Consider Phlebas
Culture Series, Book 1
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Narrated by:
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Peter Kenny
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By:
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Iain M. Banks
About this listen
The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. His Culture books combine breathtaking imagination with exceptional storytelling, and have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre.
War rages across the galaxy. Billions have died, billions more are doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, face cold-blooded, brutal destruction. The Idirans fight for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles are at stake. There can be no surrender.
Within this cosmic conflict, a crucial battle of wits is waged. Deep within a fabled labyrinth, on a Planet of the Dead forbidden to mortals, lies a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans desperately seek it. It is the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, to actually find it - and with it their own destruction.
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
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Story
A short story set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's NYT best-selling Expanse series. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion.
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Fun little short story
- By Carson on 12-28-21
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Ringworld
- By: Larry Niven
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to Ringworld, an intermediate step between Dyson Spheres and planets. The gravitational force created by a rotation on its axis of 770 miles per second means no need for a roof. Walls 1,000 miles high at each rim will let in the sun and prevent much air from escaping. Larry Niven's novel, Ringworld, is the winner of the 1970 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 1970 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1972 Ditmars, an Australian award for Best International Science Fiction.
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Genuinely Creative
- By Kennet on 05-25-03
By: Larry Niven
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Ilium
- By: Dan Simmons
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 29 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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From the towering heights of Olympos Mons on Mars, the mighty Zeus and his immortal family of gods, goddesses, and demigods look down upon a momentous battle, observing - and often influencing - the legendary exploits of Paris, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, and the clashing armies of Greece and Troy. Thomas Hockenberry, former 21st-century professor and Iliad scholar, watches as well. It is Hockenberry's duty to observe and report on the Trojan War's progress to the so-called deities who saw fit to return him from the dead.
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Achaeans and robots and post-humans, oh my
- By Ryan on 04-11-14
By: Dan Simmons
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Revelation Space
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.
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Defeated
- By Eoin on 07-15-12
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Ubik
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business - deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in "half-life," a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter's face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time.
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Holy sh*t
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-17
By: Philip K. Dick
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Saturation Point
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: Emma Newman
- Length: 4 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The Hygrometric Dehabitation Region, or the "Zone," is a growing band of rainforest on the equator, where the heat and humidity make it impossible for warm-blooded animals to survive. A human being without protection in the Zone is dead in minutes. Twenty years ago, Marks went into the rainforest with a group of researchers led by Doctor Elaine Fell, to study the extraordinary climate and see if it could be used in agriculture. The only thing she learned was that the Zone was no place for people. There were deaths, and the program was cut short. Now, they're sending her back in.
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Got to love them plot twists!
- By Pedro G. Gil on 12-12-24
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The Mercy of Gods
- Captive's War, Book 1
- By: James S.A. Corey
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The Carryx—part empire, part hive—has waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy in its conflict with an ancient and deathless enemy. When they descend on the isolated world of Anjiin, the human population is abased, slaughtered, and put in chains. The best and brightest are abducted, taken to the Carryx world-palace to join prisoners from a thousand other species. Dafyd Alkhor, assistant to a prestigious scientist, is captured along with his team.
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Incredible
- By Davey Francis on 08-15-24
By: James S.A. Corey
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Childhood's End
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer, Robert J. Sawyer - introduction
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city - intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began.
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Food for Thought
- By Kindle Customer on 11-17-08
By: Arthur C. Clarke
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All Systems Red (Dramatized Adaptation)
- The Murderbot Diaries, Book 1
- By: Martha Wells
- Narrated by: Alejandro Ruiz, Bradley Foster Smith, Holly Adams, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 33 mins
- Original Recording
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In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.”
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Narrators are the opposite of what we want
- By Badger Badger on 09-12-23
By: Martha Wells
What listeners say about Consider Phlebas
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Niklas
- 01-16-17
Fantastic narrative but shallow plot
He has a fantastic way of paining the environment in vivid ways and with surprising detail. The plot however feels shallow in the big picture and leaves you feeling less than satisfied.
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- Kaustav Chakravarthy
- 01-19-19
A brilliant book if ever there was one.
Breathtaking story set in an expansive, incredibly diverse and well-designed universe. Strong, well fleshed-out characters one really begins to care about. An intelligent, beautifully written story that reads more like poetry than prose. Wonderfully narrated, with each character having a consistent, distinct voice and the right intonation for every situation. What's not to love about this performance! Downloaded the second book in the series before the first one was even finished.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-23-20
Worth Reading, but not much more
All in all the world was rich and interesting and the book touched on topics both philosophical, political, esoteric and very human. Absolutely worth a read, but not much more. Hence I rate it 3/5.
The book was a bit indulgent with the worldbuilding/exposition at the cost of character and plot. Some parts were a bit too much spectacle for the sake of spectacle (or just a thought experiment the author really wanted to put in somewhere) and did only marginally contribute to the overall narrative/theme.
The narrator was great and absolutely enhanced the experience.
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- RTE Williamson
- 02-15-13
Culture Book 1 - Not a classic but a solid effort
What did you love best about Consider Phlebas?
The unassuming pace is interesting like listening to a day dream
Who was your favorite character and why?
Horza does kind of grow on you as the tough secret agent persona wears away. None of the characters are easy to like. And the ones that do... well...
What about Peter Kenny’s performance did you like?
Passable attempt at alien voices. The mapping of an unknown alien voice to known earth accent is always a tough one like why do French slum dwellers inherit a cockney accent in Les Miserables. Why do Culture supercomputers get the sound of a pompous nineteenth century English fop?
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
No. the slower patches are pleasant and necessary but do not engender a sprint read
Any additional comments?
This story is more than the sum of its parts.
The after taste is interesting and since it is part of a loose series it is enough to hit the buy now button a couple more times.
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- CybranM
- 08-09-23
Boring start but picked up pace
Didn't care much for how the book started but it got better. Main characters motivation felt really strange and some decisions were weird but cool world building
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- Peter
- 11-21-10
Routes of The Culture
A good listen. All the technological depth and character development you could want in a sci-fi novel. If you like "Ring World" or "The Mote In God's Eye", you'll probably like this more.
Only four stars out of five because it mainly lacks the humour of his later books. "Matter" (by the same author) was just brilliant!
Though this is Iain M Banks' first sci-fi novel, it is a 2010 audio production.
Once again, Peter Kenny excels as narrator.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Kanaka
- 07-11-22
Recommended
Pretty dang good. Narrator is great. Space communism is funny. Religious fanatics always cause trouble
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- Wayne Davis
- 08-20-17
Very good narration / Excellent Story to a point
First two thirds brilliant, then goes off the rails ending too abruptly leaving reader unfulfilled.
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- Mr
- 11-28-11
Classic, intelligent sciFi
Read this years ago: an absolute classic of sciFi. The novel works on many levels - as a story line, as a set of believable characters, and as a created world of its own. The sciFi environment which envelops the characters is convincing and deeply thought through - right down to the subtlety of the relationship between humans and the highly evolved AI computer systems who jointly form the 'Culture'. The novel is told through the character of an enemy of the Culture, again a thoroughly thought through interpretation of how a genetically modified species might interact with other species and cultures. Mostly though, the sciFi world created is convincing enough to allow the reader just to enjoy the battle of wits between the two principal characters.
Some of the scenes in the book are reflective of the extremities of behaviour which might be expected by extrapolating extreme character traits over immense populations, and I must confess I found them a bit strong - but they do contribute to the depth of characterisation and the sense of urgency in the story line.
The performance from Peter Kenny is well paced and compelling - to quote Jerry Pournelle in the golden days of Byte magazine - 'recommended'.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Anna
- 04-29-17
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I keep coming back to this one. every time I finish it I mourn the loss of Ian Banks.
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