Writing career Banks took up writing at the age of 11. He completed a first novel,
The Hungarian Lift-Jet, at 16 and a second,
TTR (also entitled
The Tashkent Rambler) in his first year at Stirling University in 1972. Though he saw himself mainly as a science fiction author, his publishing problems led him to pursue mainstream fiction. His first published novel
The Wasp Factory, appeared in 1984, when he was thirty. After the success of
The Wasp Factory, Banks began to write full time. His editor at Macmillan, James Hale, advised him to write a book a year, which he agreed to do. Banks published work under two names. His parents had named him "Iain Menzies Banks", but his father mistakenly omitted the middle name when registering his son. Banks still used the middle name and submitted
The Wasp Factory for publication as "Iain M. Banks". Banks's editor inquired about the possibility of omitting the 'M' as it appeared "too fussy" and the potential existed for confusion with
Rosie M. Banks, a romantic novelist in the
Jeeves novels by
P. G. Wodehouse; Banks agreed to the omission. After three mainstream novels, Banks's publishers agreed to publish his first science fiction novel
Consider Phlebas. To create a distinction between the mainstream and the science fiction, Banks suggested returning the 'M' to his name, which was then used in all of his science fiction works. in Glasgow, August 2005 By his death in June 2013, Banks had published 26 novels. His final novel
The Quarry appeared in June 2013, the month of his death published posthumously as his 27th novel. In an interview in January 2013, he also mentioned he had the plot idea for another novel in the Culture series, which would most likely have been his next book and was planned for publication in 2014. Banks wrote in various categories, but had said that he enjoyed science fiction most. In February 2018, a project to publish Banks's unseen early drawings, maps and sketches from the Culture universe alongs with his writings and notes on the setting was underway. In 2021, the delayed single volume of
The Culture: Notes and Drawings was cancelled and replaced with two separate volumes: a landscape artbook of
The Culture: The Drawings and a companion volume containing notes, excerpts and new text from
Ken MacLeod.
The Culture: The Drawings was released on 7 November 2023, while the still-untitled companion volume was scheduled for late 2024.
Radio and television Banks was the subject of
The Strange Worlds of Iain Banks South Bank Show (1997), a TV documentary that examined his mainstream writing, and was an in-studio guest for the final episode of
Marc Riley's
Rocket Science radio show, broadcast on
BBC Radio 6 Music.
BBC One Scotland and BBC Two broadcast an adaptation of his novel
Stonemouth in June 2015.
Theatre Banks was involved in the stage production
The Curse of Iain Banks, written by Maxton Walker and performed at the
Edinburgh Fringe festival in 1999. Banks collaborated frequently with its soundtrack composer
Gary Lloyd, for instance on a song collection they co-composed as a tribute to the fictional band
Frozen Gold from Banks's novel
Espedair Street. Lloyd also scored for a spoken word and music production of his novel
The Bridge, which Banks himself voiced and which featured a cast of 40 musicians, released on CD by Codex Records in 1996. Lloyd recorded Banks for including in the play as a disembodied voice of himself in one of the cast member's dreams. Lloyd explained his collaboration with Banks on their first versions of
Espedair Street (later versions being dated between 2005 and 2013) in a
Guardian article prior to the opening of
The Curse of Iain Banks: When he [Banks] first played them to me, I think he was worried that they might not be up to scratch (some of them dated back to 1973 and had never been heard). He needn't have worried. They're fantastic. We're slaving away to get the songs to the stage where we can go into the studio and make a demo. Iain bashes out melodies on his state-of-the-art Apple Mac in Edinburgh and sends them down to me in Chester where I put them onto my Atari. ==Politics==