Iain Banks

Edinburgh resident, Transform member and writer extraordinaire Iain Banks burst onto the literary scene in 1984 with his highly acclaimed and brilliantly macabre novel The Wasp Factory. As a man with two voices, he has since produced a stream of intelligent and thought-provoking novels, both mainstream and SF. If you have never read any of his work, do – he’s fab. If you have already been initiated into the Banks Universe then you’ll know how much of a thrill it is to have the chance to hear his thoughts on drugs and literature...

What are your views on the legalisation of drugs? Have your opinions changed over the years, and if so, why?
I think all drugs should be legalised. At one time, I’d have excepted heroin but (for one thing) given that there is evidence tobacco is more addictive than heroin, that earlier view seems illogical. Also the principle behind legalising substances for individual use would be the same no matter what they are: a democratic society is, I think, entitled as a whole to place restrictions on the availability of powerful drugs (this is, after all, exactly what we do already with tobacco and alcohol), but banning something completely, when there is obvious demand, just puts the whole production and distribution network into the hands of criminals, with all the obvious problems that that entails. It ought to be a blindingly obvious truism that the vast majority of problems associated with drugs really arise because of their illegality, not directly from their psychological and physiological effects, but getting this idea through to people with closed minds is... challenging, shall we say.

I think the fundamental point is that if people really want to fuck themselves up, they’ll find a way to do it, and society as a whole has no right to stop adults experimenting with mind altering substances just because they might enjoy themselves too much or end up in some way addicted. We – as a society – are entitled to warn people about the potential dangers of drugs, we are entitled to establish an age before which we are not prepared to accept that the individual is mature enough to make a balanced decision on their use, and we are entitled to impose a tax on such substances, partly to ensure their quality and so on, but largely to pay for any extra burden they might place upon a society-wide health service, but that’s all (and a gung-ho Libertarian would say that was far too much).

Are there any drugs you see as possibly consciousness expanding and others that you feel limit awareness?
I’m uneasy with the very idea of consciousness expansion and I suspect that most of the revelatory power of certain drugs has been talked up and exaggerated to give drug use a more utilitarianly beneficial side – ‘look, I’m doing this because it’s good for my art, not because I enjoy it, all right?’ – when all that’s really happening is that people are enjoying themselves. Still, I could be wrong, and – to an extent – if people feel they’re having their consciousness expanded, then they are. The obvious contender for limiting awareness is alcohol in large doses.

Has your own drug use influenced your work?
Sadly, no. I don’t think my readership fully appreciates the sacrifices I’ve made researching this, but over the years I’ve tried various legal and illegal substances in the attempt to write better, and – for me, at least – none of them work. Some of them appear to work, but then you wake up the next day and discover what you thought was Nobel-Prize-winning deathless prose of unparalleled grandeur, sensitivity and elegance is, in fact, a pile of old shite. I suppose some of this research did pay off slightly in being able to describe being stoned or wired in books like The Crow Road and Complicity, but that seems minor in comparison.

Is fiction as much of an escape as drugs?
Definitely, of course, there is a huge amount of evidence that reading from a young age makes you short-sighted so we should probably ban reading.

From the way that some of your characters interact with drugs, I get the feeling that you have the attitude that drugs are a fact of life, neither intrinsically bad or good. Is that right?
Yes. My cunning plan is that this attitude is actually much more subversive of our current laws and attitudes than tackling anti-drugs hysteria head-on.

In your science fiction books the people in the Culture have that capacity to switch on specific drug effects internally and to use them to particular ends. This seems to suggest that you see some positive uses of drugs. Is that true?
Yes. Drugs in the Culture are a symbol of freedom, and a way of monitoring the society’s health. The point is that with drug glands there is no outside control; nobody can keep you straight if you don’t want to be, plus you don’t have to pay anybody for your high. In the same way that being to change sex at will means that society has to treat the sexes equally (or over time there will gradually be more of the sex it is more rewarding to be), so drug glands mean that if you find everybody seems to be stoned or tripped out all the time there must be something wrong with reality. In that broadest sense, they are a means of control, but in the opposite way from the way that drugs are normally used; they are one of the ways that the individual in effect controls society, not the other way round.

What part do you see drugs playing in current and future culture?
Oh, pretty much as they have been in the past. I’d love to think the legal situation will ease further, faster, but I suspect it will take a while. In the meantime, just more of the same... though with designer drugs things might get more interesting.

Do you see a relationship between technology and drugs?
Yes. See previous two answers!

You seem to have a very different voice in your science fiction and your mainstream books. Is that deliberate or does it just happen that way?
It just happens. I try to write in whatever way will best help tell the story, but the truth is I find SF more enjoyable to write and I think it shows.

When did you first start writing and what first got you into it?
I wanted to be a writer from primary school. There is a crayon drawing in did in P7 when we were supposed to illustrate what we wanted to be when we grew up; mine shows me as an actor in TV or film studio, with the works AND NOVELIST crammed into the top corner (I wasn’t sure how to draw a writer, or at least not sure how to draw a writer and make the drawing look interesting – a problem analogous to one that TV crews struggle with to this day), so it was there in my mind from that point at least. What happened was simply that I found it really easy and fun to write stories, and my teachers gave me good marks and praise while my parents seemed impressed too. So, plenty of positive reinforcement. Then I discovered people actually got paid for doing this writing stuff; close your eyes and squint and it almost looked like a real job! I think the die was cast right there. I started trying to write a novel – a spy story, really, influenced by Alistair Maclean and lots of television series – when I was 14. A mere 16 years later, it all paid off.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
The best advice I know about writing (aside from all the obvious technical stuff about manuscript preparation and who to submit them to that you can find in something like The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook) is that writing is like everything else; the more you do it, the better you get. It helps if you enjoy, even love, writing, so that publication is an additional reward rather than the only one, plus it also helps to realise that there is often a lot of luck involved in getting published, and that sheer perseverance can substitute for that luck (some talent helps, too, of course, though I’ve read the odd book that makes me suspect it isn’t technically necessary), but the main advice, I’m afraid, is horribly obvious and simple: practice, practice, practice...

What is your favourite book on the Culture, and are you writing another one?
I think Use of Weapons is the best of the Culture books (largely thanks to Ken Macleod’s help). The new book, Inversions, out in early June, has no starships with funny names and no sarcastic drones, sadly. However – let’s think of the best way to put this, ummm... people who have read the Culture might gain satisfactions from Inversions denied to those who haven’t. Ahem (clears throat, frowns, inspects fingernails closely). There will probably be at least one more Culture book, in two or four years time. Can’t keep away from it, me. Just addicted to Utopia...