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[Page 2] Praise for Iain M. Banks “Banks is a phenomenon… writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance.” —William Gibson “There is now no British SF writer to whose work I look forward with greater keenness.” —The Times “Poetic, humorous, baffling, terrifying, sexy—the books of Iain M. Banks are all these things and more.” —NME “Staggering imaginative energy.” —Independent “Banks writes with a sophistication that will surprise anyone unfamiliar with modern science fiction.” —New York Times “The Culture Books are not technological just-so stories. They’re about faith in the future, about the belief that societies can make sense of themselves, can have fun doing so, can live by Good Works, and can do so in circumstances far removed from our own little circle of western civilization.” —Wired “An exquisitely riotous tour de force of the imagination which writes its own rules simply for the pleasure of breaking them.” —Time Out [Page 3] “Pyrotechnic, action-filled, satiric, outlandish, deep and frivolous all at once, these bravura space operas… juggle galactic scale… with a revelatory energy rarely matched in speculative fiction.” —Science Fiction Weekly “Few of us have been exposed to a talent so manifest and of such extraordinary breadth.” —New York Review of Science Fiction [Page 4] By Iain M. Banks Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Against a Dark Background Feersum Endjinn Excession Inversions Look to Windward The Algebraist Matter By Iain Banks The Wasp Factory Walking on Glass The Bridge Espedair Street Canal Dreams The Crow Road Complicity Whit A Song of Stone The Business Dead Air The Steep Approach to Garbadale [Page 5] Copyright Copyright © 1988 by Iain M. Banks Excerpt from Matter copyright © 2008 by Iain M. Banks All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Orbit Hachette Book Group 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com www.twitter.com/orbitbooks First eBook Edition: December 2009 Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group USA. The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Ltd. The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. ISBN: 978-0-316-09586-0 [Page 6] Contents Copyright 1: Culture Plate 2: Imperium 3: Machina Ex Machina 4: The Passed Pawn Extras Meet the Author A Preview of MATTER [Page 7] 1 Culture Plate This is the story of a man who went far away for a long time, just to play a game. The man is a game-player called “Gurgeh.” The story starts with a battle that is not a battle, and ends with a game that is not a game. Me? I’ll tell you about me later. This is how