Ian M. Banks is one of the recognized masters of "intellectual space opera", a writer who created his own universe. The War of the Two Largest Galactic Civilizations Republican Culture and the Idiran Empire A war that Culture has been drawn into only to save its peace of mind is the most valuable thing it has ever had. The war that the Idirans started because they understood that jihad must expand in order not to become meaningless. A war that lasted forty-eight years and one month. Total number of fatalities 851.4 billion. Ship losses 91,215,660. Number of planets destroyed 53. Scientists considered this war the most significant conflict in the last fifty thousand years of Galactic history. The episode in which the fate of millions of "strangers" is destined to be decided not by armies and not by generals, but simply by one single person - the murderer-"kamikaze" Tibaylo Quilana .