Trevor Smith

Iain Banks

Biography

Iain Banks was born in Dunfermline, Fife, in Scotland in 1954 and was educated at Stirling University where he read English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Fife where he now lives with his wife.

His first novel, The Wasp Factory (1984), immediately established Banks as an original voice in Scottish fiction, providing a contrast to the urban realism of such writers as William McIlvanney and James Kelman. The book tells the story of 16-year-old Frank Cauldhame, a self-confessed multiple murderer living alone with his father, waiting for the return of his half-brother Eric, an escapee from a mental institution.

Subsequent novels explored gothic settings, determinedly anti-Thatcherite contemporary politics, pop culture and technology. Walking on Glass (1985), follows three interwoven narratives, partly set in London. It was followed by The Bridge (1986), about the complex dreams of a coma patient, dominated by the spectre of a bridge. Espedair Street (1987) draws on the author's enthusiasm for rock music and tells the story of Daniel 'Weird' Weir and his band 'Frozen Gold'.

The Crow Road (1992) centres on Prentice McHoan, a student, negotiating sex, drink and death in the midst of a wealthy but eccentric Scottish family. Complicity (1993), also set in Scotland, follows a journalist who uncovers white-collar crime and corruption among the upper-classes. Whit (1995) is a portrait of a religious community in Scotland. The central character in The Business (1999) is Kate Telman, a successful businesswoman working for a multinational company negotiating to buy a country in order to take a place on the United Nations. When she becomes romantically involved with the country's leader, doubts begin to grow in her mind as to the benefits of capitalist ownership. Iain Banks' novel, Dead Air (2002), begins on 11 September 2001 and narrates the adventures of a 'shock-jock' in contemporary London.

1987 saw the publication of Banks' first science-fiction novel. He is almost unique in that he has achieved success in two genres, mainstream, literary fiction and the science fiction books written under the name Iain M. Banks. Reviewing Complicity (1993) in the London Review of Books in 1993 (13 November 1993), John Sutherland wrote: 'As with the novelist/entertainer Graham Greene (acknowledged as one of his favourite writers), there are two Bankses. Iain Banks is the author of six 'straight' novels. Iain M. Banks is the author of six science fiction novels. We are, I think, meant to see the writers in a Siamese connection, joined from birth but separate.' The restrained and taut prose of his literary fiction contrasts heavily with the vast science fiction sagas, in which he allows his imagination free reign to explore new worlds and a technological and a political vision through the 'Culture', a utopian organisation which contrasts with the dystopia created by many writers working in the genre. The Culture is a benign, post-sexist society, peopled with strong female characters. His science fiction writing includes the novels Consider Phlebas (1987), The Player of Games (1988), The Use of Weapons (1990), Against a Dark Background (1993), Feersum Endjinn (1994), Excession (1996) and Look to Windward (2000), as well as The State of the Art (1989), a novella and collected short stories.

Iain Banks' novels have attracted the attention of film-makers and broadcasters. His 1992 novel, The Crow Road, was successfully adapted by the BBC into a four-part television series, and Espedair Street (1987) was produced as a BBC Radio 4 Series, for which Banks wrote the accompanying music and lyrics. The film rights for the book have been sold and Banks has been contracted to write the songs. Plans for film versions of Complicity, The Wasp Factory and The Bridge are all underway.

His latest books are: Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram (2003), a personal journey through the highlands and islands of Scotland in exploration of the history and mystery of malt whisky; and The Algebraist (2004).

Genres (in alphabetical order)

Fiction, Science-fiction, Short stories, Song lyrics

Bibliography

The Wasp Factory Macmillan, 1984

Walking on Glass Macmillan, 1985

The Bridge Macmillan, 1986

Consider Phlebas (as Iain M. Banks) Macmillan, 1987

Espedair Street Macmillan, 1987

The Player of Games (as Iain M. Banks) Macmillan, 1988

Canal Dreams Macmillan, 1989

The State of the Art (as Iain M. Banks) Macmillan, 1989

The Use of Weapons (as Iain M. Banks) Orbit, 1990

The Crow Road Scribners, 1992

Against a Dark Background (as Iain M. Banks) Orbit, 1993

Complicity Little, Brown, 1993

Feersum Endjinn (as Iain M. Banks) Orbit, 1994

Whit Little, Brown, 1995

Excession (as Iain M. Banks) Orbit, 1996

A Song of Stone Abacus, 1997

Inversions (as Iain M. Banks) Orbit, 1998

The Business Little, Brown, 1999

Look to Windward (as Iain M. Banks) Orbit, 2000

Dead Air Little, Brown, 2002

Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram Century, 2003

Scottish Writers Talking II: In Interview (contributor) Tuckwell, 2003

The Algebraist (as Iain M. Banks) Orbit, 2004

Critical Perspective

Iain Banks’ work can be characterised by its mordant wit, its pace and keen sense of the contemporary. There is always a meticulous attention to detail, be that geographical (several novels have a Scottish setting), metaphysical (many of Banks’ characters are concerned with the bigger questions of mortality, morality and religion) or structural (be that of the narrative or of the physical structures upon which we have built our civilisation; indeed Banks has an engineer’s eye and the soul of a literary architect. There is an interest in the shape, form and constitution of things.)

The desire to shock is another feature of Banks’ writing and this is something that has given the author an unmistakeable aura of the controversial. Both Complicity (1993) and Dead Air (2002) are peopled with fast-living, fast-talking characters who take drugs and embroil themselves in dealings with the criminal underworld. The Crow Road (1992) begins with the line, ‘It was the day my grandmother exploded’ and in The Wasp Factory (1984), the author’s sensational gothic horror debut, the 16-year old narrator Frank Cauldhame dismisses the murders he has committed as a ‘stage [he] was going through.’

Banks also enjoys playing games with his readers and therefore demands of them quite considerable textual sensitivity. Cinematic-style flashbacks, leaps in temporal perspective and multiple points of view are all Banks trademarks and such daring structural complexity has been widely praised. The Crow Road, Complicity and The Bridge (1986), three of Banks most satisfying novels to date, are all characterised by their intricate construction yet they are handled with such a sureness of touch that the reader is more engaged than frustrated.

A further aspect of Banks' style is the manner in which he plays with the reader’s assumptions about his protagonists. In The Crow Road, Complicity and Look to Windward (2000), the reader’s ideas as to who the characters are prove to be unfounded in the final third of the novels when certain revelations cause a complete revaluation of everything that has gone before. Banks evidently relishes this form of literary rug-pulling and it exemplifies his desire to supply the reader with narrative challenges.

However, of all the author’s many qualities, the one which stands out above the rest is his ability to shift mode. Whether it be the Borges-like surrealism of The Bridge, the Grand Guignol of The Wasp Factory, or the vast and all-encompassing space operas that he writes under the name of Iain M. Banks, then we know that we are in the presence of a writer of prodigious ability.

Much of Banks’ work deals with power and identity. In The Wasp Factory, a darkly poetic and unsettling dissection of the mind of a childhood psychopath, Frank governs his small island keep, ‘an unchallenged lord of the island.’ Frank is obsessed with his control over living creatures. Each death becomes a victory for him, proving his demonic ability to remove life. The Wasp Factory was written during the Thatcher years and can be read as a parable of the cult of the individual taken to a grotesque and disturbing extreme. In that sense it is a satire as sharply observed, although markedly different in style and execution, as Brett Easton Ellis’ 'American Psycho'. Ken Nott, the self-regarding narrator of Dead Air, is obsessed with those who hold dominion over others, be that sexual, intellectual, financial or political, whilst at the same time exalting in the privilege of being able to speak his mind over the airwaves as a close to the knuckle DJ.

Banks is also interested in the relationship between power and duplicity. In The Wasp Factory, Frank is deceived by his father and it is only at the end of the novel that he discovers the truth about himself. In The Crow Road, Prentice McHoan, desperate to learn the secret of his uncle’s disappearance, considers that his family are keeping important information from him, yet he eventually learns that he is as much a victim of self-deception as anything else. And The Bridge, in which a man lies in a coma after a car crash, can be read as an extended study in deception, although this is more between writer and reader; the reader being left to discern the difference between fantasy and reality in order to discover the precise nature and location of events.

In his science fiction, Iain M. Banks has given the relationship between man and machine a fresh and invigorating examination. Each novel concerns an essentially benevolent and technologically advanced society called The Culture, administered by incredibly intelligent machines called 'Minds.' Banks has described The Culture as ‘about the nearest thing to a Utopia that I can imagine whose inhabitants remain human.’ The Culture attempts to institute a world harmonious for all and one which does not lose sight of the individual. However Banks is not the kind of writer who would deem such an idealised world the stuff of engaging fiction and therefore this futuristic ‘utopia of affluence’ is not without its problems nor a certain ruthless intent to pursue its own course. Look to Windward, investigates the consequences of a devastating civil war – a war brought about as a mistake on the part of The Culture - while the first Iain M. Banks novel, Consider Phlebas (1987) is as full of wanton death and destruction as The Wasp Factory. Yet Banks has carved out a niche for himself by the attempt to delineate a benign vision of the future. This is all the more laudable when you consider that is almost customary for science fiction writers, such as Banks’ friend Ken McCleod, to create dystopian futurescapes.

There is a danger of too neat a separation of Banks’ work into non-science fiction and science fiction. Indeed I have read that Banks himself often regrets his decision to write under two different names. A close examination reveals several crossovers and incongruities. A Song of Stone (1997) one of what William Gibson has called Banks’ ‘non genre novels,’ is never given a specific time or location and is closer in tone to Inversions (1998) – a Culture novel - than to any other book. Feersum Endjinn (1994) published under the name of Iain M. Banks, is a beautifully sustained far future novel and a fast-paced adventure, much of which is written phonetically, and recalls the ambition of The Bridge.

Yet there is a sense in which Banks is freed by science fiction to explore the outer reaches of his own imagination; and the creation of a civilisation whose nobility of aim and purpose, whilst not flawless, is nevertheless far more enlightened than the one in which we all currently reside. It is perhaps redolent of how the author would like to view the contemporary world, one which he so often calls into question with his coruscating attacks on avarice, hypocrisy and power.

Author statement

'I write because I love it, I enjoy it, I've spent most of my life trying to do it better, and I can make a living from it: beats a day job.'

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