HE IS ranked as one of the most influential post-war British writers, according to The Times newspaper of London, listed only just behind Ian McEwan (Atonement) in terms of his impact.

Yet Iain Banks is not your traditional literary figure. A doyen of the Left who once famously tore up his passport as a protest against the Iraq war, he writes both mainstream novels – often with a proven 'shock' quality – as well as cult science fiction under the name Iain 'M'. Banks, centred on his famous creation The Culture. And he shifts prodigious copies of both.

The bearded, glass-wearing author found fame on the cusp of his 30th birthday with a highly-original tale of a child-turned-killer. The Wasp Factory had a plot so full of stomach-churning turns it took a strong nerve to read but wowed the critics. Few knew that Banks had been writing science fiction for years before this success with a 'mainstream' novel (indeed, he had once studied under the legendary Malcolm Bradbury on the famous creative writing degree at the University of East Anglia). With radio, TV, theatre and film adaptations of several of his novels already completed, or in the works, it's fair to say that he has carved a reputation as an author with few direct rivals.

The 54-year-old Scotsman now lives in relative luxury in a posh Fife address (near Edinburgh) where his house overlooks that of British Prime Minister, and fellow Scot, Gordon Brown -- a man he loves to hate. In fact, he ended up hating his predecessor, Tony Blair, too and many of his 'regular' fiction works of the 1980s and 1990s showed a distinct anti-(Margaret) Thatcher undertone. So politics has never been far from Iain Banks. But he's a bit of a conundrum, too. Until recently Banks was an avowed 'petrol head' with a love of fast cars (he had several), hi-tech gadgets, a connoisseur of malt whisky (he wrote a book about it), and between writing a novel or two a year spent much of his time travelling the globe (before he ripped up his passport).

Today Banks has given up some of his headier pursuits and instead follows what he calls "a normal office day" writing 9-5 and following a slightly more relaxed publishing deadline. At a reputed £250,000+ "salary" per annum from his publishers, perhaps he's earned that break. However, with the onset of middle age he also split from his long-term partner, found a new girlfriend at a sci-fi convention and is said to have gone on a health kick. With two new books out this year, Matter (a return to his Culture science fiction novels), and the more regular fiction of The Steep Approach to Garbadale, has age finally mellowed the Scot?

"No, no, there was no particular health kick," he laughs. "I seem to have taken up hill walking -- well, glen walking, which is less strenuous -- but I still love curries, beer, wine and whisky. Though I haven't drunk much of the latter recently; these things come and go."

Banks says that he still spends much of spare time reading (when not playing the computer game Civilisation, an "on-going addiction which is in remission at the moment," he jokes) and says that he "can't imagine not being able to do writing".

He smiles: "I want an easy life and if it had been difficult I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them. For myself, it's the contract -- and to keep the wolf from the door! I'd like to think that if I really didn't enjoy it any more I'd be brave enough to stop and try something else. But I don't particularly want to find out."

He follows a fairly set routine, he says, spending between three to six months planning each book, then working a normal eight-hour day, five days a week writing. "Which means I can socialise with my pals who mostly have normal jobs like teaching and computer programming. But in practice, if I wake up at 4am thinking about the book then I get up and start writing. Which is good because then I can finish my allocation of words for the day by breakfast and have the day off. "

As he puts it: "I'm tied to the keyboard for about three months of the year and the rest of the time I have a normal life. I'm an only child so am happy with my own company and I don't really get lonely."

As that child Banks remembers his dad being a keen reader. He admits to being shocked when he discovered some of his school mates didn't have books in their homes. "I thought it was like not having oxygen, or hot water. If I could have lived in the library at that time, I would have."

And it was always science fiction that was his first love, he claims. "When I was about 12 or 13, I discovered science fiction and that became my 'genre'. So, I had a favourite genre rather than single book."

Given that he writes so fluently of relationships, the troubles of adolescence, family and other themes in his 'present-day' fiction, such as The Crow Road, or his latest offering, The Steep Approach to Garbadale, his lingering attraction to sci-fi may seem odd. But Banks sees it differently.

"I guess it's the freedom that you get in science fiction, that you can basically go anywhere. When you open a book of science fiction, especially short stories, you simply don't know where you're going to be taken. It could be the past, it could be in the far future, you could be out in space, it could even be maybe told from the point of view of an alien. I love that freedom: it's freedom for the writer and it's exciting for the reader."

"My mainstream stuff has always got more attention," he adds, "though the [my] SF seems to be catching up and may even be approaching parity now. Which is gratifying; I still love SF. "

Is there no conflict between the two styles? "I think they're both equally easy, or difficult, depending how you look at it," Banks replies. "It's just a different type of problem. I feel exactly the same no matter what I'm writing; they're all just books, stories, with ideas, plots, characters and settings and so on."

One of Banks' greatest creations, arguably, is The Culture. A kind of smug, faintly benevolent futuristic human society, it sees as its right the chance to meddle and assist in the development of other species’ affairs. No-one is ugly (unless they choose to be), you can inhabit any body-shape you wish, even gaseous forms or metallic beings (or change sex back and forth), people can secrete special combat or pain-relief (or pleasure-inducing) drugs from within adapted glands, and you can choose to live for thousands of years. The Culture is like a signature stamp to most of Banks' science fiction.

"One of the ideas behind The Culture right from the start was taking it as a given that machines would have become extremely good at doing everything practical that humans could do, but faster and more efficiently," suggests Banks. "Including thinking, being self-aware and even creative. As a result, in The Culture the humans are left to do what humans do best; be human, experience life, partake of pleasure."

Banks once said that the Moon landings had a massive effect on him and when I ask him about his long love of travel, and what he thinks of Virgin's new Galactic space trips he smiles. "I'd pay a lot to spend a day or so in space, looking down at the Earth from orbit -- and I'm selfish enough to make an exception and say the hell with being green for that experience."

As for now, his feet are firmly back on the ground, though he admits to having renewed his passport again and is planning trips to an impressively-large list of countries and cities later this year. The old Left political head is still there, too.

"Our armed forces are, shamefully, little better than US mercenaries now," he rues, "our courts are over-ruled by the corrupt and barbaric medievalists of Saudi Arabia and, in the City, the fat boys remain in charge of the tuck shop. Even as it all starts to crumble around their ears, it's us, the tax-payers who are picking up the bill for their selfishness, stupidity and arrogance."

"Meanwhile, if you want to take a newspaper, your choice appears to be confined to which right-wing billionaire you want in control of your information. So, all in all, I don't hold out much hope for the UK any more. Happily, I think there is a possibility that Scotland, as part of the EU, can be a small but exemplary progressive state, actively communitarian if not outright socialist."

All doom and gloom, then? "Well, it's a very pessimistic thing to say that we do seem to be wedded to war and destruction and torture and racism and sexism -- all the horrible things, all the xenophobic things -- we seem to have a xenophobic gene sequence. I think we should genetically modify ourselves, frankly -- if we could identify the bit that causes all the horrible things we can knock it out and become nicer people."

He lets a small smile slip. "We'll see."

This story was commissioned for The South China Morning Post © 2008

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