Dopóki Cheradenine Zakalwe był tajnym agentem Kultury, jego życie toczyło się w miarę spokojnym rytmem: ot, zwykłe intrygi, podstępne plany, od czasu do czasu wojskowa operacja na jakiejś odległej planecie. Wszystko to uległo radykalnej zmianie w chwili, kiedy Diziet Sma wzięła jego los w swoje ręce… Kolejny tom cyklu o Kulturze potwierdza, że Iain M. Banks słusznie cieszy się opinią jednego z najoryginalniejszych i najbardziej nieobliczalnych współczesnych twórców science fiction.

Dopóki Cheradenine Zakalwe był tajnym agentem Kultury, jego życie toczyło się w miarę spokojnym rytmem: ot, zwykłe intrygi, podstępne plany, od czasu do czasu wojskowa operacja na jakiejś odległej planecie. Wszystko to uległo radykalnej zmianie w chwili, kiedy Diziet Sma wzięła jego los w swoje ręce… Kolejny tom cyklu o Kulturze potwierdza, że Iain M. Banks słusznie cieszy się opinią jednego z najoryginalniejszych i najbardziej nieobliczalnych współczesnych twórców science fiction.

La guerra se recrudece a lo largo de la galaxia. Las lunas, los planetas y las mismas estrellas se enfrentaron a una destrucción a sangre fría, brutal y, lo que es peor, aleatoria. Los Iridanos luchan por su fe; la Cultura, por su derecho moral a existir. No hay lugar para la rendición. En medio del conflicto cósmico, en las profundidades de un Planeta de los Muertos, yace una Mente fugitiva. Los rumores dicen que Horza el Cambiante, y su horda de mercenarios impredecibles, humanos y máquinas, se embarcaron en su propia cruzada por encontrarla… solo para hallar su propia destrucción.

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 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.Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though 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 war — brutal, far-reaching — 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 and 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.SURFACE DETAIL is Iain M. Banks' new Culture novel, a breathtaking achievement from a writer whose body of work is without parallel in the modern history of science fiction.

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 rest of civilisation. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars. Seconded to a military-religious order he’s barely heard of — part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony — Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer — a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he’s ever known.As complex, turbulent, flamboyant and spectacular as the gas giant on which it is set, the new science fiction novel from Iain M. Banks is space opera on a truly epic scale.Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2005.

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 rest of civilisation. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars. Seconded to a military-religious order he’s barely heard of — part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony — Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer — a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he’s ever known.As complex, turbulent, flamboyant and spectacular as the gas giant on which it is set, the new science fiction novel from Iain M. Banks is space opera on a truly epic scale.Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2005.

The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, 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.

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

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 organisation with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers? On the Concern's books are Temudjin Oh, an un-killable assassin who journeys between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice; and a nameless, faceless torturer known only as the Philosopher. And then there's the renegade Mrs Mulverhill, who recruits rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, hiding out from a dirty past in a forgotten hospital ward. As these vivid, strange and sensuous worlds circle and collide, the implications of turning traitor to the Concern become horribly apparent, and an unstable universe is set on a dizzying course.

Horza est un Métamorphe, un des derniers sur­vivants de cette variété de l’espèce humaine qui peut modifier sa forme à sa guise. Et il est engagé dans une croisade personnelle contre la Culture.Son combat, comme celui de Balveda, l’envoyée de la section Circonstances Spéciales de la Culture, n’est qu’une escarmouche insignifiante sur la toile de fond de la guerre qui oppose la Culture et les ldirans.Une guerre qui embrase la Galaxie. Une guerre inexpiable comme toute guerre de religion. Une guerre où aucun compromis n’est pos­sible, qui se soldera par la victoire d’un seul camp.Celui des Idirans qui veulent soumettre à leur divinité tous les peuples de la Galaxie.Ou bien celui de la Culture qui est parfaitement tolérant et qui, à ce titre, ne peut accepter aucune intolérance.Comme dans L’usage des armes et L’homme des jeux, lain Banks décrit ici une immense société galactique, complexe, rusée, bigarrée, baroque et attachante, qui prendra place dans les annales de l’Histoire du Futur aux côtés de Dune et d’Hypérion.

W galaktyce szaleje straszliwa wojna. Zagłada dosięga księżyce, planety, orbitale, a nawet gwiazdy. Giną miliardy rozumnych istot. Idrianie walczą za wiarę. Kultura o moralne prawo do istnienia. Tam, gdzie stawką są zasady, nie ma miejsca na litość. Losy konfliktu spoczywają w rękach jednego z ostatnich metamorfów; od wyniku jego straceńczej misji zależy przyszłość wszechświata.

Cheradenine is an ex-“special circumstance” agent who had been raised to eminence by a woman named Diziet. Skaffen-Amtskaw, the drone, had saved her life and it believes Cheradenine to be a burnt-out case. But not even its machine intelligence can see the horrors in his past.