Look to Windward
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Look to Windward is a science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks: his sixth published novel to feature The Culture. In some respects it serves as a loose sequel to the first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas: both titles come from the same sentence of T.S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land (which appears in this work as an epigraph).
This book deals with the themes of exile, religious justification of mass violence against humanity/sentience (rather prophetically considering this book was written before 11 September 2001 and the Iraq War), and (naturally) the mores associated with life within a technologically and energically unlimited anarcho-socialist utopia. For those familiar with the universe of The Culture, this work also notably deals (in a limited fashion) with the Sublimed and with their construction of a heaven.
Many contemporary literary journals have reviewed Look to Windward favourably, and critics consider the author as one of the prime motivators for the return to the mainstream of contemporary UK fiction and science fiction.