The Idiran-Culture War is a major fictional conflict between the Idiran Empire and the Culture in the midst of which Iain M. Banks' science fiction novel Consider Phlebas is set. His later book, Look to Windward, contains many references to the war: particularly the induced supernovae of two stars, which resulted in the death of billions of sentient creatures. References to the war can also be found in Excession, Matter and Surface Detail.
It has been commented that the Idiran-Culture war, with its juxtaposition of a religiously fanatic species fighting (and eventually succumbing to) the atheistic Culture, shows the author's theme of "antipathy to religious belief, although nominally not to the believers". The commentator also refers to the war as a clash of civilizations in the sense of Samuel P. Huntington.
Read more about Idiran-Culture War: Overview, Course of The War
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