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".
Iain Banks
Banks was born in Dunfermline, Fife, to a mother who was a professional ice skater and a father who was an officer in the Admiralty. An only child, Banks lived in North Queensferry until the age of nine, near the naval dockyards in Rosyth where his father was based. Banks's family then moved to Gourock due to the requirements of his father's work. When someone introduced him to science fiction by giving him "Kemlo and the Zones of Silence", he continued reading the Kemlo series which made him want to write science fiction himself. After attending Gourock and Greenock High Schools, Banks studied English, philosophy and psychology at the University of Stirling (1972–1975).