Iain M. Banks (1954–2013) was born #OTD, 16 Feb: a 🎂 🧵1/13

Iain M. Banks (1954–2013) was born #OTD, 16 Feb: a 🧵
1/13

“Iain Banks… is a novelist who has his own ‘double’, an author for whom the idea of a split writing persona is emphatically not out of place”

—“Reading Double, Writing Double: The Fiction of Iain (M) Banks” – a 2010 article on Banks’s genre-busting career

@bookstodon

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2010/11/reading-double-writing-double-the-fiction-of-iain-m-banks/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

@bookstodon

Iain’s debut novel THE WASP FACTORY was published 42 years ago today…

Available on BBC Sounds – Iain Banks discusses THE WASP FACTORY with James Naughtie & readers at the National Library of Scotland

CONTAINS SPOILERS – read the book before listening!

2/13

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016w0nf

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

@bookstodon

Also on BBC Sounds: Inside THE WASP FACTORY

Iain Banks’s 1984 debut THE WASP FACTORY was described in the media as “a work of unparalleled depravity” & also “a masterpiece” – both reviews ended up on the cover. Simon Pegg discusses his favourite novel

3/13

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001w71d

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

@bookstodon

“I love plot, I love stories. I hate these novels that just stop… I don't think it’s good enough. I want closure. I don't want any of this existentialist post-modern shite, pal. I want a story, with an ending”

—an in-depth profile of Iain Banks, from 1999

4/13

https://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/aug/07/fiction.iainbanks

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

@bookstodon

Iain’s debut novel THE WASP FACTORY was published 42 years ago today…

Available on BBC Sounds – Iain Banks discusses THE WASP FACTORY with James Naughtie & readers at the National Library of Scotland

CONTAINS SPOILERS – read the book before listening!

2/13

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016w0nf

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

@bookstodon

“THE BRIDGE bends reality, breaks the rules of physics, invents technologies & plays around with impossible inventions”

—Sam Jordison explores the link between Iain Banks’s “mainstream” & science-fiction novels

5/13

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/23/iain-banks-the-bridge-link-mainstream-literature-science-fiction

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

@bookstodon

HIPPY COMMIES WITH HYPER-WEAPONS

“I think space opera in general celebrates a certain manic wildness and vivacity of vision, a refusal to be constrained”

A Few Questions About the Culture – an interview with Iain M. Banks, on Strange Horizons

6/13

http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/a-few-questions-about-the-culture-an-interview-with-iain-banks/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

@bookstodon

“As a humanist, atheist, and socialist, he preferred to place his trust in techno-scientific development, rather than his faith in gods, or his capital in the market”

Joseph S. Norman on the legacy & utopianism of Iain M. Banks’s #scifi Culture series

7/13

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2023/11/better-to-create-your-own-on-the-legacy-and-utopianism-of-iain-m-bankss-culture-series/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #utopia

@bookstodon

“Banks… envisions the overcoming of scarcity as the signal achievement of the civilization made by the Minds, & yet he focuses time and again on objects of unfulfilled desire”

—Alan Jacobs on the Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M Banks, for The New Atlantis

8/13

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-ambiguous-utopia-of-iain-m-banks

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #utopia

@bookstodon

“Our strange wee country is as complex as any alien civilization, & getting it as right as Banks did in The Crow Road required every bit as much world-building skill as his Culture”

—Simon Stephenson travels THE CROW ROAD for Reactor Magazine

9/13

https://reactormag.com/the-difference-is-entirely-one-of-setting-iain-banks-the-crow-road/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

@bookstodon

Why has Iain Banks’s Culture series – “a world where your Bezoses & your Musks are not just irrelevant, but actively sought out & disempowered” – garnered a billionaire fanbase? Kurt Schiller examines ultra-rich misreadings & delusions for Blood Knife

10/13

https://bloodknife.com/culture-war-iain-m-banks-jeff-bezos/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #billionaires

@bookstodon

The New Scientist Book Club read the science-fiction masterpiece THE PLAYER OF GAMES by Iain M. Banks. In this video, Iain’s friend & fellow author Ken MacLeod discusses Iain’s schooldays, his literary influences, & his idea for a final Culture novel

11/13

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7OW6A8XCgg

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

@bookstodon

“Pay attention to the moments of contradiction & uncertainty threaded through character dialogue & self-reflection…Watch his tone. Watch his humour. For me, that’s where the sharpest lessons are”

—Dr Bethany Jacobs for the New Scientist

12/13

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2506129-why-sci-fi-novelist-iain-m-banks-was-an-astounding-world-builder/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture