Consider Phlebas

Banks himself once described the plot of Consider Phlebas as: "a shipwrecked sailor falls in with a gang of pirates and goes in search of buried treasure." And that's precisely what it is, a colourful romantic adventure full of derring do and hair's breadth escapes and startling escapades. Only it's all played out against a vast backcloth of galactic warfare and huge faster-than-light ships and exploding Orbitals. In other words: it's big. The scale of the thing just makes us gasp with amazement. It was Consider Phlebas that introduced us to the Culture, which has to be the best space opera setting in science fiction. Honestly, if the Culture doesn't fill you with wonder, nothing will. And we could have included other Culture novels on this list, like Excession with all those brilliant ships, or Matter with those nested worlds, or The Player of Games just because. But Consider Phlebas came first, so it has to be first on this list. Why It Made The ListIt wasn't the first Culture novel written, but it was the first published. And you can say that it didn't just start the Culture, it started the British Renaissance, it started the New Space Opera, and it started an awful lot of people seeing just how mid-bogglingly good space opera can be. So it really has to come top of the list.The Culture series is an amazing set of novels and if it wasn't already considered a classic in the sci-fi genre, Iain M. Banks' recent departure from this world will definitely solidify that status. If you didn't know Iain M. Banks before this list, you need to give yourself a slap with a glove, because the recently departed man was considered such an asset to science fiction, that he's had an asteroid named after him. Consider Phlebas tells the epic, intergalactic tale of the Idiran-Culture War and the different levels of conflict that the War creates. One of the characteristics of the Culture series that makes it so interesting compared to your run-of-the-mill space opera series, is that it's told from the perspective of the antagonist of the tale. Battles, betrayal, action, and ship to ship combat abounds. Consider Phlebas is a great segway into the culture series -- regarded as some of the finest science fiction around.