Iain Banks at the IBF this weekend

A quick reminder: Iain will be appearing at the Islay Book Festival this weekend, with a Where Do You Get Your Ideas From? Q&A session taking place on Saturday at 10.30 and a session focusing on Matter on Sunday at 14.00.

See the Islay Book Festival website for more information on Iain's appearances, plus details of the other attendees.

More reviews, Q&A II on the way…

We're just putting the finishing touches to the next Iain Banks Q&A session and are hoping to post that later today. But in the meantime, here are a few more recently-posted reviews of two Banks classics:

Hungarian webzine Ekultura has posted Bors Csaba's review of The Player of Games (the link is to an English translation). Bors concludes: "[T]he novel rocks. The plot is thick with thrills and chills, twists and turns, it grasps the reader and just won’t let go. It is an absolute page-turner."

Over at Highlander's Book Reviews, the eponymous Highlander has posted his reaction to A Song of Stone: "[it's] not a 'nice' book ... but it stands out as an example of Banks' ability to cross and mix genres and come up with something compelling, memorable and original."

Writing for the Malaysian Star newspaper, Martin Spice reviews The Steep Approach to Garbadale, saying: "[The Steep Approach to Garbadale] is a somewhat rambling and picaresque novel, but I found it gripping and its main character beguiling."

Iain Banks email Q&A July 2008

A few weeks ago, we invited readers of this website and www.orbitbooks.net to submit questions to be put to Iain Banks by email. Once the three-week submission period was over, the selection panel sifted through the submissions and picked half a dozen; Iain mused, pondered, cogitated and then sent back the following responses:

[read more]

Iain Banks interviewed and ‘Matter’ reviewed for Time Magazine Online

Lev Grossman has posted a review of Matter over at www.Time.com as well as an interview with Iain, which you can find over at his and Matt Selman's Time.com hosted Nerd World blog.

In the interview, Iain reveals the secret of his amazing ability to transcribe fluent technobabble almost as if he were making it all up:

"I suspect it's just the right balance of wide-eyed, totally fascinated enthusiasm for 'real' tech speak along with a healthy dose of cynicism regarding how easy it is to make up such stuff without really having any idea what in the hell you're talking about. I am happy to report I have both, in spades."

Read the full interview at time-blog.com/nerd_world and thanks again to Alex for the heads-up.

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