Author(s): Iain M. Banks

Science Fiction & Fantasy

A stunning new reissue edition of Against a Dark Background - 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.



Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilisation based around the planet Golter. Now she is hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes that she is the last obstacle before the faith's apotheosis, and her only hope of escape is to find the last of the apocalyptically powerful Lazy Guns before the Huhsz find her.



Her journey through the exotic Golterian system is a destructive and savage odyssey into her past, and that of her family and of the system itself.



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 Phlebas

The Player of Games

Use of Weapons

Excession

Inversions

Look to Windward

Matter

Surface Detail

The Hydrogen Sonata

The State of the Art



Other books by Iain M. Banks:

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.