It’s a great pleasure to say that the writer Ken MacLeod was with us for a webchat about Iain Banks. Ken and Iain were friends from their mid-teens onwards and this is a superb opportunity to ask about the life, works and enduring legacy of one our greatest literary stars.
Ken has also promised to re-read this month’s reading group title, The Bridge, so if you have any lingering questions about this fascinating, complex book this is a good opportunity to air them. Also, as a primer, and since we’ve been discussing how The Bridge straddles Banks’ mainstream fiction and his SF output, you might want to look at MacLeod’s lovely tribute to his friend’s talent, the way he “smuggled truck-loads of science fiction past the border guards of the ‘literary’ establishment” and the mark he is going to leave on posterity:
The reputation and reception of Iain Banks as a mainstream author may fluctuate in the future. His verve and talent will always be recognised, and his work will always find and enthrall new readers, but tastes change unpredictably as decades pass. But the place of Iain M Banks in science fiction is already assured, and permanent. He was one of our very best, a star whose light will travel a long way, and fall on places not yet built.
Finally, this is also a fantastic opportunity to ask this respected writer about his own work. Ken MacLeod is the author of 14 novels, from 1995’s The Star Fraction to his latest, Descent, which portrays a near-future Scotland transformed by technical and social change, seen through the eyes of a young man haunted by an encounter altogether too close for comfort. MacLeod’s novels and stories have received three BSFA awards and three Prometheus awards, and several have been shortlisted for the Clarke and Hugo awards. You can find him on his blog, The Early Days of a Better Nation, on Twitter @amendlocke – and happily, for us, right here on Wednesday 1 October.
Follow the Q&A here, as it happened
Here are all your questions and Ken’s answers in chronological order:
MythicalMagpie asks:
Firstly, I’d like to say that rereading The Bridge has brought home to me how much we have lost with the passing of Iain Banks. His talent for combining complex ideas with humour and readable narratives is going to be sorely missed.
I noticed, on a quick trawl through the Internet, that Iain Banks had a background in Arts subjects while you are a Science graduate, having studied Zoology. I was wondering if you think that gives you a different approach to writing Science Fiction and perhaps life in general?
It’s a long time since I read any pure Science Fiction, any suggestions for which of your books you’d like someone to read first?
Dylanwolf says:
Hello Ken. Thank you for joining us to discuss Iain and his work.
The following post to your Guardian article on Iain Banks from June last year was made by spacedone had 187 likes. He/She quoted first from your piece -
A source of enduring irritation to him – and to his indefatigable literary agent Mic Cheetham, who became a beloved friend – was the tendency of some critics who admired his mainstream work to treat his SF as a potboiling sideline best passed over in silence, like some embarrassing and disreputable, but otherwise harmless quirk.
I caught the tribute to Iain on R4 Today programme this morning where his entire body of science fiction work was essentially dismissed as unimportant by the guests. Half of his life’s work dismissed with a “Um... I tried reading one once, I didn’t like it.” Bloody snobs.
A good number of the subsequent posts re-iterated this same theme - namely the idea that literary critics are too biased against the genre of sci-fi to admit literary merit in his sci-fi “M.” novels.
Apparently for a significant percentage of Iain’s sci-fi fans there is highly passionate rejection of the opinion of literary critics as too snobbish (to the far more vituperative accusations - “arrogant tossers”, “full of wank”) to recognise the value of his sci-fi output seems to be a issue invoking of highly militant and emotional content.
People who read SF just for pleasure are the only credible judges of merit.
claims makingtime.
My question is do you think that these extremist views of a seemingly significant proportion of Iain’s sci-fi fans damage or help his standing as a literary figure?
And how valid a viewpoint is it? In reality to what extent has “the literary critic” (no names no pack drill) dismissed Iain’s work because of prejudice against genre writing?
Guardian contributor I don't want to get into the literary v genre argument here, and I don't think any literary fiction critics bother reading SF fans' intemperate comments under articles, so damage in that quarter isn't a worry.
It isn't hard to find readers and reviewers who liked Iain Banks and ignored Iain M. Banks, however, and Iain did meet quite a few: 'Yes, but when are you going to write your next novel, Mr Banks?'
juliusflywheel asks:
Dear Ken,
A question.
Had Iain spoken to you of stories untold of The Culture? Ones that he wanted to write, ones that he’d pondered but discarded or any themes he wanted to explore.
Ps. What’s your favourite Culture ship name, Canon, made up or both?
JF/Bob, Melbourne
Guardian contributor Untold stories ... he told me after his diagnosis that he had an idea for a Culture novel that if he didn't live to write he'd leave the notes and outline to me to write in my own way (not a pastiche of his style or anything). Sadly he didn't live long enough even to leave notes, beyond one basic idea which I can't do anything with.
Fave Culture ship name ... mind's gone blank. Oh wait, GSV Mind's Gone Blank sounds plausible, doesn't it?
Thackur asks:
Hello Ken. We’ve been talking a lot about the influence of Alasdair Grey on Iain Banks - the other writer he often cited as a huge influence and one very relevant to the discussion about science fiction was M John Harrison. (Who is amazing and who I discovered thanks to Iain Banks referencing him...). Do you think MJH’s influence is apparent in The Bridge? What ideas do you think Iain took from MJH’s work? (And is it true that MJH was inspired to write the Light trilogy after a conversation with Iain?).
Second question: One thing that’s very refreshing in Iain’s sci-fi is the exuberant humour . Do you think there was suddenly a watershed in sci-fi in general when it developed a kind of self-aware humour? (Was it all Douglas Adams’s fault?!). Or has it always been there? Do you think that perhaps saved the genre from itself to a degree? (Much like This Is Spinal Tap made heavy metal bands aware of and able to laugh at their own excesses - though importantly, unlike the ‘Tap, neither Adams nor Banks are laughing at science-fiction when they use it as a fertile ground for humour).
Guardian contributor I think what Iain took from Mike Harrison's work wasn't so much ideas as ambition, and a sense of what could be done with apparently clapped-out forms (sword-and-sorcery, post-apocalypse, space opera ...) if you faced head-on what real issues they were evading. Harrison's 1970s critical essays and reviews in New Worlds Quarterly were a big influence, and his stories a big inspiration in that respect.
There's always been a strand of humour in SF, as well as parody, and Iain had already written the first drafts of several novels a few years before Hithchiker came on the radio. Catch-22 and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas were more direct influences on Iain.
beerbart asks:
Ken, you are acknowledged by Iain himself in Use of Weapons for ‘arguing the old warrior out of retirement’. To what extent did you influence Use of Weapons? Could you see something worth persevering that Iain couldn’t?
Guardian contributor All I did for Use of Weapons was to ask Iain if I could re-read the MS and see if something could be done with it, and then to point out that its original highly artificial structure placed the climactic revelation in the middle, making everything after it an anti-climax. I also suggested the structure of one set of chapters (the flashbacks) going backward in time and the other (the narrative present) going forward, so they both arrived at their respective (and linked) revelations together.
nightjar12 asks:
Hi Ken, I have not read any Iain M. Banks as I am not a lover of sci-fi novels but I enjoyed The Bridge so much, and others on here have been linking it to The Culture that I am ready to try - can you recommend a good starting point?
Guardian contributor 
Guardian staff Just to jump in, I read Consider Phlebas straight after The Bridge, and although it's supposed to be one of the weaker Culture novels, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Interesting to see lots of the ideas from the Bridge reappearing in new contexts too...
boguscoleman asks:
Hi Ken. I have a read quite a few of Iain’s books, including a couple of the Culture series, but have still a long way to go before I finish them all (lucky me!). One theme in his SF work that stands out for me so far is his treatment of what happens when we die, and in particular the choices available to both individuals and civilisations in his books. From sublimation and personality back-ups to artificial heavens and hells.
Everything I have read has been characterised by his astonishing imagination, but these themes do seem to be among the more thoughtfully explored concepts in the series.
I guess my question is are these explorations of the afterlife a reflection of his own views, or a commentary on the divisiveness and conflict generated by religion in general?
Thanks!
Guardian contributor Iain was a hard-line materialist, and had little interest in religion as such. However, his understanding of materialism held open the possibility of an actual afterlife becoming technically possible through (handwave) copying brain-states into machines, and the copies living in a virtual reality or a robot body. That opened all sorts of possibilities, grim as well as good. But the idea that we now have after-lives of whatever sort struck him as implausible as well as self-centred.
Aeglefinus asks:
Ken, were the oblique references to The Culture in The Bridge just for those of you who had read the drafts of the early Culture novels?
Guardian contributor ActualGraunReader asks:
Hello Ken,
It was obvious from ‘Walking On Glass’ that the author was familiar with a lot of different types of fabulism. In the Culture books we saw a lot of small variations but really within what’s often called ‘wide-screen baroque’, with hints of Charles Harness and Barrington J Bayley in the early ones then a more developed Iain M Banks idiom. Apart from ‘Feersum Enjinn’ and a couple of shorter piece it was exploring this one set-up in different ways.
Did he ever hint of wanting to write other kinds of SF? Would a near-future Scotland, such as in ‘Rule 34’ have appealed to him as a subject?
Guardian contributor To the best of my knowledge Iain never had so much as an idea for a near-future SF novel, and certainly never showed any interest in writing one. The closest he comes to that is Transition. He explored other sub-genres of SF and fantasy in the short stories collected in The State of the Art, but I don't recall any that were straight extrapolation of near-future possibilities. He liked reading that kind of SF, but wasn't inclined to write it.
daveportivo asks:
Hey Ken and hey Reading Group,
Just finished The Bridge, I thought it was totally awesome, but I’m still sort of processing it, feel very similar to how I did when I finished The Magus actually, but not ready to ask a question about that book yet (hopefully will be tomorrow though)
But I do have a more general question:
Q: Me and my dad often argue about The Culture, we both love the books but disagree about, well, The Culture itself. My dad thinks it’s benign and brilliant idea, but to me the novels reminded me of Andy Warhol’s critique of consumerism: you can have all the choice in the world, all the freedom in the world, except seemingly the the ultimate choice - a million flavours of personalised soup, one label.
I read malevolence and machinations, he read an optimistic vision of existence. From knowing Iain what was his feeling about the loose subject he wrote so much about and, more importantly, how did and do you feel towards The Culture as you read the novels?
I should say I haven’t read the later one’s, I’m very much catching up. Lol I’m sure I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, but that’s half the fun anyway.
Q2: No worries if you don’t want to answer on Iain’s behalf, but how did he or would he choose to define or think of himself in terms of nationality or place in the world?
I only ask because it has been fascinating (to me at least) hearing people discuss their sense of indentity in the wake of the referendum (and I’ve found myself making a meal of the question when asked abroad).
Guardian contributor Iain certainly saw the Culture as an optimistic vision, though his view of its darker side (the manipulations of the Minds, the problems of meaning that you suggest, etc) darkened as time went on.
In terms of nationality, I suppose more Scottish than British ... again, increasingly as time went on. He was definitely a supporter of Scottish independence, for the non-nationalist reason that he thought a more left-wing country would result.
cardiogram asks:
Ken and All,
Given that all political parties (SNP included) are happy with TTIP, and the weak is confused and directionless, is the future more Transcapital-Techno than Techno-Socialist that you write?
Given the Left have struggled ideologically with population rise as a vast problem for us and were slow to take on climate change, how do you move round these realities to present a socialist-techno Utopia in your fiction?
In terms of a SciFi outlook, do you think you and Iain were looking out of the same spaceship window?
Many thanks. I look forward to reading more fiction from the both of you.
Guardian contributor Thanks!
The only one of my books that has a socialist techno-utopia is The Cassini Division, and it all runs on nanotech which is at least as indistinguishable from magic as the Culture Minds are. Most of my books are pretty much techno-capitalist futures. I don't think population growth or climate change are insurmountable problems for capitalism or socialism but that's too long an argument for here. In terms of SF outlook I think Iain and I were at least looking at the same stars, though from different windows.
daveportivo comes back to ask two further questions:
Okay came up with a question about the Bridge, one that after reading the excellent comments on Sam’s articles that I don’t think has actually been asked:
1. Should we actually like or sympathise with Mr. Lennox?
It is certainly is easy to sympathise with him while reading, but, reflecting on his actions, he takes a woman whose life and whole joie de vivre has been crushed by having one of the men she loves becoming a dependent and His response ultimately is to drunkenly, but consciously, put himself in that same situation (albeit temporarily). I was starting to wonder if The Bridge was less a romantic subconscious redemption and more the story of a jealous, stifled, but very relatable man getting what he wants.
2. The novel exist within Alex’s mind for the vast majority (he even seems to dream about the narration of his actual life story), so it seems reasonable to assume that most everything we encounter is representative in someway. This makes me wonder, why so much brutality of both human nature and (when he leaves The Bridge) the natural world itself?
The prison and frustration angles are easy to interpret, but what do make of all the butchery, violence and oppression in the novel?
Guardian contributor Hmm ... the first is a good question that I don't have an immediate answer to.
The second, about the violence (human and natural) - I think that concretises something Alex thinks on at one point: that any tendency to self-pity is torn apart by the reflection that most people in the world have much worse things to deal with, and that he is lucky. It's his awareness of natural disasters, wars, exploitation and misery coming out of the shadows of his mind.
Or something.
Alan Keatinge asks:
Hi Ken,
Huge fan of Iains work and discovered your own work through him. I a sadly woefully behind (having only read the star fraction) but an observation I would make based on that book is the difference between you two. Iain postulates a (mostly) benevolant social utopia. Your future, while strongly socialist in tone, seems rather my dystopia. I see them as two (equally valid) sides of the same coin, just wondering about your thoughts on this?
Guardian contributor Yes, the world in The Star Fraction is one in which a utopia is possible but we're not getting to it any time soon. (Some readers see the fragmented Britian in that world as a libertarian utopia (or 'Libertaria') already, and who am I to argue?) In its sort-of sequels, The Stone Canal and The Cassini Division, we see one version of the socialist utopia come about centuries after the Fall Revolution, and in The Sky Road we see a different (and possibly better) outcome of the same events
Nonviolent asks:
Hello, Mr. MacLeod.
In an effort to be brief: I like your writing, and if you write more, I’ll read more. I am, however, incredibly anxious to learn the answers to the following questions about Iain’s writing. Would you please live a bit longer, so I can ask you some questions about you later?
1: Iain came up with plot ideas for the sequels to The Algebraist and Against A Dark Background. He was also thinking about another Culture novel. Did he share some of those thoughts, and are they written down somewhere so I can entertain a glimmer hope of reading them one day?
2: I seem to remember that the published version of The Bridge was heavily edited/abridged compared to the manuscript -- was that so? If yes, what was excised?
3: To your knowledge, were elements of Iain’s early novels directly inspired by the work of other writers (e.g. the Lazy Gun by Barrington J. Bayley’s Zen Gun, The Player of Games by BJB’s The Grand Wheel, tripedal Idirans by tripedal Nulls in Brian Aldiss’ The Interpreter)?
4: I would love to hear Iain’s musical compositions. He spoke of thinking about making those available online one day. Is there any hope of that happening?
5: I would also love to read more of Iain’s work, e.g. his unpublished novels and drafts, like O and The Hungarian Lift-Jet. Could you give me any advice as to how to achieve such noble goal?
Thank you.
Guardian contributor 1. No ideas that can be developed, sadly.
2. I don't know, but I seem to recall reading the MS and it was pretty much as published, give or take maybe some purple passages.
3. Iain was a great admirer of both Bayley and Aldiss, but it would take some literary detective work with publication dates etc to make any direct inspiration traceable.
4. Some day, some day ...
5. The unpublished works and drafts may yet end up in an archive for scholars, but I assure you that none of them are really worth going out of your way for just as reading material - an opinion of them that Iain had too.
samjordison says:
As I read your account of reading New Worlds magazines and talking SF with Iain Banks while you were growing up, I wondered if you both knew then that you wanted to be writers? And if so, did you know what kind of writers you wanted to be? Was it surprising, for instance, that Iain Banks first published The Wasp Factory instead of SF?
Guardian contributor Iain wanted to be a writer from the age of about ten or so, and I wanted to be a scientist (though I did want to write SF, and wrote very bad SF stories every so often from my teens to my thirties). Iain wanted to write mainstream and SF, I think, but SF was his first choice. According to David Haddock one of Iain's SF novels (The Player of Games, I think) nearly got accepted.
But after lots of rejections of first TTR ( a sprawling near-future pun-riddled satire) then his space operas, Iain rather shame-facedly admitted to his friends that he was going to try something else. He really was a little worried that we'd think he was selling out and letting the side down by writing such a mainstream and middle-of-the-road and respectable novel as The Wasp Factory.
Guardian staff He really was a little worried that we'd think he was selling out and letting the side down by writing such a mainstream and middle-of-the-road and respectable novel as The Wasp Factory.
haha!
samjordison asks:
I know that you’ve been re-reading The Bridge prior to this webchat (which is much appreciated!) and am wondering if your take on the book has changed since you first read it? It struck me that it would be the kind of book that seems very different every time you go through it - although since I’ve only read it once, I’m not really in a position to say....
I also wonder about how interpretations of the book could change given Iain Banks’ changing politics. Am I right in thinking that when he was writing The Bridge he was pretty firmly a Labour supporter, but later went over to the SNP thanks to Tony Blair? I kept wondering if it was possible to see something about Scottish nationalism in the depictions of this grand national monument, decaying industry and the conflicts with Thatcherite materialism...
Guardian contributor Well, having just finished the re-read this morning ... The Bridge is actually better than I remember it, in that I can see more of the thought that went into it and the allusions in the characters' names (Cramond, Arroll, and no doubt more that I've still missed). In some ways, as Stuart Kelly has pointed out, it didn't just take inspiration from Lanark but foreshadowed some later Scottish fiction: the use of phonetic demotic, and the attention to the 70s and 80s as a turning point for Scotland. The shift from the post-war settlement to neoliberalism is lived by the character and strongly evoked.
On the politics - Iain's politics didn't really change, as I argued here: he supported Labour when it was still Labour, as he put it in his final interview in the Guardian, and then the SNP as a party that (as he saw it) was closer to what Labour used to stand for than any other mainstream party.
Guardian staff Hey thanks - that article was fascinating. And yes, take the point that although he remained constant, Labour changed... (more's the pity!)
Chinookz asks:
Ken,
When I was fortunate to meet Iain at a public reading, I asked him to comment on , what I see as, his essentially positive and exhilarating view of a potential future, in the The Culture, in contrast to the overwhelming body of dystopian futures that are often SF’s stock in trade.
I’d like to hear your comments on that aspect of his work and how that may or may not have emerged from his character.
PS Not saying Banks didn’t produce some bloody dark literature but you know what I mean :)
Guardian contributor Yes, I'd say it emerged from his character in that he had a great exuberance and optimism about the potential of science and technology, combined with (and here's where the dark stuff came from) a fairly disillusioned view of how we actually are and how likely we are to do good stuff with all our shiny tech.
Jericho999 asks:
I have a difficult easy question: Which is your favourite Iain Banks book and why.
Also, since lots of people this month seem to have become interested in SF after reading The Bridge, are there any books you’d recommend for beginners? (Goes without saying they should read yours too!)
Guardian contributor Same answer to both questions: Use of Weapons. But if you mean my favourite of his mainstream work, The Crow Road. It's also a lot less grim than The Bridge.
MistakeNot asks:
Would just like to say thank you for some wonderful writing and ask , in the space opera ‘genre’ for want of a better word who else would you recommend?
Guardian contributor Peter Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds, Justina Robson. I haven't yet read Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie but it's getting rave reviews, won every major SF award in 2014 and is often said to be like Banks's SF.
boguscoleman asks:
Did Iain have a favourite whiskey? Or a number of favourite whiskies? Apologies if this is revealed in Raw Spirit ...
Guardian contributor Laphroig and Macallan, at opposite poles more or less in terms of taste, were among them. Much more detail in Raw Spirit, q.v..
Excellent! If I ever come across some I'll raise a toast to his genius.
Roosterbooster198 asks:
Surely Ursula K LeGuin was a big influence on Banks’ SF writing? Reading The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed recently it was clear that they had greatly influenced the Culture novels.
Guardian contributor Hard to say - I'm fairly sure he came up with the idea of the Culture before he'd read The Dispossessed.
samjordison asks:
Just in case there’s time for one more question: What are you working on at the moment?
Guardian contributor Three short novels scheduled to come out in rapid succession to form a space opera trilogy. Robots and uploaded dead soldiers in conflicts around an extrasolar system.
Nonviolent asks:
Thank you for taking time to answer all these questions – I’m grateful I could read what you had to say. Here is one more.
At what stage is your work on your and Iain’s joint poetry collection, and how are you feeling working or having worked on it? Could you -- would you like to? -- share anything about your selection criteria, or your decisions on how to structure the collection?
Guardian contributor I sent in the corrected proofs yesterday.
Iain selected his own poems, and I selected mine. I don't know what his criteria were: mine for my own were basically anything I thought still seemed all right. I did ask others to give them a critical eye, and of course the editor at Little, Brown too. The structure is Iain's poems, then mine.
Miamijim asks:
Something I always wanted to ask Iain was how much his work was influenced by the T.S. Eliot, having a series of books on the Culture and quotations from The Wasteland within these works, it was always my assumption that Iain’s Culture novels were derived from Eliot’s “Notes on the definition of Culture”.
Would you know if this was in any way true?
Guardian contributor Certainly The Waste Land was an influence, but I doubt that the other connection is anything but a coincidence of names.
Thank you Ken, Iain gave me such joy with his Sci Fi books, they will never lose their place on my shelves and I can only hope that one day my son may take them down to read them as I did with my Fathers Sci Fi books 35 years ago.
And we’re done! Thanks everyone for all the questions and many thanks to Ken for his absolutely fascinating answers.
Guardian contributor Thanks, everyone - and apologies to anyone whose questions I missed. Now, back to work.
Well, Iain was always as interested in science as I was, and I was almost as interested in literature and philosophy - it's just that he had the sense to study what he was actually good at, while I had this fixed idea about being a scientist for reasons that now escape me. I think his writing shows a greater literary range than mine.
If you haven't SF in a while, start with my more recent novels such as Intrusion or The Night Sessions.