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Iain Banks - Raw Spirit: A Review Show Special

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This programme contains some strong language.

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Beside one of Scotland's most dazzling creations,

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lived one of the nation's most dazzling creative minds.

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Iain Banks' home on the shores of the Firth of Forth

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is where he wrote some of the most compelling fiction in a generation.

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And it's where he was to face his own death from cancer.

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This was his final interview.

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It's been almost 30 years

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since Iain Banks' remarkable debut, The Wasp Factory.

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It marked him out as a major new talent.

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Over the course of 29 books,

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he created an extraordinary body of work,

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with a very particular point of view.

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He combined both critical acclaim and popular success.

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His books are clever, controversial, funny, warm, political,

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and astoundingly imaginative.

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They reflect the personality of the man.

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Usually with my male central characters,

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they will be basically me, but in an idealised form,

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ie, taller, handsomer, younger,

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thinner of waist,

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and more successful with the ladies.

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Nowhere was the strength of that personality more evident

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than in the blog he published in April.

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He announced he was "officially very poorly", and had asked

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his long-term girlfriend to "do him the honour of becoming his widow".

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In Iain Banks' final novel, The Quarry,

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one of the main characters is dying of cancer.

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It's a visceral portrayal of a man furious at his approaching death.

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Iain, "I am officially very poorly", that statement sounds like

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the first line of an Iain Banks novel.

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I suppose it does, actually.

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And this idea that your novels are really like a hand grenade

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and yet you were delivered of your own extraordinary hand grenade in your life.

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Your first reaction to that was what?

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I think it was on the lines of "Oh, bugger!" Um...

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it's one of these things I guess in a sense you rehearse in your head.

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I think anyone kind of does it.

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You sort of game it, you play it, you think about how would I feel,

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how would I react if, you know, a loved one is, well, dies

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or is delivered of a verdict,

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you know, prognosis like that, as it were.

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And I think especially as a writer,

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and I think probably within a greater field, actors are probably

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the same when you have to take on

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the part of someone who's dying or dead,

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well, you know, if you're writing about people who are facing death

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and you automatically, you kind of have to embody that.

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You have to take that in quite seriously.

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And obviously there are professions that are very much involved

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with death, you know, funeral directors and so on

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and people in A&E and, you know, ambulance drivers and so on,

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you know the paramedics that come with the ambulance.

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I think you'll probably find a preponderance of people like that

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who are sort of pre-prepared,

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or as pre-prepared as you can be with your reaction.

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And I just took it as just, you know, bad luck, basically.

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It did strike me almost immediately,

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my atheist sort of thing kicked in and I thought, hah!

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If I was a God-botherer, I'd be thinking, "Why me, God?

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"What have I done to deserve this?"

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Don't know why I turned into a Jewish person there, but never mind.

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And I thought at least I'm free of that, at least I can simply,

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you know, sort of treat it as bad luck and get on with it.

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Humour has been at the heart...

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Very very black humour has been at the heart of so much of your work.

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I mean, does it help you get through different stages of this,

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just finding the humour in things?

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I guess so. It's not something you kind of do deliberately.

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I guess it's just there, it's an automatic reaction, and yes,

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obviously, with the loss factor, you go right back to the start.

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That was, you know, it was always meant to be a black comedy,

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that was very much the idea, and I...

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I occasionally get asked, if I could be a character in one of my novels,

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you know, who would it be?

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There's quite a limited choice,

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given the rather unpleasant ends that some of them come to.

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You wrote The Quarry thinking it would be coming out this October or so forth

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and they're rushing it out, so tell me a bit about the writing of The Quarry.

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Well, it's, um... The narrator is an 18-year-old boy

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who's on one or two different spectra, as it were,

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possibly Asperger's being one of them.

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But in a sense the main character's his dad who's dying of cancer.

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Ha-ha! Ho-ho!

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But I was 87,000 words into the book before I discovered the bad news.

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I had no inkling, so it wasn't as though this is a response

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to the condition, to the disease or anything,

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and the book had been kind of ready to go.

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And then 10,000 words from the end, as it turned out,

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I suddenly discovered that I had cancer.

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I've really got to stop doing my research too late.

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This is such a bad idea.

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You're 87,000 words into The Quarry then, and what changed

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after your diagnosis in the writing and the revision?

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Well, the first thing I did, I'd taken my laptop

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when I first got the original bad news, as it were, in Kirkcaldy

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in the Victoria Hospital and I'd taken my laptop in

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just to...just thought I might do a bit of work while I was there.

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And I couldn't really be bothered.

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I'd basically done my work, my words for the day anyway,

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so, having got this news, I sat in bed and I wrote -

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there's a bit where Guy says, "I shall not be upset

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"to leave this stupid bloody country and this idiotic, bloody human race

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"and this idiotic world" and the rest of it, it's a proper rant.

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I think it kind of changed places.

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Originally it was exactly where I got the news, it was exactly 87,000.

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It was changed slightly because my editor said, yes, it'd actually

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be more powerful in the sort of address on camera that he does,

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the recording, so we changed that.

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"And I shall not miss being part of a species lamentably ready

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"to resort to torture, rape and mass murder

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"just because some other poor fucker or fuckers

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"is or are slightly different from

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"those intent upon doing such harm,

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"be it because they happen to worship

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"a very slightly different set of superstitious idiocies,

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"possess skin occupying a non-identical position

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"on a pan-tone racial colour wheel,

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"or had the fucking temerity to pop out of a womb

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"on the other side of a river, ocean, mountain range,

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"other major geographical feature, or, indeed, just a straight line

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"drawn across the desert by some bored and ignorant bureaucrat

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"umpteen thousand miles away and a century ago.

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"None of these things shall I miss.

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"Frankly, it's a relief to be getting shot of the necessity

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"of watching such bollocks play out.

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"I would still rather have the choice, mark you,

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"but, as this would appear to be being denied me,

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"I am making the best of a bad job and looking on the bright side -

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"I shall be free, at last, of that nagging, persistent sensation

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"that I am, for the most part, surrounded by fucking idiots."

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It just seems uncanny that you should be writing

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a book about terminal cancer as you were given a diagnosis.

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Not only that, only Iain Banks could get the diagnosis,

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sit with his laptop and write about it there and then.

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Oh, no, I disagree.

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I think perhaps the majority of writers would do that.

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In the hospital with your laptop?

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It was there, you know, I was sort of - bugger!

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So you do have to, you know, I think it's a natural thing

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for a writer just to express themselves.

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You might not do it with the idea of immediate inclusion into the novel

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if that's what you're working on or whatever

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but because... I think it was just coincidence, you know.

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I think it was just the way things worked

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that I happened to have chosen that subject.

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Let's just go back to The Wasp Factory for a minute

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and from the very get-go, you talk about it as a black comedy,

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but it's a deeply moving book as well about a twisted childhood.

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Oh, yeah, it's meant to basically press as many buttons

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as is possible and kind of cheerfully going for

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the Grand Guignol, you know, sort of feel as well.

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It was an extraordinary...I mean, it was your first published novel.

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-Absolutely.

-And it absolutely... That was a hand grenade.

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It certainly worked and I'm still very proud of it.

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There's none of the books that I'm not proud of.

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There's ones I think I could have done better with.

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I still think Canal Dreams is the runt of the litter

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but, yeah, I'm still very very proud of The Wasp Factory

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and it was... You were saying earlier about The Quarry,

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I realised as I was sitting there those couple of days

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coming up with the ideas that this is looking a bit like Wasp Factory.

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I thought, well, that's OK.

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You're allowed to have themes, you're not just always just repeating yourself

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if you have similarities between your novels.

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And I kind of just liked the idea of playing around with that

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and about the father/son relationship and...

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But I mean, there's a bit,

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you can almost see the workings in The Quarry.

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-Yeah, you know what I mean.

-Yeah.

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When Kit talks about this thing about he's got, about trying

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to measure people accurately, and one of the methods he resorts to

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is wandering into the room at night when they're asleep and trying

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to measure them and how frustrating it is and almost nobody's stretched,

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lies stretched out like that, and everybody sort of curls up.

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But he goes through some pain to say, "But it's not like

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"I'm a mad axe murderer or anything," and that was almost there

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just because of the Wasp Factory, so you're reassured that Kit...

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-Kit's not going to be bumping people off.

-Not murderous.

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No, Kit's not, Kit's a wonderful, gentle human being, but then,

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just going into some of the kind of set pieces in The Wasp Factory,

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I mean, the death of Esmeralda.

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I mean...extraordinary because you loved kites as well, didn't you?

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Oh, yeah, I used to make my own kites and it was...

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Used to...got big black bin liners and tape them to canes

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and take them up to the hills above Greenock and fly them.

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So I just remember, a good old windy day in Inverclyde

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and going, "Bloody hell!"

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Almost getting pulled off my feet, and I thought, if you were lighter,

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if you were a child, you would be pulled off your feet and thought, hmm, really?

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And because I, you know, from way back there, I still wanted,

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that was always my ambition, to be a writer, you just think,

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well, that's a way to kill somebody off if they're quite small.

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Esmeralda looked round one last time at me,

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giggling, and I laughed back.

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Then I let the lines go.

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The winch hit her in the small of the back and she yelped.

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Then she was dragged off her feet as the lines pulled her

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and the loops tightened around her wrists.

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I staggered back, partly to make it look good

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on the off-chance there was somebody watching

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and partly because letting go of the winch had put me off balance.

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I fell to the ground as Esmerelda left it forever.

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The kite just kept snapping and flapping and flapping and snapping

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and it hauled the girl off the earth and into the air, winch and all.

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I lay on my back and watched it for a second,

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then got up and ran after her as fast as I could,

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again just because I knew I couldn't catch her.

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She was screaming and waggling her legs for all she was worth,

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but the cruel loops of nylon had her about the wrists,

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the kite was in the jaws of the wind,

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and she was already well out of reach

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even if I had wanted to catch her.

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I ran and ran, jumping off a dune and rolling down its seaward face,

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watching the tiny struggling figure being hoisted

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farther and farther into the sky as the kite swept her away.

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'Childhood, often fraught and damaged,

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'plays a central role in Iain Banks' stories.'

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By contrast, his own was very happy,

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and mostly spent here in North Queensferry,

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and it's where he returned to live almost 20 years ago.

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This was a great place to grow up.

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Even if I'd only had indifferent parents,

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your average parents, it was such an adventure playground.

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There was even more of the military stuff left around, you know,

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First World War emplacements

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and Second World War anti-aircraft gun emplacements.

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It was just a great place to wander round.

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It's almost an island, it's got that lovely self-contained feel about it.

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Just three-quarters of an island, you know, this wee peninsula,

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but for the scale of a child it was absolutely perfect. It seemed huge.

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And there was something inevitable that you'd have to use the bridge

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-in your fiction?

-I think so, yeah.

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It was, it's one of the...

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Almost, yeah, the only book I did that came to me in a dream.

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I just had this dream.

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I was living in Faversham in Kent at the time,

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and I had this dream about a gigantic version of the bridge,

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of this bridge,

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just on a different scale and the size of a city, in a sense,

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and I just woke up thinking, right, oh that's cool, that's nice.

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Be nice if all the books came that way, totally effortless.

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If he'd had less than the legal limit to drink

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he would take the Quattro out

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and drive to North Queensferry to sit beneath the great dark bridge,

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listening to the water lap against the stones and the trains rumble overhead.

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He would smoke a joint or just breathe the fresh air.

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If he felt pity for himself, it was only one timid, tentative

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part of his mind that felt so.

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There was another part of him which seemed like a hawk or an eagle,

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hungry and cruel and fanatically keen-eyed.

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Self-pity lasted a matter of seconds in the open.

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Then the bird of prey fell on it, tearing it, ripping it.

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The bird was the real world,

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a mercenary dispatched by his embarrassed conscience,

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the angry voice of all the people in the world, that vast majority

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who were worse off than he was - just common sense.

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He discovered, to his knowing, almost righteous dismay, that the bridge

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was not painted end-to-end over a neat three-year period.

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It was done piecemeal,

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and the cycle lasted anything between four and six years.

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Another myth bites the dust, he thought - par for the course.

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I think it had been such a large part of my life for so long,

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it was this gigantic symbol that had affected me in all sorts of ways.

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I think it's also there in the science fiction.

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I've just always liked big structures, you know!

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When you root some of your work in Scotland,

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that's one part of your imagination.

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The other part of your imagination's creating completely different worlds, for example the Culture,

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this kind of slightly very sarcastic kind of supergroup, as it were,

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-that kind of fly round the universe sorting things out.

-Uh-huh.

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You like the idea of creating different worlds?

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I love it, yeah.

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There's an enormous freedom that you get in science fiction

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that you can just, you can go anywhere and do anything.

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It's that simple.

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The things that I love and things that I tend to read most

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are science fiction and, you know, mainstream literature.

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And those are what I love to write as well.

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And it's been a privilege in a way to be able to get away with it,

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you know, for an entire career, be able to do both.

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But is the idea behind The Culture

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to imagine a world that you think, in a way, would be better?

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Yes, oh, it's didactic.

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It's my idea of what is as close as possible,

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as close as possible to anything remotely like us,

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as a species, could get to in terms of being, if not an actual utopia

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then a sort of functioning, as good as we're going to get utopia.

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Having said that, I think that,

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I don't think humanity is up to it, quite frankly.

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I think we're too nasty.

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We may find that there are genes that code for xenophobia.

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Well, there are genes that code for, you know, racism

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and sexism, for, you know, anti-Semitism,

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for Islamophobia, all the xenophobic things, all the things

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where we decide that we're this, we're one good privileged group and

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those bastards over there, well, we hate them.

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And all the excuses that we found,

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we find, you know, to be so deeply, deeply unpleasant each other.

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On Earth, one of the things that a large proportion of the locals

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is most proud of is this wonderful economic system which,

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with a sureness and certainty

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so comprehensive one could almost imagine the process bears

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some relation to their limited and limiting notions of either

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thermodynamics or God, all food, comfort, energy, shelter,

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space, fuel and sustenance gravitates naturally and easily

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away from those who need it most and towards those who need it least.

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Indeed, those on the receiving end of such largesse are often

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harmed unto death by its arrival, though the effects may take

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years and generations to manifest themselves.

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Are you a kind of evangelising atheist in your work?

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I've been describing myself as an evangelical atheist

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for about 20 years, yes.

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It's not enough to be sitting in the corner going,

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well, I know I'm right, I'm not going to tell anybody else.

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No, no, you have to, you have to go up to people's doors almost.

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Have you discovered the power of atheism, brother?

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Much more effective.

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But what about, you don't...

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There's a tiny bit of agnosticism in there on the basis that

0:19:540:19:57

if you think there are other lives on other planets,

0:19:570:19:59

I seem to remember you said something,

0:19:590:20:01

"Damn, there might just be a God out there playing a trick on us."

0:20:010:20:04

Oh, could be, there has to be a sort of

0:20:040:20:06

half a percent of, you know, of agnosticism in there

0:20:060:20:09

just because you just never know.

0:20:090:20:11

In a sense, because it seems so blatantly bloody obvious

0:20:110:20:15

that there is no God and it's all just another nonsense

0:20:150:20:18

so it's just, it's us expressing ourselves.

0:20:180:20:21

And as I'm saying in that piece about basing our fears and hopes and

0:20:210:20:25

so on, that, well, you know it could just be some gigantic cosmic joke.

0:20:250:20:30

But like Christopher Hitchens, are you anti-theist?

0:20:300:20:34

Do you think that religion is actually actively evil?

0:20:340:20:37

Not necessarily, and certainly not all the time.

0:20:370:20:40

It is a comfort to people, apart from anything else, you know.

0:20:400:20:43

But you'd say a false comfort?

0:20:430:20:45

Yeah, but again, I keep coming back to the fact I could be wrong.

0:20:450:20:49

And it's hard to know what else you'd put in place.

0:20:490:20:52

In the end, I would love to see religion just wither away

0:20:520:20:55

and, you know, just kind of be so exposed to reason

0:20:550:20:59

and to rationality that it would simply cease to be.

0:20:590:21:04

Or it would be very much a minority sport, as it were.

0:21:040:21:07

But as actually evil, well, it can be, yes.

0:21:070:21:11

I mean, it can certainly be.

0:21:110:21:13

Evil's such a...kind of an all or nothing word, isn't it?

0:21:130:21:16

-Mm-hmm.

-Yes, it can be, you know but I mean it turned out

0:21:160:21:19

so could communism as well, for that matter, you know.

0:21:190:21:22

There's terrible crimes against humanity committed in its name.

0:21:220:21:26

It was supposed to be all about people, not about religion at all.

0:21:260:21:29

Do you believe in moral progress

0:21:290:21:32

or are we in an arrested phase at the moment?

0:21:320:21:34

I think the clutch is slipping at the moment, put it that way.

0:21:340:21:38

I believe in moral progress, yes, of course.

0:21:380:21:41

I mean, Steven Pinker wrote, I can't remember the name of the book now

0:21:410:21:44

but I think we are gradually doing better.

0:21:440:21:48

Fewer people are dying despite all the mayhem

0:21:480:21:50

and the horribleness of which we see so much nowadays.

0:21:500:21:54

Because of the media bringing it right to you.

0:21:540:21:56

You know, we are killing fewer of ourselves

0:21:560:21:59

so, yeah, there's moral progress. We've still got a way to go.

0:21:590:22:02

You know, I'm not sure we're getting much more

0:22:020:22:04

than a C on the report card but absolutely,

0:22:040:22:07

yes, of course there's moral progress.

0:22:070:22:10

Music's been a real importance to you in your, in your life.

0:22:100:22:14

I mean, lots of people would say that but for you particularly

0:22:140:22:16

because you can listen to music when you write and so forth.

0:22:160:22:20

And has that been something that's given you solace just now?

0:22:200:22:24

I think the solace is going to come because I write music, you know.

0:22:240:22:29

I've pretensions towards being a composer.

0:22:290:22:33

And that's what I intend to spend most of my creative

0:22:330:22:35

energies on in the next couple of months or however long I've got,

0:22:350:22:38

is writing music and trying to get it to some

0:22:380:22:41

level of presentability so that should be accessible.

0:22:410:22:43

Until now, this had been a private pastime for Iain,

0:22:430:22:48

but he was ready to share it.

0:22:480:22:50

So this is the symphony wot I wrote and I'm,

0:22:500:22:53

well, I'm still slightly in the course of writing

0:22:530:22:56

because it needs further tinkering with because it's such a long piece.

0:22:560:23:01

There's always more you can do, it's a bit like a novel.

0:23:010:23:03

A short story can be completely finished,

0:23:030:23:06

-a novel in a sense can always be tinkered with.

-Look at that!

0:23:060:23:08

It looks so different from everything else.

0:23:080:23:10

-God, it looks so complex.

-Well that's because it is.

0:23:100:23:13

HE LAUGHS

0:23:130:23:14

MUSIC PLAYS

0:23:140:23:16

This is the start of the second movement.

0:23:270:23:29

It's a bit that I feel is the most finished of all the movements.

0:23:290:23:35

It's a bit I've actually let people hear, you know.

0:23:350:23:38

Little Scottish...

0:23:520:23:54

Yeah, I think there is a sort of Scottish influence in there, yeah.

0:23:540:23:57

Because it's been a hobby, it's been more fun than the writing

0:24:160:24:19

because the writing is, well, how, you know, I earn my keep, basically.

0:24:190:24:23

And, you know, my career depends on the writing

0:24:230:24:27

and in a small way, you know, part of my publishers

0:24:270:24:31

and book shop owners and so on and just your public,

0:24:310:24:35

the people who actually are fans, you don't want to let them down.

0:24:350:24:38

Cos I can just do what I damn well please,

0:24:380:24:40

well, that's always been the case, you know, sort of until now.

0:24:400:24:42

This was a hobby. It was simply meant to be a giggle.

0:24:420:24:47

The only sad thing is you can't really do both at the same time.

0:24:470:24:50

I can't write because I'm staring at a screen all day

0:24:500:24:52

and the last thing I want to do is come and stare at a screen

0:24:520:24:55

for the next two or three hours of me time, as it were.

0:24:550:24:59

So I can only really do one at a time.

0:24:590:25:01

So now that the, that's it basically with the writing,

0:25:010:25:05

I can devote myself more to this, you know.

0:25:050:25:08

And even if no-one ever hears it or no-one ever enjoys it,

0:25:080:25:11

it'll be fun for me.

0:25:110:25:13

It will be genuinely therapeutic.

0:25:130:25:15

I just have such a, such a hoot with this.

0:25:150:25:18

But did writing, did it always come easily to you?

0:25:190:25:22

It appears to come easy. I mean, you write so quickly.

0:25:220:25:27

Well, yeah, I say fairly. You know it doesn't really feel it.

0:25:270:25:30

I'm only really, I'm only at the typeface for three months a year.

0:25:300:25:35

The rest of my time is my own, you know.

0:25:350:25:38

So yeah, well, I just found I like to

0:25:380:25:40

get it out the way as fast as I can.

0:25:400:25:42

I just want to, you know, go on and I get caught up in it

0:25:420:25:45

and I can't really slow down.

0:25:450:25:47

I just, I really need to, to get going.

0:25:470:25:49

Are you still writing?

0:25:490:25:51

No. No, I am going to try

0:25:510:25:54

and get the plot for the next Culture novel together

0:25:540:25:59

so that just in case there is some sort of miracle cure or whatever,

0:25:590:26:06

I don't get to the end of the year going, "Aha, beat you cancer!

0:26:060:26:09

"Oh, God, I haven't got a book to write, oh, no."

0:26:090:26:11

So I'll do it just for that but also there's a very slim

0:26:110:26:14

possibility, you know, that maybe somebody else could actually

0:26:140:26:17

write it but I don't know, not sure about that.

0:26:170:26:20

-How do you feel about that?

-Mixed feelings.

0:26:200:26:22

You know, in a way it would be better for it to be written,

0:26:220:26:25

ach, it depends on the books.

0:26:250:26:27

I haven't actually got the full suite of ideas yet for a start but...

0:26:270:26:31

Are there any things you wish you'd done differently?

0:26:310:26:34

Done differently?

0:26:340:26:36

Ach, I don't know, that's one of those questions where you think -

0:26:360:26:39

well, when you have a working time machine, you know,

0:26:390:26:43

then we'll look at that seriously.

0:26:430:26:45

So there's not really much point. I don't have many regrets in my life.

0:26:450:26:50

I suppose I...

0:26:500:26:51

Oh, like a lot of men, I've hurt women and didn't need,

0:26:530:26:57

well, when I was being selfish or there's a degree of hurt towards

0:26:570:27:01

ex-girlfriends that probably didn't need to have happened but...

0:27:010:27:06

That's probably the greatest series of regrets in my life.

0:27:060:27:11

Other than that, certainly professionally, not really, no.

0:27:110:27:15

So have you made plans for your death?

0:27:150:27:17

I've had a thought about, I guess it will just be the local crematorium.

0:27:170:27:23

Adele has then promised to scatter my ashes in the Grand Canal

0:27:230:27:27

in Venice, just a small amount, you know, but in secret if necessary.

0:27:270:27:32

I don't know what the bylaws are.

0:27:320:27:34

Grand Canal in Venice, in front of a certain cafe in Paris.

0:27:340:27:40

Put some into a rocket to be fired over the Forth,

0:27:430:27:46

again, quite a small amount.

0:27:460:27:48

And oh, yeah, some onto a beach in Barra, Vatersay, whatever,

0:27:480:27:54

but not too much in any.

0:27:540:27:57

Most of them actually remain in the urn

0:27:570:27:59

and be sunk where my dad's ashes are sunk in Loch Shiel.

0:27:590:28:04

So wait a minute, some are going into a firework

0:28:040:28:06

so Iain Banks is actually going to be fired into the universe?

0:28:060:28:10

Oh, yeah. Well, into the... into the Forth, yeah.

0:28:100:28:13

Hmm. Yeah.

0:28:130:28:15

Still remaining entirely within the atmosphere, I'm afraid, but yeah.

0:28:150:28:19

-Iain Banks, thank you very much.

-You're welcome.

0:28:190:28:22

HE CHUCKLES

0:28:220:28:24

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0:28:400:28:43

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