Thread by @scotlit

Iain M. Banks (1954–2013) was born #OTD, 16 Feb—a🎂🧵
1/7

“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”

—A 2010 article on Banks’s genre-busting career:
thebottleimp.org.uk/2010/11/readin…

Bookclub: THE WASP FACTORY
Available on @BBCSounds – Iain Banks discusses his debut novel with James Naughtie & readers at the @natlibscot
🚨CONTAINS SPOILERS🚨 – read the book before listening to the programme!
2/7
bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01…

HIPPIE 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 @strangehorizons
3/7
strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/ar…

“Banks… envisions the overcoming of scarcity as the signal achievement of the civilization made by the Minds, and yet he focuses time and again on objects of unfulfilled desire”
—The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M Banks: Alan Jacobs in @tnajournal
4/7
thenewatlantis.com/publications/t…

“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”
— @TheSimonBot travels THE CROW ROAD on @tordotcom
5/7
tor.com/2020/10/16/the…

Why has Banks’s Culture series – “a world where your Bezoses & your Musks are not just irrelevant, but actively sought out & disempowered” – garnered a billionaire fanbase? @mechanicalkurt in @BloodKnifeMag on what might attract Jeff Bezos & Elon Musk
6/7
bloodknife.com/culture-war-ia…

“THE BRIDGE bends reality, breaks the rules of physics, invents technologies & plays around with impossible inventions”
– @samjordison explores the link between Iain Banks’s “mainstream” & #ScienceFiction works
7/7
theguardian.com/books/2014/sep…