Excession

Excession is a science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks and the fourth published to feature The Culture. It is a large-scale space opera with a complex plot following many characters across large volumes of space.

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The book details the Culture's response to an "Outside Context Problem", the Excession of the title (essentially a Big Dumb Object), is a perfect black-body sphere that appears mysteriously on the edges of Culture space. The Excession is Mysterious and Ineffable for a while, and then disappears. One of the main plot elements is the relationship between the Culture and a civilization appropriately named the Affront, a sadistic species which tends to view all other sentient beings (including other members of their own species) as tools for their amusement.

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The book, more than any of the other Culture novels, focuses on the Culture's Minds as protagonists.

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Science fiction: Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology upon society and persons as individuals. In common with most fiction, science fiction is written mainly to entertain people. The borders of this genre are not well defined, and the...

Iain M. Banks: redirect Iain Banks...

The Culture: This article is about the fictional society. For the main article on culture, see culture....