Iain Banks: Even at my age I still have something to prove | Boo. Dear me, have you noticed how many middle-aged, bearded blokes are around these days? It makes Iain Banks terribly difficult to spot in a crowd. Maybe that 70s polytechnic lecturer look he has assiduously adopted for so many years is finally in fashion. Still, when he strides into Edinburgh's swanky Balmoral Hotel, fresh off the train from his home in North Queensferry, he looks trim and well-groomed – and, slightly surprisingly, orders a mineral water from the bar. Banks has cut down on drink, he says, and drugs have been banished. Banks shrugs. In response, he plans to crank out a book a year, rather than his recent rate of one every 18 months. Readers of both Banks's mainstream work and his hardcore science fiction (published under the name Iain M Banks) agree that the quality of his science fiction has held up much better over the years; the "M" novels Look to Windward (2000) and Matter (2008) were among his most ambitious and accomplished works in the genre.
Free Book Library - Suvudu - Science Fiction and Fantasy Books, The Agony Column / Rick Kleffel. Bio. Free Reads ~ James Patrick Kelly Reads Himself.