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
It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. 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.
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Surprisingly meh
- By Ryan on 05-19-24
By: Iain M. Banks
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Pandora's Star
- By: Peter F. Hamilton
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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The year is 2380. The Intersolar Commonwealth, a sphere of stars some 400 light-years in diameter, contains more than 600 worlds, interconnected by a web of transport "tunnels" known as wormholes. At the farthest edge of the Commonwealth, astronomer Dudley Bose observes the impossible: Over 1,000 light-years away, a star...vanishes. It does not go supernova. It does not collapse into a black hole. It simply disappears.
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Great Epic Scifi
- By Devin on 10-17-09
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Diaspora
- By: Greg Egan
- Narrated by: Adam Epstein
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Behold the orphan. Born into a world that is not a world. A digital being grown from a mind seed, a genderless cybernetic citizen in a vast network of probes, satellites, and servers knitting the Solar System into one scape, from the outer planets to the fiery surface of the Sun. Since the Introdus in the 21st century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software.
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Fabulous Story, Disappointing Performance
- By Ben on 12-08-13
By: Greg Egan
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A Fire Upon the Deep
- By: Vernor Vinge
- Narrated by: Peter Larkin
- Length: 21 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.
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What a wild, wacky, awesome book!
- By Noah Smith on 06-20-10
By: Vernor Vinge
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Hyperion
- By: Dan Simmons
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor, Allyson Johnson, Kevin Pariseau, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.
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The Shrike Awaits. Enter The Time Tombs...
- By Michael on 10-13-12
By: Dan Simmons
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Red Mars
- By: Kim Stanley Robinson
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 23 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, Red Mars is the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson's best-selling trilogy. Red Mars is praised by scientists for its detailed visions of future technology. It is also hailed by authors and critics for its vivid characters and dramatic conflicts.
For centuries, the red planet has enticed the people of Earth. Now an international group of scientists has colonized Mars. Leaving Earth forever, these 100 people have traveled nine months to reach their new home. This is the remarkable story of the world they create - and the hidden power struggles of those who want to control it.
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very long
- By Dana on 07-17-08
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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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The Collapsing Empire
- The Interdependency, Book 1
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Our universe is ruled by physics, and faster-than-light travel is not possible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transports us to other worlds, around other stars. Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It's a hedge against interstellar war - and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.
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THE STUPIDITIES OF COURT
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-01-17
By: John Scalzi
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All Systems Red
- By: Martha Wells
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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All Systems Red is the tense first science fiction adventure novella in Martha Wells' series The Murderbot Diaries. For fans of Westworld, Ex Machina, Ann Leckie's Imperial Raadch series, or Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. The main character is a deadly security droid that has bucked its restrictive programming and is balanced between contemplative self-discovery and an idle instinct to kill all humans.
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I just wish all four stories were one book...
- By Garrett Stone on 11-05-18
By: Martha Wells
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Snow Crash
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Neal Stephenson is a blazing new force on the sci-fi scene. With the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, he has "vaulted onto the literary stage." It weaves virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility - in short, it is the gigathriller of the information age.
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A solid sci-fi novel
- By Brent on 02-05-03
By: Neal Stephenson
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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
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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