Iain M. Banks Culture - 25th anniversary box set: Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games and Use of Weapons - Couverture souple

Banks, Iain M.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0356502090 ISBN 13 : 9780356502090

Editeur : Orbit, 2012

Synopsis

CONSIDER PHLEBAS The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction. USE OF WEAPONS The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks or military action. The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought. The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a burnt-out case. But not even its machine intelligence could see the horrors in his past. THE PLAYER OF GAMES 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.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

CONSIDER PHLEBAS.
The war raged across the galaxy. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

THE PLAYER OF GAMES.
The Culture -- a human/machine symbiotic society -- has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is 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. Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life -- and very possibly his death.

USE OF WEAPONS.
The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks and military action.

The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought.

The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a lost cause. But not even its machine could see the horrors in his past.

Revue de presse :

"Banks' ability to combine humor and horror, the cosmic and the human, as he builds an action-packed story on a moral framework, as well as his wonderfully original characters and, of course, the lavish descriptions of weapons and spaceships, makes Surface Detail all you could ask for in a space opera. Nobody does it better." --- Times (UK)

"This is an engrossing novel of ideas ornamented by fantastically cinematic set-pieces." --- The Guardian (UK)

"Surface Detail is the type of widescreen space adventure we've come to expect from Banks, full of elaborate games, spellchecker-busting names, salty dialogue and, above all, a thrilling sense of the limitless scope SF affords an author's imagination." --- Financial Times (UK)

"Iain M. Banks' new novel, Surface Detail, is some of the best work he's done in his galaxy-spanning Culture universe." --- io9.com

"Banks' labyrinthine and devious ninth Culture space opera novel...adeptly shifts perspective between vast concepts and individual passions." --- Publishers Weekly

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Orbit
• Date d'édition: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0356502090
• ISBN 13: 9780356502090
• Reliure: Broché