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Showing 1 - 25 of
30 matches in All Departments
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Inversions
Iain M. Banks
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R468
R392
Discovery Miles 3 920
Save R76 (16%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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An engrossing portrait of an alien world and two very different
people bound by a startling and mysterious secret from the
internationally bestselling author of The Player of Games and
Consider Phlebas Iain M. Banks. 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 she also has more
remedies in hand than those who wish 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. No one trusts the doctor,
and the bodyguard trusts no one, but is there a 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 talent to be reckoned with" (Locus
Magazine) at the height of his remarkable powers.
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Look to Windward
Iain M. Banks
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R473
R365
Discovery Miles 3 650
Save R108 (23%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
This "sophisticated space opera" (The New York Times), filled with
suspense and humor, masterfully explores the horrors of war--from
the acclaimed author of The Wasp Factory. The Twin Novae battle had
been one of the last of the Idiran war--and one of the most
horrific. Desperate to avert their inevitable defeat, the Idirans
had induced not one but two suns to explode, snuffing out worlds
and biospheres teeming with sentient life. They were attacks of
incredible proportion--gigadeathcrimes. But the war ended, and life
went on. Now, eight hundred years later, 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 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 and self-exiled dissident, the
honored Composer Ziller. Ziller claims he will do anything to avoid
a meeting with Major 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 cannot
remember it. Hailed by SFX Magazine as "an excellent hopping-on
point if you've never read a Banks science fiction novel before",
Look to Windward is an awe-inspiring immersion into the wildly
original, vividly realized civilization that Banks calls the
Culture.
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 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
"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.
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 accepts the
game, and with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his
death.Praise for Iain M. Banks:"Poetic, humorous, baffling,
terrifying, sexy -- the books of Iain M. Banks are all these things
and more" -- NME"An exquisitely riotous tour de force of the
imagination which writes its own rules simply for the pleasure of
breaking them." -- Time Out
A stunning new reissue edition of Consider Phlebas - a space opera
of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one
of the most important and influential writers in modern science
fiction. 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, to
actually find it - and with it their own destruction. Praise for
the Culture series '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 The Culture series: 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 Other books by Iain M. Banks: 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.
A stunning new reissue edition of The State of the Art - a
collection of short stories of stunning power and awesome
imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and
influential writers in modern science fiction. The first ever
collection of Iain M. 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 collection range from science
fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear
the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks's staggering talent. Praise for
the Culture series '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 The Culture series: 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 Other books by Iain M. Banks: 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.
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Inversions (Paperback)
Iain M. Banks
|
R338
R278
Discovery Miles 2 780
Save R60 (18%)
|
Ships in 9 - 15 working days
|
A stunning new reissue edition of Inversions - a space opera of
stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of
the most important and influential writers in modern science
fiction. In 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, has his
enemies. But his enemies strike more swiftly, and his means of
combating them are more traditional. Spiralling round a central
core of secrecy, deceit, love and betrayal, Inversions is a
spectacular work of science fiction, brilliantly told and wildly
imaginative, from an author who has set science fiction alight.
Praise for the Culture series '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 The Culture series: 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 Other books by Iain M. Banks: 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.
A stunning new reissue edition of The Hydrogen Sonata - a space
opera of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks,
one of the most important and influential writers in modern science
fiction. The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, the End
Days for the Gzilt civilisation. An ancient people, organised 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 civilisations: 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
civilisation are likely to prove its most perilous. Praise for the
Culture series '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 The Culture series: 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 Other books by Iain M. Banks: 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.
A stunning new reissue edition of the third Culture novel from Iain
M. Banks - one of the most important and influential writers in
modern science fiction. 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 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 burnt-out
case. But not even its machine intelligence could see the horrors
in his past. Praise for the Culture series: '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 The
Culture series: 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 Other books by Iain M. Banks:
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.
A stunning new reissue edition of Surface Detail - a space opera of
stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of
the most important and influential writers in modern science
fiction. 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 at a price, and to
put things right she will need the help of the Culture. It begins
in the realm of the Real. It begins with a murder. And it will not
end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself. Praise for
the Culture series '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 The Culture series: 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 Other books by Iain M. Banks: 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.
A superb standalone novel from the awesome imagination of Iain M.
Banks, a master of modern science fiction. 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 change... For this is the time of the encroachment and,
although the dimming sun still shines on the vast, towering walls
of Serehfa Fastness, the end is close at hand. The King knows it,
his closest advisers know it, yet sill they prosecute the war
against the clan Engineers with increasing savagery. The crypt
knows it too; so an emissary has been sent, an emissary who holds
the key to all their futures. Praise for 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 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 Other books by
Iain M. Banks: Against a Dark Background Feersum Endjinn The
Algebraist
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Matter (Paperback)
Iain M. Banks
|
R338
R278
Discovery Miles 2 780
Save R60 (18%)
|
Ships in 9 - 15 working days
|
A stunning new reissue edition of Matter - a space opera of
stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of
the most important and influential writers in modern science
fiction. 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. 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. Praise for the Culture series '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 The
Culture series: 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 Other books by Iain M. Banks:
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.
A stunning new reissue edition of the second Culture novel from
Iain M. Banks - one of the most important and influential writers
in modern science fiction. 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 accepts the game, and with it the challenge
of his life - and very possibly his death. Praise for the Culture
series: '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 The Culture series: 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 Other books by Iain
M. Banks: 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.
This extraordinary collection celebrates the dazzling worldbuilding
of Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers
in modern science fiction. Faithfully reproduced from notebooks he
kept in the 1970s and 80s, these annotated original illustrations
depict the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of
Banks' Culture series of novels in incredible detail. Praise for
the Culture series: 'Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and
absorbing in its execution' Independent on Sunday 'Few of us have
been exposed to a talent so manifest and of such extraordinary
breadth' New York Review of Science Fiction 'Jam-packed with
extraordinary invention' Scotsman 'Banks has created one of the
most enduring and endearing visions of the future' Guardian 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 Other books by Iain M. Banks:
Against a Dark Background Feersum Endjinn The Algebraist
A stunning new reissue edition of Look to Windward - a space opera
of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one
of the most important and influential writers in modern science
fiction. 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. Now, eight hundred years later, the light
from the first of those ancient mistakes has reached the Culture
Orbital, Masaq. The light from the second may not. Praise for the
Culture series '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 The Culture series: 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 Other books by Iain M. Banks: 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.
|
Excession (Paperback)
Iain M. Banks
|
R338
R278
Discovery Miles 2 780
Save R60 (18%)
|
Ships in 9 - 15 working days
|
A stunning new reissue edition of Excession - a space opera of
stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of
the most important and influential writers in modern science
fiction. 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. Praise for the
Culture series '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 The Culture series: 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 Other books by Iain M. Banks: 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
Iain M. Banks
|
R600
R505
Discovery Miles 5 050
Save R95 (16%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
Matter (Paperback)
Iain M. Banks
|
R524
R453
Discovery Miles 4 530
Save R71 (14%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
In a world renowned even 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, 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.
MATTER is 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.
A stunning new reissue edition of Feersum Endjinn - a space opera
of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one
of the most important and influential writers in modern science
fiction. 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 change . . .
For this is the time of the encroachment and, although the dimming
sun still shines on the vast, towering walls of Serehfa Fastness,
the end is close at hand. The King knows it, his closest advisers
know it, yet sill they prosecute the war against the clan Engineers
with increasing savagery. The crypt knows it too; so an emissary
has been sent, an emissary who holds the key to all their futures.
Praise for the Culture series '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 The Culture series: 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 Other books by Iain M. Banks: 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.
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. 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. USE OF
WEAPONS 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 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 burnt-out
case. But not even its machine intelligence could see the horrors
in his past. THE PLAYER OF GAMES 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 accepts the game, and with it the challenge
of his life - and very possibly his death.
"The New York Times "bestselling Culture novel...
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.
A superb standalone novel from the awesome imagination of Iain M.
Banks, a master of modern science fiction. 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 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. Praise for 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 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 Other books by Iain M. Banks: Against a Dark
Background Feersum Endjinn The Algebraist
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Transition (Paperback)
Iain M. Banks
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R622
R552
Discovery Miles 5 520
Save R70 (11%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and
catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of
the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and
global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a
guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful
organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive
influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of
extraordinary powers? Among those operatives are Temudjin Oh, of
mysterious Mongolian origins, an un-killable assassin who journeys
between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the
dark palaces of Venice under snow; Adrian Cubbish, a restlessly
greedy City trader; and a nameless, faceless state-sponsored
torturer known only as the Philosopher, who moves between time
zones with sinister ease. Then there are those who question the
Concern: the bandit queen Mrs. Mulverhill, roaming the worlds
recruiting rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, under sedation and
feigning madness in a forgotten hospital ward, in hiding from a
dirty past. There is a world that needs help; but whether it needs
the Concern is a different matter.
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