The Hydrogen Sonata

(Paperback)

Available Formats

---

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, the End Days for the Gzilt civilisation.

An ancient people, organised 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 civilisations: 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 civilisation are likely to prove its most perilous.

Reviews

25 years after Banks's first Culture novel he is as exuberant, slyly funny and mind-stretchingly imaginative as ever - SUNDAY TIMES

Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution - INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

Sharply satirical and packed with brilliant action scenes, this space opera proves British SF's big beard still plays the best tunes - BBC FOCUS

Author Bio

Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He has since gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels. Iain lives in Fife, Scotland.