As part of their sci-fi season, BBC Radio 4 present a dramatisation by Paul Cornell of the short story The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks.
A spaceship from The Culture arrives on Earth in 1977 and finds a planet obsessed with alien concepts like ‘property’ and ‘money’ and on the edge of self destruction. When Agent Dervley Linter decides to go native can Diziet Sma change his mind?