Consider Phlebas

Consider Phlebas

First edition
Author	Iain M. Banks
Audio read by	Peter Kenny
Cover artist	Richard Hopkinson[1]
Language	English
Series	The Culture
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Macmillan
Publication date	23 April 1987
Publication place	Scotland
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	471
ISBN	0-333-45430-8
OCLC	15197422
Followed by	The Player of Games

Consider Phlebas, first published in 1987, is a space opera novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks. It is the first in a series of novels about an interstellar post-scarcity society called the Culture.

The novel revolves around the Idiran–Culture War, and Banks plays on that theme by presenting various microcosms of that conflict. Its protagonist Bora Horza Gobuchul is an enemy of the Culture.

Consider Phlebas is Banks's first published science fiction novel, and takes its title from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. A subsequent Culture novel, Look to Windward (2000), whose title comes from the previous line of the same poem, can be considered a loose follow-up.