Surface Detail (2010) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters edit see section history

• Lededje Y'breq: Chattel slave
• Jolier Veppers: Rich Industrialist
• Marshal Vatueil: Soldier
• Yime Nsokyi: Culture contact agent
• Prin: Pavulean Journalist
• Chay: Pavulean Journalist
• Bettlescroy: Add a description of this character.
• Jolicci
• Dr. Sulbazghi
• Sensia: Avater of the General Systems Vehicle (GSV) ship Sense Amid Madness, Wit Amidst Folly
• Byozuel
• Huen
• Xingre
• Dvelner
• Auppi
• Filhyn
• Zaive
• Mr. Nopri: An agent of the Numina section of Culture's Contact organization
• Dr. Miejeyar
• Grautze
• Drueser
• Joiler
• Sapultride
• Jeussere
• Lehktevi
• Me, I'm Counting: A (ex) Hooligan class LOU. A very long reference by Watts back to the But Who's Counting? - a ship mentioned in Look To Windward.
• Himerance: Ship avatar of the Me, Im Counting
• Demeisen: Ship avatar of Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints

Quotes edit see section history

• “Utility is seven-eighths proximity.”

• “Some problems were generational; you just had to wait for the relevant elders to die off and replaced with more progressive types.”

• “They speak well of everybody. That so bad?Yes; it means you can’t trust them.”

• “… a meeting was a benign environment; potentially just as tremendously boring as war but without the slivers of utter terror stuck in there as well.”

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• the belief system that provably worked and genuinely did produce miracles: reason, science and technology.

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• All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself. Very specific; this bit, here, right now. All the rest was fantasy.

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• “Insult, like many such feelings, is experienced in the soul of the person addressed; it is not something that can be granted or withheld by the person doing the addressing.”

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• Contact even had a phrase for it: Utility is seven-eighths Proximity.

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• When the fake behaved exactly like the real, why treat it as anything different? You gave it the benefit of the doubt, until something proved otherwise.

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• General Systems Vehicle Sense Amid Madness, Wit Amidst Folly,

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• Faced with the inevitable struggles and iniquities attendant upon a primitive life, it could be argued that it was an either very gloomy, unimaginative, breathtakingly stoic or just plain dim species that didn’t come up with the idea that what could feel like an appallingly short, brutal and terrifying life was somehow not all there was to existence, and that a better one awaited them, personally and collectively – allowing for certain eligibility requirements – after death.

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• Later, during seemingly endless committee sessions, he’d accepted that a lot of what passed for useful information-sharing within an organisation was really just the bureaucratic phatic of people protecting their position, looking for praise, projecting criticism, setting up positions of non-responsibility for up-coming failures and calamities that were both entirely predictable but seemingly completely unavoidable, and telling each other what they all already knew anyway.

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• There were few better ways of knocking the fight out of people than by convincing them that life was a joke, a contrivance under somebody else’s ultimate control, and nothing of what they thought or did really mattered. The trick, he supposed, was never to lose sight of the theoretical possibility while not for a moment taking the idea remotely seriously.

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• “Labtebricolephile,”

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Sichultia
• Bodhisattva
• Ubruater
• Restoria
• Vebezua
• Hell
• Espersium
• Tsungarial Disk
• Bliterator
• Heaven
• Iobe Cavern City
• Reliquaria
• Flekke

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Matter.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Iain Banks (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Locus Science Fiction Award (Finalist, 2011)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: 2010932993
• Dewey: 823.914

Notes for Parents edit see section history

This book has subjects that may be inappropriate for children in some cultures.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Science Fiction › Space Opera
• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Authors, A-Z › ( B ) › Banks, Iain M.
• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Science Fiction

More Books Like This edit see section history