Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.
Now it is back.
Endorsements
'Banks is a phenomenon ... wildly successful, fearlessly creative' — William Gibson
'Thrilling, affecting and comic ... probably the finest science fiction he has written to date' — New Scientist
'Banks has rewritten the libretto for the whole space-opera genre' — The Times