Iain M Banks talks to The View From Here

Mike French, editor of literary magazine The View From Here has been in touch to say:

“We interviewed Iain at the Luton Library Theatre before he went on stage, in a half-hour interview which turned out to be both amusing and insightful. The full interview is only available in our printed and digital editions.”

Here’s a taster question to whet your appetite:

The View From Here: Is there a grand plan for the Culture, are you taking it somewhere or just having fun with it?

Iain M Banks: “No – and yeah… it will go on until I stop having fun with it and then I will just sort of leave it to be. There’s no overall strategic plan and in a sense that is the plan, having no plan is the plan. The plot of the Culture is not going to come to some huge climatic end, well unless I come up with an idea that can only work in those terms but I’ll try not to.

“That is, the Culture just keeps on going: it’s this society where by now you might have expected it to sublime, to retire from the normal matter base life of the galaxy and the universe and go off into this magical realm. (Which I may have to deal with as I keep getting asked about it these days, so I’m going to have to explain what the hell it is.)

“But it’s definitely not doing this, deliberately staying back and surfing the crest instead of going down the wave – it wants to keep on doing good works, it wants to be part of the normal life of the galaxy. So it’s deliberately not doing what it’s expected to do. So that theme of continuance, of sticking around – like passiveness, almost bloody mindedness is why it can’t just all suddenly come to a big crashing stop and I think eventually it will fade away, but it’s going to leave lots of echoes.

“That was one of the questions today during the Twitter thing which I had to put in quite concise terms: somebody said, will the Culture ever fall? And I said, it’s not going to fall but it will fade and that’s going to leave echoes everywhere. ( Mock evil laughter )”

If you want to read the full interview you’ll need to pay The View From Here the princely sum of $1 (one US dollar) or 69p (sixty-nine British pence) for the downloadable pdf edition, or $7.35 / £4.99 for a copy of the print remix.

More information from www.theviewfromheremagazine.com.