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Matter

On sale

31st January 2008

Price: £19.99

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Selected: Audiobook Downloadable / ISBN-13: 9781405503990
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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 intricate structure of a Shellworld – an arti­ficial planet of spheres-within-spheres – is matched only by the machinations of its inhabitants.

On the eighth sphere of Sursamen, a man witnesses the murder of his father and flees, searching for the one – maybe two – people who could clear his name. For his brother, this means a life lived under constant threat of treachery, while for their sister, Djan Seriy Anaplian, it means returning to a place she’d thought abandoned forever.

Anaplian is not who she once was. She 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 she 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.

What's Inside

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Reviews

The Guardian
You can, if you must, draw clever comparisons between the conflicts in Matter and what's happening in Iraq. Or you can just sit back and listen to Toby Longworth's tongue-in-cheek reading of a very funny book
Daily Express
You can always expect the unexpected with an Iain M. Banks novel. So sit back and enjoy a tale with more than a twist or three in Matter. For a start, it's a rattling good story: a man accused of something he didn't do. Lots of action, lots of mind-boggling imaginative thought in this excellent piece of SF, read by Toby Longworth
The Times
There is now no British SF writer to whose work I look forward with greater keenness
The Guardian
Confirms Banks as the standard by which the rest of SF is judged