Culture- Surface Detail

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.





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:

Independent on Sunday

Guardian

Scotsman

Sunday Telegraph


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


Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
The Algebraist

Also now available:
- 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.