MATTER was published in 2008
It is a Culture novel
In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, there is a crime within a war.
For one man it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one – maybe two – people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she’d thought abandoned forever.
Only the sister is not who she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has changed almost beyond recognition to become an agent of the Culture’s Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilisations throughout the greater galaxy.
Concealing her new identity – and her particular set of abilities – might be a dangerous strategy. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else’s war is never a simple matter.
Italian cover
Jonathan Wright in SFX describes Matter: ‘Here’s the really good news – it’s ace, a grand concoction of familiar Culture elements – ironic, self-aware drones that deign to act as companions to the Culture’s flesh-and-blood inhabitants, starships with daft names, designer drugs that don’t give you a hangover – and, well, the historical novel. That last part requires some explaining. On a ‘Shellworld,’ a vast, hollowed-out artificial planet where different civilisations live on different levels, there’s a war in progress, between two societies that are technologically and socially somewhere around our Tudor or Stuart period. We’re even offered such historical fiction archetypes as the foolish prince and his wise servant (think Don Quixote and Sancho Panza). But a greater, older conflict may threaten the entire world.’
Iain said, “It’s fun to be able to play with that sort of stuff, and say, ‘here’s a framework that you as the reader can expect to get on with’, then you can work around it to your heart’s content really, but I wasn’t particularly trying to overturn anything... the foolish prince is pretty foolish. Although without giving anything away, he does become less foolish, I think, throughout the novel, and becomes a more rounded character. It’s fun to be able to play with these ideas.”