The Wasp Factory: Ian Banks

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In 2010 Banks publicly joined the cultural boycott of Israel, refusing to allow his novels to be sold in the country. He was a frequent signatory of letters of protest to the Guardian and a name recruited to causes of which he approved, from secular humanism to the legalising of assisted suicide to the preservation of public libraries. Banks himself was a self-declared "evangelical atheist" and a man of decided political views, often expressed with humorous exasperation and sometimes requiring ripe language. He relished his public status as no-nonsense voice of a common-sense socialism that had an increasingly nationalistic tint. Then I knew what had happened. He didn't have to tell me the rest. I suppose I could have thought from the little he'd said up until then that my half-brother was dead, or ill, or that something had happened to him, but I knew then it was something Eric had done, and there was only one thing he could have done which would make my father look worried. He had escaped. I didn't say anything, though.

Author Iain M. Banks revealed in April 2013 that he had late-stage cancer. He died the following June. Unfortunately, Iain Banks died too young at age 59, but his books will be read for generations and maybe this one will be read even longer than that. He has not killed them for the standard reasons, like he needed to keep them quiet because he abused them, or that he was jealous of them, or that he hated them passionately. He didn’t really need a reason. we made them, we moulded them from the wild, smart survivors that were their ancestors so that they would become docile, frightened, stupid, tasty wool-producers. We didn't want them to be smart, and to some extent their aggression and their intelligence went together. Of course, the rams are brighter, but even they are demeaned by the idiotic females they have to associate with and inseminate. In 1997 Craig Warner adapted the novel into a 10 part serial (15 minute episodes) for BBC Radio 4. [6]I'm not answering these questions any more,' I said to him as I took my plate to the sink. 'We should have gone metric years ago.'

Humanity comes off badly in this book. The truth of what made Frank the person he is will leave you more chilled than any silly evocation of a devil in a religious text. Frank's very being is an ambulatory evil act. But the reason for it, the motivating factor, is the absolute worst horror this book contains. All the animal-torture stuff is unpleasant, I agree. It's not as though it's lovingly and lingeringly described. And it pales in comparison to Frank's raison d'etre. The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia, the 2016 graphic biography of Louise Michel by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot, is "Dedicated to the memory of Iain (M) Banks, friend and sorely missed creator of socialist utopias." [64] A word of warning to teenagers who can't wait to find out about the thrills of drinking : alcohol may seriously impair you muscle coordination:

Includes 'The Spheres', excised from the original draft of Transition; and 'The Secret Courtyard', excised from Matter. Limited edition of 500, to mark Novacon 40. So here's the deal: Frank, and his brother Eric, aren't role models, aren't people you'd want to be around, aren't amusing compadres for a jaunt along the path to the Banal Canal. They are, like Hum and Lo and Clarissa and Septimus, avatars (in the pre-Internet sense) of the raw, bleeding, agonic (unangled, in this use) purposelessness of life. They are the proof that salvation is a cruel ruse. These characters rip your fears from the base of your brain and move them, puppetlike, eerily masterful withal, into your worst nightmares. By his death in June 2013, Banks had published 26 novels. A 27th novel The Quarry was published posthumously. [19] His final work, a poetry collection, appeared in February 2015. [20] In an interview in January 2013, he also mentioned he had the plot idea for another novel in the Culture series, which would most likely have been his next book and was planned for publication in 2014. [21] A project to publish Banks's unseen early drawings, maps and sketches from the Culture universe alongs with his writings and notes on the setting was underway in February 2018. [22] In 2021, the delayed single volume of The Culture: Notes and Drawings was cancelled and replaced with two separate volumes: a landscape artbook of The Culture: The Drawings and a companion volume containing notes, excerpts and new text from Ken MacLeod. [23] In 2023, the release date for The Culture: The Drawings was confirmed for the 7 November that year while the still-untitled companion volume was scheduled for late 2024. [24] So by 1980 I was getting fed up. Maybe I wasn't just an SF writer, after all. Maybe I should try writing an ordinary, boring, mainstream novel. Maybe it was even time to consider writing a second draft of one of these works of patent genius, rather than trusting that London publishers would have the wit to recognise an obvious rough diamond who, a trifling number of easily polished awkwardnesses having been dealt with, was surely about to make the ungrateful wretches millions . . .