Next Culture novel to appear next year.

[Dartzap]

Guardian interview

On the first full day of The Guardian Hay Festival, Iain Banks talks to Stuart Jeffries about why he tore up his passport, his first mainstream novel for five years, and his enduring passion for science fiction

Just over four years ago, Iain Banks did something strange. He ripped up his passport in protest at the Iraq war and sent it to Tony Blair. Why did he do something that hurt himself rather than the prime minister? "Yeah, I know it was self-harming, but what else could I do?" says Banks as we settle down in a hotel conference room. Oh, I don't know: post Blair some broken glass with an insulting note, challenge him to a fight, wee in his holiday swimming pool?


A man of culture


On the first full day of The Guardian Hay Festival, Iain Banks talks to Stuart Jeffries about why he tore up his passport, his first mainstream novel for five years, and his enduring passion for science fiction

Friday May 25, 2007
The Guardian

Iain Banks
'We are real people' ... Iain Banks

Just over four years ago, Iain Banks did something strange. He ripped up his passport in protest at the Iraq war and sent it to Tony Blair. Why did he do something that hurt himself rather than the prime minister? "Yeah, I know it was self-harming, but what else could I do?" says Banks as we settle down in a hotel conference room. Oh, I don't know: post Blair some broken glass with an insulting note, challenge him to a fight, wee in his holiday swimming pool?

Article continues
Banks, one of the star turns at this week's Guardian Hay festival, looks at me witheringly: "I think you'll find the first of those is illegal." And the others would be a big fuss? "True. I thought of parking my Land Rover across the railway tracks in Edinburgh, but I decided it would only inconvenience commuters." He also considered driving that Land Rover into the Rosyth nuclear plant, but realised that the security guards carry machine guns.

So what drove him to make the gesture in the first place? "I was so angry about the illegality and immorality of the war. And this was me - a comfortably off, white Caucasian atheist from a vaguely Protestant background. If I thought it was a disgusting, what would Muslims think about how their co-religionists were being treated?"

Banks, who is now 53, says he will get an application for a new passport as soon as he gets back to his home in North Queensferry, Fife. "The day that Blair goes and Gordon is installed in all his pomp, I will submit my form," he says. He has even booked a celebratory foreign excursion on the Orient Express to Venice in October with his girlfriend, Adele Hartley (of whom more later).

But wasn't Brown equally responsible for the war? "It was Blair's war. There is the technicality of cabinet reponsibility, but it was Blair who bowed to Bush in the first place, and Blair who convinced the Labour party and parliament of the need to go to war with a dossier that was so close to lying that it makes no difference." In 2004, Banks signed a petition urging that Blair be impeached for taking Britain into an illegal war. "I still look forward to seeing him in that glass cubicle in the Hague," he says.

"What Blair did was morally corrosive," Banks continues. "It made me wonder why I was bothering to obey speed limits. What is the point of the rule of law when our prime minister breaks such a big one shamelessly? There doesn't seem to be an acknowledgment that we should have a moral point of view. Remember Robin Cook calling for an ethical foreign policy? What happened to that?"

I wonder if he's likely to be less hard on Brown so as to keep in with the neighbours. The PM-in-waiting, after all, has a house about 100 yards from Banks's own home, overlooking the majestic Forth Rail bridge. (Banks moved back to his childhood town in 1991, and later bought a house next door for his parents.) "I've never met [Brown]," he protests. "I think I saw him on the beach about 10 years ago with the girlfriend who become his wife, but he isn't exactly the kind of guy you'd see down Tesco. I'm under no illusions about my neighbour. I know he's a monetarist who's in favour of big business and part of a political movement, New Labour, that is to the right of Ted Heath's government." So why is he getting a passport again? "Brown's not Blair. That's the main thing."

But there will be a downside to having a passport: he will no longer have an excuse to avoid foreign book tours. "I didn't love them." Particularly, one would have thought, the American ones. In his new book, The Steep Approach to Garbadale, the hero, Alban McGill (who, with his well-trimmed beard and his affiliation to the Scottish Socialist party, does not seem a million miles from Banks himself), says: "I wouldn't move to the United States now any more than I'd have moved to Germany in the mid-30s." Surely he can't be looking forward to explaining that quote to readers in Des Moines? "Let's just say that the character who says that, who is more articulate than I will ever be, doesn't have the same views as me. But no, I'm not." In any case, he is not certain that the book has yet attracted the interest of an American publisher.

The new novel, his first book of mainstream fiction in five years, is a saga about a family whose huge fortune has been built on a board game called Empire!. At one point the family renegade, Alban, seeks to thwart an American buy-out of the company, and, in a climactic speech before shareholders, says: "Personally, I believe when faced with an imperial power - and let's not kid ourselves, that's exactly what the USA is - one ought to do everything nonviolent one can to resist it, just on principle. The USA is a great country full of great people. It's just their propensity as a whole for electing idiots and then conducting a foreign policy of the utmost depravity that I object to."

Thankfully, there's much more to his new, customarily well-plotted novel than political ranting. Most divertingly, there is a love triangle. The hero is torn between his posh cousin called Sophie, with whom he had an adolescent dalliance that scarred him psychically (as these things do), and his new girlfriend, a maths professor called Verushka Graef, whom Banks concedes is "something of a middle-aged man's wish fulfilment" (she's blonde, brainy, fit, self-contained, undemanding, likes oriental carpets, as does Banks, likes mountain climbing and casual sex, and is sceptical about commitment and having children).

Given that the novel was written shortly after the end of Banks's 25-year relationship with his wife Annie (whom he married in Hawaii in 1992), and that he now has a new girlfriend, it is tempting, if irresponsible, to map Alban's romantic conflict on to Banks's recent life. The book is dedicated "For lost loves" and there is a moment in the book when Alban flies across from Hong Kong to Lima, and there is a single-sentenced paragraph that reads: "He sleeps through Hawaii." You might be forgiven for taking that as a pointed kiss-off.

Banks met Adele, a horror-film curator, 17 years ago at a science-fiction convention, but only started dating her last year. "She used to come along for curries with me and Ken [sci-fi writer Ken MacLeod]. And then one day Ken didn't come. I realised I was on a date. It grew from there, just over a year ago. So the book was written from extreme happiness, when I was getting my life back together."

He has made some other life changes since his marriage break-up. In February, for example, he sold his car collection. "I was a complete petrolhead, but I realised it had to stop." He had spent more than £150,000 on cars, and owned a bottle green 3.2-litre Porsche Boxter, a burgundy Porsche 911 Turbo, a 3.8-litre Jaguar Mk II, a 5-litre black BMW 7 series, a souped-up Land Rover Defender. He replaced the fleet with a Lexus RX 400h. "It's a hybrid, but it's ridiculously huge, a real Chelsea tractor. I may have to downsize even more. But as soon as there are battery-powered sports cars, I'm going to buy one. And this is the thing: I won't power it from the national grid. I'll power it from a wind turbine on my house or photo cells on the roof - even though I live in Scotland, they should generate enough to power a car."

Some critics have found Banks's new book tame and his hero disappointingly likeable. Garbadale is hardly as winningly toxic as his most famous fiction, such as his first novel, 1984's The Wasp Factory, in which a bored adolescent protagonist has bumped off three people before the book starts, nor indeed as 1992's The Crow Road, with its arresting first sentence ("It was the day my grandmother exploded"). Banks has arguably lost the edge that made his earlier mainstream fiction so compelling. Fortunately, that is not the only genre in which he writes.

Banks is one of the few writers to successfully write both mainstream realistic fiction (he has written 12 novels as Iain Banks) and science fiction (he has written 10 sci-fi novels as Iain M Banks, and another title under that name is coming soon), and there are many who argue that it's with sci-fi, and his creation of a futuristic civilisation called the Culture, that his talents truly lie. Just as we're talking about the Culture, there comes a knock at the door. It turns out we have been quietly sipping mineral water actually laid out for other people. "You'll have to leave," says a functionary. "You're not the real people."

"We are real people," retorts Banks.

Good point. And anyway, doesn't this woman realise that Banks was voted fifth greatest writer ever after Shakespeare, Austen, Orwell and Dickens in a BBC online poll, even though The Wasp Factory was rejected by six publishers before it was picked up and became a bestseller? Doesn't she know that not only is Banks a feted writer, but also a man brainy enough to have beaten darts commentating god Sid Waddell, comedian Alistair McGowan and singer/ pianist/presenter/model Myleene Klass to the title of Celebrity Mastermind last year (special subject: Scottish whiskies and distilleries)?

Apparently not. As we resettle in a nearby cafe, I ask him why he didn't play the don't-you-know-who-I-am card. "That's just not me," he says winningly.

Banks tells me that he has spent the past three months writing another Culture novel. It will be called Matter and is to be published next February. "It's a real shelf-breaker," he says enthusiastically. "It's 204,000 words long and the last 4,000 consist of appendices and glossaries. It's so complicated that even in its complexity it's complex. I'm not sure the publishers will go for the appendices, but readers will need them. It's filled with neologisms and characters who disappear for 150 pages and come back, with lots of flashbacks and -forwards. And the story involves different civilisations at different stages of technological evolution. There's even one group who have disappeared up their own fundaments into non-matter-based societies."

While Garbadale is a professionally well-plotted and warm-hearted novel, it's hard not to feel that this is where Banks increasingly gets his kicks. "The point about the Culture," he says, "who are the most advanced civilisation in my books, is that they alter their genertic inheritance to make themselves sane and not genocidal, as we often seem to be. They also create machines so intelligent that they can save us from ourselves. We have a lot to learn from them.

"I wish, given what a miserable bunch of murdering bastards we are much of the time, we were more like them." Perhaps, next time he's back home, Banks should deliver a proof copy of Matter, with its vision of a peaceful, technically advanced civilisation that puts our warmongering one to shame, to his neighbour Gordon Brown. Perhaps our new prime minister might find it refreshing and even inspiring. Maybe.

· Iain Banks will be talking about his new novel at the Guardian Hay festival on May 30 at 6.15pm.

Apart from him being a smidge sensitive about Blair.... Good news about the next book. The more complex, the better!

[Luke Starkiller]

There's even one group who have disappeared up their own fundaments into non-matter-based societies.

Sweet! We actually get something on the Sublimed.

[HSRTG]

Christ. I had enough trouble following Use of Weapons. I hope he gives us some clue before character X goes down memory lane or I'm really not going to like this book.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Use of Weapons was easy enough to follow, especially when you pay attention to the chapter numberings.

[andrewgpaul]

Yeah. The really confusing one was Feersum Endjinn, even without Bascule's 'phonetic' spelling.

[andrewgpaul]

ghetto edit: Excession did the same wierd things to time that Feersum Endjinn did.

[NecronLord]

I love appendicies. *Hugs his shelf full of Tolkien and George MacDonald Fraser* I hope they put them in.

What're ye lookin' at?

[OmegaGuy]

I wonder how this will effect the vs. debates

[Big Orange]

I really hope the appendixes and the story itself sheds a lot of light on the still mysterious Homomdan Empire and the dozen other Milky Way factions that are comparable (or slightly greater) to the Culture...

[Bob the Gunslinger]

I really hope this is published in the US. Right now the only Culture books we get (legally) are Excession and State of the Art. It's really hard to get into Iain M Banks when everyone is talking about how great are the books you don't have.

Yeah, we also have the Algebraist. AKA that book with the scarily mathy name and the space squid on the cover. That one sold real well.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I really hope this is published in the US. Right now the only Culture books we get (legally) are Excession and State of the Art. It's really hard to get into Iain M Banks when everyone is talking about how great are the books you don't have.

Yeah, we also have the Algebraist. AKA that book with the scarily mathy name and the space squid on the cover. That one sold real well.

Always Canada or importing from the rest of the Commonwealth. I hope this novel does keep the appendices, else it may be that bit harder to follow. If this is going to be epic like Excession and use the same MacLeod inspired structure, it will be quite the read.

[DPDarkPrimus]

I really hope this is published in the US. Right now the only Culture books we get (legally) are Excession and State of the Art.

Not true. I purchased Look to Windward at a B&N a couple years ago.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Oh. We have that. I just thought it was a fantasy book and not related to the culture.

[Lazarus]

Yeah, we also have the Algebraist. AKA that book with the scarily mathy name and the space squid on the cover. That one sold real well.

It didn't? Huh. Well I read it and thought it was passable... And mine has a nebula, not a squid

[Grog]

It didn't? Huh. Well I read it and thought it was passable... And mine has a nebula, not a squid

You sure it isn't a gas giant and a moon?

I liked it even tough the ending was a bit predictable.

[The Nomad]

It didn't? Huh. Well I read it and thought it was passable... And mine has a nebula, not a squid

You sure it isn't a gas giant and a moon?

I liked it even tough the ending was a bit predictable.

I was a bit underwhelmed by The Algebraist, to be honest. I hope Matter will be more... thrilling.

[Uraniun235]

I really hope this is published in the US. Right now the only Culture books we get (legally) are Excession and State of the Art. It's really hard to get into Iain M Banks when everyone is talking about how great are the books you don't have.

Yeah, we also have the Algebraist. AKA that book with the scarily mathy name and the space squid on the cover. That one sold real well.

What do you mean 'legally'? It's not like there's a law against importing books.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You sure it isn't a gas giant and a moon?

I liked it even tough the ending was a bit predictable.

It's a picture of Jupiter with the moon Io floating past in the shot, taken by Cassini in 2001. I remember I've got a full A3 sized copy in an astronomy book in my room. Having said that, I've still yet to read the novel after I got it one Xmas. It just never gripped me and I'm far more into Alastair Reynolds right now (who seems to do a book every 6 months now!) than anything non-Culture by Banks.

I also have no idea how anyone can think LTW is a fantasy novel unrelated to the Culture, when it's set on an orbital, has numerous dialogues with Mind avatars and includes a nasty bit of closure courtesy of Special Circumstances' terror weaponry.

[Big Orange]

I was a bit underwhelmed by The Algebraist, to be honest. I hope Matter will be more... thrilling.

The Algebraist had an excellent set-up, decent first act, a fairly dull middle act and a climatic final act (even though some of the subplots had weird or/and pointless endings, the Taince subplot being one of them). I was not that impressed by the Dwellers despite their imaginative genuinely alien physiology and weird mindset - I found the semi-feudal Mercatoria setting with the giant megacorporations, mammoth administrations, multilayered military forces and cartoonishly evil warlords to be far more entertaining than jabbering gasbags in eccentric gentlemen clubs.

[The Nomad]

I also have no idea how anyone can think LTW is a fantasy novel unrelated to the Culture, when it's set on an orbital, has numerous dialogues with Mind avatars and includes a nasty bit of closure courtesy of Special Circumstances' terror weaponry.

Perhaps he's thinking of Inversions? (which is actually a Culture novel as well)

[Big Orange]

Perhaps he's thinking of Inversions? (which is actually a Culture novel as well)

I'm reading that already and so far its excellent with the imaginative Medieval style setting - although I do wonder why the Culture-verse is so permeated by apparently unrelated alien races that are virtually indistinguishable from homo sapien sapiens and residing on planets not unlike Earth (although that may partially explained in Matter and this was half heartedly touched upon in Use of Weapons. Culture "humans" have also been descibed as being physically different to homo sapien sapiens as well).

[XaLEv]

Actually there seem to be a number of different 'archetypal' forms which unrelated species will take, with some variation on the basic theme between them. Idirans and Homomdans both belong to the 'large hexapod' type, though in the case of the Idirans the third arm has evolved into a signaling horn. The Affronters were shepherded for a time by some people called the Padressahl who were similar in form, and there is a mention of a species in Consider Phlebas which may have had the same basic shape.

The books' focus on members of the various humanoid species could be due to those species truly being more common, or it could just be that Banks prefers to write about them specifically.

[Tasoth]

I think the fact that Culture 'humans' are all different races but look the same comes from the fact that a bipedal body type much like ours would be rather efficient for a sapient being. There is mention through out various culture books that individual members of The Culture are able to Genofix or some such themselves so that they can actually have children with out 'humans' of the Culture. That right there makes me think they body shape is just from an evolutionarily successful viewpoint.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Yeah, we also have the Algebraist. AKA that book with the scarily mathy name and the space squid on the cover. That one sold real well.

It didn't? Huh. Well I read it and thought it was passable... And mine has a nebula, not a squid

Yeah, but you live in the UK. In the US, the cover has a space squid.

What do you mean 'legally'? It's not like there's a law against importing books.

No, but the books say "Not for sale in the United States" on the back, have prices only listed in pounds and Euros and are completely unavailable through normal bookstores and their distributers. You simply cannot Special Order Use of Weapons in the US through normal, convenient book-buying methods. Yes, you can get it online, but even then it's a hassle. And for the record, I did buy an imported copy of Consider Phlebas. It just wasn't very easy. And I got no discount.

I also have no idea how anyone can think LTW is a fantasy novel unrelated to the Culture, when it's set on an orbital, has numerous dialogues with Mind avatars and includes a nasty bit of closure courtesy of Special Circumstances' terror weaponry.

...Ok, but one would have to read the book in order to know that it is "set on an orbital, has numerous dialogues with Mind avatars and includes a nasty bit of closure courtesy of Special Circumstances' terror weaponry." The US cover is of a sword under a waterfall and the back of the book makes it sound like a generic fantasy story. It really comes across as a completely unrelated story set in a fantasy world.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

..Er, maybe I am thinking of Inversions.. I'll have to check next time I'm in a bookstore.

I just haven't bothered to care about the book since my first impression was "That's not about the Culture. Screw it."