The desperate news that ground-breaking Scottish writer and all round excellent guy Iain Banks has only a few months to live inevitably leads to some reflection on mortality and time. I reflected that I had been a fan of Iain Banks since I was a 15 year old at high school (and banned from writing a book review of the Wasp Factory!) when he was a very new writer. In a sense I grew up with his writing (sci-fi and mainstream) an integrated thread of my own developments up and down in my life. Banks is an incredibly prolific writer so since the 80s has more or less produced a book a year or 18 months or so.
Another quiet memory was an interview I did with him for the Scottish Socialist Voice which I managed to dig up from computer - I can't find it online although I do have a hard copy. It was in 2002 only a decade ago but politically for the Scottish Left it is a geological age. The optimism of the (relatively) new SSP and the Scottish Parliament is here as is the growing movement against war criminal Blair which would result in the massive anti-war demonstrations a couple of months later. Banks' latest book at the time was Dead Air - a direct response to the 11th September bombings.
Reflections on life led to me thinking about how sad the political position we are in now in when you read this. In many ways the period of this interview was the time when the SSP was at its strongest attracting the support of all sections of Scottish society including the cultural wing, involved in the anti-war movement and industrial action (the firefighters were beginning a serious campaign of industrial action, left unity however precarious (the SWP were involved after all) seemed a reality not blind wishful thinking. Again a few months later the SSP gained 128,000 votes and 6 MSPs.
Now that seems as remote as one of the colourful planets that Iain (M) Banks writes about. The Scottish Left is generally a wasteground, the SSP disintegrated in the aftermath of 2 court cases and things have been thrown back many years to way before 2002. Personally I gave up my membership in 2011 after the Parly elections as the SSP struggled to cope with the post-court case (2010 model) terrain.
As Banks says here: " the point is not - and never - to give up hope". There are some good signs : the Radical Independence Convention, the anti-bedroom tax demos. But things are so much more complicated and patchy because there is no coherent left force in Scotland. For a time there was though and Iain Banks was part of it. Hopefully as he faces his next few months that will be a positive thought for him.
He also turned me on to an Orchestra Baobab album which is still one of my favourites!
Iain Banks is one of Scotland’s most successful fiction
writers. Dead Air, published a few
months ago is his twelfth novel. He has
also internationally popular with his science fiction work where he has
written nine novels and created his own
utopian society: the Culture. He is also, perhaps, the most famous subscriber
to the Scottish Socialist Voice! He gave
his views on books, music, the world and politics to Nick McKerrell.
Dead Air seems to have caused a bit of a controversy
touching as it does on the events around
September 11. Did this surprise you?
Not really. Actually
I was hoping it would stir things up a bit. A bit more, even (instead of
dealing with the issues the book tried to raise, people seemed generally
fixated on the fact the first draft was "written" in six weeks - it's
true it was typed out in six weeks, however I'd mostly written the book in my
head over the three or so months previously).
A lot of your recent mainstream novels seem to deal with a
lot of topical issues is this your preferred setting?
I like the freedom of being able to write from a Science
Fictional point of view, where you can deal with issues on any scale at all,
but I do enjoy writing about the here and now too, because, well, that's where
we all live, while still keeping the option of veering off into fantasy or
magical realism or whatever, should the notion take me.
The main protagonist in Dead Air is a shock left-wing
DJ who lets rip at various points with
his comments on America, the world and everything. Did you use this to vent your spleen on
the way the world is going?
Definitely. Usually I allow myself just one obvious rant
per book, but with this one I decided to make the rants more centre stage. I
think since Dubya's non-election and the rightwards slide of New Labour (tm)
there seems to be more to rant about.
On that theme how do
you think the world is going?
Badly, just now. The
Right has been in the ascendancy since the early Eighties and has done its
damnedest to persuade everybody that its way is the only way, but some of the
chickens are starting to come home to roost now (the word "Enron"
springs to mind, for some reason) and the point is not - and never - to give up
hope. Capitalism has had it all its own way since about 1990 and the world is a
demonstrably less fair, just and equitable place; alternative ways of running
society need to be explored and I think more and more people are open to that
idea.
How do you feel about the current warmongering of Bush and
Blair?
I've never voted for
New Labour and I don't consider myself a subject of the Crown, but I can't help
feeling ashamed of what Blair is doing in my - our - name. What is being touted
here is a war of naked imperialist aggression, an act of civilisational
thuggery.
How do you think the Scottish Parliament has done in the
last few years?
Not bad, so far. Not brilliant, certainly, but there have
been some progressive measures (student fees, nursing care funding). The
biggest scandal is the cost of the new Parliament building; were the
planners/accountants from a military background? I thought only weapons systems
cost eight times more than originally budgeted for.
What about the SSP?
Well, you get my vote, and I buy the paper... But stop
fishing for compliments.
Would you call yourself a socialist?
I do if I bump into right-wing Americans (I don't know,
there's just something about the sight of a wildly pulsing vein on the suddenly
scarlet brow of a Republican-voting big-name SF author). But I'm rich*, so I'm
not sure I'm really allowed to... (*This is rich in the compared-to-most-people
sense, not in the Bill Gates or even Sir Paul McCartney sense.)
The Culture –Banks’s utopian universe– could be seen as a
vision of a socialist society?
Yes, the Culture, which appears in most of the SF books,
is socialist/communist/whateverist. There's no money, private property is
synonymous with sentimental value, nothing and nobody is exploited and the
opportunities for fun are pretty much unrestricted, so I like to think of it as
a society that anybody could be happy in. Well, maybe not people of a
determinedly miserablist nature, but they get to use really good, profoundly
saturative VR, so even they're happy (relative term) too. Gee, all we need is
too-cheap-to-ticket space travel and unlimited clean energy! What's stopping
us?
Does it bother you that many people only read your fiction
and don’t look at the sci-fi?
Deeply. But, heck,
it isn't compulsory.
Will your next book be science fiction?
Yup. Though that's about all that even I know. It'll probably end up
being a Culture story again because I just love writing about it and there's
still a lot of stuff about the Culture I'd like to write about, however if I
can think of a really spiffing non-Culture idea between now and this time next
year when I have to start writing the blighter, I'll go with that instead
(hint: I most likely won't).
How do you rate other Scottish writers?
Far too good. We're just a wee daft country; how DARE
there be so many writers what are better than me. It's a disgrace. I may sue.
I know you’re a bit of a music fan. What are you listening to at the moment?
Red Hot Chilli
Peppers: "By The Way". Or maybe Craig Armstrong: "As If To
Nothing".
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