Iain M. Banks Poradie kníh

A stunning, large-format hardback featuring original drawings by Iain M. Banks, giving a fascinating insight into the creation of his bestselling Culture universe - an essential collector's edition for all Iain M. Banks fans. číst celé

Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth, Scotland. After five years in exile, his presence is required at the funeral of local patriarch Joe Murston, even though the last time Stewart saw the Murstons he was running for his life. An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth, with its five-mile beach, can be beautiful on a sunny day. On a bleak one it can seem to offer little more than sea fog, gangsters, cheap drugs, and a suspension bridge irresistible to suicides.As he steps back into the minefield of his past to confront his guilt and all that it has lost him, Stewart uncovers ever darker stories, and his homecoming takes a more lethal turn than even he had anticipated. Tough, funny, fast-paced, and touching, renowned storyteller Iain Banks poignantly evokes adolescence, love, brotherhood, and vengeance in a rite-of-passage novel unlike any other.

Eighteen-year-old Kit is weird: big, strange, odd, socially disabled, on a spectrum that stretches from "highly gifted" at one end, to "nutter" at the other. At least Kit knows who his father is; he and Guy live together in a decaying country house on the unstable brink of a vast quarry. His mother's identity is another matter. Now, though, his father's dying, and old friends are gathering for one last time. "Uncle" Paul's a media lawyer now; Rob and Ali are upwardly mobile corporate bunnies; pretty, hopeful Pris is a single mother; Haze is still living up to his drug-inspired name twenty years on; and fierce, protective Hol is a gifted if acerbic critic. As young film students they lived at Willoughtree House with Guy, and they've all come back because they want something. Kit, too, has his own ulterior motives. Before his father dies he wants to know who his mother is, and what's on the mysterious tape they're all looking for. But most of all he wants to stop time and keep his father alive. Fast-paced, gripping and savagely funny, The Quarry is a virtuoso performance whose soaring riffs on the inexhaustible marvel of human perception and rage against the dying of the light will stand among Iain Banks' greatest work.

The war raged across the galaxy, resulting in billions of deaths and the destruction of moons, planets, and stars. The Idirans fought for their Faith, while the Culture defended its moral right to exist. Amid this cosmic conflict, an individual crusade unfolds. Deep within a labyrinth on a barren world lies a fugitive Mind sought by both the Culture and the Idirans. Horza, the Changer, and his unpredictable crew of mercenaries, human and machine, embark on a quest to find it, leading to their own potential destruction. Cheradenine Zakalwe, a top agent for Special Circumstances, alters planetary destinies through intrigue and military action. Diziet Sma, who elevated him from obscurity, realizes she doesn’t know him as well as she believed. Skaffen-Amtiskaw, a drone that once saved Sma's life, views Zakalwe as a burnt-out case, yet it cannot fathom the horrors of his past. In a symbiotic society of humans and machines, Gurgeh, known as the Player of Games, excels in every strategy and board game. Bored with his success, he travels to the Empire of Azad to engage in a game so complex that the winner becomes emperor. Faced with mockery, blackmail, and near-death experiences, Gurgeh accepts the challenge of a lifetime, which may also lead to his demise.

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.

"Абсолютная достоверность самых фантастических построений, полное ощущение присутствия - неизменный фирменный знак Бэнкса" (Time Out)

When sex slave Lededje Y'breq is murdered by a politician on the planet Sichult, the artificial intelligence running one of the Culture's immense starships resurrects her so she can seek revenge. Meanwhile, the Culture is uneasily watching the conflict over whether to preserve virtual Hells for the souls of "sinners" or give them the release of death

Science fiction. Imagine a world that is one of infinite parallel worlds, that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Presiding over this world is the Concern, an all-powerful organisation whose operatives possess extraordinary powers. There is Temudjin Oh, an unkillable assassin who journeys between the high passes of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and a wintry Venice; Adrian Cubbish, restlessly greedy City trader; and the Philosopher, a state-sponsored torturer who moves between the time zones with sinister ease. Transition is a high-definition, hyper-real apocalyptic fable for terrible times.

Matter is a novel of dazzling wit and serious purpose. An extraordinary feat of storytelling and breathtaking invention on a grand scale, it is a tour de force from a writer who has turned science fiction on its head. --