Surface Detail
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4.3 • 12 Ratings
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- €6.49
Publisher Description
The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. His Culture books combine breathtaking imagination with exceptional storytelling, and have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre.
'Banks is a phenomenon' William Gibson
The "War in Heaven", a simulated war game, rages between civilisations. Its virtual battles have been fought for decades, and the victors will decide the fate of the digital Hells - torturous artificial afterlives with horrors beyond imagination.
In the Sichultian Enablement, 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.
As the virtual war threatens to spill into the Real, Y'breq is willing to risk everything for her freedom - but she'll need the Culture, and its help comes at a price. The Culture is going 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Banks's labyrinthine and devious ninth Culture space opera novel (after 2008's Matter) adeptly shifts perspective between vast concepts and individual passions. The blissfully disorganized, galaxy-spanning Culture has fabulous technology that gives human and alien entities freedom to choose who and what they want to be. When sex slave Lededje Y'breq is murdered by a politician on the planet Sichult, the artificial intelligence running one of the Culture's immense starships resurrects her so she can seek revenge. Meanwhile, the Culture is uneasily watching the conflict over whether to preserve virtual Hells for the souls of "sinners" or give them the release of death. Leaping with jaw-dropping speed from character to character and from reality to virtuality, the narrative swiftly pulls these concerns together. New readers may be taken aback by the rapid pace, but fans will dive right in and won't come up for air until the final page.
Customer Reviews
Awesome in the correct sense
This has a blend of god-like technology along side themes delving into the nature of consciousness, morality and probably a few other subjects that slipped passed me because I was reading too quickly. Banks knows how to hit the Awe switch when it comes to technology, particularly weapons and habitats. His AI are as interesting as usual, especially a warship that's so at the peak of the galaxies destructive power the ships who come second place couldn't even guess at it's potential. This warship also comes across like a hyper intelligent delinquent Glasgow teenager. There's no shortage of ideas here, maybe there's too many in some parts because I found myself annoyed at having to get my head around some bizarre concept in a new chapter just as a previous chapter's story thread was getting juicy. Standard pacing technique I know, but Banks can jolt my attention around almost as much as the sore crew in one of his battleships mid-skirmish. There are lots of little nuggets in the book beyond the tech and the main themes, such as a brilliant description of people's real reasons for filling department meetings with hot air and how to skim for the information you need while paying as little attention as possible; as true for humans today as it is for quadrupedal bi-trunked Aliens. This is a hefty meal of a book, with lots of different courses.