Biography
Iain Banks
Author and Composer
1954-2013
“The hallmarks of his work are a sure grasp of narrative complexity, a soaring unquenchable imagination, an attraction to the bizarre, the grotesque, and the grand guignol — and, always, a thread of black humour to lighten the darkness. His work demonstrates a technical virtuosity and his novels exhibit a pyrotechnic brio that sheds both emotional heat and philosophical light on their subjects. His command of story and his range invites comparison with another great Scottish writer, Robert Louis Stevenson.”
Val McDermid
© Jonathan Daniel Pryce
Iain Banks was born in Dunfermline, Fife in 1954 and spent a happy early childhood in North Queensferry before moving to Gourock on the Clyde estuary.
Asked by a teacher in primary 7, aged about 11, to draw what he wanted to be when he grew up, Iain knew the answer but not exactly how to show it, so produced this...
...around the same time as he got these...
Iain went on to read English literature with philosophy and psychology at Stirling University, graduating in 1975. While a student, Monty Python decided to film Holy Grail nearby and Iain is in that final scene somewhere!
Thereafter followed a string of jobs, ranging from hospital porter to oil platform technician to law firm clerk, all chosen expressly to leave plenty of time for writing.
The publication of his debut novel, The Wasp Factory (1984), caused a critical sensation. Branded 'a repulsive piece of work' by the Evening Standard and 'a work of unparalleled depravity' by the Irish Times, it soon became a cult classic - and is now a fixture on Year 10 school reading lists.
Over the next 29 years he wrote a further 28 novels, alternating between literary fiction as “Iain Banks” and science fiction as “Iain M Banks”.
He debuted as Iain M with Consider Phlebas (1987), the first of nine books set in The Culture, an egalitarian, post-scarcity society run by benign AI called ‘Minds’. Written in part as a reaction against the bombastic, right-wing US space operas Banks grew up with, The Culture’s distinctly left-wing utopia mirrored his own political beliefs.
In 1993, Iain is named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.
He’s in exceptional company, alongside Alan Hollinghurst, Anne Billson, Ben Okri, Caryl Phillips, Esther Freud, Kazuo Ishiguro, Lawrence Norfolk, Nicholas Shakespeare, Philip Kerr, Tibor Fischer, Will Self, Adam Lively, Adam Mars-Jones, Candia McWilliam, Helen Simpson and Jeanette Winterson.
We’d love to show you a fantastic 31 year old photo of those Granta novelists. We asked Getty. Getty wanted £1600.
We fell over, and politely declined to be mugged.
We have sent the photographer David Montgomery an extremely polite request by email, and are hoping for a response. So while we can’t just include the photograph here, you can very easily go look at it.
Simply search Google Images for ‘Granta Best of British Novelists 1993’ and you’ll see the photograph as used in The Guardian newspaper.
...or click here to see it
In 1999, the Songbook Series invited ten artists and writers to each compile a CD of favourite music, which would be packaged in a full colour booklet containing their work. Participants included Savage Pencil, Robert Crumb, Hunter S Thompson, Gerry Anderson, Ralph Steadman, Peter Bagge, Gilbert Shelton, Ivor Cutler, Clive Barker and Iain. The series formed the basis of an exhibition at the London ICA that April.
Left to right: Ivor Cutler, Iain, Gilbert Shelton, Savage Pencil and Gerry Anderson with Ralph Steadman (kneeling)
Loudly opposed to injustice and inequality, Iain refused to allow his books to be sold in apartheid-era South Africa, tore up his passport in protest at Tony Blair’s support of the US-led invasion of Iraq, and called for a cultural and educational boycott of Israel in support of Palestinians.
A giant of the Scottish literary scene, Banks – who situated many of his literary novels in altered Scottish landscapes – was pro-independence and pro-whisky. His only work of non-fiction, Raw Spirit (2003), documented a series of road trips around his beloved Scotland in search of the perfect dram.
Iain was diagnosed with terminal cancer in March 2013 and passed away three months later. Over that short time, more than 12,600 readers left tributes on his website and Asteroid 5099 was renamed Asteroid Iainbanks in his honour. In the years since, a deep-sea submersible and two SpaceX autonomous spaceport drone ships have been named after Culture ships, in what must be the broadest range of geographic impact an author has ever had.
The final word goes to Iain who, of course, put it all rather more succinctly when asked years ago to write his own bio...
“Iain Banks was born in 1954 in Dunfermline, Fife. He went to Stirling University and was variously employed before giving up his day job in 1984 on the publication of The Wasp Factory. He writes nominally mainstream books under the above name and – following an arguably successful bid for the World's Most Penetrable Pseudonym title – Science Fiction novels under that of Iain M Banks. He lives back in Fife now, where such eccentricity is generally tolerated. A dedicated and enthusiastic consumer of low profile tyres, outdoor stuff, MIDI equipment, gadgets in general, books, CDs, alcohol and curries, his hobbies include writing.”
