He is forced to fight and kill one of the crew to earn a place. He is picked up by a pirate ship, the Clear Air Turbulence ( CAT). However, the Idiran starship on which he is travelling is soon attacked by a Culture vessel, and Horza is ejected. They instruct him to retrieve the Mind.ĭuring Horza's extraction, the Idirans also capture a Special Circumstances agent, Perosteck Balveda. Horza, a shape-changing mercenary, is rescued from execution by the Idirans who believe the Dra'Azon guardian may let him onto the planet as in the past he was part of a small group of Changers who acted as stewards. The Dra'Azon, godlike incorporeal beings, maintain Schar's World as a monument to the world's extinct civilisation and the dangers of nuclear proliferation, forbidding access to both the Culture and the Idirans. A Culture Mind, fleeing the destruction of its ship in an Idiran ambush, takes refuge on Schar's World. The Culture and the Idiran Empire are at war in a galaxy-spanning conflict. A subsequent Culture novel, Look to Windward (2000), whose title comes from the previous line of the same poem, can be considered a loose follow-up. Its protagonist Bora Horza Gobuchul is an enemy of the Culture.Ĭonsider Phlebas is Banks's first published science fiction novel, and takes its title from a line in T. The novel revolves around the Idiran–Culture War, and Banks plays on that theme by presenting various microcosms of that conflict. It is the first in a series of novels about an interstellar post-scarcity society called the Culture.
Consider Phlebas, first published in 1987, is a space opera novel by Scottish writer Iain M.
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