Consider Philebas

1987 Banks, Iain M[enzies] (1954-2013). Consider Philebas. London: Macmillan. Rpt. London: Orbit, 1991. PSt

Conflict between two dystopian cultures, one Islamic, the other communist. First of his novels of the Culture, few of which have explicitly utopian content but can collectively be seen as utopian. See also 1988 and 2008 Banks. Other Culture novels include The State of the Art. Willimantec, CT: Mark V. Ziesing, 1989; rpt. in his The State of the Art (London: Orbit, 1991), 83-172; rpt. (London: Orbit, 1993), 99-205 [First contact of The Culture with Earth]; Use of Weapons. London: Macmillan, 1990; Excession. London: Macmillan, 1996; Inversions. London: Orbit, 1998; Look to Windward. London: Orbit, 2000; Surface Detail. London: Orbit, 2010; and The Hydrogen Sonata. New York: Orbit, 2012. Other Culture material includes “A Gift from the Culture.” Interzone, no. 20 (Summer 1987): 44-51. Rpt. in his The State of the Art (London: Orbit, 1991), 7-22. Rpt. (London: Orbit, 1993): 8-28; and in The Big Book of Science Fiction: The Ultimate Collection. Ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Vintage Books, 2016), 865-74 with an editors’ note on 964. See also his “A Few Notes on the Culture.” http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm. Accessed March 26, 2015. Scottish author.