Iain M. Banks Biography
Iain (Menzies) Banks was born in Fife in 1954, and was educated at Stirling
University, where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology.
Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of
his first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984.
His first science fiction novel, Consider Phlebas, was published in 1987.
He has continued to write both mainstream fiction (as Iain Banks) and science
fiction (as Iain M. Banks).
He is now acclaimed as one of the most powerful, innovative and exciting writers
of his generation: The Guardian has called him "the standard by which the
rest of SF is judged". William Gibson, the New York Times-bestselling
author of Spook Country describes Banks as a "phenomenon".
Banks' mainstream fiction includes The Wasp Factory (1984), Walking on
Glass (1985), The Bridge (1986), Espedair Street (1987),
Canal Dreams (1989), The Crow Road (1992), Complicity (1993),
Whit (1995), A Song of Stone (1997), The Business (1999),
Dead Air (2002), The Steep Approach to Garbadale (2007), and Transition (2009).
Banks’ science fiction includes seven novels based around The Culture, a massive
interstellar civilization. These novels are: Consider Phlebas (1987),
The Player of Games (1988), Use of Weapons (1990), Excession
(1996), Inversions (1998), Look to Windward (2000), Matter
(2008), and Surface Detail (2010). His non-Culture science fiction novels are Against a Dark Background
(1993), Feersum Endjinn (1994) and The Algebraist (2004), which
was nominated for the Hugo Award. A collection of short fiction, The State of
the Art (1989), contains both Culture and non-Culture work.
He has also written Raw Spirit, a book about Scotland and its whiskies.
He lives in Fife, Scotland.
This biography was last updated on 08/09/2011.
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