The Books of Iain Banks - and Iain M Banks

Banks is a prolific writer and (at the time of interview) had produced 13 books in the last 16 years. We asked him to describe his books for us and he told us "It's a tired old cliché but books are like children..."

The Wasp Factory

"It was supposed to be a respectable, normal kind of book that went away and came back with a ring through its nose and a safety pin through its cheek, and dressed in black leather." Bank's first published novel, though not the first he wrote, this is the macabre and darkly humorous story of Frank, an unusual child growing up on a Scottish island.

Consider Phlebas

"A broth of a book, not particularly bright, but great fun to be with, the life and soul of the party.. ho-ho-ho-ho! Rather a Brian Blessed sort of a book.

Consider Phlebas is the first of the Culture books and you actually learn a lot about the Culture. You learn it from an antagonistic standpoint and the main character Horza hates the Culture - that was me trying not to proselytise too much, trying not to make it boring for the reader by saying "hey, here's the Culture, wouldn't you like to live there!" By writing from the point of view of someone who despised it, who was fighting against it, I made it more interesting for me and I hope for the reader as well."

The Bridge

"Definitely the intellectual of the family, it's the one that went away to University and got a first. I think The Bridge is the best of my books." The anonymous narrator awakes on an enormous bridge and slowly dreams his past life as he travels around an alien planet, dreaming of a barbarian straight from the pages of a sword and sorcery novel.

Espedair Street

"It's the child that wanted to be a rock star and got it." The story of Danny Weir, mega-rock star, and why he didn't commit suicide...

Walking on Glass

"It doesn't fit into this category at all! It's probably schizophrenic, it's a cluster bomb of a book." His second published novel, Walking on Glass combines the coming of age of an anguished adolescent, the disturbing fantasies of a paranoiac who's an outcast from a galactic war and the game-playing exile of two warriors from opposite sides of the conflict.

Complicity

"Definitely a coke addict!" Probably the nearest Iain Banks has come to a straight detective novel, this is the fast-paced story of a computer game-playing substance-abusing Gonzo journalist who's following up one big story and becoming part of another. It alternates between the disturbingly explicit and blackly ironic humour. "A bit like The Wasp Factory except without the happy ending and redeeming air of cheerfulness."

The Crow Road

"A family sort of person, an earth mother type." Another mystery, this is the story of Prentice McHoan's complex family, including the exploding grandmother.

Feersum Endjinn

His latest book and winner of this year's BSFA award, it's set on an Earth of the far far future and a third of the book is told by the child Bascule, in phonetic writing. "I was just getting fed up with writing normally, and I thought would make it feel more childlike, give more of a childlike feel of what it was like to be in this gigantic structure. I've always liked gigantic structures - probably because I was brought up near the Forth Bridge! Had a big effect on me."

State of the Art

A collection of short stories, including the novella in which the Culture discovers Earth.

"I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if the Culture found us. Basically it's a joke, Earth ends up getting used as a controlled experiment."

Player of Games

Gurgeh is the Culture's best Player of Games and he's sent to play the ultimate game of the Empire of Azad, without realising he's a pawn of the Culture. "It's impossible to be that big and that powerful and not to behave like that. By showing that, I was trying to make it a more rounded society."

Use of Weapons

Zakalwe is a mercenary, working for the Culture and trying to forget his past and ending up reliving it. "It's more a personal tragedy. Both this and Player of Games are slightly more like mainstream novels, slightly more about the individual characters but whereas there is a kind of redemption at the end of Player, there isn't at the end of Use of Weapons. Any optimistic note is predicated on the reader believing that the Culture is good. Zakalwe has created another slightly monstrous version of himself, another guy who has a thing about chairs. In the end, I still think the Culture is doing it's best by all concerned. It's a dirty job. I think it's the best of my SF novels, the most complex and the best structured. I think it's the second best of the novels overall, it's very psychological, about one person, one obsessive type; it's a kind of tragedy"

Against a Dark Background

Set outside the Culture, this is the story of the Lady Sharrow's quest for the last Lazy Gun, a weapon that destroys what you fire it at by poetically appropriate methods. "It's an SF rendering of a fantasy plot - getting the gifted team together and going in search of things of power. I wanted to have that sort of scale and that breadth of canvas and to do it from a hard SF point of view. It's all completely relativistic, completely Einsteinian, there's no breaking of the light speed barrier at all."

Canal Dreams

As the US government prepares to hand the Panama Canal back to Panama in the year 2000, the Japanese cellist Hisako Onoda travels to down the canal to reach Europe. "My first attempt at a political thriller - an action book. I was quite pleased with the way it escalated gradually so in the first half of the book there's no violence at all and about halfway through it starts to get quite violent and the rest of it just gets completely over the top. I was quite pleased with that aspect of it but as a political thriller it's not very good because it would be so easy to take the politics out."

He also told us about his next two books - one set in the Culture, but the first, Whit, set once again in Scotland. "It's set in May - there's a very good technical reason for this but it's a bit complicated. It's set largely in a cult, a religious cult . It was going to be called Cult Novel (well it's a novel and it's about a cult and I hoped it might become a cult novel...) but that was trying to be a bit too cheeky, a bit too clever, so back to the original title. It's told from the point of view of a young girl of 18 who's going to be the next cult leader. It's about her leaving the ashram - where they live just up-river in Stirling - travelling to Edinburgh, then to London then round England and then back, trying to find her cousin who's become apostate - she's hankering to leave the cult and they want her back in. I think it's a comedy - the jury’s still out on that I think!" He laughs, then grows more serious. "It's also about power and hate."

Although it's mostly finished, he's still "tinkering" with Whit. "My publishers extended the deadline; they've actually got very relaxed about deadlines since Nelson Mandela's autobiography which came in with about an hour to spare! But it should be out in September."

After that it'll be the next Culture novel due next June. "I'm really looking forward to that, I've been thinking about it for the last few months. I think it's going to be fun -there'll be lots of starship names of course!"

Where to start?

Where should you start, if you've never read an Iain Banks novel before? Although Wasp Factory was published first, its macabre approach may not be the best place to start; The Bridge is our favourite, but not everyone likes it. We aked Iain Banks what would be a suitably gentle introduction. "Espedair Street. It's so nice, there's not even any real deaths and murders in it! Not even any violence, it's very pleasant that way. I would say not The Bridge because although I think The Bridge is the best of my books, it's also the most complicated. And you don't want to read the best one first!"

(Published in SFX magazine)