Download or read book Surface Detail written by Iain M. Banks and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2010-10-28 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surface Detail is among Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, a breathtaking achievement from a writer whose body of work is without parallel in the modern history of science fiction. It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. It begins with a murder. And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself. Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture. Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful -- and arguably deranged -- warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war -- brutal, far-reaching -- is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it's about to erupt into reality. It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the center of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether. The Culture Series Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata

Download or read book Use of Weapons written by Iain M. Banks and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2008-12-22 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks and military action. The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought. The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a lost cause. But not even its machine could see the horrors in his past. Ferociously intelligent, both witty and horrific, Use of Weapons is a masterpiece of science fiction. The Culture Series Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata

Download or read book Matter written by Iain M. Banks and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2009-02-10 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel of dazzling wit and serious purpose. An extraordinary feat of storytelling and breathtaking invention on a grand scale, it is a tour de force from a writer who has turned science fiction on its head. "Unexpectedly savage, emotionally powerful, and impossible to forget." —The Times In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one — maybe two — people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever. Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has changed almost beyond recognition to become an agent of the Culture's Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilizations throughout the greater galaxy. Concealing her new identity — and her particular set of abilities — might be a dangerous strategy, however. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else's war is never a simple matter. The Culture Series Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata

Download or read book Inversions written by Iain M. Banks and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: London: Orbit, 1998.

Download or read book The Hydrogen Sonata written by Iain M. Banks and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2012-10-09 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling Culture novel. . . The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, provably, the End Days for the Gzilt civilization. An ancient people, organized on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture ten thousand years earlier and were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they've made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilizations; they are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new and almost infinitely more rich and complex existence. Amid preparations though, the Regimental High Command is destroyed. Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont appears to have been involved, and she is now wanted -- dead, not alive. Aided only by an ancient, reconditioned android and a suspicious Culture avatar, Cossont must complete her last mission given to her by the High Command. She must find the oldest person in the Culture, a man over nine thousand years old, who might have some idea what really happened all that time ago. It seems that the final days of the Gzilt civilization are likely to prove its most perilous. The Culture Series Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata

Download or read book Look to Windward written by Iain Banks and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eight hundred years after the most horrific battle of the Idiran war, light from its world-destroying detonations is about to reach the Masaq Orbital, home to the Culture. Major Quilan has supposedly come to take the exiled Composer Ziller back to their war-ravaged home world, Chel. But despite the major's civilized veneer, his true mission may be the death and destruction of an entire civilization.

Download or read book Surface Design for Ceramics written by Maureen Mills and published by Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This studio reference captures all the popular techniques available for embellishing clay, as well as a wealth of practical information and detailed images that lead readers through every phase of the design and decorating process.

Download or read book Surface of Earth written by Reynolds Price and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1995-05 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infused with the hungers and aspirations of three generations of Southerners, this breathtaking story of two families bound, then embittered, by the immoderate passions of a young woman and her older lover, is the first book in Price's masterful trilogy.

Download or read book Against a Dark Background written by Iain M. Banks and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilization based around the planet Golter. Now she is hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes that she is the last obstacle before the faith's apotheosis, and her only hope of escape is to find the last of the apocalyptically powerful Lazy Guns before the Huhsz find her. Her journey through the exotic Golterian system is a destructive and savage odyssey into her past, and that of her family and of the system itself.

Download or read book Walking On Glass written by Iain Banks and published by Abacus. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Establishes beyond doubt that Iain Banks is a novelist of remarkable talents' Daily Telegraph Graham Park is in love. But Sara Fitch is an enigma to him, a creature of almost perverse mystery. Steven Grout is paranoid - and with justice. He knows that They are out to get him. They are. Quiss, insecure in his fabulous if ramshackle castle, is forced to play interminable impossible games. The solution to the oldest of all paradoxical riddles will release him. But he must find an answer before he knows the question. Park, Grout, Quiss - no trio could be further apart. But their separate courses are set for collision. Praise for Iain Banks: 'The most imaginative novelist of his generation' The Times 'His verve and talent will always be recognised, and his work will always find and enthral new readers' Ken MacLeod, Guardian 'His work was mordant, surreal, and fiercely intelligent' Neil Gaiman 'An exceptional wordsmith' Scotsman

Download or read book The Culture Series of Iain M Banks written by Simone Caroti and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-07-26 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This critical history of Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels covers the series from its inception in the 1970s to the The Hydrogen Sonata (2012), published less than a year before Banks’ death. It considers Banks’ origins as a writer, the development of his politics and ethics, his struggles to become a published author, his eventual success with The Wasp Factory (1984) and the publication of the first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas (1987). His 1994 essay “A Few Notes on the Culture” is included, along with a range of critical responses to the 10 Culture books he published in his lifetime and a discussion of the series’ status as utopian literature. Banks was a complex man, both in his everyday life and on the page. This work aims at understanding the Culture series not only as a fundamental contribution to science fiction but also as a product of its creator’s responses to the turbulent times he lived in.

Download or read book Surface Decoration written by Anderson Turner and published by The American Ceramic Society. This book was released on 2008 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Surface Texture Answer Book written by Carl Musolff and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book In the Orbit of Sirens written by T. A. Bruno and published by Song of Kamaria. This book was released on 2020-10-04 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nightmarish machines have driven humanity into the depths of space. The survivors are forced to adapt to a planet filled with monsters.

Download or read book Modernist Objects written by Xavier Kalck and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modernist Objects: Literature, Art, Culture is a unique mix of cultural studies, literature, and visual arts applied to the discrete materiality of modernist objects. Contributors explore the many tensions surrounding the modernist relationship to objects, things, products and artefacts through the prism of poetry, prose, visual arts, culture and crafts.

Download or read book Consider Phlebas written by Iain M. Banks and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in Iain M. Banks's seminal science fiction series, The Culture. Consider Phlebas introduces readers to the utopian conglomeration of human and alien races that explores the nature of war, morality, and the limitless bounds of mankind's imagination. The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction. The Culture Series Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata

Download or read book Frequency Selective Surfaces written by Ben A. Munk and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2005-03-11 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "...Ben has been the world-wide guru of this technology, providing support to applications of all types. His genius lies in handling the extremely complex mathematics, while at the same time seeing the practical matters involved in applying the results. As this book clearly shows, Ben is able to relate to novices interested in using frequency selective surfaces and to explain technical details in an understandable way, liberally spiced with his special brand of humor... Ben Munk has written a book that represents the epitome of practical understanding of Frequency Selective Surfaces. He deserves all honors that might befall him for this achievement." -William F. Bahret. Mr. W. Bahret was with the United States Air Force but is now retired. From the early 50s he sponsored numerous projects concerning Radar Cross Section of airborne platforms in particular antennas and absorbers. Under his leadership grew many of the concepts used extensively today, as for example the metallic radome. In fact, he is by many considered to be the father of stealth technology. "This book compiles under one cover most of Munk's research over the past three decades. It is woven with the physical insight that he has gained and further developed as his career has grown. Ben uses mathematics to whatever extent is needed, and only as needed. This material is written so that it should be useful to engineers with a background in electromagnetics. I strongly recommend this book to any engineer with any interest in phased arrays and/or frequency selective surfaces. The physical insight that may be gained from this book will enhance their ability to treat additional array problems of their own." -Leon Peters, Jr. Professor Leon Peters, Jr., was a professor at the Ohio State University but is now retired. From the early sixties he worked on, among many other things, RCS problems involving antennas and absorbers. This book presents the complete derivation of the Periodic Method of Moments, which enables the reader to calculate quickly and efficiently the transmission and reflection properties of multi-layered Frequency Selective Surfaces comprised of either wire and/or slot elements of arbitrary shape and located in a stratified medium. However, it also gives the reader the tools to analyze multi-layered FSS's leading to specific designs of the very important Hybrid Radome, which is characterized by constant band width with angle of incidence and polarization. Further, it investigates in great detail bandstop filters with large as well as narrow bandwidth (dichroic surfaces). It also discusses for the first time, lossy elements used in producing Circuit Analog absorbers. Finally, the last chapter deals with power breakdown of FSS's when exposed to pulsed signals with high peak power. The approach followed by most other presentations simply consists of expanding the fields around the FSS, matching the boundary conditions and writing a computer program. While this enables the user to obtain calculated results, it gives very little physical insight and no help in how to design actual multi-layered FSS's. In contrast, the approach used in this title analyzes all curves of desired shapes. In particular, it discusses in great detail how to produce radomes made of FSS's located in a stratified medium (Hybrid Radomes), with constant band width for all angles of incidence and polarizations. Numerous examples are given of great practical interest. More specifically, Chapter 7 deals with the theory and design of bandpass radomes with constant bandwidth and flat tops. Examples are given for mono-, bi- and tri-planar designs. Chapter 8 deals with bandstop filters with broad as well as narrow bandwidth. Chapter 9 deals with multi-layered FSS of lossy elements, namely the so-called Circuit Analog Absorbers, designed to yield outstanding absorption with more than a decade of bandwidth. Features material previously labeled as classified by the United States Air Force.