CONSIDER PHLEBAS 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. USE OF WEAPONS 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 or 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 burnt-out case. But
not even its machine intelligence could see the horrors in his past. THE PLAYER OF GAMES The
Culture - a human machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players and one of
the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board
computer and strategy. Bored with success Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad cruel and
incredibly wealthy to try their fabulous game ...a game so complex so like life itself that
the winner becomes emperor. Mocked blackmailed almost murdered Gurgeh accepts the game and
with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death.
