Consider Phlebas: A Culture Novel (The Culture)

Product Information

Don’t you have a religion?” Dorolow asked Horza. “Yes,” he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. “My survival.”

Yes," he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. "My survival."Always a Bigger Fish: The Dra'Azon are a race of almost unfathomably powerful Energy Beings that care little for the physical galaxy besides preserving Ghost Planets as monuments to futility and destruction, including Schar's World. Neither the Culture or the Idirans want to risk pissing them off. Bora Horza Gobuchul is a Changer and an operative of the Idiran Empire. He was one of a party of Changers allowed on Schar's World, and for that reason is tasked by the Idirans with retrieving a Mind that had crashed to the planet. Horza is humanoid, but committed to the Idiran cause despite the fact that he does not believe in their god and does not agree with their harsh and aggressive expansion. He despises the Culture for its dependence on machines, and the fact that Culture's machines seemingly rule over the Culture humans, which he perceives to be spiritually empty and an evolutionary dead end. Batman Gambit: Xoxarle breaks one of Balveda's arms, and leaves her hanging on for dear life to a gantry with the aim of forcing the incredibly pissed-off Horza to choose between avenging his pregnant girlfriend and saving her... He chooses the latter. This allows Xoxarle to ambush the Changer, inflicting the injuries which ultimately kill him. The novel revolves around the Idiran–Culture War, and Banks plays on that theme by presenting various microcosms of that conflict. Its protagonist Bora Horza Gobuchul is an enemy of the Culture. Dave Langford reviewed Consider Phlebas for White Dwarf #90, and stated that "Banks pumps in enough high spirits to keep this rattling along to his slam-bang finale in the bowels of an ancient deep-shelter system whose nuclear-powered high-speed trains are used for... well, not commuting." [4] In other media [ edit ] Cancelled TV adaptation [ edit ]

Safe aboard the Idirian ship The Hand of God 137 (the 137 th ship to bear that name, Idiran ship-naming conventions being in strong contrast to the Culture’s predilection for jokes and irony), Horza gets cleaned up and learns his mission. Before he went to work for the Idirans, he was a caretaker on Schar’s World, and as such, he may be able to go there and retrieve the Culture Mind hiding there. Not anyone can just pop in on this planet; it’s surrounded by a “Dra’Azon Quiet Barrier” (precisely what this means is not revealed at this point), which will damage or destroy anything else that tries to land there. Horza agrees, and in classic One Last Job fashion, his condition is that once it’s done, he—and an old friend who, to the best of his knowledge, still lives on Schar’s World—will be given the resources to escape the war altogether. Yalson is a slightly furry humanoid woman working aboard the Clear Air Turbulence. She forms an intimate relationship with Horza during the time he is aboard the ship. So Consider Phlebas is about a military conflict between the Culture and the Idirans, a powerful and militant race that is united by its belief that its mission is to spread its religion to all other races, generally by force. The Culture is diametrically opposed to such behavior, so it reluctantly finds itself embroiled in a far-ranging galactic war that will eventually involve trillions of casualties and the destructions of thousands of planets, Orbitals, GSVs (General Systems Vehicles), Minds, etc. In the book, despite its length, we only get to see a tiny glimpse of this massive conflict via a few key characters and events. The first adventure in the Folio Society editions of ‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ series, Enid Blyton’s The Enchanted Wood features Jonathan Burton’s enchanting illustrations and a new introduction by Michael Morpurgo. I'm a Humanitarian: During a very nasty side arc when Horza is trapped on a deserted island on the Vavatch Orbital alongside a cannibalistic apocalypse cult. He has to figure out how to talk his way out of being eaten and reach an escape shuttle the Culture left on the island, before a Culture ship is scheduled to destroy the Orbital. Horza has to lose the meat on several fingers before he can escape the cultists. As one otherwise hardened reviewer put it, "I can't believe this is happening".Peter Benchley’s Jaws is the ultimate pulp thriller, and this is the ultimate illustrated edition. Folio commissioned Hokyoung Kim for the artwork, while the late author’s wife, Wendy Benchley, provides a fascinating new introduction. The first volume of the bewitching ‘Chrestomanci’ series by Diana Wynne Jones. Charmed Life arrives in an explosion of magic in this edition illustrated by Alison Bryant and introduced by Katherine Rundell. Ziller lives in self-imposed exile on Masaq', having renounced his privileged position in Chel's caste system. He has been commissioned to compose music to mark a climactic event in the Idiran-Culture War. Upon hearing of Quilan's visit, and suspicious of his reason for travel, Ziller scrupulously avoids him. Consider Phlebas, like most of Banks's early SF output, was a rewritten version of an earlier book, as he explained in a 1994 interview: The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual assassins of the new Yearking's immediate family by drowning them in the tears of the Continental Empathaur in its Sadness Season.”

Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Idiran special forces team led by Xoxarle is so xenophobic, stupid and singleminded that they betray the Free Company, get pretty much everyone killed, and leave Balveda able to rescue the Mind that would otherwise be theirs. To an extent this is also reflected in their overall conduct of the entire war — while they never had a hope of actually winning, they could have got out while they were ahead, or conducted their campaign much more efficiently. Throw the Dog a Bone: After spending the whole book being bullied and subjected to Fantastic Racism by Horza, Unaha-Closp survives the " kill-'em-all" final battle, and retires to build "small steam-driven automata as a hobby". vinsentient on It’s No Fun To Be Alone: Communicating With Cryptids in The Shape of Water 1 hour ago Phil Daoust in The Guardian said the story was an "enjoyable romp" and described Quilan as "one of the misguided yet decent villains who are a feature of these [Culture] tales". [1] He went on to complain of the heavy emphasis given to the consequences of war and that the Chelgrians were too thinly disguised humans. [1]Look to Windward is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 2000. It is Banks' sixth published novel to feature the Culture. The book's dedication reads: "For the Gulf War Veterans". What Happened to the Mouse?: Thanks to the Fat Bastard I'm a Humanitarian Prophet, Horza loses a finger. In fact, he has to pull the bones, now completely stripped of flesh, off his hand himself. No mention of his missing digit is ever made again. Did he regrow it? (He was changing to a semblance of Kraiklyn at the time) Are his crew just that incurious? Who knows?