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29 jan 2021 email to my brothers, in response to an article link sent to me about Iain Banks

I like the reference to Ayn Rand. Elena, who I sued to play music with, lent me The Fountain Head.

Banks was never sort of "out there in your face". Rand was. She had an agenda: she was

a gamechanger. Banks was a more laid-back gamechanger, in the sense that his books

had weight but he wasnt militant about their aesthetics. Thats wasnt his personality.

his books will (we can presume) continue to be successful because he was taking

an unoriginal fictional idea (call it heaven, if you want) and not making a hash of it.

It must be tricky to write about a Utopia, or to write rationally about it in and of itself (

which his 94 essay mainly does), and he always did it with such ingenuity people just

couldnt turn a blind eye. I stil think the book "transition" was one of his attempts to

penetrate the north american market properly: he didnt sell well there (relatively..and dont

quote me on that) during his lifetime.

of course I didnt mention his "non sci-fi" fiction: the wasp factory was always sufficiently brilliant

to leave a dent in international literature. Sort of a shockflash debut.