Product Description

"Dazzlingly original." -- Daily Mail
"Gripping, touching and funny." -- TLS

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18788 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780316005388
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Library Journal
In the midst of a war between two galactic empires, a shapechanging agent of the Iridans undertakes a clandestine mission to a forbidden planet in search of an intelligent, fugitive machine whose actions could alter the course of the conflict. Banks ( Walking on Glass ) demonstrates a talent for suspense in a new wave sf novel that should appeal to fans of space adventure. For large sf collections. JC
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
'Banks is a phenomenon: the wildly successful, fearlessly creative author of brilliant and disturbing non-genre novels, he's equally at home writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance' William Gibson 'There is now no British SF writer to whose work I look forward with greater keenness' The Times 'Poetic, humorous, baffling, terrifying, sexy - the books of Iain M. Banks are all these things and more' NME

About the Author
Iain Banks came to controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. CONSIDER PHLEBAS, his first science fiction novel, was published under the name Iain M. Banks in 1987. He is now widely acclaimed as one of the most powerful, innovative and exciting writers of his generation. Iain Banks lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Customer Reviews

Culture and The Culture
_Consider Phlebas_ is not out of print, although Amazon apparently doesn't have it. It's been re-published recently by Orbit (ISBN 1-85723-138-4) and it's worth tracking down.

Like David Brin, Dan Simmons or Poul Anderson, this is high concept space opera. But unlike them, this book, and the subsequent books about The Culture, are morally ambiguous. Horza, the protagonist, despises the machine intelligences and moral laziness of The Culture. But his embrace of and alliance with The Culture's enemies in this galaxy-wide war reveals them to be intolerant, racist, religious zealots. He is much more comfortable with the agent of The Culture who infiltrates his band of pirates than with his erstwhile allies. Through plot twists, when he fights his allies with the help of his enemy, Banks makes many points on many levels.

The book is amazingly compelling. As Horza careens from debacle to disaster, fighting a battle in which he only partially believes, you come to care a about him. Which is surprising, because by any sane standard he an amoral criminal.

Banks is a good but not exceptional writer. But he produces very remarkable books. Even the coda to this book, in which Bank reports the war, of which this story is a tiny, tiny part, caused 850 billion casualties; even the coda underscores the ambiguity of the tale.

What makes a culture "good" or "bad"? In the course of telling a very good story, Banks makes you wonder if you are asking the right question.

Top-class SF
This was the first Iain M. Banks book I read and it blew me away. It is one of many SF books to explore grand concepts like Artificial Intelligence, huge spaceships and Interstellar War, but it is one of very few to it believably and with dramatic tension.

The war is between the Idirans, who are driven by religion and natural aggression born from a harsh home-planet, and the Culture, a luxury-loving empire largely run by machines. Until attacked by the Idirans, the machines spent most of their time mixing drinks for the Culture's biological citizens, but are now having to apply their (artificial) intelligence to war.

The plot traces the story of Horza, an Idiran secret agent trying to capture a Culture Mind (Minds are big thinking machines that do most of the Culture's planning and strategy) which has gone to ground in neutral territory. Far from the Idiran front line, Horza is thrown very much on his own resources. He has to enlist help from the sad detritus of neutrals, each trying to get by and if possible profiteer at the margins of the war, to attempt to reach and capture the Mind. Naturally the Culture is also trying to recover this machine, and sends an agent who inevitably clashes with Horza. The trouble is that, across a gulf of fanaticism and violence, the two agents quite like each other.

Banks' execution of this plot is totally absorbing. Huge concepts spring beautifully to the minds' eye, and the characters evoke interest and sympathy. The book starts with a prologue of the Mind's near-capture by Idiran ships and taking refuge on a neutral world. How do you describe the twists and turns of a super-intelligent machine trying to escape a host of hostile pursuers? Try beating that prologue.

One of the best SF books ever written.

Exciting space opera
After hearing about the works of Iain M. Banks for ages, with almost unanymous praise, I finally decided to check out some of his works. The author writes both regular fiction (under the name Iain Banks) and science fiction (under the name Iain M. Banks). His "Culture" novels fall under the SF category, and "Consider Phlebas" is generally considered the best starting point.

The setting for this novel is the galaxy-wide war between the technology-driven Culture and the religious Idirans. The Culture is a loose group of human planets, living in wealth and freedom through their powerful technology. The true masters of the Culture are the Minds, incredibly powerful artificial intelligences, often fitted in big ships like GCU (General Contact Units) or GSV (General System Vehicles).

One of these Minds is lost at the beginning of the story. The Idirans want to capture it, because studying it will provide them with useful techonological knowledge in the war. The Culture wants to prevent them from finding it, for obvious reasons.

Horza, a human shape-changer employed on the Idiran side, is sent out to find the lost Mind. In his search, he teams up with a group of mercenaries and, after many adventures, travels to the planet where the Mind is hiding out.

"Consider Phlebas" is a very exciting novel, filled with aliens, immense space-ships, Orbitals, ... Everything you need for a good, old-fashioned, sensawunda-filled space opera. If that's what you enjoy reading, look no further. I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of the Culture series.