General Contact Unit “Recent Convert”
Looking forward to the publication of Matter by Iain M. Banks next year (from Orbit in both the UK and US) I’ve been surfing the huge and helpful body of websites on the Culture, and happened on this comprehensive Wikipedia entry listing the ships of the Culture. They include the General Contact Unit “Well I Was In The Neighbourhood”, the Offensive Unit “All Through With This Niceness And Negotiation Stuff” and, my favorite, the Demilitarized Rapid Offensive Unit “Resistance Is Character-Forming”.
July 6th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
I’ve not popped in there for some time, but there used to be an incredibly lengthy running thread of reader-submitted Culture ship names on the Iain Banks fansite forum. Some are average, but some are unspeakably funny or just plain poetic - well worth checking out for IMB fans with about four hours to kill.
And I can’t wait for Matter. It’s been too long since we last had a fresh Culture novel.
July 6th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
And here it be. It’s only 112 pages
http://213.253.134.7/banks/forum2/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=84