Iain M Banks

Iain M Banks was a great science fiction writer. He was able to combine interesting ideas with solid writing. His writing is clever and engaging. You can easily get lost in his books, which is what all great writing is about. If you can make people think, point out truths about the world, and get them to believe and relate to characters you’re an excellent writer.

He wrote many books, but his most famous are the “The Culture” books about a human society in the future with advanced AI. It is probably fair to say that these books are having a moment. Which is good, they are good books.

The first culture book “Consider Phlebas” is slow to get into. I didn’t like the first 100 pages but then realized what a great book it was. There are nine Culture books, one collection of short stories. However two aren´t available for copyright reasons.

The second book, “The Player of Games” is the best book. You might want to start there as you can read the books in any order.

Image of Banks at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2009. Photography by TimDuncan - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7599707