The Culture of Iain M Banks

Hippies. With guns. And super-computers. That’s the Culture.

The thing about genius is there’s nothing else like it.

Iain Banks was a genius of science fiction. It takes a few generations for genius to appear in any field. The Mozarts and Einsteins need the shoulders of giants to stand upon.

Iain Banks stood on the shoulders of Wells, Stapledon, Asimov, Le Guin, Niven and others, and raised science fiction to its highest level.

The Culture is Banks’ great creation. As a young fan, with his childhood friend Ken MacLeod, Banks decided that science fiction, even the masterpiece Dune by Frank Herbert, didn’t meet the tenets of “historical materialism”.

So Banks wrote the Culture as a galactic civilisation that would.

Almost a year ago I decided to make a quick video about The Culture. Which developed into a feature length video essay, including an interview with Ken MacLeod.

PS — the one big problem with Banks is that once you read the Culture, all other space opera scifi will seem poorly realised and intellectually dead in comparison…you have been warned!