Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. Banks is a pseudonym of Iain Banks which he used to publish his Science Fiction.īanks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Hailed by SFX magazine as 'an excellent hopping-on point if you've never read a Banks SF novel before,' Look to Windward is an awe-inspiring immersion into the wildly original, vividly realized civilization Banks calls the Culture. But the Major's true assignment will have far greater consequences than the death of a mere political dissident, as part of a conspiracy more ambitious than even he can know-a mission his superiors have buried so deeply in his mind that even he can't remember it. Ziller claims he will do anything to avoid a meeting with Quilan, who he suspects has come to murder him. In the aftermath of the conflict that split his world apart, most believe he has come to Masaq' to bring home Chel's most brilliant star & self-exiled dissident, the honored Composer Ziller. There it will fall upon Masaq's 50 billion inhabitants, gathered to commemorate the deaths of the innocent & to reflect, if only for a moment, on what some call the Culture's own complicity in the terrible event.Īlso journeying to Masaq' is Major Quilan, an emissary from the war-ravaged world of Chel. Now, 800 years later, light from the 1st explosion is about to reach the Masaq' Orbital, home to the Culture's most adventurous & decadent souls.

They were attacks of incredible proportion - gigadeathcrimes. Desperate to avert defeat, the Idirans had induced not one but two suns to explode, snuffing out worlds & biospheres teeming with sentient life. The Twin Novae battle had been one of the last of the Idiran war, one of the most horrific.

Look to windward iain banks