Culture

Series · 12

books · 1987-2016

By Iain M. Banks

Books in series

Consider Phlebas

1987

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 Player of Games

1988

The Culture - a humanoid/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players. One of the best is Jernau Morat Gurgeh, Player of Games, master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel & 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 accepts the game and with it the challenge of his life, and very possibly his death.

Use of Weapons

1990

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 the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a lost cause. But not even its machine could see the horrors in his past. Ferociously intelligent, both witty and horrific, USE OF WEAPONS is a masterpiece of science fiction.

The State of the Art

1991

The first ever collection of Iain Banks' 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 collection range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks' staggering talent.

Excession

1996

The international sensation Iain M. Banks offers readers a deeply imaginative, wittily satirical tale, proving once again that he is "a talent to be reckoned with" ("Locus"). In Excession, the Culture's espionage and dirty tricks section orders Diplomat Byr Gen-Hofoen to steal the soul of a long-dead starship captain. By accepting the mission, Byr irrevocably plunges himself into a conspiracy: one that could either lead the universe into an age of peace or to the brink of annihilation.

Inversions

1998

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. Vosill has more enemies than she first realizes. But then she also has more remedies to hand than those who wish her ill can ever guess.Elsewhere, in another palace across the mountains, a man named DeWar serves as chief bodyguard to the Protector General of Tassasen, a profession he describes as the business of "assassinating assassins." DeWar, too, has his enemies, but his foes strike more swiftly, and his means of combating them are more direct. None trust the doctor, while the bodyguard trusts no one, but what is the hidden commonality linking their disparate histories? Spiraling around a central core of mystery, deceit, love, and betrayal, Inversions is a dazzling work of science fiction from a versatile and imaginative author writing at the height of his remarkable powers. About the Author: Iain M. Banks, one of the United Kingdom's bestselling authors of science fiction, has written such highly-regarded novels as Excession, Feersum Endjinn, Use of Weapons, The State of the Art, and Against a Dark Background. As "Iain Banks," he also writes mainstream novels, including The Wasp Factory and A Song of Stone. He lives in Scotland.

Look to Windward

2000

The Twin Novae battle had been one of the last of the Idiran war, one of the most horrific. Desperate to avert defeat, the Idirans had induced not one but two suns to explode, snuffing out worlds & biospheres teeming with sentient life. They were attacks of incredible proportion - gigadeathcrimes. But the war ended and life went on. Now, 800 years later, light from the 1st explosion is about to reach the Masaq' Orbital, home to the Culture's most adventurous & decadent souls. There it will fall upon Masaq's 50 billion inhabitants, gathered to commemorate the deaths of the innocent & to reflect, if only for a moment, on what some call the Culture's own complicity in the terrible event. Also journeying to Masaq' is Major Quilan, an emissary from the war-ravaged world of Chel. In the aftermath of the conflict that split his world apart, most believe he has come to Masaq' to bring home Chel's most brilliant star & self-exiled dissident, the honored Composer Ziller. Ziller claims he will do anything to avoid a meeting with Quilan, who he suspects has come to murder him. But the Major's true assignment will have far greater consequences than the death of a mere political dissident, as part of a conspiracy more ambitious than even he can know—a mission his superiors have buried so deeply in his mind that even he can't remember it. Hailed by SFX magazine as "an excellent hopping-on point if you've never read a Banks SF novel before," Look to Windward is an awe-inspiring immersion into the wildly original, vividly realized civilization Banks calls the Culture.

Matter

2008

In a world renowned 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, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever. Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has become an agent of the Culture's Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilisations throughout the greater galaxy. Concealing her new identity - and her particular set of abilities - might be a dangerous strategy. 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.

Surface Detail

2010

It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. It begins with a murder. 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. To put things right she will need the help of the Culture. Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful tho 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 brutal, far-reaching war 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 & 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.

Les Enfers virtuels 2

2010

Une esclave en quête de vengeance, un voyage à travers la galaxie, la description d'inimaginables supplices, une guerre dans le monde virtuel... Banks noue tous les fils de son intrigue et conclut en fanfare ce septième opus du cycle de la Culture. Le cycle de la Culture ( L'Usage des armes, 1992 ; L'Homme des jeux, 1992 ; Excession, 1998 ; Le Sens du vent, 2002 ; Trames, 2009), l'un des plus importants de l'histoire de la science-fiction, met en scène une société galactique tolérante, cynique, hédoniste, anarchiste, pleine de bonnes intentions et parfois machiavélique. Mettant en scène des humains, des Intelligences Artificielles de tout calibre et des Extraterrestres plus étranges les uns que les autres, le Cycle aborde pratiquement tous les thèmes de la science-fiction. Dans Les Enfers virtuels, Banks a imaginé l'usage effrayant que pourraient faire les civilisations galactiques des univers virtuels informatiques : puisqu'il est possible d'y copier et d'y projeter les personnalités de défunts, on crée, pour les ressortissants supposés criminels ou seulement coupables d'écarts à la loi, des Enfers virtuels aussi épouvantables que possible et d'où personne ne peut s'échapper. Les supplices atroces (Banks ne manque pas ici un et même plusieurs clins d'œil à Dante, notamment dans sa description du démon en chef) des damnés dureront aussi longtemps que les univers virtuels puisqu'ils " ressuscitent " chaque fois qu'ils succombent aux sévices infligés... Les civilisations qui ont créé les Enfers virtuels estiment ces châtiments nécessaires à leur conservation et à leurs principes moraux : les méchants doivent être punis. D'autres, plus progressistes (et certains opposants à l'intérieur des précitées), estiment au contraire ces abominations insupportables et devant être abolies. C'est évidemment le point de vue de la Culture. Dans son combat, la Culture va trouver une cible en la personne du richissime et barbare entrepreneur Veppers (dont la famille a fait fortune dans les jeux virtuels partagés) après avoir découvert qu'il abritait dans ses ordinateurs les fameux Enfers virtuels. Pour l'atteindre, les I.A. et des humains de Circonstances spéciales (bras armé de la Culture) vont utiliser Lededje, l'ex-esclave de Veppers déterminée à se venger de son bourreau... les deux fils de l'intrigue (le sort de l'esclave Lededje et la bataille opposant les civilisations galactiques autour des enfers virtuels) finissent ainsi par se rejoindre dans un final spectaculaire !

#10

The Hydrogen Sonata

2012

The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, provably, the End Days for the Gzilt civilization. An ancient people, organized on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture ten thousand years earlier and were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they've made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilizations; they are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new and almost infinitely more rich and complex existence. Amid preparations though, the Regimental High Command is destroyed. Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont appears to have been involved, and she is now wanted - dead, not alive. Aided only by an ancient, reconditioned android and a suspicious Culture avatar, Cossont must complete her last mission given to her by the High Command. She must find the oldest person in the Culture, a man over nine thousand years old, who might have some idea what really happened all that time ago. It seems that the final days of the Gzilt civilization are likely to prove its most perilous.

#1-9

Iain M Banks Collection Culture Series 9 Books Bundle

2016

Iain M Banks Collection Culture Series 9 Books Bundle includes titles in this collection :- Surface Detail, Matter, Consider Phlebas, Look To Windward, Inversions, Excession, The State of the Art, Use Of Weapons, The Player Of Games. Surface Detail 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. Matter 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 means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever. Consider Phlebas 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. Look To Windward It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war. It led to the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported. Inversions IIn the winter palace, the King's new physician has more enemies than she at first realises. In another palace across the mountains, in the service of the regicidal Protector General, the chief bodyguard, too, has his enemies. Excession 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. The State of the Art The first ever collection of Iain Banks' short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, The State of the Art.

Author

Iain M. Banks

Author · 18 books

Iain M. Banks is a pseudonym of Iain Banks which he used to publish his Science Fiction. Banks' father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edinburgh and then Fife. Banks met his wife Annie in London, before the release of his first book. They married in Hawaii in 1992. However, he announced in early 2007 that, after 25 years together, they had separated. He lived most recently in North Queensferry, a town on the north side of the Firth of Forth near the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge. As with his friend Ken MacLeod (another Scottish writer of technical and social science fiction) a strong awareness of left-wing history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence. In late 2004, Banks was a prominent member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Prime Minister Tony Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In protest he cut up his passport and posted it to 10 Downing Street. In an interview in Socialist Review he claimed he did this after he "abandoned the idea of crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns." He related his concerns about the invasion of Iraq in his book Raw Spirit, and the principal protagonist (Alban McGill) in the novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale confronts another character with arguments in a similar vein. Interviewed on Mark Lawson's BBC Four series, first broadcast in the UK on 14 November 2006, Banks explained why his novels are published under two different names. His parents wished to name him Iain Menzies Banks but his father made a mistake when registering the birth and he was officially registered as Iain Banks. Despite this he continued to use his unofficial middle name and it was as Iain M. Banks that he submitted The Wasp Factory for publication. However, his editor asked if he would mind dropping the 'M' as it appeared "too fussy". The editor was also concerned about possible confusion with Rosie M. Banks, a minor character in some of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels who is a romantic novelist. After his first three mainstream novels his publishers agreed to publish his first SF novel, Consider Phlebas. To distinguish between the mainstream and SF novels, Banks suggested the return of the 'M', although at one stage he considered John B. Macallan as his SF pseudonym, the name deriving from his favourite whiskies: Johnnie Walker Black Label and The Macallan single malt. His latest book was a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012. Author Iain M. Banks revealed in April 2013 that he had late-stage cancer. He died the following June. The Scottish writer posted a message on his official website saying his next novel The Quarry, due to be published later this year*, would be his last. *The Quarry was published in June 2013.