Picked up from the amazing pile brought to the Sheffield Meet!

Will go to kittiwake once I've read it - so onto the ray pile it goes, which gets priority :o)

Pre-numbered label used for registration.

RELEASE NOTES:

Beebarf brought some sf books to today's meet-up for me and this is one of them.

Now, the Arbitrary wasn't actually insane; it did its job very well, and as far as I know none of its pranks ever actually hurt anybody, at least not physically. But you have to be a bit wary of a ship that collects snowflakes.

A book containing seven short stories and a novella. In the title story, it is 1977 and a General Contact Unit ship from the Culture is in orbit around Earth. The ship and the Contact agents it carries are studying Earth and its inhabitants in minute details in order to decide whether the Culture should make contact with the people of Earth or just continue to observe us. I liked this novella a lot, especially the sarky footnotes by the drone who translated it into English, but the other stories were a bit of a mixed bag.

To be released at Saturday's BookCrossing meet-up, downstairs at the Costa Coffee OBCZ.

I picked up from Costa Coffee and I'm looking forward to reading as I like Iain Banks, but have not read any of his science fiction yet.