Appearance in Novels
- Two books describe attempts to destroy Orbitals:
- Vavatch Orbital (an Orbital being strategically abandoned by the Culture due to the Idiran war) is the setting for a large part of Consider Phlebas. Vavatch's circumference of fourteen million kilometres and width of thirty-five thousand kilometres - significantly larger than most Orbitals built by the Culture - also produce greater simulated gravity. Vavatch also does not provide the Culture's typical omnipresent hub mind assistance.
- Masaq' Orbital is the main setting for Look to Windward. The hub mind of Masaq' was previously the ship Lasting Damage, and is both tormented by its actions during the Idiran-Culture War as well as the main target of another faction seeking revenge on the Culture.
- Jernau Morat Gurgeh sets off from Chiark Orbital in The Player of Games on his quest to play Azad.
- Prebeign-Frultesa Yime Leutze Nsokyi dam Volsh sets off from Dinyol-hei Orbital in Surface Detail on her mission for the Quietudinal Service.
Read more about this topic: Orbital (The Culture)
Famous quotes containing the words appearance in, appearance and/or novels:
“Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Though an unpleasant sort of person, and even a queer threatener withal, yet, if one meets him, one must get along with him as one can; for his ignorance is extreme. And what under heaven indeed should such a phantasm as Death know, for all that the Appearance tacitly claims to be somebody that knows much?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)