# Iain Banks (1954 – 2013)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [June 9, 2013, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554 "2013-06-09T15:24:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2013, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/21 "2013-06-10T22:56:46Z")
> [@Terr](#):
>
> Yeah, I have read every Iain M. Banks book out there. Never read any Iain Banks’ books, but then I am not into mysteries…
Am I being whooshed? His non-science fiction books are not mysteries.
Are you sure you aren’t confusing him with Ian Rankin?
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### Author:  [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/22 "2013-06-11T00:21:24Z")
> [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#):
>
> Am I being whooshed? His non-science fiction books are not mysteries.
>
> Are you sure you aren’t confusing him with Ian Rankin?
Whatever you classify those books as… They are not sci-fi. Gothic horror?
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### Author:  [@Nightfall1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightfall1)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/23 "2013-06-11T00:26:28Z")
Please name a book you enjoyed. I’m a science fiction reader but have never read anything by him. I’d like to try one. Thank you all.
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### Author:  [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/24 "2013-06-11T00:34:56Z")
> [@Nightfall1](#):
>
> Please name a book you enjoyed. I’m a science fiction reader but have never read anything by him. I’d like to try one. Thank you all.
IMO, every book he published as Iain M. Banks is a masterpiece.
**Consider Phlebas** is the first one I read. **Player of Games** and **Use of Weapons** also come to mind. **The Algebraist** is outstanding too. As I said, every one is great, hard to pick 🙂
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/25 "2013-06-11T00:37:53Z")
> [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#):
>
> “It was the day my grandmother exploded.” is the best opening line of all time. I’m hoping someone loads his coffin with fireworks for a truly grand send-off.
“But I don’t want to be buried . . . I don’t want to be cremated, either. I wanna be blown up! [_boom_foooosh\*] 'There he goes, God love ‘im!’”
– George Carlin
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### Author:  [@Precambrianmollusc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Precambrianmollusc)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/26 "2013-06-11T00:39:42Z")
Very sad, I picked up Consider Phlebas in about '88 and was hooked on Banks, I wasn’t so keen on his later stuff, felt the same about his other books, Espadair Street Crow, Road The Bridge were fantastic, later ones seamed a bit of recycling. We have lost a valuable author.
I would recommend Consider Phlebas or The Use of Weapons. The Player of Games is also very good, not my favorite but other rank it very highly.
Count me in as another one raising a glass of single malt.
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### Author:  [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/27 "2013-06-11T00:55:29Z")
I’d recommend either “Espedair Street” or “The Crow Road”. “Espedair Street” is, I think, the best depiction of the 1970s rock scene ever written. It follows the fortunes of the fictitious band ‘Frozen Gold’. I’ll say no more, except to say you’re in for a treat.
“The Crow Road” is about a large, sprawling Scottish family, and the varied world views of its different generations. There is the central question of whatever happened to Uncle Rory, but I still wouldn’t class even this one as a mystery.
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### Author:  [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/28 "2013-06-11T01:53:56Z")
> [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#):
>
> There is the central question of whatever happened to Uncle Rory, but I still wouldn’t class even this one as a mystery.
I knew there was a reason why I thought Iain Banks wrote mysteries. **Complicity**.
But you know what, since there will be no new Culture books… I think I will try reading Iain Banks’s books.
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### Author:  [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/29 "2013-06-11T03:21:11Z")
> [@Nightfall1](#):
>
> Please name a book you enjoyed. I’m a science fiction reader but have never read anything by him. I’d like to try one. Thank you all.
_Surface Detail_ was the first book of his that I read, and it was only afterwards that I found out it’s considered a difficult introduction to the Culture.
If you like very little exposition and a dense story that takes about 80% of the book to reveal itself, this book is amazing.
It remains my favorite Culture novel by far.
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### Author:  [@Face\_Intentionally\_Left\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Face_Intentionally_Left_Blank)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/30 "2013-06-11T06:05:14Z")
> [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#):
>
> “It was the day my grandmother exploded.” is the best opening line of all time. I’m hoping someone loads his coffin with fireworks for a truly grand send-off.
OK, give with the name. How can I NOT read that?
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### Author:  [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/31 "2013-06-11T11:11:55Z")
That’s the opening line of ‘The Crow Road’.
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### Author:  [@Nightfall1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightfall1)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/32 "2013-06-11T12:38:19Z")
Thank you all for the names of different books to read. 🙂
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### Author:  [@artemis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/artemis)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/33 "2013-06-11T14:54:51Z")
An incredible loss. I hope his last days were peaceful.
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### Author:  [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/34 "2013-06-11T16:29:38Z")
I was looking at my bookshelves earlier, and I realised that Banks (both M and not-M) is by some margin the author who I have the most hardbacks by. There’s only one more to come, and that is very sad.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/35 "2013-06-11T22:58:20Z")
According to the Washington Post’s obit, he was an extra in _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_.
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### Author:  [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2013, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/36 "2013-06-12T00:17:07Z")
RIP. One of my favourite authors, both with and without the M.
**Terr** , I wouldn’t really classify the Iain Banks books as mysteries, I wouldn’t really classify them as a group as anything but Iain Banks books. _The Wasp Factory_ is a masterpiece, and it’s also quite short if you find it’s not to your taste. All his books are worth reading, IMHO.
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### Author:  [@Face\_Intentionally\_Left\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Face_Intentionally_Left_Blank)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2013, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/37 "2013-06-12T04:13:36Z")
> [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#):
>
> That’s the opening line of ‘The Crow Road’.
Thank you. Hope the rest of the book lives up to the first line.
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### Author:  [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2013, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/38 "2013-06-12T14:14:04Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#):
>
> According to the Washington Post’s obit, he was an extra in _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_.
He was a student at Stirling University at the time they were filming _Holy Grail_. The castle in the film is Doune Castle, and that’s only a couple of miles away from the Uni.
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### Author:  [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2013, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/39 "2013-06-12T14:24:12Z")
> [@Steophan](#):
>
> All his books are worth reading, IMHO.
I agree, even the comparative duds like _Dead Air_ are worth a go.
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### Author:  [@TPWombat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TPWombat)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2013, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iain-banks-1954-2013/660554/40 "2013-06-12T16:12:59Z")
I first discovered him when I wandered into a room where he was giving a reading from his novel [The Bridge.](http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Bridge-Iain-Banks/dp/0349139210/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371052059&sr=8-1&keywords=the+bridge+banks) at the 1987 World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton.
He was reading the scottish barbarian’s sections from it , sample
“_I luv the ded, this old basturt sez to me when I wuz trying to get some innfurmashin out ov him. You fukin old pervirt I sez, gettin a bit fed up by this time enyway, an slit his throate; ah askd you whare the fukin Sleepin Byootie woz, no whit kind of humpin you lyke. No, no he sez splutterin sumthin awfy and gettin blud all over ma new curiearse, no he sez i sed Isle of the Dead_” 😃
Later at the same convention he was briefly arrested for climbing up the balconies outside the hotel when the police had just arrived to investigate a room robbery. They let him go when all the fans explained that this was normal behaviour for an author at an SF con.
Bought The Bridge on the strength of the above and loved his work ever since
BTW the BBC did a pretty good TV adaptation of The Crow Road.
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