EXCESSION was published in 1996
It is a Culture novel
Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe.
It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing.
Then it disappeared. Now it is back.
Diplomat Byr Genar-Hofoen has been selected by the Culture to undertake a delicate and dangerous mission. The Department of Special Circumstances – the Culture’s espionage and dirty tricks section – has sent him off to investigate a 2500 year–old mystery: the sudden disappearance of a star fifty times older than the universe itself. But in seeking the secret of the lost sun, Byr risks losing himself.
There is only one way to break the silence of millennia: steal the soul of the long-dead starship captain who first encountered the star, and convince her to be reborn. And in accepting this mission, Byr will be swept into a vast conspiracy that could lead the universe into an age of peace...or to the brink of annihilation.
Iain said, “I think Excession is the limit in terms of the non-human side. It’s really about the ships and the Minds, not about the humans at all. Excession is the furthest it’s possible to take the reality of the existence of the Culture. The ships are really centre stage in any large-scale action, and the humans are almost irrelevant.”
French Cover
German Cover
German Cover