"The Year of Iain Banks" 2024 Spotlight Author

Welcome to “The Year of Banks”! What is it? Well, through the entire year of 2024 I wanted to highlight an author I have been saving posts on, so I can devote a monthly spotlight to his body of work. The author? Sir Iain Banks. If you are a sci fi or British fiction book fan you probably have already heard of him. If not, he was and, in my opinion, still one of the best authors people need to talk more about. Sir Iain Banks wrote over twenty novels and numerous short stories and even a book about whiskey. When writing more mainstream fare, he would use his name Iain Banks, but while writing science fiction wanted to differentiate it somehow so he added M. as the middle initial (Iain M. Banks) to let his fans know which was which. So, our first and last book will say Iain Banks while all the culture novels will say Iain M. Banks. Sadly Mr. Banks passed away in 2013 at the age of fifty-nine – I’ll share more about that time in his life when we get to The Quarry.

So, what’s the plan? The “Year of the Banks” plan is to delve into one of his books a month. I’ll write a post about it and maybe get some friends to read along. My idea is to discuss Mr. Banks’s first and last books in January and December, which are The Wasp Factory and The Quarry. In between, I want to read all his sci fi novels and what he is probably known for, which is his Culture series, a nine book and short story collection all centered around a future utopian civilization called The Culture. That series is where I first heard of Mr. Banks. After getting and devouring the first book, Consider Phlebas, I stopped and bought the entire series and waited for a rainy day, and 2024 is my plan. I have never been so taken by how much I loved an author’s ideas, writing, voice, all of it - I knew it was special. And from research over the years, I have heard that his works keep getting better.

If people are interested, I want this series to be something that they can delve into with me and follow the journey, but I’m also hoping to make these posts throughout the year spoiler-free. The point is to share how fun and cool reading and writing can be using his work as an example So please join me starting in January of 2024, where I will write a kick off post with some background info and videos. Let’s go to the books with Mr. Banks!

The tentative post schedule is below:

January 2024 – Kick off Post/The Wasp Factory

February 2024 – Consider Phlebas

March 2024 – The Player of Games

April 2024 – Use of Weapons

May 2024 – The State of the Art

June 2024 – Excession

July 2024 – Inversions

August 2024 – Look To Windward

September 2024 – Matter

October 2024 – Surface Detail

November 2024 – The Hydrogen Sonata

December 2024 – The Quarry/Wrap Up/Ranking Post