CONSIDER PHLEBAS by Banks, Iain M - 1987

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. Stated First U.S. Edition. Hardcover. Very Good Plus / Very Good. Octavo, 8.5 in. x 5.7 in., pp. 471. Blue cloth-covered boards with gilt title to spine. Very light rubbing to extremities. Unmarked interior. Light sunning, and light rubbing to edges of dustjacket. Protected in mylar. "Consider Phlebas is a space opera novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks. It is the first in a series of novels about an interstellar post-scarcity society called 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 an enemy of the Culture." (from Wikipedia)

"Escape seemed impossible: 'there was one bewilderingly complicated and unlikely way out of the concentric shells of erupting energies now opening like the petals of some immense flower between the star systems. It was not, however, a route the Mind of a small, archaic warship could plan for, create and follow. By the time it was noticed that the ships Mind had taken exactly that path through its screen of annihilation, it was too late to stop it from falling away through hyperspace towards the small, cold planet fourth out from the single yellow sun of the nearby systems...the planet the Mind had made for through its shield of explosions was not one they could simply attack, destroy or even land on; it was Schar's World, near the region of barren space between two galactic strands called the Sullen Gulf, and it was one of the forbidden planets of the Dead"