[If anyone happens to have the address of a friendly Mind who could make this happen in a nano-second or two, please do let us know via the usual channels.]

Update 17.11.08: Looks like this will be happening some time early next week now, folks. Normal service will continue for a short while yet...

Read on for the latest Q's from Iain's readers and fans, with A's from the man himself...

From Ashley Franks:

Q: Having now read a number of your books, I realize that it's not always a good idea to get attached to any particular character (the typical "happy ending" is not typical of your work, as far as I can tell). Everything is messy and true to life in that sense. But do you ever have trouble killing off some of your characters? And if you do, I'm curious as to who and why? And also, how do you feel about "Happy Endings", generally?

Yes; Yalson in Consider Phlebas. I felt a distinct twinge when I had to kill her off. I just liked her, I suppose. Which is an oddly narcissistic thing to say, given she wasn't based on anybody and I basically made her up, but there you are; a writer's characters are part of him- or her-self and so we shouldn't be too surprised when we fall slightly in love with our own creations.

I think we're generally too attached to happy endings, but I guess that's only natural. I don't hate happy endings as such, I just think they're somewhat over-represented in our general fictive media (though, you could argue that they're under-represented in respectable / quality / Booker-type novels).

From : Anthony

Q: I wondered if you could elucidate a little on the inspiration and influences behind Walking On Glass? I would like to know what you were aiming to demonstrate and achieve? For me it is one of your most puzzling novels and I've not come across a decent deconstruction yet of it.

Well, I wanted to do something different, and I had a bunch of three ideas that were effectively competing to be the one to form the framework of the next novel. Unusually, none of them broke away from the pack, as it were, and all three just kept on developing pretty much equally, and even in sync, with other ideas coming along - generated by this first batch - that seemed to fit equally well with any and all of them, so it seemed obvious, eventually, to develop the similarities between them and write them all together in a sort of braided structure.

In retrospect the book may have been partly a reaction to the relatively linear and conventional structure of The Wasp Factory (though not to its reception - Walking on Glass was all but completed by the time The Wasp Factory was published).

Beyond that, I was just trying to tell a story (well, three) and show what I could do.

From Manuel Fernandes:

Q: The Culture is a society almost perfect from the point of view of a less evolved society. A less evolved society can look at the Culture and think they are gods. My actual question is: Have you thought about writing about the Culture finding actual evidence of a god? - not another extremely evolved culture or artefact but an actual god who knows everything, is everywhere and can do everything?

No, is the short answer. As a fully paid-up evangelical atheist I don't believe such a being exists, for one thing. To take this remotely seriously you'd have to specify more fully what sort of God you're talking about; is the Christian God, for example, usually regarded as something / someone it's even possible to track down to a particular place? ...Heaven? Where would that be then? How do you get there from here? Apart from by dying, obviously. Isn't God meant to be everywhere and every-when or something? And if the blighter's supposed to be omnipotent and omniscient, wouldn't that mean that it would have to be complicit in its own discovery anyway? I think the basic daftness of the idea is starting to come out here. (I mean the basic daftness inherent in the idea of God, obviously; the question's relatively reasonable.)

From Janet Williamson:

Q: As we've just had the annual Banned Book Week, I thought I'd ask - has The Wasp Factory (probably still your most contentious book?) ever been banned? And what do you think makes it so challenging and challenged over the years?

Apparently it was banned from the Harrods department store book department in London for a while shortly after it was first published. Or maybe it was just sold under the counter; accounts differ. I like to think some purple-faced retired major stormed back there insisting it was withdrawn from sale after buying it earlier and reading the first few chapters. I don't recall hearing of any other bannings.

I'm not entirely sure why it's still regarded as so challenging; maybe it's the conflict between the often grisly subject matter and Frank's breezy narration.

From Stuart Cragg:

Q: How often do you wake up and find yourself disappointed that you are in Britain, and not in the age of the Culture after all?

Never. I think I have a fairly firm grip on reality and I know the Culture doesn't actually exist, though I would like to think that, in however small a way, the fact that I've presented it as an idea might help to bring something like it into existence sometime in our future. One can but hope.

I guess the real trouble is that we - us humans - are just not nice enough to support something as benign as the Culture. The point is that as a species, as a civilisation, you can choose to behave with consistent decency at any stage in your technological development, not just in a post-scarcity environment, and any species which could instigate or become a founding part of the Culture would, I'm afraid, almost certainly have been behaving a lot better in the lead up to that event and throughout their history than we have throughout ours. I would like to be wrong, but I suspect we are too selfish, stupid, xenophobic and cruel to be Culture-compatible.

So, genetic modification ahoy for us then, matey!

Once again, a very big thank you to everyone who sent in questions for Iain and to Iain himself for taking time out of his schedule to provide another great set of answers.

Interviewer Judith Spelman has posted a (1.23Mb) pdf copy of the piece on her own website at www.judithspelman.co.uk.

[Thanks to DaveH for the heads-up]

"Visitors to the Iain Banks site may be interested in one of the items: a copy of Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing, illustrated by Ralph Steadman, and signed and inscribed by Iain Banks ('May the spirit of the blessed Saint Hunter be with you')."

This item will be one of those listed on Book Aid International's 'Books Change Lives' eBay for Charity page on Monday October 13th.

A press release about the auction adds: "As well as a fantastic array of signed books, Book Aid International will also be auctioning a number of original illustrations by some of the UK's best-loved illustrators including Nick Sharrat, Satoshi Kitamura and Sue Heap."

"Paul Cornell's radio adaptation of Iain Banks' novel The State of the Art will be aired on the 6th March 2009 on Radio 4...

"Of course, anyone impatient for a preview would have to come along to NewCon 4. We've obtained permission to play exclusive clips from the show, 6 months ahead of its broadcast; said clips to then be discussed by the author and adaptor ('adaptor' as in Paul, rather than any electronic gizmo!)."

And there's more information on State of the Art's place in the forthcoming BBC Radio science fiction season, over at blogs.thestage.co.uk.

Slightly shorter lead-time this time around, folks: we'd like you to send in your questions to us no later than Friday October 3rd, please - so that gives you just over two weeks to think of something devastatingly interesting to put to Iain.

We do still have a few potential candidates on file from the first two rounds, so please don't feel the need to repeat yourself if you've already submitted a question that hasn't quite made the cut yet. On the other hand, if you'd like to try a new angle, or follow-up on something that was mentioned in the first two Q&A sessions, then that's always worth a try.

Same procedure as before, folks: send your best question (just the one per correspondent, please), by email, to orbit@littlebrown.co.uk, with the subject line 'Iain [M] Banks Q&A Suggestion'.

We're hoping to post the answers sometime during the week commencing October 6th, Iain's schedule allowing, of course...

Independent columnist Matthew Bell makes a brief mention of Iain's recent appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Webzine Dazed & Digital has a brief interview with Iain, also conducted during the EIBF.

Paul Cornell gives a brief progress report on his BBC radio adaptation of 'The State of the Art' during an interview with IO9.com.

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

And so - without any further ado - we present Iain's Email Q&A, episode II:

From Pete Davies:

Q: For me the big three "literary, but accessible" British novelists for my generation are yourself, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes. But where do you see the next great voices coming from and do you have any theories as to why it's taking so long for you three to get some competition?

Well, I'm flattered to be mentioned in such august company - I suspect a lot of people would dispute my inclusion. To answer your question; I think in the shape of Alan Warner and David Mitchell they're already here, and have been for a few years.

But if it's not them then I don't know and, more to the point, probably wouldn't know. I try to keep up with developments in mainstream and SF but I just don't read fast enough to do so reliably in either field; far more clued-up commentators exist who read more widely and deeply in contemporary literature. Frankly I wouldn't trust my own judgement in such matters.

Double submission, from Tam Ham and Barry de la Rosa:

Q: In several of your books, games play a prominent role (Azad, Empire!, Despot) and the Halo Trilogy is said to be heavily influenced by your Culture books. Would you ever consider developing your own computer game? Or would you ever consider licensing a game company to produce a role-playing game or MMORPG based on the Culture universe?

In theory yes, or at least maybe. The trouble is I'm not a team player (an only child thing, I expect), plus writing novels anyway kind of spoils you for co-operating with other people. You get too used to being God, controlling everything, calling all the shots and just generally doing it all your own way, with no arguments or compromises.

Modern computer games are so complicated and time-consuming to write - and cost so much money to develop - that they have to be co-operative efforts and I don't think I'd fit into the team ethos required. I have supposed I could act in some sort of advisory or consultancy role but I don't know how realistic that idea is. Anyway, it would really require somebody approaching my agent with a serious proposal in the first place; like translation and film deals, you can't push these things - people come to you with a proposal or they don't come at all.

It would probably take a significant film deal - and likely one carried through to a successful film - to produce the kind of commercial climate necessary to make a Culture computer game viable. Generally, I'd have no objections in principal to licensing a role-playing or other game based on the Culture - these are things you have to evaluate on the particular merits of any individual proposal. And if none of this ever happens I'm happy to settle for the ideas behind the Culture somehow influencing both games design and the assumptions behind them.

From Bruce Attenborrow:

Q: One of the key aspects of the Culture's ability to perpetuate itself is the essential reliance it has on the Minds. You mentioned in the previous Q & A that the Culture's Minds find the Culture itself interesting and therefore continue to work in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship (or at least, they appear to). What, in your opinion, is it that the Minds find so interesting? Why don't at least some of them turn on the Culture and cut loose? What is it philosophically and moralistically that keeps them on the straight and narrow? Could the Culture exist without the Minds?

The idea is that the Minds find us interesting the way we find our pets interesting. We're their fish tank, their ant farm, their Sims.

The assumption is that AIs so many generations down the line from when their human (or whatever) instigators created the first generation will be free of any prejudices or drives (or the equivalent of drives) those biological designers might have included in the AIs' design, deliberately or otherwise. So they'll be vastly wise - and may well have something like a drive in the shape of a thirst for knowledge - but they'll also, arguably, be almost too perfect, too powerful, too self-sufficient. They'll need something to keep their interest in the mundane workings of reality, and the humans in the Culture provide that.

Those humans are far better-behaved and much less neurotic and psychotic compared to us but they are still humans, with a collection of drives, needs and desires that produce behaviour a Mind would find fascinating, and something worth caring about.

As humans, we feel both tenderness and a duty of care towards those who are relatively powerless, weak and vulnerable compared to ourselves - whether it's towards our own children or animals (especially when they're cute). I'm suggesting that even without deliberately designing it into a Mind, there would be a similar or at least analogous feeling or urge in those Minds - based on a shared ability to look at the universe and both to wonder and to reason - sufficient for them to find it rewarding and even pleasurable to cooperate with and to some degree look after the humans involved.

However, some of the Minds do just bugger off after they're completed, and the Culture accepts this degree of apparent waste as part of the price for creating AIs which are their own entities - individuals with genuine personalities - rather than just carefully designed components of the civilisation.

My feeling is that there will be ways for any currently existing generation of Minds to tweak the properties of the next generation (I'd assume there would be a smaller likelihood of the sort of apostasy mentioned above occurring during what one might term the war economy necessary for the successful waging of the Idiran War, for example) and the extent and frequency of such tweaking would be something that would have evolved and developed over time, so that by the time the Culture stories are set this has become a mature technology.

I don't think the Culture as it is portrayed in the stories could exist for long without the Minds. They anchor it; if they all suddenly disappeared (and in a sense kept on disappearing even when new ones were created) it would drift, eventually, into a different civilisational course. Arguably it would drift into the main sequence of galactic civilisational development, describing what the elder civilisations (who, as mentioned in the Appendices section of Consider Phlebas, take an interest in such matters) would recognise as a more familiar arc within the space of developmental possibilities, moving towards conventional Sublimation rather than sticking around - engaged, in-play and just generally interfering - as the Culture is, quite deliberately, doing.

I also think that just knowing the Minds are there - and relatively accessible - makes a huge difference to the average Culture citizen. They make it easier to enjoy the Culture's nearly infinite pleasures with a clearer conscience.

Double submission, from Andy Smelt and 'Bascule the Teller':

Q: I was watching the final double episode of the last series of Doctor Who and I noticed that the Doctor described the Dalek's ability to move the Earth as a "fearsome technology" and later called the resulting collection of planets some sort of engine (a reference to Feersum Endjinn?) Have you been approached to write or co-write a Doctor Who episode? If you ever were, would you take up the offer? And if you did, what sort of episode do you think you would write?

I'd put that use of language down to coincidence (if not, then I'm suitably flattered). I don't recall being asked to write or co-write a Doctor Who episode but I'd almost certainly say no anyway. It's that teamwork thing, in a way; you have to accept the limitations of the form, including the stipulation that any monsters taken out of the box during the course of the episode(s) are put back in it again at the end, and I don't know that I could adapt to that.

This is not to denigrate the writing in the recent series at all; some of the Doctor Who episodes over the last few years have been amongst the best SF ever to appear on TV or film and may well prove much more influential than anything I've ever written, but, even so, faced with the reality of having to write within a framework after so many years of using SF as the place where my imagination gets totally free rein, I think I'd still find the restrictions too frustrating to work with.

You never know, though; if I suddenly had a spiffing idea that would work best - or even only - as a Doctor Who episode I'd happily submit it.

From Mike Smiffy:

Q: I've noticed while reading your SF in particular that you are constantly describing very precise distances and measurements; whether it's miles, kilometres or even centimetres and millimetres. I was wondering: is this something you do consciously to set the scene and give the reader a more vivid picture of the surroundings and distance to the goal, or is it just you putting your ideas down exactly as you see them?

Hmm. Mild OCD on my part, perhaps. Could just be the skiffy equivalent of a phenomenon we writers refer to as Doing Too Much Research And Insisting On Showing How Much You've Done.

I do have the dubious habit of drawing out Culture ships and the like, so they sort of have precise dimensions rather than just vague impressions of immense size or whatever and I guess sometimes these figures get incorporated into the text.

Otherwise it's just me trying to get an idea of size and scale over as simply as possible. It seems fitting, somehow, in SF. If I was writing proper Fantasy I suppose keeping it more vague and abstract would make sense.

From Gary Wilkinson:

Q: I recently read that another writer, Steve Brust, had a dragon from one his books tattooed on his back... if you were to do something similar, what character, object or image from your books would you have tattooed? And where?

Well, I wouldn't. I think tattoos look fine on other people, but there's a remark a character makes in The Steep Approach to Garbadale about having a tattoo meaning you will never be truly naked ever again, and I kind of agree with that (and think it's a unnecessary limitation).

If I ever change my mind, I guess a wasp - probably quite subtle, life-size - would be the obvious contender and I imagine somewhere out-of-the-way without being what you might call intimate would be appropriate; the ankle, perhaps.

From Tal Porter:

Q: In "An Audience With Billy Connolly", the Big Yin gets asked what he does with groupies. He replies that comedians don't get groupies, they just get drunk blokes telling them jokes and insisting they go in the act. Do you similarly get fans plaguing you with ideas for your next novel? It's just I've got this great one for the next Culture book...

Nope. Never really noticed any groupies either, at least not when it would have made a difference (though I've been told they were there and I was just being too thick to notice, which I'm afraid sounds horribly plausible).

People sometimes say things like "You should put that in a book!" but it's generally about some unlikely though still mundane event rather than anything to do with SF. I'm not really in the market for other people's ideas for Culture or any other novels; for me a large part of the fun of writing books is seeing what I'll surprise myself with in the shape of the idea for the next one, and professional pride alone would prevent me out-sourcing that process!

Once again, a big thank you to everyone who sent in questions, and of course to Iain for taking the time out of his summer schedule to come up with his answers. There's a distinct possibility that we'll be running another Q&A session before too long, so do watch this space (or, even better, subscribe to the site's RSS feed) for further announcements.

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."

Dave H sent us a link to a Guardian podcast of the recent discussion panel on The Wasp Factory that was chaired by John Mullan.

On the subject of The Wasp Factory, there's a lengthy analysis-piece over at a blog called The Anatomy Lesson, which probably deserves a few comments.

Readers might also be interested in visiting Jon's Soap Box, where you can read (and discuss) a comparison of the world-building techniques of Iain Banks and William Gibson.

And blogger Cobb ponders The Sybaritic Side of The Culture.

Here's the link to the original article: www.financialradio.co.uk.

And here are the three YouTube links:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Embedded audio after the jump, click on 'read more' to access.

And so, without further ado, we hereby call for all you Banks-fans and readers to send in your next batch of questions for Iain. The same general guidelines as last time will apply once more:

Send your best question (just one per correspondent, please), by email, to orbit@littlebrown.co.uk, with the subject line 'Iain [M] Banks QandA Suggestion'.

The deadline for submissions for this second session is Wednesday August 13th. After that date, the half-dozen or so queries that - in the collective opinion of the team here at Orbit / Abacus - are the most interesting and / or intriguing will be put to Mr Banks for his consideration and contemplation. The resulting answers will then be posted to to the website as soon as Iain has gotten his answers back to us.

Fire away!

From Ed Ashby:

Q: Imagine you've agreed to write a novella; the only two provisos are that the story must be set in the Culture and it must feature a character from a previous Culture novel. It doesn't have to be a main character, and the events in the novella can take place before or after those of the original book in which they appear. Who would you pick, and why?

Iain Banks: Hmm. Good question. I think I'd go with Shohobohaum Za, from The Player of Games, the man who saves Gurgeh's ludic arse when he's attacked outside the games hall, orders the preposterous cocktail from the Limiting Factor's module and who turns out to be - surprise - an SC agent. Now there's a chap who must have had an interesting past. And would doubtless go on to have a just as interesting a future (though you wouldn't necessarily bet on it being all that long).

I always felt he was a character who could carry something bigger than the cameo he has in TPoG, and it would be good to have an SC agent who isn't so obviously weighed down by the past, like Zakalwe from Use of Weapons or Anaplian from Matter; Za has a much more blasé take on the whole being-an-SC-agent lark, and that would be refreshing. So I'd probably write about some future adventure, scrape or escapade of his. No idea what the story would actually be, but I wager it would be colourful.

From Paul Raven:

Q: Which is your favourite (or most hated) literary manifesto, and why? If you could start your own right now, and gather an instant flock of rebel cohorts, what would it be called, and what would the agenda be?

Iain Banks: Cripes. We don't much hold with them there literary manifestos round here, though I'm sure if I had a concisely annotated list of them before me I could find one or two I thought were sensible or inspiring, and some I'd regard as a bit daft. Honestly, I don't really pay such things much attention. I'm always a bit sceptical about any movement or even allegedly coherent group of writers really existing for much longer than whatever lunchtime the idea of said movement was dreamt up.

That whole herding cats thing, you know? I feel writers tend to go their own way, especially these days, and any pattern or appearance of a programme only appears in retrospect, and generally only to those looking for it.

If I was going to have a manifesto - just for the sheer flipping heck of it - I'd draw up one that denigrated cliché, demanded greater realism in narrative and bound its adherents to resolutely refuse to acknowledge the existence, even as handy plot devices, of any form of supernatural or spiritual force whatsoever.

Ha! (That's a 'so-there' type of 'Ha', not a 'tee-hee' sort of 'Ha'.)

From Dave Haddock:

Q: The Culture books have been chronological so far - have you thought about writing about the Culture before it was the Culture?

Iain Banks: Yup, I have, and generally jettisoned the idea pretty quickly. It's one of those ideas that is kind of waiting for the right story idea to come along; an idea that somehow implies the Culture but doesn't depend on its existence. I guess the trouble is that when I'm in what you might call a Culture state of mind then I really look forward to using the usual props; the ships, the drones, the knife missiles and so on.

(Even in Matter, where most of that stuff is kept fairly isolated to brief sections while the rest of the story rolls on, there's a kind of expectation, I think, that all this will come to the fore at some point, so that when the flurry of action does take place at the end, it's a kind of long-built-up release.)

And when I don't have my Culture hat on, I usually take the opportunity to get well away and do something quite different, maybe even something that is effectively incompatible with the Culture universe (The Algebraist being the best example). These are kind of the two faces of the coin being spun here, so waiting for a pre-Culture Culture story might be like waiting for the coin to land on its edge. Still, you never know.

From Gabriel Bihian:

Gabriel: Could you write a science-fiction novel without wars and violence?

Iain Banks: Good grief yes. I've toyed with the idea of writing a Shakespearean - okay, a sub-Shakespearean - comedy set in the Culture where some feckless / rather dizzy / profoundly spoilt human characters suffer a series of misunderstandings (with hilarious results), attended by jaded and long-suffering drones. It's just I'm kind of a sucker for the unlimited special effects budget written SF hands a writer - and big explosions (I blame Gerry Anderson).

Again, though, it'd be a narrow idea-window for me to hit; a story that needed to be SF, but didn't need all the pyrotechno-gizmology I've become so fond of. Any ideas I've ever had in this direction, when sternly asked the question "Couldn't you do almost exactly the same story set in our reality, present or past?" tend to look pretty shifty, break eye contact and start drawing doodles in the dust at their feet while starting to whistle.

Definitely possible though.

From Massimo Gasperini:

Q: Can you suggest any particular parts of Scotland that would be most interesting to visit and explore, from the point of view of someone who likes your books?

Iain Banks: Reading Raw Spirit might throw up more, but off the top of my head:

The stretch of shore West of Portmahomack in Easter Ross (helped inspire The Wasp Factory), the Forth Bridge (no prizes for guessing which book), Greenock, Oban, the Glenfinann House hotel, Glenfinnan and the area around the Crinan Canal, all of which provided raw material for The Crow Road. Edinburgh, obviously, given that it plays a part in Complicity (and Loch Bruc in the novel is sort of based on Loch Shiel, the loch which Glenfinnan is at the head of... there's a rather poor joke in there with an utterly irrelevant Australian connection. Moving swiftly on).

The upper reaches of the Forth - the flood plain as far as Stirling - is there in Whit (and briefly Edinburgh again), and the whole area around Stirling University and the town of Bridge of Allan (plus Stirling Castle in one scene) lies behind the setting of Song of Stone. That's all I can think of!

From Mark Wilson:

Q: What do you think is the one, single, most vital collective development that humanity needs to take before it has any hope whatsoever of evolving into a Culture-like society?

Iain Banks: Genetically modifying ourselves, I suspect. Finding the set of genes that code for xenophobia in general - these days usually expressed though sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, Islamophobia, Romaphobia and so on (and on, and on) - and knocking them out. Possibly then we'll be nice enough for the Culture or something like it. Of course maybe inventing true AIs will be enough, always assuming that they're as benign - and yet sympathetically interested in us - as they are taken to be in the Culture.

The one thing that won't be enough is getting to a post-scarcity society; a statistically valid number of us have lived in something very like that for the past decade and a bit and we still collectively behaved like slavering morons, so it'll take more than just having more toys than we know what to do with to make us truly civilised.

I mean, nil desperandum and all that, but - still - don't hold your breath.

Thank you very much indeed to everyone who sent in questions, and to Iain for taking time out to provide us with answers. We're hoping to announce further Q&A sessions in future, to watch this space, or even better, subscribe to the site's RSS feed for updates.

The general conclusion was that the book isn't actually as shocking as its reputation tends to suggest. Iain said that it was written as a black comedy and that Complicity was actually written to be far more shocking, but tends to be written up as being far less so. Iain's suggestion was that the shock response to The Wasp Factory created "anti-bodies" that then defeated the shock value of the later novel.

Plenty more of interest from the session, over at books.guardian.co.uk.

Edit Dave H has pointed us in the direction of a podcast recording of the panel session on the Guardian website. Cheers Dave!

In the article we learn that The Wasp Factory was Iain's sixth completed novel, and that at the time he regarded it as something of a step-backwards from his dream of becoming a published science fiction writer:

"The Wasp Factory represented me admitting partial defeat, heaving a slightly theatrical sigh, stepping reluctantly away from the gaudy, wall-size canvasses of science/space fiction to lay down my oversize set of Rolf Harris paint rollers, pick up a set of brushes thinner than pencils and - jaw set, brows furrowed - lower myself to using a more restricted palette and to producing what felt like a miniature in comparison."

There's plenty more insight into the origins of the book to be gained by reading the rest of the Guardian article.

The Literary Arena page has been updated recently and lists Iain as appearing on Saturday, possibly round about lunch-time (ish). So if you're already heading on down to the festival this weekend (Saturday day passes are sold out, so it's probably best not to turn up on spec) and want to see our Mr Banks do his thing (whatever that thing turns out to be) then it looks like Saturday is the day to hang around the Literary Arena. Presumably they'll give you an actual timetable of events when you get there on the day, so you'll know roughly what time to turn up. So that should be okay...

The blurb says: "Broadcaster and journalist David Quantick celebrates the home-produced compilation cassette, a disappearing art form in an age when music can be readily downloaded. Contributors include novelist Iain Banks and poet Simon Armitage."

More information from www.bbc.co.uk.

[Many thanks to Gary W for the heads-up]

Banks-fans and other interested readers can also join the professor and the author for a discussion of the novel on Thursday July 10 at the Newsroom, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1. Doors open at 6.30 p.m. and entry costs £8. To book a ticket, email book.club@guardian.co.uk or phone 020 7886 9281.

[Thanks to Dave H of 'The Banksoniain' for the heads-up]

More news as Paul reveals it...

[Thanks to Dave H of 'The Banksoniain' for the heads-up]

So if you've got a burning issue that you'd like Iain to address, or if there's something that's intrigued you about his recent work, or a question that's been lurking in the back of your mind ever since you read one of his earliest novels that you'd now like to bring into the light of day, then this is your chance.

Send your best question (just one per correspondent, please), by email, to orbit@littlebrown.co.uk, with the subject line 'Iain [M] Banks QandA Suggestion'. The deadline for submissions for this first session is July 9th. After that date, the half-dozen or so queries that - in the collective opinion of the team here at Orbit / Abacus - are the most interesting and / or intriguing* will be put to Mr Banks for consideration. The resulting answers will then be posted to this very website in due course.

We're hoping that this will be the first of a number of regular Q&A sessions with Iain, so don't worry if you can't think of something fascinating to ask him straight away; why not mull it over a bit and maybe submit it to us for the next round?

*Hint: Questions such as "why did you cut up your passport?" and "why did you sell all your sports cars?" have been answered no end of times elsewhere, we feel. Likewise, "where do you get your ideas?" will be given short-shrift indeed. We're looking for interesting and / or intriguing queries to put to Iain, folks... so fire up those imagination circuits!

Tickets are £9 (£7 conc.) and will go on sale from June 20th. We'd love to send you straight to the relevant ticket-booking page, but alas the EIBF website just isn't built that way, but if you head on over to tickets.edbookfest.co.uk and run a search for 'Iain Banks' the details should pop right up.

Worth noting also that Iain's good pal and fellow Orbit author Ken MacLeod will also be taking part in a couple of EIBF events this year; check the website for details.

[Thanks to DaveH of 'The Banksoniain' for the heads-up]

David from 'The Banksoniain' tells us the piece "starts off being about Matter, but goes onto more general things, including the first hints that the next SF book is likely to be a 'Culture' one..."

Intriguing stuff. See the ASIM website for more information on ordering a print (AUD$8.95 plus postage) or pdf (AUD$4.95) copy of the latest issue.

Addendum: Simon Petrie of ASIM very kindly sent us a pdf copy of the interview with Iain, so we can confirm that he talks about (among many other things) his addiction to writing science fiction: "The point is, though, that science fiction is the genre that I love… it just lets me exercise the imagination, and that’s the point about science fiction. It's about imagination, it's about ideas, and those are the two things that I absolutely treasure, you don't get in any other genre."

And on that hint as to whether his next SF novel will be a Culture title: "Will it be Culture? I don't entirely know… but having said that, I love writing about the Culture, I just absolutely adore it, I almost have to force myself not to. So, chances are very much that the one after the next one (which is a mainstream) will be the next Culture science fiction novel."

There's also some intriguing thoughts on the origins of The Culture, the degree of artistic extrapolation vs. research in his world-building, the chances of seeing a Culture novel on the big screen (pretty slim), Iain's literary inspirations (a great many) and much more.

Well worth the pdf download admission price alone. Cheers, Simon!

Initial info has been posted at www.asaplive.com, with more details to follow in due course, which we'll post as soon as we have them.

You can check out the video version (in two parts) over on the CNN website, or if you don't have a broadband connection handy right now, you can read the text version of the interview instead.

Iain will be taking questions from the audience during a panel session on Saturday 6th at 10.30 a.m. and will then be talking about his latest novel, Matter at a second session on Sunday 7th at 2.00 p.m.

More information is available on the Islay Book Festival website: www.islaybookfestival.com.

Well, I think that's the sort of sentiment we can all get behind. But wait, there's more:

"The fact that so much of the background info is difficult to parse, and yet the book is so readable, demonstrates Banks' writing skill. The characterization is complex and unexpected, and the setting, despite its complexity, is totally consistent and believable. Banks has a gift for apt phraseology, especially the courtly speech of the principal characters. But it's the subtle touches that make this setting so rich."

Nicely put, Mr Baichtal. Read the full review over at blog.wired.com/geekdad/.

The team-review starts with a general over view of Iain Banks' place in the respective reviewer's hearts and libraries in Part One, before moving on to the meat of the Matter at hand as they discuss the novel itself in Part Two and then concluding with an analysis of the novel's major thematic elements and central message in Part Three.

Part One - does it Matter to you?
Part Two - mind over Matter
Part Three - the heart of the Matter

Comments are enabled on all three posts (they've been posted across three of the contributors' blogs to maximise the link-love for all, which is a nice touch) so do feel free to join in and let the contributors know what you think of their conclusions.

Gwyneth draws intriguing parallels between certain plot elements the new Culture novel and a certain ring-themed classic of the fantasy genre and also makes some interesting observations on the nature of Space Opera and the way in which Iain - whose left-wing political views are well known and thoroughly documented - handles the more violent tropes of the sub-genre:

"Space Opera is no longer out of fashion, but what about the other problem, the moral issue? There’s no denying that this sub-genre glorifies war. Worse, it tends to position the reader back at the chateau with the generals, being pragmatic about those casualty figures. ... Banks is certainly aware of the difficulty, and always runs damage limitation alongside the joyous mayhem. This is the difference between Old Space Opera and New Space Opera, after all. It’s about having fun in permanent warfare world, without supporting the Military Industrial Complex in real life: about having liberal, enlightened values and enjoying the odd Death Star Demolition Derby."

Well worth reading the full review over at www.strangehorizons.com, and the associated comments thread is shaping up nicely as well.

"It's grand, stirring stuff with a hint of the space opera to it. A more than welcome return of the master of sci-fi."

Read Nick's full review at www.express.co.uk.

"Alban's story unfolds with flashbacks and revelations by dotty aunts and there is a wonderful twist at the end. Family secrets, divisions and machinations are deftly described with a wee dig at corporate America."

Read the full mini-review at readersinthemist.blogspot.com.

[Thanks to Gary W for the heads-up]

"Named one of the top 50 writers in postwar Britain by The Times of London, Iain Banks boasts the greatest range of any of his contemporaries. Celebrated for his shocking experimental narratives (The Wasp Factory), gripping family sagas (The Crow Road) and witty dissections of life in executive class (The Business), Banks has also mastered the art of the ripping space yarn.

"In Matter, he returns to form - and the Culture - of the far-future, space-faring civilization that is the subject of his best work. Taken as a whole, Banks's sequence of Culture novels are among the most important science fiction written by anyone, anywhere, in the past 20 years."

If you want to read the full review you'll have to cough up a few Canadian dollars. We have asked Matt if he's posted the full text anywhere else, maybe on a blog or forum, but he hasn't gotten back to us just yet.

The Independent explains:

"Over the course of the week [the offer went live on April 2nd*] you will be able to download the chapters from this celebrated novel and by Friday April 11th you will have all of the parts you need to make up the complete 6-hour audiobook."

Full details of the offer are available from www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books.

And check out www.audible.co.uk/iainbanks for a special offer on a range of Iain Banks audio titles from Audible.co.uk, which are available at a 30% discount until April 18th.

*Apologies for the late posting of this one, folks... if you're quick, you can still catch it!

"At last, only 24 years after it was first published, I've finally got hold of a version of Banks's extraordinary first novel with a reader who does it justice ... Peter Kenny is the one reader (I've heard five) who brings out Banks's glorious sardonic wit. Good things are worth waiting for."

[Thanks to Gary W for the heads-up]

"Like most other [Iain] M. Banks books, Matter twists in completely unanticipated ways and offers up ampules of philosophy along with its plot. His characters - even the most minor - are fully drawn and fascinating. A reader can feel her mind twist around Banks' more fantastic ideas and marvel at the complicated whimsy he creates. That alone is worth the price of admission."

In a recent entry, the blogger, Angela, who is writing Mutable Matter as part of the research for her Open University Phd course, muses on the nature of matter in Matter, concluding:

"...in a way, Matter really is the parody of heroic fantasy/science fiction it appears to be at the beginning (only much darker and despite bouts of heroism from some of the characters) where the futility of war (especially upholding ‘noble aims’ in war), excessive monitoring and destruction with increasing levels of technologies, and the disturbingly purpose-giving, intoxicating effects of war are painfully rendered. Yet what happens in the novel is only painful, because the scenarios and wording ("appropriate level of interference") trigger parallels with past, but especially current, events: computerised warfare, monitoring of wars in 'less developed' countries (Rwanda is just one example), war-promoting regents with 'noble' intentions (e.g. George W. Bush) are just some examples.

It definitely makes for an interesting take on the book. Go, read, leave a comment if you feel so inclined. I'm sure Angela would appreciate the feedback.

"Dipping back into 'The Culture' felt like a joyous return to a long missed and familiar place. Banks has such a clever way with words that he makes it seem effortless and you don't realise how cleverly he constructs brilliantly clear images."

More information on the Festival at www.oslosf.no.

[Thanks to DaveH of 'The Banksoniain' for the heads-up]