Transition
Iain Banks
 Set between the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the 2008 financial crisis, Transition centres on a shadowy organisation called 'The Concern' (also known as 'L'Expédience'), and how the workings of this organisation affect the lives of the novel's multiple narrators and characters. Banks uses the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics theory to imagine "infinitudes" of parallel realities, between which The Concern's agents–known as Transitionaries–can "flit", intervening in events to produce what The Concern sees as beneficial outcomes for that world. Transitioning, or flitting, is only possible for people with a predisposed talent for such movement, who may only flit after ingesting a mysterious drug called 'septus'. When a Transitionary flits into another world, he or she temporarily takes control of the body of an existing inhabitant of that world, along with some of that body's residual idiosyncrasies (such as personality disorders and sexual preferences).