Iain Banks, a name synonymous with both mind-bending science fiction and incisive literary fiction, left an indelible mark on the literary world. This article delves into a poignant final interview with the Scottish author, conducted shortly before his untimely passing. We explore his reflections on life, death, his celebrated works, and his unwavering political convictions, offering a comprehensive look at the man behind the books, optimized for readers seeking to understand the genius of Iain Banks.
A Glimpse into the Final Days of Iain Banks
“You know, this might be my last public statement,” Iain Banks remarked in a phone call arranging this interview. At the time, the sentiment felt improbable. Banks, a man brimming with ideas and opinions, seemed too vibrant for such finality. Just weeks before his death on June 9th, he expressed hope of returning to his village walks, a testament to his enduring optimism. The contrast between his plans and the harsh reality of his prognosis underscores the cruel swiftness of his illness. To lose decades of anticipated life was devastating; to be denied even a few more months felt particularly unjust.
The interviewer approached their meeting with a heavy heart, knowing this goodbye carried a profound weight. Banks, at 59, a prolific author of 29 books, was facing his mortality head-on. His diagnosis of inoperable gallbladder cancer in April 2013 had drastically altered his perspective on life’s inevitable end. His public announcement, a masterclass in dignified candor, began with the memorable line, “I am Officially Very Poorly,” and revealed his request to his partner, Adele Hartley, to “do me the honour of becoming my widow.” The end arrived sooner than anyone anticipated, but this final interview provides a powerful window into his spirit during those challenging times.
Energy and Wit in the Face of Adversity
Upon opening his door, Banks defied expectations. Though thinner and less healthy than before, his energy was palpable. “At least I don’t look like Grandpa Simpson anymore,” he quipped, his characteristic wit still sharp. As he led the interviewer through his home to his study, he lamented the perennial struggle of bookshelves versus books. He gestured to a substantial stack, “That pile there… are all unread. And, sadly, likely to remain so!” A tour of his music studio revealed another facet of his creativity, a space he described as acoustically ideal, the books serving as excellent sound insulation.
Scanning the shelves, the interviewer spotted a battered proof copy of The Wasp Factory, Banks’s groundbreaking debut novel. With a playful lunge, Banks retrieved it, showcasing the sticky tape repairs holding the pages together. Inside, he had inscribed, “Much restored.” The unspoken topic of his illness hung in the air, but Banks addressed it preemptively. Settling down for tea and biscuits, the interviewer prepared to navigate the delicate balance of a meaningful conversation amidst a terminal diagnosis. Was a simple “How are you?” insensitive? Was “Tell me about the new novel?” too detached from the gravity of the situation?
But Banks launched into conversation, animated and engaging. He brandished a handkerchief featuring a Cyberman, a gift, and confessed, “You know, I’ve fallen out of love with Doctor Who, at least in its present incarnation. I just can’t get along with it.” He dismissed suggestions to write for the show, citing creative constraints. “I might have been hopelessly naive but I hadn’t realised there are just so many rules when you write a Doctor Who story, like the monster has to go back in the box at the end.”
The Wasp Factory book jacket, showcasing the iconic cover of Iain Banks’s debut novel.
This led to a discussion about risk and consequence in fiction, a hallmark of Iain Banks‘s work, particularly his science fiction. The interviewer suggested that readers were drawn to the very sense of danger and unpredictability in his sci-fi narratives.
“Well,” Banks responded, “if you are going to write what a friend of a friend once called ‘Made up space shit’, then if it’s going to have any ring of truth that means sometimes some of the horrible characters get to live, and for there to be any sense of jeopardy, especially in future novels, the good people have to die. Sometimes.” This willingness to defy convention and embrace narrative unpredictability was central to his appeal.
Science Fiction, the Culture Series, and Literary Freedom
Banks openly admitted his preference for writing science fiction novels over his “literary” works, and within science fiction, the Culture novels held a special place. The Culture series, known for its hedonistic, anarchistic, post-scarcity civilization, was described as “a hoot. It’s my train set. I adore the freedom and the size of the canvas.” However, he acknowledged the increasing complexity of writing within the established Culture universe. “And there’s so much baggage with the Culture now that I have to get each new novel aligned with earlier Culture history. I don’t have the same leeway to make things up compared with when I started.”
When asked about concluding the Culture series, Banks was resolute: “No. And it’s a self-conscious decision; just like the Culture itself is determined to keep on going, refusing to sublimate or disappear off stage, so I think it would be too easy for me to lob in a series-ender. To that extent, ‘destroying the whole universe’ – an always tempting scenario when you realise in SF you can do anything – just seems too easy.” This refusal to provide easy answers or predictable conclusions underscored his commitment to challenging readers and pushing the boundaries of genre.
Pushing Boundaries in Literary Fiction
This spirit of challenging conventions extended to his literary fiction, from the dark and unsettling The Wasp Factory to the gothic scope of The Crow Road and the coming-of-age story Stonemouth. Banks emphasized the delicate balance between narrative drive and plausibility. He referenced William Goldman’s assertion that “only real life can get away with the really outrageous stuff,” highlighting the unique constraints of fiction. “The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn’t. It’s incredibly annoying for us scribblers. A lot of the time you’re simply deciding how far down the path of unlikeliness you can go while still retaining the willing suspension of disbelief in the reader. You can’t go too far – ‘With one mighty bound he was free!’ – because it just becomes ridiculous. Readers will start to feel that it’s all too coincidental, too easy, too contrived and convenient for the writer’s purposes. You’re trying to decide how much you can get away with.”
The Crow Road book cover, another example of Iain Banks’s diverse literary output.
The Quarry: A Precient Final Novel
Discussing his latest book, The Quarry, whose publication was expedited due to his illness, Banks described it as “quite realist. It’s a fairly simple book as well; not many characters, there’s only really one location and it doesn’t muck around with flashbacks or narrative order.” He confessed a tinge of disappointment that this, rather than a grander work like Transition, might be his literary farewell. “If I’d known it was going to be my last book, I’d have been quite disappointed that I’m going out with a relatively minor piece; whereas something like Transition, a wild splurge of fantasy, sci-fi and mad reality frothed up together … now that would have been the kind of book to go out on. I’m still very proud of The Quarry but … let’s face it; in the end the real best way to sign off would have been with a great big rollicking Culture novel.”
The Quarry centers on Kit, a sharp-witted, alienated teenager, and his terminally ill father, Guy. The narrative unfolds as Guy’s old university friends descend upon their home, ostensibly to offer support, but with hidden agendas related to a compromising video from their past. The eerie synchronicity between the novel’s plot and Banks’s own life was not lost on him.
“God, I’d nearly finished the book when I found out. It was bizarre,” he admitted. “Guy was always going to be dying of cancer; the book was always going to be predicated on that, and nothing really changed because of my own bad news.” He revealed the novel’s rapid genesis in October 2012, noting, “Some books take a lot of teasing out and the coming together of previous ideas, but this one jumped in there fully formed in the course of a couple of days back in October 2012; so much so that once I’d had the idea I just left it for the best part of two months because it was ready to go at that point. It’s purely experience that lets you know when a novel’s ready to go. You know when not to overwork it before you start.”
The Quarry book cover, revealing the thematic resonance with Iain Banks’s own life circumstances.
Banks recounted the timeline of his diagnosis, revealing the unsettling coincidence of writing about a character facing terminal illness while unknowingly facing his own. He found himself writing the line, “I shall not be disappointed to leave all you bastards behind,” for Guy after receiving his prognosis, channeling his own shock and using his writing as a means of processing his reality. “Like I say; that’s reality for you, it can get away with anything.”
Dignity, Acceptance, and Unextinguished Ire
The public response to Banks’s announcement was overwhelming, marked by admiration for his dignity and lack of bitterness. “Yes!” he laughed, “I know; it’s not like me, is it?” He clarified that Guy’s character, while dealing with terminal illness, was not a direct reflection of his own feelings. “I’m not Guy – for example, he deeply resents that life will go on without him. I think that’s a stupid point of view. Apart from anything else, I mean, what did you expect?” The Quarry served as a platform to dissect the clichés surrounding terminal illness, with Guy dismissing alternative treatments with acerbic wit, comparing them to “running into a burning building and trying to put the fire out by means of interpretative dance.”
Banks pondered the strange synchronicity of life and art, suggesting that writers, by constantly engaging with themes of death and mortality, might be better equipped to face their own. “Unless you’re writing purely for five-year-olds, about bunnies, you’re going to have to think about death. Your characters will die and people will live on afterwards who cared about them. You need to be able to empathise with them. Of course, we all go through it; we all have people close to us die. But as a writer you really have to think it through properly, or it’ll all ring false. It’s almost one of the perks of the trade that you’re forced to think about that stuff fairly deeply. So maybe when it comes along in real life, you’re slightly better prepared to deal with it.”
Despite his acceptance of his fate, Banks’s political fire remained undiminished. He launched into passionate denunciations of self-obsession and the perceived arrogance of religious dogma. “I can understand that people want to feel special and important and so on, but that self-obsession seems a bit pathetic somehow. Not being able to accept that you’re just this collection of cells, intelligent to whatever degree, capable of feeling emotion to whatever degree, for a limited amount of time and so on, on this tiny little rock orbiting this not particularly important sun in one of just 400m galaxies, and whatever other levels of reality there might be via something like brane-theory… really, it’s not about you.”
His political zeal extended to Thatcherism, the Iraq War, and the rise of right-wing populism. He expressed disappointment at potentially missing the Scottish independence referendum, lamenting “a Scotland still shackled to a rightwing England.”
Reflections on a Career and a Secret Affection
Reflecting on his prolific career, Banks shared insights into his own work. He considered The Bridge his best novel and Canal Dreams perhaps his weakest. He harbored a desire for a film adaptation of Consider Phlebas. When asked about a secretly cherished novel, one that might have been underappreciated, he named A Song of Stone. “With A Song of Stone, there’s an elegance to it, I’d claim. I think it’s my most poetic use of language.” He recounted a conversation with fellow author Ken MacLeod, who described A Song of Stone as a novel where “the relatively clear prose falls away and you get a really intense part where he brings out all his adjectives and big guns? With A Song of Stone the whole novel’s like that.'”
The Bridge book cover, representing Iain Banks’s personal favorite among his novels.
Banks revealed that A Song of Stone originated as a poem, and shared his ambition to publish a poetry collection before his death, potentially in collaboration with Ken MacLeod. “I think my poetry’s great but then I would, wouldn’t I? But whether any respectable publisher will think so, that’s another matter. I’ll self-publish if I have to; sometimes I have no shame.”
Overwhelmed by Response and Facing the Future
The response to Banks’s public announcement of his illness was “overwhelming,” moving him deeply. He and his partner had strategically timed the announcement to coincide with their departure for Venice, hoping to avoid the initial onslaught of media attention. He humorously noted that had Thatcher died on the same day, his news would have been relegated to the back pages.
He found a strange form of solace in contemplating his limited time. “You look at the decrepitude of the very old and ill, and at least I’ll be spared years of that. It’ll be over fairly quickly.” He expressed a desire to finalize his music projects and create a website for distribution, driven by a need to bring his musical creations to “some level of respectability.” Despite his prognosis, he was characteristically busy, aiming to complete a new Culture novel if possible.
In a final, unexpected twist, Banks offered a whimsical explanation for his cancer: “Cosmic ray,” he declared. “I won’t brook any contradiction; it was a high-energy particle. A star exploded hundreds or thousands of years ago and ever since there’s been a cosmic ray – a bad-magic bullet with my name on it, to quote Ken – heading towards the moment where it hit one of my cells and mutated it. That’s an SF author’s way to bow out; none of this banal transcription error stuff.” Instead of a final goodbye, he offered a “See you soon,” leaving a lingering sense of his enduring spirit.
Legacy of Laughter and Lasting Impact
Reflecting on the conversation after Banks’s passing, the interviewer was struck by the pervasive laughter throughout their exchange. That laughter, now silent, echoes through his work and his enduring legacy. On the train home, crossing the Firth of Forth, the interviewer mused on a fitting tribute: renaming the Forth Road Bridge the “Iain (M) Banks Other The Bridge Bridge.” More profoundly, they realized that Banks, even in his final days, embodied the best of himself – witty, passionate, imaginative, kind, and profoundly clever. It was a humbling privilege to witness.
The laughter may be gone, but the echoes of Iain Banks‘s brilliance, his insightful observations, and his unforgettable stories continue to resonate, reaching far beyond the known universe, securing his place as a true literary giant.
