Pensa em Phlebas

Consider Phlebas, first published in 1987, is a space opera novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks. Written after a 1984 draft, it is the first to feature the Culture. The novel revolves around the Idiran-Culture War, and Banks plays on that theme by presenting various microcosms of that conflict. Its protagonist Bora Horza Gobuchul is actually an enemy of the Culture. Consider Phlebas is Banks's first published science fiction novel set in the Culture, and takes its title from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. Look to Windward (2000), whose title comes from the previous line of the same poem, can be considered a loose follow-up.Consider Phlebas is so many things: breathlessly exciting space opera, yet starring a morally ambiguous antihero; a story which both embraces and rejects the romanticism of space adventure; a story which unsettles as often as it thrills. Banks demands a lot from his readers and challenges them, while managing to keep his story accessible and absorbing. He's quite unlike anyone writing in the field today. The novel is set in Banks' Culture milieu. The Culture is a starfaring society run by benevolent machines; its enemies, the Idirans, are a more traditional, religious race. And the two are at war, with the Idirans winning, because, after all, they fight the encroachment of the Culture with a passionate fervor while the humans living within the Culture are generally soft and satisfied, and have had to learn to harden themselves for the realities of warfare. Banks refuses to draw good guy/bad guy conclusions about either side, depicting instead a conflict between ideologies, each convinced it is operating in the best interests of living beings in general.