"I blame Gerry Anderson"
July 24th, 2008
Iain [M] Banks on story ideas that may never come to fruition:
Q: Could you write a science-fiction novel without wars and violence?
Iain Banks: Good grief yes. I've toyed with the idea of writing a Shakespearean – okay, a sub-Shakespearean – comedy set in the Culture where some feckless / rather dizzy / profoundly spoilt human characters suffer a series of misunderstandings (with hilarious results), attended by jaded and long-suffering drones. It's just I'm kind of a sucker for the unlimited special effects budget written SF hands a writer – and big explosions (I blame Gerry Anderson).
Again, though, it'd be a narrow idea-window for me to hit; a story that needed to be SF, but didn't need all the pyrotechno-gizmology I've become so fond of. Any ideas I've ever had in this direction, when sternly asked the question "Couldn't you do almost exactly the same story set in our reality, present or past?" tend to look pretty shifty, break eye contact and start drawing doodles in the dust at their feet while starting to whistle.
Definitely possible though.
[Via Malaclyps]
