Iain Banks

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Iain M. Banks (2009)

Iain Menzies Banks (born February 16, 1954 in Dunfermline , Fife , Scotland ; died June 9, 2013 in Kirkcaldy , Fife) was a Scottish writer best known for writing science fiction .

He published his novels under the name Iain Banks or, if it was science fiction, as Iain M. Banks . The " New York Times " called Banks the "most important science fiction writer of our time"; the British " The Times " put him on the list of the "greatest British writers since 1945" in 2008. "

Life

Iain Banks as guest of honor at a science fiction congress in Bergen , 2000

Banks' mother was a professional figure skater , his father an admiralty . The family was originally called Banks Menzies . Iain Banks' paternal grandfather changed the order to Menzies Banks . Although he was only registered as Iain Banks himself at birth , Banks had used Menzies as his middle name since childhood .

At fourteen, Banks decided to become a writer. Two years later he completed his first story. He studied philosophy, English and psychology in Stirling until 1974 . After college, he worked as a hospital porter , clerk, gardener and technician. All jobs gave him enough time to pursue his writing ambitions. He then hitchhiked through Europe and worked as a technician for British Steel . After crossing the United States from Washington, DC to Los Angeles in 1978, he worked at IBM in Greenock before moving to London in 1979 . In 1980 Banks wrote his novel The Wasp Factory there , which was published in 1984 and made him world famous in one fell swoop. Since then he has written novels and the occasional short story, which became almost all best-sellers in Britain. His books are less known in the German-speaking world. From the first book publication on, he lived with his future first wife in Kent , but moved back to Scotland in 1988 after a (temporary) separation. Most recently he lived in North Queensferry on the north bank of the Firth of Forth .

On April 3, 2013, Banks published a message on his weblog that some time ago he had been diagnosed with gallbladder cancer, which had already spread. His life expectancy is measured in months. The novel The Quarry , which should appear in the summer of 2013, will be his last. His publisher has therefore brought the publication date forward as far as possible. From now on he will withdraw from all public appearances and obligations. A few weeks before his death, he married his partner Adele Hartley after asking her "do him the honor of being his widow". Iain Banks died on June 9, 2013 at the age of 59. Just eleven days later, on June 20th, The Quarry was released . The novel describes the emotional and physical injuries that cancer inflicts on those affected. Banks had already written 90 percent of the time when it was discovered that he himself had cancer. In the same year he received the Karl Edward Wagner Award .

On June 23, 2013, an asteroid was named after him: (5099) Iainbanks .

Aerial view of the first Autonomous spaceport drone ship after it was renamed Just Read the Instructions in honor of Iain Banks , which is already painted on the deck

On January 23, 2015, Elon Musk , CEO of the space company SpaceX , named two floating rocket landing platforms, his Autonomous spaceport drone ships Just Read the Instructions and Of Course I Still Love You , in honor of Iain Banks . These are spaceship names that Banks used in his work The Game Azad . Just Read the Instructions is stationed in Port Canaveral and enables the landing of rocket stages in the Atlantic , which shortly before have launched from the Cape Canaveral spaceport .

Literary work

Iain Banks wrote his first never published novel in 1970 at the age of 16. It was titled The Hungarian Lift-Jet and was an Alistair MacLean- influenced spy novel "full of sex and violence". Even The Tashkent Rambler 1972 was not published. In the following years Banks wrote several science fiction novels, for which he found a publisher only after the publication of The Wasp Factory in 1984. Shortly before his death in 2013, Banks emphasized that his SF novels, especially the Kultur cycle , were always close to his heart. It was the "mainstream" novels that supported his SF work with their good sales, not the other way around. The Wasp Factory was followed by Barefoot Over Glass in 1985 and Die Brücke in 1986, two further novels outside the genre of science fiction, before the first volume from the culture cycle appeared in 1987, with concerns Phlebas .

Banks subsequently published almost alternating SF and non-SF novels. Banks characterized pure science fiction novels by using his abbreviated middle name, but the works published under the name Iain Banks sometimes contain fantastic elements. The German-language editions were all published by Heyne Verlag under the name Iain Banks , including Die Wespenfabrik and Träume vom Kanal in the SF series.

Alan MacGillivray, former lecturer in Scottish literature in Glasgow, comments on Banks 'worldview in an overview of Banks' oeuvre (1996) that long desperate and nihilistic statements can be found in his works when his characters go into the “heart of the Darkness ”looked. Anything they can do about their desperation, be it drink more malt whiskey , turn up the rock music , and sniff more cocaine - Banks remained, to some extent, an incorrigible hippie from the 1970s. However, in no way does Banks' works have continuous darkness. MacGillivray praises the "sparkling spectrum" of Banks' humor and playful ingenuity. He also emphasizes the happy ending of the latest SF novels by Iain M. Banks at the time of his viewing, In Front of a Dark Background and Förchtbar Maschien . In Science Fiction Studies , Christopher Palmer points out that the novels Bedenke Phlebas , Das Spiel Azad, and Einsatz der Waffen tell the conventional story of a space opera , characterized by violence and adventure - although this story ultimately applies in all cases to the protagonist as unimportant and pointless.

In the science fiction novels of the culture cycle, Banks describes an anarchic-socialist and post- heteronormative society in which there is no longer a shortage of goods . Life for the inhabitants of the culture has paradisiacal features: their resources are practically unlimited and are unconditionally available to everyone. Thanks to advanced bioengineering , cultural citizens are also practically immortal or can freely determine their lifespan. There are no clearly established laws, only social norms (good manners) that are defined and maintained by social conventions. However, this utopia is not unbroken; In several of his novels, Banks depicts the problematic way culture deals with other civilizations and values. In this way, Banks discusses the advantages and downsides of open societies. An essential element of the culture cycle is the representation of machines and spaceships, which, unlike other books of the space opera genre, have their own will and intervene as active characters in the action. This becomes particularly clear in the novel Excession .

In an obituary of the Telegraph , a macabre black humor and his sense of the bizarre and "the Gothic " are generally mentioned as characteristic of Banks' novels . Iain Banks himself viewed The Bridge as his best book and described it as "the intellectual in the family".

Also in an obituary in the FAZ, the writer Dietmar Dath attests to Iain Banks, "[...] the readership [not] [pampered] with bite-sized space cotton candy"; The following quote comes from there:

“In front of a background that was by no means pink-on-pink, often dark enough, Banks created economic, evolutionary and mathematical-physical thought games with his science fiction, all of which deal with the fact that the inventive spirit and the artistic sense still have a lot to do, if more bodily Deficiency and historically inherited bondage together with other embarrassing remains of the earth (" Scarcity ") will one day be overcome. "

- Dietmar Dath

Awards

  • 1991 Kurd-Laßwitz-Prize for The Bridge in the category "foreign SF novel"
  • 1992 Kurd-Laßwitz-Prize for The Wasp Factory in the category "foreign SF novel"
  • 1993 Kurd-Laßwitz Prize for Use of Weapons in the "Foreign SF Novel" category
  • 1994 British Science Fiction Award for Feersum Endjinn for best novel
  • 1996 British Science Fiction Award for Excession for best novel
  • 1998 Kurd-Laßwitz Prize for Excession in the "Foreign Work" category
  • 2012 Premio Ignotus for Última generación ( The State of the Art ) in the category "Mejor cuento extranjero - Best Foreign Story"
  • 2013 British Fantasy Award ( Karl Edward Wagner Award )

bibliography

Culture / culture cycle

Novels

Collections

  • The Spheres (2010)
  • Poems (Poems, 2015; with an introduction by Ken MacLeod)

Short stories

1987
  • Cleaning Up (1987)
    • German: Disposal. In: Iain Banks: A Gift of Culture. 1992.
  • A Gift from the Culture (in: Interzone, # 20 Summer 1987 )
  • Descendant (1987, in: Roz Kaveney (Ed.): Tales from the Forbidden Planet )
    • German: Run down. In: Iain Banks: A Gift of Culture. 1992.
  • Scratch (in: Fiction, vol. 6 no.6, August 1987 )
    • German: scratches. In: Iain Banks: A Gift of Culture. 1992.
1988
  • Road of Skulls (1988, in: 20 under 35, Scepter )
    • German: Street of the Skull. In: Iain Banks: A Gift of Culture. 1992.
1989
  • Odd Attachment (1989, in: Alex Stewart (Ed.): Arrows of Eros )
    • German: Odd. In: Iain Banks: A Gift of Culture. 1992.
  • Piece (in: Observer, 1989 )
    • German: Fundstück. In: Iain Banks: A Gift of Culture. 1992.
  • The State of the Art (short novel, 1989)
    • German: The last state of art. In: Iain Banks: A Gift of Culture. 1992.
2010
  • The Secret Courtyard (2010, in: Iain Banks: The Spheres )
  • The Spheres (2010, in: Iain Banks: The Spheres )

Non-fiction

  • Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram (2003; report of a trip to the Scottish whiskey distilleries with personal and political considerations)

literature

  • Ronald Binns: Castles, books, and bridges: Mervyn Peake and Iain Banks. In: Peake Studies. Vol. 2, no. 1 (Winter 1990), pp. 5-12.
  • Don D'Ammassa : Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Facts On File, New York 2005, ISBN 0-8160-5924-1 , p. 24 f.
  • William H. Hardesty: Space Operas Without Space. The culture novels by Iain Banks. In: Sascha Mamczak and Wolfgang Jeschke (eds.): Das Science Fiction Jahr 2004. Heyne, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-453-87896-5 , pp. 148-160.
  • Matthias Hofmann: From the wasp factory to Krähenstrasse. A conversation with Iain M. Banks. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): The Science Fiction Year 1992. Heyne, Munich, ISBN 3-453-05379-6 , pp. 610–631.
  • John Clute , David Langford : Banks, Iain M. In: John Clute, Peter Nicholls : The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction . 3rd edition (online edition), version dated November 8, 2017.
  • George Mann : The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Robinson, London 2001, ISBN 1-84119-177-9 , pp. 52-54.
  • Nicholas Ruddick: Banks, Iain M (enzies) . In: Noelle Watson, Paul E. Schellinger: Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers. St. James Press, Chicago 1991, ISBN 1-55862-111-3 , pp. 31 f.
  • Oliver Schoenbeck: Their Versions of the Facts: Text and Fiction in the Novels of Iain Banks, Kazuo Ishiguro, Martin Amis, and Jeanette Winterson. WVT, Trier 2000, ISBN 3-88476-404-7 .
  • Joachim Stahl: Iain Banks. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): The Science Fiction Year 1991. Heyne, Munich, ISBN 3-453-04471-1 , pp. 529-537.

Web links

Commons : Iain Banks  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c British author Iain Banks has died. News report at ORF.at, June 9, 2013
  2. ↑ The 50 greatest British writers since 1945 (English) , The Times . January 5, 2008. Retrieved February 10, 2010. 
  3. ^ A b Iain Banks ( English ) In: The Telegraph . June 9, 2013. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  4. ↑ hpi / ap / dpa: Iain Banks is terminally ill . Spiegel Online . April 3, 2013. Retrieved November 12, 2017.
  5. ^ Alison Flood: Iain Banks diagnosed with gall bladder cancer . The Guardian. 2013. Retrieved April 3, 2013.
  6. ↑ Obituary: Iain Banks , obituary on BBC June 9, 2013, accessed April 5, 2015
  7. ^ Iain Banks dies of cancer aged 59 , BBC report of June 9, 2013, accessed April 5, 2015
  8. ↑ Stubby the Rocket: Elon Musk Names SpaceX Drone Ships in Honor of Iain M. Banks, January 23, 2015; Retrieved April 19, 2015
  9. ↑ a b Andrew Wilson: Iain Banks Interview ( English ) In: Textualities . 1994. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  10. ^ Iain Banks: 20 May update from Iain ( English ) In: Banksophilia: Friends of Iain Banks . May 20, 2013. Archived from the original on June 12, 2013. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  11. ^ Peter Schneider: Iain Banks - Publication Policy . 2002. Archived from the original on December 16, 2012. Retrieved on July 10, 2012.
  12. ^ A b Alan MacGillivray: The Worlds of Iain Banks ( English ) In: Laverock . Association for Scottish Literary Studies. 1996. Archived from the original on May 3, 2014. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  13. ^ Christopher Palmer: Galactic Empires and the Contemporary Extravaganza: Dan Simmons and Iain M. Banks . In: Science Fiction Studies . vol. 26, no. 1 , 1999, p. 86 , JSTOR : 4240753 .
  14. ^ A b David Horwich: Culture Clash: Ambivalent Heroes and the Ambiguous Utopia in the Work of Iain M. Banks ( English ) In: Strange Horizons . January 21, 2002. Archived from the original on May 16, 2008. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  15. ^ A Few Notes on the Culture, by Iain M Banks. Retrieved February 21, 2019 .
  16. ↑ The Books of Iain Banks ( English ) Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Accessed June 11, 2013.
  17. ^ A b Dietmar Dath: On the death of the writer Iain Banks - The name of the future: Culture . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . June 11, 2013. Retrieved October 19, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Banks, Iain
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Banks, Iain Menzies (full name); Banks, Iain M. (alternative spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Dunfermline , Fife (Scotland)
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 2013
Place of death Kirkcaldy