiset - ovat avaruudessa vähemmistöä. F[...]