The Algebraist

The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. With breathtaking imagination and extraordinary storytelling, they have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre.

'Banks is a phenomenon' William Gibson

It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars but Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year.

The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilisation. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars.

Abruptly seconded to a military-religious order he's barely heard of - part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony - Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years.

But with each day that passes a war draws closer - a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he's ever known.

Praise for the novels of Iain M. Banks:

'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

Books by Iain M. Banks:

Consider Phlebas

The Player of Games

Use of Weapons

Excession

Inversions

Look to Windward

Matter

Surface Detail

The Hydrogen Sonata

The State of the Art

Against a Dark Background

Feersum Endjinn

The Algebraist

Also 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.

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

Iain Banks (1954-2013) 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.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.