writer. He writes mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks, and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, including the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies. In 2008, The Times
named Banks in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers
since 1945".
Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty
and his mother was a professional ice skater
. Banks studied English
, philosophy
, and psychology
at the University of Stirling
.
After attending the University of Stirling, Banks moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edinburgh
and then Fife.
Banks met his future wife Annie in London, before the 1984 release of his first book.
A human exposed without protection to the conditions required to support Affronter life would be dying in at least three excitingly different and painful ways anyway without having to worry about being crushed by a cage of leg-thick tentacles. 
It was used mainly as a regimental mess and dining hall and so was hung with flags, banners, the hides of enemies, bits and pieces of old weapons and military paraphenalia.
Serious up-cannoning on our part, for all its for all its intrinsic vulgarity and first-principle undesirability, may be the only way to prevent scalar inter-civilization conflicts...
The double-sun system was relatively poor in comets; there were only a hundred billion of them.
...there came a point when if a conspiracy was that powerful and subtle it became pointless to worry about it.
If you have any helpful suggestions I'd be pleased to hear them. If all you can do is make snide insinuations then it would probably benefit all concerned if you bestowed the fruits of your prodigious wit on someone with the spare time to give them the consideration they doubtless deserve.
"What, now?" "Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar. Therefore, immediacy."