Iain M Banks 1954 - 2013

In the early 1990's, when I was of an age where the books of my youth were losing their magic and a fourth read through Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy wasn't quite appealing enough, I discovered the world of Science Fiction. I read Dune.

Yes, I know that's a different author from a different generation, but Dune sparked a desire to read more science fiction and it was an animated conversation with a friend about how good Dune was that ended in my being handed a 'Culture' novel - Use of Weapons, by Iain M Banks. I started it that same afternoon and read for 14 hours straight. I was hooked.

Iain Banks (his father forgot to put his middle name on the birth certificate) was born in Fife, Scotland, in 1954. Scotland was Iain's physical and spiritual home and it shows in many of his works, with its language, geography and engineered structures often referenced and in some cases central to his stories. Although science fiction was his passion from a young age, his breakthrough story was a work of fiction, The Wasp Factory, published in 1984 which brought him literary success and allowed him to focus on writing full time. It also set the tone for his hard edged and occasionally brutal narrative that runs throughout his stories.

He would continue to write fiction throughout his career under the name Iain Banks, but it is his science fiction works, written under the name Iain M Banks (the M stands for the forgotten middle name Menzies) that he is arguably most remembered for. That's not to say his works of fiction are any less good - some are among the best I've ever read - but his incredible imagining of a hedonistic utopian society run by benevolent but occasionally morally dubious and conniving machine intelligences that are beyond anything as crass as 'Artificial' is what stands out.

The nine Culture novels (some say eight, the source of bitter argument) are set in this universe - this galaxy in fact, perhaps somewhere not too far from us but far enough away to make little old Earth a place of little interest - and spread over a time span of hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. A series of mostly unconnected stories, they can be read in any order without spoiling the plot of the others. Some are hard going, but I recommend reading them in order of publication as there is a subtle progression in capability of the Culture's technology that is pleasing for the technocrat.

The novels centre around the doings of the Culture, a collective of pan-human beings and occasional aliens who join in for the fun, whose society is run entirely by the sentient 'Minds' (with a capital M) that oversee the planets, habitats and inventively named spaceships that cruise throughout Culture space. In the Minds, Iain perfected a most enjoyable and oft-emulated bastion of science fiction tropes - that of sentient spaceships, whose characters are varied, fiercely intelligent, occasionally flawed and often surprisingly offensive (both in language and in martial ability).

The Culture is a utopian ideal where no-one ever has to buy anything ('Money implies Poverty', quote the Minds), and one only has to ask to get whatever they want - within reason. Sentient drones and humans live side by side, and if the stories were only about the long, easy lives of the majority of the Culture's inhabitants, it would make a dull (but envious) read. Thankfully though, the Culture has enemies and threats to deal with. To explore the unknown it has the Contact section, and to deal with the nasty stuff that occasionally turns up in the ever expanding edges of it's sphere of influence, there is Special Circumstances. It's these elite, tip of the spear Minds, drones and humans that the stories revolve around as they defend, influence and often downright subvert newly discovered or threatening societies they come into contact with. Sometimes told from both sides of the coin (the first novel, Consider Phlebas, is actually from the point of view of the bad guys - who see themselves as the good guys, naturally), Iain's Culture novels explore the boundaries of morals, power through use of excessive force, and the rights and wrongs of interfering with another's life.

He does so while weaving a narrative that is so tight, with epic worldbuilding, it makes other SF stories seem tame by comparison. His stories are shot through with hard science references and exotic weaponry; knife missiles (often very snarky), energy fields, wormholes, devastatingly powerful munitions platforms, super-capable space suits and hyperspace shenanigans abound. They are in places poetic, technical, sometimes brutal and occasionally gory, and often include a shocking but well crafted twist that his loyal fans loved and expected.

An increasingly political figure from the late 90's until his death, Iain campaigned on several issues, including the Iraq war and Scottish independence, but despite his fiction novels increasingly reflecting his left-leaning political views, Iain was surprisingly even handed in how he handled the varying protagonists in his Culture universe.

Writing in a time where predictions of future technology was arguably more challenging than the low tech sixties and seventies, Iain's science fiction nethertheless hinted at Things To Come. Terminals (the Culture equivalent of smart phones), quantum computing, virtual reality that is more real and sometimes more interesting than real life, and the neural lace - a machine grown in and through the brain and spine, are today either emerging reality or actively being researched. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos both publicly admit they are fans of Iain's work. Elon Musk has even named three SpaceX drone ships after Culture spacecraft; the 'Just Read The Instructions' and 'Of Course I Still Love You' are soon to be joined by 'A Shortfall Of Gravitas'.

Iain died from cancer in 2013 at the height of his writing career. There was lots left to say and explore of the Culture. Perhaps the most telling legacy of his SF works is that they are described as 'unfilmable'. For some fans, this means it would not be possible to transcribe to screen the scope and subtlety of his novels, or that any attempt to reduce such epic work to film would be a travesty to Iain's legacy, and many would fight tooth and nail (figuratively speaking I hope) to prevent it. We'll see - Jeff Bezos announced recently that Amazon are going to serialise the Culture novels, starting at the beginning with Consider Phlebas.

The Culture remains one of the great modern SF literary influences, but one many wouldn't dare try to imitate, even if they do occasionally dip into his ideas now and then. Who wouldn't? It's just too much fun.

Written by tristam_james