Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

Shock -- The unofficial Iain M Banks information site at http://www.futurehi.net/phlebas
This site contains (among other things) links to a Banks bibliography, notes on some unpublished stories
and a link to a paper by Iain Banks himself which discusses the political, economic and social ideas
behind the universe in which he sets most of his science fiction. It is called A Few Notes on the
Culture and will be found at http://nuwen.net/culture.html
Banks has published fourteen books to date. Of these six are firmly SF and most of the rest contain
overt or covert SF references. (Canal Dreams for example, is firmly a mainstream book and yet it is set
in the year 2000). Banks, it seems, cares little for pigeonholes. He just writes books.
In confirmation of this, in an interview with the BBC at the 1995 World Convention in Glasgow, Banks
was asked why he distinguished between his genre and non-genre writings by putting different names
on them. His reply was that he rather wished he hadn't and in retrospect it was probably a mistake -though
perhaps it was too late to change it now. In one sense, that begs the question, but it does
illustrate the lack of distinction that Banks' consciously makes between the categories that others slot
his books into.
But that just makes him the latest in a very long and very distinguished line.