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Against a Dark Background is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1993. Image File history File links IainMBanksAgainstaDarkBackg. ...
Iain Menzies Banks (born on February 16, 1954 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland) writes mainstream novels as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks. ...
Motto: (Latin for No one provokes me with impunity)1 Anthem: Multiple unofficial anthems Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow Official language(s) English, Gaelic, Scots 2 Government Constitutional monarchy - Queen of the UK Queen Elizabeth II - Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair MP - First Minister Jack McConnell MSP Unification...
The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
Some notable science fiction novels, in alphabetical order by title: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke 334 by Thomas M. Disch An Age by Brian Aldiss The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard...
Orbit Books a British publisher which specialises in Sci-Fi and Fantasy books. ...
A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) book is bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth or heavy paper) and a stitched spine. ...
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The Crow Road is a novel by the Scottish writer Iain Banks, published in 1992. ...
This article is about the novel by Scottish author Ian Banks. ...
Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ...
A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative in prose. ...
Motto: (Latin for No one provokes me with impunity)1 Anthem: Multiple unofficial anthems Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow Official language(s) English, Gaelic, Scots 2 Government Constitutional monarchy - Queen of the UK Queen Elizabeth II - Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair MP - First Minister Jack McConnell MSP Unification...
Iain Menzies Banks (born on February 16, 1954 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland) writes mainstream novels as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks. ...
Plot introduction An aristocrat, Lady Sharrow, is being hunted by a religious cult, the Huhsz, and has to travel widely with a team of former comrades-in-arms, to find an ancient weapon, placate the Huhsz, and save her own life.
Plot summary Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. Lady Sharrow, a former pilot and antiquities thief, lives in exile on a planet called Golter, which, with its sun Thrial, lies a million light years from any other star. An eccentric cult, the Huhsz, believes that the messiah can not be born until the end of her bloodline. The only way to escape their hunting passport lies in the recovery of the Lazy Gun - an ancient weapon, with a surreal and humorous approach to death. A light year, abbreviated ly, is the distance light travels in one year: roughly 9. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...
Against a Dark Background is a science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks. ...
Sharrow, who narrowly survived the assassination of her mother when a child, joins up with her former combat team on a series of quests. The Crownstar Addendum, the most valuable piece of jewellery on the planet, is just one of the things the group has to find on the way to the final quest for the last Lazy Gun. When it is eventually discovered, it is guarded by an elaborate defence system incorporating a genetic key which Sharrow has to deactivate. Genetics (from the Greek genno γεννώ= give birth) is the science of genes, heredity, and the variation of organisms. ...
Feril is the android who faithfully follows Sharrow through thick and thin. The book contains a road trip they make across a continent in a monowheel, a 'smart' vehicle with remarkable performance. The android Data, portrayed by Brent Spiner, from the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation An android is a robot made to resemble a human, usually both in appearance and behavior. ...
A monowheel is a one-wheeled vehicle similar to a unicycle. ...
History Against a Dark Background was rewritten from an original work of 1975. Banks has said it is the last of his old material that he has to rewrite. [1]
Literary significance & criticism The correspondence between the intricate descriptions of scenery and gadgetry, and the running theme of isolation, can be seen as a use of the pathetic fallacy. In literary criticism, the pathetic fallacy is the description of inanimate natural objects in a manner that endows them with human emotions, thoughts, sensations and feelings. ...
Sharrow encounters various political systems on her travels across Golter, which lends the book a lightly satirical tone in places. She also meets The Solipsists, a gang of pirate mercenaries on a hovercraft, who hold very unusual philosophical beliefs. The word solipsism (Latin: solus, alone + ipse, self) is used for two related yet distinct concepts: An epistemological position that ones own perceptions are the only things that can be known with certainty. ...
BHC SR-N4 The worlds largest car and passenger carrying hovercraft A hovercraft, or air-cushion vehicle (ACV), is a vehicle or craft that can be supported by a cushion of air ejected downwards against a surface close below it, and can in principle travel over any relatively smooth...
Like Consider Phlebas, Against a Dark Background gets a lot of its power from the treatment of the dynamics within a team. The carefully drawn characters arguably work better together in this book. Consider Phlebas (ISBN 1857231384) is a novel by Iain M. Banks first published in 1987. ...
The Sea House has echoes of Gormenghast castle in Mervyn Peake's classic trilogy. Gormenghast Castle in the BBC miniseries Gormenghast is a fictional castle of titanic proportions that features prominently in a series of fantasy works penned by Mervyn Peake. ...
Mervyn Laurence Peake (July 9, 1911 – November 17, 1968) was a British modernist writer, artist, poet and illustrator. ...
Title Against a Dark Background is set within a single solar system, isolated from the rest of the universe and alone in a vast intergalactic void. Major features of the Solar System (not to scale): The Sun, the eight planets, the asteroid belt containing the dwarf planet Ceres, outermost there is the dwarf planet Pluto (the dwarf planet Eris not shown), and a comet. ...
'The sky was full of darkness. There were planets and moons and the tiny feathery whorls of the dim nebulae, and they had themselves filled it with junk and traffic and the emblems of a thousand different languages, but they could not create the skies of a planet within a galaxy, and they could not ever hope, within any frame of likelihood they could envisage existing, to travel to anywhere beyond their own system, or the everywhere-meaningless gulf of space surrounding their own isolated and freakish star. For a distance that was never less than a million light years in any direction around it, Thrial - for all its flamboyant dispersion of vivifying power and its richly fertile crop of children planets - was an orphan.' Another possible derivation for the title of this book could be a 1975 Ursula K. Le Guin essay Science Fiction and Mrs Brown, which concludes: Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (born October 21, 1929) is an American author. ...
'And I think science fiction is - well, no, not important, yet still worth talking about, because it is a promise of continued life for the imagination, a good tool, an enlargement of consciousness, a possible glimpse, against a vast dark background, of the very frail, very heroic figure of Mrs Brown.'
Bibliography Against a Dark Background, Iain M. Banks, London: Orbit, 1993, ISBN 1-85723-179-1 (UK) ISBN 0-553-29225-0 (US)
External links - Steven Wu's review
- Snowblink review
- review
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