#theculture — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #theculture, aggregated by home.social.
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This week on my #scifi #writing #podcast I continue my exploration of #TheCulture with a comparison of Contact with the Federation of #StarTrek and their #PrimeDirective. Spoiler: They're almost completely opposite.
https://lexstarwalker.com/lol/103
#AmWriting #WritingCommunity #AmWritingSciFi #ScienceFiction
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#IainMBanks #TheCulture #SurfaceDetail
I've decided to re-read the entire series of Culture novels and short stories this summer. Been musing which one to start with. Not by order of publication. I'll take them in whichever order I feel like, one-by-one, starting today with Surface Detail because I remember fondly the character Lededje Y'breq who is taught and trained by the Mind on her ship Of Course I Still Love You.
Mmm, delicious Culture immersion.
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Butlerian Jihad!
Plunder Speculative Fiction for your grifts, and we'll do the same for revenge!
Going to make a chair our of Elon for ripping off Iain M Banks!
#SamAltman #ButlerianJihad #TormentNexus #SpeculativeFiction #Hustle #Grift #GenAI #LLMs #TheCulture #Dune
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I finally finished Iain M. Banks' series of "Culture" SF novels and thoroughly enjoyed it. There's an overview of the series on my blog at:
https://leejrussell.com/2026/03/22/iain-m-banks-culture-seriesutopia-power-and-moral-complexity/
Highly recommended reading!
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@Nickiquote this is how I feel when Elon Musk desecrates the memory of Iain M Banks
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CW: Question about Excession by Iain M. Banks
spoilers
I've always been a bit confused by the infinite pregnancy relationship plot in this book.
In retrospect it seems like a terrible idea to send Byr Genar-Hofoen, and Dajeil Gelian off to a remote research outpost together. The Sleeper admits to Byr this was their call. And it says "it was a mistake"
Did the ship know that when it made the choice? Is it "eccentric" after all or just pretending?
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Currently on BBC Sounds: THE STATE OF THE ART by Iain M. Banks
In 1977, the Culture starship GCU ARBITRARY discovers Earth: a primitive society on the edge of self-destruction.
When Contact agent Dervley Linter decides to go native, can Diziet Sma change his mind?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hv1dz
#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #scifi #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #audiobook
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“An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop…”
—Iain M. Banks, EXCESSION (1996)
#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #videogames #Civ #Civilization #SidMeier
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“An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop…”
—Iain M. Banks, EXCESSION (1996)
#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #videogames #Civ #Civilization #SidMeier
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“An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop…”
—Iain M. Banks, EXCESSION (1996)
#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #videogames #Civ #Civilization #SidMeier
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“An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop…”
—Iain M. Banks, EXCESSION (1996)
#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #videogames #Civ #Civilization #SidMeier
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“An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop…”
—Iain M. Banks, EXCESSION (1996)
#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #videogames #Civ #Civilization #SidMeier
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“Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION was one of the most addicting games of my life… I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Iain M. Banks shared the addiction and that his Culture novel EXCESSION was in part inspired by it.”
—Peter Tieryas on how Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION helped inspire Iain M. Banks’s 1996 Culture novel EXCESSION
#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #videogames #Civ #Civilization #SidMeier
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“Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION was one of the most addicting games of my life… I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Iain M. Banks shared the addiction and that his Culture novel EXCESSION was in part inspired by it.”
—Peter Tieryas on how Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION helped inspire Iain M. Banks’s 1996 Culture novel EXCESSION
#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #videogames #Civ #Civilization #SidMeier
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“Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION was one of the most addicting games of my life… I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Iain M. Banks shared the addiction and that his Culture novel EXCESSION was in part inspired by it.”
—Peter Tieryas on how Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION helped inspire Iain M. Banks’s 1996 Culture novel EXCESSION
#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #videogames #Civ #Civilization #SidMeier
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“Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION was one of the most addicting games of my life… I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Iain M. Banks shared the addiction and that his Culture novel EXCESSION was in part inspired by it.”
—Peter Tieryas on how Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION helped inspire Iain M. Banks’s 1996 Culture novel EXCESSION
#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #videogames #Civ #Civilization #SidMeier
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“Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION was one of the most addicting games of my life… I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Iain M. Banks shared the addiction and that his Culture novel EXCESSION was in part inspired by it.”
—Peter Tieryas on how Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION helped inspire Iain M. Banks’s 1996 Culture novel EXCESSION
#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #videogames #Civ #Civilization #SidMeier
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“I mean, your society’s broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No let’s blame the people with no power & no money & these immigrants who don’t even have the vote, yeah it must be their fucking fault.”
—Iain Banks, the final interview
13/13
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/15/iain-banks-the-final-interview
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture
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“Pay attention to the moments of contradiction & uncertainty threaded through character dialogue & self-reflection…Watch his tone. Watch his humour. For me, that’s where the sharpest lessons are”
—Dr Bethany Jacobs for the New Scientist
12/13
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture
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The New Scientist Book Club read the science-fiction masterpiece THE PLAYER OF GAMES by Iain M. Banks. In this video, Iain’s friend & fellow author Ken MacLeod discusses Iain’s schooldays, his literary influences, & his idea for a final Culture novel
11/13
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7OW6A8XCgg
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture
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Why has Iain Banks’s Culture series – “a world where your Bezoses & your Musks are not just irrelevant, but actively sought out & disempowered” – garnered a billionaire fanbase? Kurt Schiller examines ultra-rich misreadings & delusions for Blood Knife
10/13
https://bloodknife.com/culture-war-iain-m-banks-jeff-bezos/
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #billionaires
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“Our strange wee country is as complex as any alien civilization, & getting it as right as Banks did in The Crow Road required every bit as much world-building skill as his Culture”
—Simon Stephenson travels THE CROW ROAD for Reactor Magazine
9/13
https://reactormag.com/the-difference-is-entirely-one-of-setting-iain-banks-the-crow-road/
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture
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“Banks… envisions the overcoming of scarcity as the signal achievement of the civilization made by the Minds, & yet he focuses time and again on objects of unfulfilled desire”
—Alan Jacobs on the Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M Banks, for The New Atlantis
8/13
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-ambiguous-utopia-of-iain-m-banks
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #utopia
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“As a humanist, atheist, and socialist, he preferred to place his trust in techno-scientific development, rather than his faith in gods, or his capital in the market”
Joseph S. Norman on the legacy & utopianism of Iain M. Banks’s #scifi Culture series
7/13
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #utopia
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HIPPY COMMIES WITH HYPER-WEAPONS
“I think space opera in general celebrates a certain manic wildness and vivacity of vision, a refusal to be constrained”
A Few Questions About the Culture – an interview with Iain M. Banks, on Strange Horizons
6/13
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture
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“THE BRIDGE bends reality, breaks the rules of physics, invents technologies & plays around with impossible inventions”
—Sam Jordison explores the link between Iain Banks’s “mainstream” & science-fiction novels
5/13
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture
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“I love plot, I love stories. I hate these novels that just stop… I don't think it’s good enough. I want closure. I don't want any of this existentialist post-modern shite, pal. I want a story, with an ending”
—an in-depth profile of Iain Banks, from 1999
4/13
https://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/aug/07/fiction.iainbanks
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture
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Also on BBC Sounds: Inside THE WASP FACTORY
Iain Banks’s 1984 debut THE WASP FACTORY was described in the media as “a work of unparalleled depravity” & also “a masterpiece” – both reviews ended up on the cover. Simon Pegg discusses his favourite novel
3/13
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001w71d
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture
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Iain’s debut novel THE WASP FACTORY was published 42 years ago today…
Available on BBC Sounds – Iain Banks discusses THE WASP FACTORY with James Naughtie & readers at the National Library of Scotland
🚨CONTAINS SPOILERS🚨 – read the book before listening!2/13
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016w0nf
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture
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Iain M. Banks (1954–2013) was born #OTD, 16 Feb: a 🎂 🧵
1/13“Iain Banks… is a novelist who has his own ‘double’, an author for whom the idea of a split writing persona is emphatically not out of place”
—“Reading Double, Writing Double: The Fiction of Iain (M) Banks” – a 2010 article on Banks’s genre-busting career
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2010/11/reading-double-writing-double-the-fiction-of-iain-m-banks/
#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture
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@selfawarepatterns.com
It may be that I came to it via The State of the Art, a novella published with some assorted short stories, but I think that story of the examination of an Uncontacted world in which I had lived is a good entry point.For younger people, perhaps it would feel no more real than an Orbital.
#SciFi #IainBanks #TheCulture #StartingPoint -
Out in the #KnownSpace of #LarryNiven, there is a machine the size of a building, possibly built by a #PakProtector as its insides are human-scale. We know this because those that found it now employ humans to do maintenance on it, wearing black radiation armor suits heavy enough to require powered assists. The tech briefing went over my head with talk about neutrinos and #scrith and the mass of the W boson, but the key thing is that this machine will kill you. So never take off the gauntlets or stop to think about a problem. Just follow the manual, call for help if you need more hands, and listen to the veterans. The suits are like elaborate black plate mail, and I bet they would look impressive standing in a nice clean museum as they are literally relics, as is the machine which might finally allow humans to build a new type of hyperspace engine. But that's for others to worry about, as I need to earn enough to leave this place. This universe. Known Space is not a nice place to visit because it will kill you, enslave you, eat you, or worse. When I get home to the more forgiving universe of #TheCulture, I'm sure my ship-Mind will have a great deal to say about the rationality of my choices. I don't think scrith would work at home and it's not even full protection. This universe might hate people. And there is something wrong with their hyperspace. It may a singular thing actually aware of humans and is visually incomprehensible either as a side effect of hostility or attempts to interact. Finally, for any who follow me, #TeelaBrown may be too dangerous a friend to stand next to, but be sure to ask for post cards.
Thanks to @MicroSFF for inspiration. #IainMBanks
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The NEW SCIENTIST Book Club is reading the science-fiction masterpiece THE PLAYER OF GAMES by Iain M. Banks. In this video, Iain’s friend & fellow author Ken MacLeod discusses everything from how the pair met as teenagers at school to Banks’s literary influences, & even his idea for a final novel set in the universe of the Culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7OW6A8XCgg
#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #scifi #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture
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Free audiobook of my previous poetry pamphlet "For the hypothetical aliens" which is an exploration of our place in the universe and our relationships both with one another and nature, explored through the twin lenses of cosmology and Sci-Fi...
https://soundcloud.com/literal-fraud-press/sets/for-the-hypothetical-aliens
#Free #Book #Audiobook #Aliens #AreWeTheAliens #Poems #Poet
Featuring: #Squid #Poetry #IceWorms #DrakeEquation #KardashevScale #Daleks #IMBanks #TheCulture #Filk #SpaceProbe #SpeciesExtinction
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Free audiobook of my previous poetry pamphlet "For the hypothetical aliens" which is an exploration of our place in the universe and our relationships both with one another and nature, explored through the twin lenses of cosmology and Sci-Fi...
https://soundcloud.com/literal-fraud-press/sets/for-the-hypothetical-aliens
#Free #Book #Audiobook #Aliens #AreWeTheAliens #Poems #Poet
Featuring: #Squid #Poetry #IceWorms #DrakeEquation #KardashevScale #Daleks #IMBanks #TheCulture #Filk #SpaceProbe #SpeciesExtinction
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Free audiobook of my previous poetry pamphlet "For the hypothetical aliens" which is an exploration of our place in the universe and our relationships both with one another and nature, explored through the twin lenses of cosmology and Sci-Fi...
https://soundcloud.com/literal-fraud-press/sets/for-the-hypothetical-aliens
#Free #Book #Audiobook #Aliens #AreWeTheAliens #Poems #Poet
Featuring: #Squid #Poetry #IceWorms #DrakeEquation #KardashevScale #Daleks #IMBanks #TheCulture #Filk #SpaceProbe #SpeciesExtinction
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Free audiobook of my previous poetry pamphlet "For the hypothetical aliens" which is an exploration of our place in the universe and our relationships both with one another and nature, explored through the twin lenses of cosmology and Sci-Fi...
https://soundcloud.com/literal-fraud-press/sets/for-the-hypothetical-aliens
#Free #Book #Audiobook #Aliens #AreWeTheAliens #Poems #Poet
Featuring: #Squid #Poetry #IceWorms #DrakeEquation #KardashevScale #Daleks #IMBanks #TheCulture #Filk #SpaceProbe #SpeciesExtinction
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Free audiobook of my previous poetry pamphlet "For the hypothetical aliens" which is an exploration of our place in the universe and our relationships both with one another and nature, explored through the twin lenses of cosmology and Sci-Fi...
https://soundcloud.com/literal-fraud-press/sets/for-the-hypothetical-aliens
#Free #Book #Audiobook #Aliens #AreWeTheAliens #Poems #Poet
Featuring: #Squid #Poetry #IceWorms #DrakeEquation #KardashevScale #Daleks #IMBanks #TheCulture #Filk #SpaceProbe #SpeciesExtinction
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I return to my discussion of The Culture setting and explore the Culture’s economic systems. This leads to a discussion of our current day economics systems and government corruption. How do we move to our current corrupt systems to one like The Culture’s where there is true democracy and equality?
https://lexstarwalker.com/lol/100
#podcast #writing #AmWriting #WritingCommunity #SciFi #AmWritingSciFi #TheCulture #ScienceFiction #IainBanks #books #writers #authors
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This week on my #podcast I return to my discussion of The Culture setting and explore the Culture’s origins and its structure of government, such as it is. I also touch on why galactic empires are impractical, unlikely, and probably a silly idea. We’ll also explore why rebellion against controlling powers is much easier in a space-living civilization than one limited to a single planet.
https://lexstarwalker.com/lol/099
#Writing #SciFi #AmWritingSciFi #TheCulture #AmWriting #WritingCommunity
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Oh, the richness: Putin and Xi discussing organ transplants for life extension
OTOH, imagining Putin awake at night fearfully considering his own impending death, the same guy who has people slaughtered in Ukraine: well, it's something, I guess.
OTOH, the quest for immortality, no cost spared, has been standard for arse wipes from Qin Shi Huang to Thiel
On the gripping hand, guess at whose expense no cost will be spared? Where will the pristine, prime-of-life organs be harvested? Clones, you say? Who has time for that?! Not Putin.
As Ian M. Banks has it in a throwaway aside in Use of Weapons about an unspecified Ethnarch (who is exactly the kind of arse wipe you would expect from such a title):
His heart — the heart of an athletic young anarchist woman up until eleven years ago — was beating quickly, but not worryingly so.
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Oh, the richness: Putin and Xi discussing organ transplants for life extension
OTOH, imagining Putin awake at night fearfully considering his own impending death, the same guy who has people slaughtered in Ukraine: well, it's something, I guess.
OTOH, the quest for immortality, no cost spared, has been standard for arse wipes from Qin Shi Huang to Thiel
On the gripping hand, guess at whose expense no cost will be spared? Where will the pristine, prime-of-life organs be harvested? Clones, you say? Who has time for that?! Not Putin.
As Ian M. Banks has it in a throwaway aside in Use of Weapons about an unspecified Ethnarch (who is exactly the kind of arse wipe you would expect from such a title):
His heart — the heart of an athletic young anarchist woman up until eleven years ago — was beating quickly, but not worryingly so.
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Yesterday evening I had my most intense reading experience in decades, reading the climax of Iain M Banks' Consider Phlebas .
I'm a bit under the weather, last day of vacation before we'd return home from Saxon Switzerland and really should have been in bed, but I simply couldn't put the book down for 100 pages of slowly and dreadfully building climax.
I'm a very slow reader, and normally my brain has a tendency to fall asleep reading while I would prefer to focus on the book, but this was the polar opposite: I had to stop but couldn't.
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Yesterday evening I had my most intense reading experience in decades, reading the climax of Iain M Banks' Consider Phlebas .
I'm a bit under the weather, last day of vacation before we'd return home from Saxon Switzerland and really should have been in bed, but I simply couldn't put the book down for 100 pages of slowly and dreadfully building climax.
I'm a very slow reader, and normally my brain has a tendency to fall asleep reading while I would prefer to focus on the book, but this was the polar opposite: I had to stop but couldn't.
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Yesterday evening I had my most intense reading experience in decades, reading the climax of Iain M Banks' Consider Phlebas .
I'm a bit under the weather, last day of vacation before we'd return home from Saxon Switzerland and really should have been in bed, but I simply couldn't put the book down for 100 pages of slowly and dreadfully building climax.
I'm a very slow reader, and normally my brain has a tendency to fall asleep reading while I would prefer to focus on the book, but this was the polar opposite: I had to stop but couldn't.
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Yesterday evening I had my most intense reading experience in decades, reading the climax of Iain M Banks' Consider Phlebas .
I'm a bit under the weather, last day of vacation before we'd return home from Saxon Switzerland and really should have been in bed, but I simply couldn't put the book down for 100 pages of slowly and dreadfully building climax.
I'm a very slow reader, and normally my brain has a tendency to fall asleep reading while I would prefer to focus on the book, but this was the polar opposite: I had to stop but couldn't.
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Chapter one of Consider Phlebas. Not great to read over lunch.
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Chapter one of Consider Phlebas. Not great to read over lunch.
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Chapter one of Consider Phlebas. Not great to read over lunch.
