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Modern Masters of Science Fiction
Iain M. Banks
The 1987 publication of Iain M. Banks's Consider Phlebas helped trigger the British renaissance of radical hard science fiction and influenced a generation of New Space Opera masters. The thirteen SF novels that followed inspired an avid fandom and intense intellectual engagement while Banks's mainstream books vaulted him to the top of the Scottish literary scene. Paul Kincaid has written the first study of Iain M. Banks to explore the confluence of his SF and literary techniques and sensibilities. As Kincaid shows, the two powerful aspects of Banks's work flowed into each other, blurring a line that critics too often treat as clear-cut. Banks's gift for black humor and a honed skepticism regarding politics and religion found expression even as he orchestrated the vast, galaxy-spanning vistas in his novels of the Culture. In examining Banks's entire SF oeuvre, Kincaid unlocks the set of ideas Banks drew upon, ideas that spoke to an unusually varied readership that praised him as a visionary and reveled in the distinctive character of his works. Entertaining and broad in scope, Iain M. Banks offers new insights on one of the most admired figures in contemporary science fiction.
208 pages, Paperback
Published May 12, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 16, 2017
Posted at Heradas Review
A concise yet comprehensive literary analysis on the works of the late Iain Banks. Kincaid’s writing functions primarily through illustrating and deconstructing the thematic lineage and interplay between Banks’ novels published with and without the M, but also delves into the deeper political and societal backdrop in which Banks’ wrote and lived. The bits of history that Kincaid feels influenced Banks are particularly illuminating for myself, someone who knows little of Scottish or UK life, especially concerning the 70s and 80s.
Not as obviously praising of Banks’ writing as Simone Caroti’s The Culture Series of Iain M. Banks: A Critical Introduction, and in a lot of ways it does feel like a response to it. Caroti called for a need to examine Banks’ entire catalog of writing, not just the M or non-M work as had previously been done. Kincaid’s book takes exactly this approach, but with an emphasis on his science fiction work. It is also a much more balanced examination of the strengths and weaknesses at play in the novels. That being said, the rabid Banks fan inside of me enjoyed Caroti’s book quite a bit more because it more closely aligned with my own reading and interpretation of Banks; which is of course an admittedly subjective, masturbatory reason.
Caroti’s book started a new conversation; addressing the ways in which Banks had been grossly ignored, misunderstood, and misinterpreted in literary circles and criticism over the years. It posited a much better interpretation of Banks’ work than had previously existed. I’m please to see that it appears Caroti’s contribution had it’s desired effect, because this continuation of the conversation seems to have benefited greatly from it. Gone are the misreadings and general sloppy analogies in the pre-Caroti analyses. Of course, as a result, Kincaid is much more objective and more in line with a standard literary analysis, which is more intellectually pleasing, but it remains thoughtful to the corrections and additions that Caroti made previously.
The bulk of this analysis deals with Banks’ writing chronologically, but also takes into account the order in which the novels were written, rewritten and released. Since so many of them -- the Culture novels specifically -- were written very early and then reworked later in Banks’ career before being published, this method helps to trace the evolution of themes and thoughts throughout the novels as they changed and adapted. There are quite a few biographical details and quotes interspersed throughout, which I always welcome, especially considering that there is still no extant proper biography on Banks. The book then comes to a close with an illuminating interview between Banks and Jude Roberts, who received his P.h.d. on The Culture series.
This book is something I’ve been waiting a long, long time for, and I am extremely pleased that Kincaid has not only continued the conversation on Banks’ work and legacy that Caroti jump started, but also added so much to it in the process. This is a fantastic addition to the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series and I look forward to seeing where we go from here. Personally, I feel that Banks’ work needs to endure the test of time, and welcome future writings on him as a subject.
A concise yet comprehensive literary analysis on the works of the late Iain Banks. Kincaid’s writing functions primarily through illustrating and deconstructing the thematic lineage and interplay between Banks’ novels published with and without the M, but also delves into the deeper political and societal backdrop in which Banks’ wrote and lived. The bits of history that Kincaid feels influenced Banks are particularly illuminating for myself, someone who knows little of Scottish or UK life, especially concerning the 70s and 80s.
Not as obviously praising of Banks’ writing as Simone Caroti’s The Culture Series of Iain M. Banks: A Critical Introduction, and in a lot of ways it does feel like a response to it. Caroti called for a need to examine Banks’ entire catalog of writing, not just the M or non-M work as had previously been done. Kincaid’s book takes exactly this approach, but with an emphasis on his science fiction work. It is also a much more balanced examination of the strengths and weaknesses at play in the novels. That being said, the rabid Banks fan inside of me enjoyed Caroti’s book quite a bit more because it more closely aligned with my own reading and interpretation of Banks; which is of course an admittedly subjective, masturbatory reason.
Caroti’s book started a new conversation; addressing the ways in which Banks had been grossly ignored, misunderstood, and misinterpreted in literary circles and criticism over the years. It posited a much better interpretation of Banks’ work than had previously existed. I’m please to see that it appears Caroti’s contribution had it’s desired effect, because this continuation of the conversation seems to have benefited greatly from it. Gone are the misreadings and general sloppy analogies in the pre-Caroti analyses. Of course, as a result, Kincaid is much more objective and more in line with a standard literary analysis, which is more intellectually pleasing, but it remains thoughtful to the corrections and additions that Caroti made previously.
The bulk of this analysis deals with Banks’ writing chronologically, but also takes into account the order in which the novels were written, rewritten and released. Since so many of them -- the Culture novels specifically -- were written very early and then reworked later in Banks’ career before being published, this method helps to trace the evolution of themes and thoughts throughout the novels as they changed and adapted. There are quite a few biographical details and quotes interspersed throughout, which I always welcome, especially considering that there is still no extant proper biography on Banks. The book then comes to a close with an illuminating interview between Banks and Jude Roberts, who received his P.h.d. on The Culture series.
This book is something I’ve been waiting a long, long time for, and I am extremely pleased that Kincaid has not only continued the conversation on Banks’ work and legacy that Caroti jump started, but also added so much to it in the process. This is a fantastic addition to the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series and I look forward to seeing where we go from here. Personally, I feel that Banks’ work needs to endure the test of time, and welcome future writings on him as a subject.
March 12, 2017
An overview of the late great Iain Banks' work, with a few biographical details along the way. It focuses on the science fiction in his oeuvre, as a careful reading of the title will hint, but also includes the M-less books where they are relevant to a discussion, or borderline SF (like Transition). Kincaid has an interesting idea about RD Laing's theory of the divided self being the underpinning of Banks' novels, and his argument is pretty convincing. This is a concise and readable book, written for an intelligent reader but not drowning in academic language. As a fan of both versions of Banks, I'd have liked a bit more on books like The Crow Road, but they are understandably out of the scope of this book. It made me want to go back and reread the whole Banks catalogue, so that must be a recommendation.
March 25, 2018
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2979935.html
In a better world, Iain Banks would have turned 64 last month and would have published his thirtieth novel some time last year, or maybe even the year before; and we'd be debating his eligibility for this year's awards. We live in an imperfect world. Some popular authors disappear as soon as their career is over, but Iain Banks won't be one of them, and Paul Kincaid explains why in a succinct but thorough survey of his literary career, part of the same University of Illinois series as Edward James' Lois McMaster Bujold, which I read last year. I found the analysis of Banks' politics particularly enlightening, as that's the sea that I swim in; but it was also very interesting to read of the influence of Alasdair Gray's Lanark, R.D. Laing, T.S. Eliot, and Erving Goffmann's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life which includes some research in Scotland and which I read recently.
In a better world, Iain Banks would have turned 64 last month and would have published his thirtieth novel some time last year, or maybe even the year before; and we'd be debating his eligibility for this year's awards. We live in an imperfect world. Some popular authors disappear as soon as their career is over, but Iain Banks won't be one of them, and Paul Kincaid explains why in a succinct but thorough survey of his literary career, part of the same University of Illinois series as Edward James' Lois McMaster Bujold, which I read last year. I found the analysis of Banks' politics particularly enlightening, as that's the sea that I swim in; but it was also very interesting to read of the influence of Alasdair Gray's Lanark, R.D. Laing, T.S. Eliot, and Erving Goffmann's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life which includes some research in Scotland and which I read recently.
July 7, 2019
Overview of both the literary and scifi books, one-by-one. Thus skimmable by anyone who would want to read it in the first place (...)
Worth it, for fans, for the absolutely amazing interview with a PhD student, in which he refuses all invitations to pompous theory:
Worth it, for fans, for the absolutely amazing interview with a PhD student, in which he refuses all invitations to pompous theory:
JR: You've used the word "play" to describe your use of form and narrative structure. As I'm sure you know, in recent years the term play has been used to describe a certain kind of postmodern engagement with the world. To what extent do you consider your work to be postmodern?
IB: I confess I don't think about it at all. I've never been good on literary or societal theory. I've long since decided people like me just write what we do and let other people worry about the analytical side.
JR: Have you read any work by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, or Emanuel Levinas (or any other continental philosophers)? If you have, what did you think?
IB: The little I've read I mostly didn't understand, and the little I understood of the little I've read seemed to consist either of rather banal points made difficult to understand by deliberately opaque and obstructive language (this might have been the translation, though I doubt it), or just plain nonsense. Or it could be I'm just not up to the mark intellectually, of course.
JR: You have written quite a few novels that use Freudian imagery and tropes—The Wasp Factory, Use of Weapons, The Bridge, Walking on Glass—What do you think of Freudian psychoanalysis?
IB: Never been entirely sold on it. I suspect Freud's theories tell you a great deal about Freud, quite a lot about the monied middle-class in Vienna a hundred-plus years ago, and only a little about people in general. Like Marx, he was too keen to insist that his area of study was genuinely a science. Also like Marx, though, he provides a genuinely useful and insightful (if, especially in Freud's case, limited) way of looking at people and their hidden lives (well, more implied lives with Marx, relating to their economic function within a society). Anyway, I can honestly say that I've never deliberately included any Freudian imagery in my stories, so what's there must be the result of my subconscious. . . . Uh-oh. . .
June 16, 2017
‘Outside Context Problem’
This is a very readable, concise and scholarly study of Banks’ science-fiction novels. As the title indicates, the author focuses on those under the name Iain M Banks, but also discusses the ‘mainstream’ novels when the distinction is less clear. I suppose the inclusion of M in the authorial designation broadly indicates the novel falls into the space opera category, while the others are more generally imaginative or speculative.
There is discussion of all the Culture novels as well as the Culture itself. The early novels, so imaginatively written, so well structured, even concise, attract the greater part of the discussion. The author suggests that the Culture novels really reached their logical conclusion with ‘Look to Windward’ and subsequently Banks became increasingly devoted to religion and death in the later novels. These are not discussed in anything like the same depth as the earlier ones, even though they are all much longer, perhaps because Banks himself could not take the logical step of ending the series, just as his construct, the Culture, could not take the logical step of ending itself through the process of subliming. The Culture is described as an atheistic paradise and the writer discusses at length the problem about all paradises and heavens – the constant risk of eternal boredom! These novels are linked with relevant ‘mainstream’ novels such as ‘The Bridge’ or ‘The Business’ to demonstrate that Banks with or without an M was recognisably the same writer, one whose own biography had a profound influence on all his writing.
I suggest that this is not simply required reading for all of Banks’ many followers, but that it is thought-provoking, insightful and pleasurable too.
This is a very readable, concise and scholarly study of Banks’ science-fiction novels. As the title indicates, the author focuses on those under the name Iain M Banks, but also discusses the ‘mainstream’ novels when the distinction is less clear. I suppose the inclusion of M in the authorial designation broadly indicates the novel falls into the space opera category, while the others are more generally imaginative or speculative.
There is discussion of all the Culture novels as well as the Culture itself. The early novels, so imaginatively written, so well structured, even concise, attract the greater part of the discussion. The author suggests that the Culture novels really reached their logical conclusion with ‘Look to Windward’ and subsequently Banks became increasingly devoted to religion and death in the later novels. These are not discussed in anything like the same depth as the earlier ones, even though they are all much longer, perhaps because Banks himself could not take the logical step of ending the series, just as his construct, the Culture, could not take the logical step of ending itself through the process of subliming. The Culture is described as an atheistic paradise and the writer discusses at length the problem about all paradises and heavens – the constant risk of eternal boredom! These novels are linked with relevant ‘mainstream’ novels such as ‘The Bridge’ or ‘The Business’ to demonstrate that Banks with or without an M was recognisably the same writer, one whose own biography had a profound influence on all his writing.
I suggest that this is not simply required reading for all of Banks’ many followers, but that it is thought-provoking, insightful and pleasurable too.
June 19, 2020
A fascinating examination of the work of one of the best SF writers of the last 30-odd years, whose central invention, the Culture, laid the groundwork for the revival of Space Opera as a form capable of generating the kind of scope and challenge many of us started reading science fiction for in the first place.
May 28, 2018
Kincaid does a good job of reviewing the themes of Banks' science fiction and tying those themes into his literary output. That is an essential step to take in analyzing Banks as an author. While you can consider just the Culture novels or the literary novels, the fundamental struggle with power, whether conventional state or business examples or families, runs through the work. My fundamental complaint with the work is that it isn't more thorough in reviewing the literary novels, only considering about half of them.
July 2, 2018
Hugo 2018 reading. The provided excerpt was chapter 2 which discussed the themes and plots of the Culture Series. Regretfully, I haven't read of the Culture books, but Paul Kincaid does a good job exploring the plots and providing a discussion of the themes and Banks' thoughts.
August 5, 2020
Partially read this for book club. The book is well written. I didn't enjoy The Bridge by Iain M. Banks and am not interested in reading his other works. This book confirms that resolution.
Read
June 2, 2021Just read some of
November 22, 2019
Reading this well-composed and thoughtful study of Iain Banks’ oeuvre brought me a pleasant rush of nostalgia. I discovered Banks’s first science fiction novel, CONSIDER PHLEBAS, as a sophomore in college, and was suitably blown away by the creativity and energy of his writing and the audaciousness of his vision. I spent much of my twenties tracking down Banks’s SF and mainstream novels (the latter not then easy to find in the United States) and pressing them on my friends. I read the last few Culture novels in my late 30s and early 40s, as a less-easily-impressed college professor, and appreciated now Banks’s moral vision, sense of humor, and plans to incorporate his principal sci-fi milieu into a larger galactic vision. One definition of a classic is a work that reveals different virtues to the reader at different stages of his/her life. Taken as a whole, Banks’s written works fit this description well.
Kincaid insightfully identifies the most appealing and perplexing feature of Banks’s Culture series: the setting’s utopian character. The Culture is a huge, very powerful, incredibly rich civilization dedicated to the proposition that life should be fair. Its billions of citizens want for nothing, except the one thing a genuine post-scarcity society cannot fulfill: the human desire to be needed. As in the equally utopian Star Trek milieu, the Culture resolves this problem by meddling in the affairs of crueller, less enlightened societies, like the Idirans or the Azadian empire or the Affront. In Banks’s early novels, the Culture wins easily and suffers nothing, leaving its individual agents to endure the scarring or brutalizing effects of its civilizing efforts. In later novels, like EXCESSION and MATTER, Banks began to hint that the Culture was merely one very large fish in a galactic ocean full of large fish, that it might eventually encounter enemies or crises its citizens could not fob off on their AIs or special agents. Kincaid considers the last few Culture books some of Banks’s weaker efforts. I disagree; I think they instead showed Banks trying to complicate his original vision by introducing new possibilities for conflict, both physical and ideological. Regrettably, the author’s early death prevented him from following this creative arc through to its conclusion.
Kincaid insightfully identifies the most appealing and perplexing feature of Banks’s Culture series: the setting’s utopian character. The Culture is a huge, very powerful, incredibly rich civilization dedicated to the proposition that life should be fair. Its billions of citizens want for nothing, except the one thing a genuine post-scarcity society cannot fulfill: the human desire to be needed. As in the equally utopian Star Trek milieu, the Culture resolves this problem by meddling in the affairs of crueller, less enlightened societies, like the Idirans or the Azadian empire or the Affront. In Banks’s early novels, the Culture wins easily and suffers nothing, leaving its individual agents to endure the scarring or brutalizing effects of its civilizing efforts. In later novels, like EXCESSION and MATTER, Banks began to hint that the Culture was merely one very large fish in a galactic ocean full of large fish, that it might eventually encounter enemies or crises its citizens could not fob off on their AIs or special agents. Kincaid considers the last few Culture books some of Banks’s weaker efforts. I disagree; I think they instead showed Banks trying to complicate his original vision by introducing new possibilities for conflict, both physical and ideological. Regrettably, the author’s early death prevented him from following this creative arc through to its conclusion.
October 20, 2024
A comprehensive analysis of the themes and structures of Banks' novels in the context of SF. Because of that, its coverage is very uneven, with the bulk of the book devoted to the Culture novels and his three other M. Banks novels. The no-M novels get some attention, but mostly in places where they're clearly in dialogue with his SF, like his first three 'mainstream' novels. Others such as Crow Road and Complicity are barely mentioned. Mixed in is appropriate biographical context, commentary on his interactions and influences within the SF community, and brief review of his writing's reception.
The analysis is short and sweet, covering 15+ novels in about 150 pages. No space is wasted, though I wish it did have a little more breathing room. As it is, he focusses mostly upon Banks' non-linear structural devices and recurring themes of plot, such as divided selves, civil war, and utopia. It proceeds mostly chronologically, but there is (appropriately) a good deal of jumping around as Banks' novels reverberate off of each other. Kincaid obviously loves Banks' writing, but he's no fanboy. He's quite harsh in his evaluation of the last three Culture novels, especially in comparison to the earlier ones.
Kincaid makes a strong case that the divide between the M. and no-M. novels is somewhat artificial, even beyond the obvious case of Transition. Banks' first three released novels are all supposedly mainstream, and all three contain devices and effects which are distinctly fantastical, Kincaid fitting them in varying degrees into the milieu of what he calls the "Scottish Fantastic". He definitely convinced me to check out many of Banks' 'mainstream' novels, as well as Alasdair Gray's Lanark.
The analysis is short and sweet, covering 15+ novels in about 150 pages. No space is wasted, though I wish it did have a little more breathing room. As it is, he focusses mostly upon Banks' non-linear structural devices and recurring themes of plot, such as divided selves, civil war, and utopia. It proceeds mostly chronologically, but there is (appropriately) a good deal of jumping around as Banks' novels reverberate off of each other. Kincaid obviously loves Banks' writing, but he's no fanboy. He's quite harsh in his evaluation of the last three Culture novels, especially in comparison to the earlier ones.
Kincaid makes a strong case that the divide between the M. and no-M. novels is somewhat artificial, even beyond the obvious case of Transition. Banks' first three released novels are all supposedly mainstream, and all three contain devices and effects which are distinctly fantastical, Kincaid fitting them in varying degrees into the milieu of what he calls the "Scottish Fantastic". He definitely convinced me to check out many of Banks' 'mainstream' novels, as well as Alasdair Gray's Lanark.
August 13, 2017
Not quite an academic deconstruction, not quite a fan-rave about some excellent books, this book sets out to show why Iain M Banks was so important to the resurgence of science fiction. Definitely one for those who have already read the books being discussed, as it doesn't stop before the endings, but if you are (and if not, why not!?) a fan, then some excellent nuggets about themes and inspiration.
Full review on my blog.
Full review on my blog.
Read
March 20, 2019an excellent overview of Bank's work.
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