The Hydrogen Sonata
(Paperback)
Available Formats
Publishing Details
The Hydrogen Sonata
By (Author) Iain M. Banks
Little, Brown Book Group
Orbit
12th March 2024
30th November 2023
United Kingdom
Classifications
General
Fiction
823.914
Short-listed for The John W Campbell Memorial Award 2013 (UK)
Physical Properties
Paperback
640
Width 128mm, Height 196mm, Spine 44mm
440g
Description
A stunning new reissue edition of The Hydrogen Sonata - a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.
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.Praise for the Culture series'Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution' Independent on Sunday'Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future' Guardian'Jam-packed with extraordinary invention' Scotsman'Compulsive reading' Sunday Telegraph The Culture series:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataThe State of the ArtOther books by Iain M. Banks:Against a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe AlgebraistAlso now available: The Culture: The Drawings - an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks' Culture series of novels in incredible detail.Reviews
Banks is a phenomenon: the wildly successful, fearlessly creative author of brilliant and disturbing non-genre novels, he's equally at home writing pure science fiction of a perculiarly 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, humourous, baffling, terrifying, sexy - the books of Iain M. Banks are all these things and more * NME *
Author Bio
Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. Consider Phlebas, his first science fiction novel, was published under the name Iain M. Banks in 1987 and began his celebrated ten-book Culture series. He is acclaimed as one of the most powerful, innovative and exciting writers of his generation.
