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…

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More from @scotlit

Feb 14
VALENTINE WEATHER
Edwin Morgan

Kiss me with rain on your eyelashes,
come on, let us sway together,
under the trees, and to hell with thunder.

—a short 🧵 of Edwin Morgan love poems for #ValentinesDay 💘 & #LGBTHistoryMonth 🏳️‍🌈
1/4 Image
No smoke without you, my fire.
After you left,
your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray
and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey
I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal
of so much love…

—Edwin Morgan, “One Cigarette”
2/4 Image
There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine…

—Edwin Morgan, “Strawberries”
3/4 Image
Read 4 tweets
Feb 13
James Leslie Mitchell (1901–1935), better known as Lewis Grassic Gibbon, was born #OTD, 13 Feb. Author of SUNSET SONG—& many other titles from historical to science fiction—he is one of the most important Scottish writers of the 20th century.
A 🎂🧵…
1/8
digital.nls.uk/learning/sunse… Image
“The ambiguity of authority & reliability in narration, in Scots or English, is central to Hogg, Galt, Stevenson, many others, but in Gibbon’s trilogy it is utterly deconstructed”
—Alan Riach: the influence of Gibbon on contemporary Scottish literature
2/8
thenational.scot/news/15550316.…
“Not only did he invent a sentence structure that works like breath through the body of the reader, and a kind of Scottish English that’s simultaneously rich and spare, but [A Scots Quair is] a formally stunning and cunning work of art”
—Ali Smith
3/8
theguardian.com/books/2019/jun…
Read 10 tweets
Feb 8
Robert Louis Stevenson’s #shortstory “The Bottle Imp” was first published (in English) #OTD, 8 Feb 1891, in the New York Herald. It was originally published in #Samoan translation as “O le Fagu Aitu” in the missionary magazine O le sulu Samoa (The Samoan Torch)

A 👿🧵 …
1/8
Interesting for all sorts of reasons—a #Hawaiian protagonist, a strong female character—“The Bottle Imp” is wonderfully elegant, & moves like a Swiss watch. It also contains a paradox, which arguably undermines Rational Choice Theory in #economics
2/8
📷William Hatherell, 1905
Stevenson’s “The Bottle Imp” has inspired a number of spinoffs, from the 2016 opera THE DEVIL INSIDE, by @stuart_macrae & @louisewelsh00
3/8
theguardian.com/music/2016/jan…
Read 9 tweets
Mar 20, 2019
What Scotsman was caught up in a civil war before the age of twenty? Wrote a book that became the inspiration for an #Oscar-winning film? Met a runaway teenager in Paris & married her against the wishes of his family? Lost his ranch to raiding Apaches?
Went into Parliament as a #Liberal and came out as a #Socialist? Assaulted a policeman in defence of free speech and was sent to prison? Travelled in disguise in Morocco trying to reach a forbidden city? Was a founder of both @scottishlabour & @theSNP?
Was a ferocious critic of imperialism, racism & cruelty to any human or animal? Bought his favourite horse from the Glasgow Tramway Co. & rode it for 20 years? Rounded up horses at the age of 62 for use by the Army? Wrote nearly 30 books, including 200 short stories & sketches?
Read 8 tweets

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