Product Description
This digital document is an article from Utopian Studies, published by Society for Utopian Studies on January 1, 2002. The length of the article is 6778 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Imachinations of peace: scientifictions of peace in Iain M. Banks's The Player of Games *. (Essays).
Author: Ronnie Lippens
Publication: Utopian Studies (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2002
Publisher: Society for Utopian Studies
Volume: 13Issue: 1Page: 135(14)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description

Term paper due tomorrow? Need to bone up for a test? Or just looking for the best information about a favorite literary figure?

Turn to "Dictionary of Literary Biography" for the finest literature reference material. Brought to you by the Gale Group--the world's leading source of reference information--this e-doc contains a biographical essay written by a noted literary expert as well as extensive primary and secondary bibliographies. ... Read more

Product Description
This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Consider Phlebas, Excession, the Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Look to Windward, Inversions, Feersum Endjinn, Against a Dark Background, Matter, the Algebraist, Hundredth Idiot. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Excession, first published in 1996, is Scottish writer Iain M. Banks' fourth science fiction novel to feature the Culture. It concerns the response of the Culture and other interstellar societies to an unprecedented alien artifact, the Excession of the title. The book is largely about the response of the Culture's Minds (AIs with enormous intellectual capabilities and distinctive personalities) to the Excession itself, and the way in which another society, whose systematic brutality horrifies the Culture, tries to use the Excession to increase its power. As in Banks' other Culture novels the main themes are the moral dilemmas which confront a hyperpower and how biological characters find ways to give their lives meaning in a post-scarcity society which is presided over by benign super-intelligent machines. The book features a large collection of Culture ship names, some of which give subtle clues about the roles these ships' Minds play in the story. In terms of style, the book is also notable for the way in which many important conversations between Minds resemble email messages complete with headers. The book, more than any of the other Culture novels, focuses on the Culture's Minds as protagonists. When asked about his focus on the possibilities of technology in fiction, Banks said about the book: Also significant within the Culture novel cycle is that the book shows a number of Minds acting in a decidedly non-benevolent way, somewhat qualifying the godlike non-corruptibility and benevolence they are ascri...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=68863 ... Read more