'Iain was in love when he wrote it': Iain Banks thriller Stonemouth comes to TV
Screenwriter David Kane explains how he adapted Stonemouth for the BBC, the first Iain Banks novel to be filmed since his deathIn Iain Banks’s 2012 novel Stonemouth, a funeral brings Stewart Gilmour...
View ArticleGuardian readers' comfort library
Jane Austen rubs shoulders with Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett sits next to Harry Potter in the great self-help archive assembled by our contributorsA breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I...
View ArticleWhen AI rules the world: what SF novels tell us about our future overlords
Science fiction has offered many visions of a computer-controlled future, and the future doesn’t look good for humanityIt’s only March and already we’ve seen a computer beat a Go grandmaster and a...
View ArticleHow sci-fi simulates simulated reality
Elon Musk caused a stir last week by suggesting ours is not the real world, but sci-fi writers have been speculating about this for at least 70 years“There’s a one in billions chance that this is base...
View ArticleBig Dumb Objects: science fiction's most mysterious MacGuffins
From 2001 to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, these awesome structures loom large over the genre, loaded with inscrutable significanceWe humans love things we can’t explain. Witness the vast array...
View ArticleScotland's favourite books: readers' picks
Iain Banks, Ali Smith and more – here are 10 books the BBC missed, as recommended by readersAs part of its #LovetoRead campaign, the BBC last week released a list of 30 novels by authors born or based...
View ArticleLewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song voted Scotland's favourite novel
The 1932 elegy to crofting sees off contemporary stars including Iain Banks, Irvine Welsh and JK Rowling to top BBC pollLewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic novel Sunset Song has been voted Scotland’s...
View ArticleTop 10 unreliable narrators
From Edgar Allan Poe to Gillian Flynn, storytellers who cannot be trusted are great devices for writers, and a compelling challenge for readersThe unreliable narrator is an odd concept. The way I see...
View Article30 years of Culture: what are the top five Iain M Banks novels?
These gritty space operas combine extravagant, high-tech invention with real human drama. Thirty years after they began appearing, here are some of the bestOur first image of Iain M Banks’s Culture...
View ArticleThe day Iain Banks drove me through the Scottish Highlands
It’s June 1991, and a young Iain Banks fan is hitching a lift. Guess who pulls up in a black BMW?The day after my 22nd birthday in June 1991 I decided to meet some friends and go hillwalking with them...
View ArticleTips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of themAre you on Instagram? Then you can be featured here by tagging your books-related posts with #GuardianBooksScroll down for our...
View ArticleTop 10 books about the Scottish Highlands and Islands
Remote yet magnetic, the rugged environments of Scotland’s north have been inspiring writing for centuries, whether in memoir, natural history or tales of alien hitchhikers...“Wherever I wander,...
View ArticleIain M Banks's drawings of the Culture universe to be published in 2019
Late author’s friend Ken MacLeod is to publish a collection of the writer’s own images, sketching out the science fiction universe where he set 10 booksA final glimpse into the galaxy-spanning...
View ArticleTop 10 spaceships in fiction
From Jules Verne’s far-sighted Victorian moonshot to the self-aware starships of Iain M Banks, here are some of the most compelling flights of fantasySome of my earliest memories are of watching Star...
View ArticleDoes Elon Musk really understand Iain M Banks's 'utopian anarchist' Culture?
The tech entrepreneur has endorsed a vision of monolithic totalitarianism overseen by machiavellian machines – and one that is neither entirely utopian or anarchistSo, Elon Musk has claimed he is a...
View ArticleTop 10 books about the afterlife
From The Lovely Bones to Lincoln in the Bardo, the best novels to take up this imaginative challenge do so with meticulous convictionFew lives are lived without a passing thought for what happens after...
View Article'I can't even look at the cover': the most disturbing books
From hiding from a copy of The Exorcist to being unnerved by the likes of Shirley Jackson, Stephen King and Iain Banks, here are your most alarming reading experiencesLast week we asked you to share...
View ArticleTop 10 books about remaking the future | Peter F Hamilton
The urgent need to reorganise life on Earth is clear to almost everyone, how we do it less so. Fortunately science fiction has drawn up some good plansThere is no consensus on what constitutes a better...
View ArticleAmazon TV adaptation of Iain Banks' Culture series is cancelled
Author’s estate says timing wasn’t right, while scriptwriter says he is ‘mystified’ by moveThe estate of Iain Banks has blamed timing for the demise of a planned Amazon television adaptation of the...
View Article'It had been on my shelf for years': readers share their lockdown reads
Publishers report that coronavirus has boosted sales of long, classic novels. You reveal the great baggy monsters you’ve found the time to tackleAdrian Tilley, 73, retired English teacher, Okehampton,...
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