A Gift From The Culture

"A Gift from the Culture", published in 1987, is a short work of space opera, by the Scottish science fiction author Iain M. Banks. The story is an early venture into the "complex and unusual and very distant" setting of the Culture, which Banks would further develop through various of full length novels, stories, and his essay "A Few Notes on the Culture".

"'A Gift from the Culture' is one of Banks' few short stories, and of them, one of the even fewer that give glimpses of the Culture. In this story written more than a decade before the real-world War on Terror, Banks' protagonist is coerced into committing mass murder, seeming a bit uncomfortably like Luke Skywalker as Mohammed Atta." (p. 298, TSOR)

It was re-published in the Banks anthology, The State of the Art (1991, ISBN ).

Wrobik Sennkil: the protagonist of the story. "Vreccile citizen...male, prime race, aged thirty, part-time freelance journalist...and full-time gambler." Wrobik, however, is also an alien, a Culture expatriate, "Bahlln-Euchersa Wrobich Vress Schennil dam Flaysse...born female, species mix too complicated to remember, aged sixty-eight, standard, and one time member of the Contact section.... and a renegade."

Kaddus and Cruizell: two large Vreccile flunkies, to whom Wrobik is in arrears.

Maust: Vreccile, a dancer in one of the Low City’s gay clubs, and Wrobik’s boyfriend.

The story is set in Vreccis Low City, within the Vreccile Economic Community (VEC). From the opening passages, it could easily unfold as a classic noir tale: A rainy night outside a gambling club, Kaddus and Cruizell confront the reluctant but indebted Wrobik with a dead-end deal. In a couple of days a starship carrying the planet’s Admiral will be returning, and Wrobik is to shoot it down, over the city, using a small pistol which they give him to use. It is only when the gun is placed in his hands, does it become clear that this is another reality: it "comes to life," lights blinking, small screen flickering. The pistol will function only for those biologically of the Culture, and is the only weapon able to penetrate the starship’s defenses, making the alien Wrobik the perfect candidate for the job.

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Wikipedia