Say you want a revolution

Award-winning SF writer Charles Stross takes us through the defining themes of Iain M. Banks’ work, and why his new novel, Empire Games, is dedicated to late novelist

If anyone ever writes a history of Scottish science fiction - or a history of British SF since 1980 - one name is inevitably going to come up: the late, great Iain Banks, author of some 30 books, including the Culture series of space operas and several bestselling mainstream novels. Iain was not the bestselling Scottish SF/F author (that accolade inarguably belongs to J. K. Rowling), but coming in second place behind a global media phenomenon is still doing pretty well: and I think Iain’s writing might actually have a greater long-term impact than Harry Potter.

Born in 1954, Iain came-of-age during the turbulent Seventies, against a background of the end of Empire and industrial unrest, oil shocks and Cold War. The swinging Sixties were the background to his teenage years; the reactionary clampdown that gave rise to protest movements and punk the refrain to his early twenties, the time during which serious authors get to grips with their craft. Angry at the injustices he saw on every side, Iain engaged with the political left -- not as a supporter of the grey authoritarian parties of the Eastern Bloc, but as a utopian dreamer who wanted a better world where humans could be free from hierarchy and exploitation.