‘There is more than a shade of Pip and Estella in Stewart and Ellie, and to create an emotionally satisfying while intellectually convincing ending is a rare achievement’ Guardian

‘The storytelling is very, very smooth.. One of his best’ Evening Standard

‘Addictive, funny, and brilliantly observed’ Daily Mail

‘This is Banks at his waspish, intelligent, nuanced best. His fans will give thanks’ Scotland on Sunday

‘…it’s tender, and funny, and heart-stopping-ly exciting. I finished it on a high that gave way rapidly to bereavement – as if I were eight again and had just finished Five Go to Smuggler’s Top’ The Times

‘Jocular, gritty and smart-alecky, Stonemouth is very Iain Banks’ Sunday Independent, Ireland

Iain will be out and about signing books in the next few weeks, so check the appearances section for details.

Thanks to everyone who entered our competition to win a signed proof of Iain Banks new novel Stonemouth. We had some great answers to why you'd like to review it (as well as some helpful spelling advice on the word 'receive':-)). And now, without further ado, the winners are . . .

Seth DeHaan
Gordon Ritchie
Jason Cordes
Louise Hunter
Vanessa Round

Congratulations! Your proofs are on their way to you as we speak - looking forward to hearing what you think!

• The Stratford-Upon-Avon Literary Festival - Wednesday 25th April
• Key Words Dinner & Conversation - Friday 27th April
• University of East Anglia Literary Festival - Tuesday 1st May

For details, please see the appearances section of the website.

[Thank you to David H from The Banksonian for the heads up on these three.]

Iain Banks returns in April with his new novel - a dark, fast-paced and brilliant thriller that deals with adolescence, love and vengeance, and the perils of coming home.

We're very excited about it, and with less than three months to wait until Stonemouth is released on the 5th of April, the countdown to publication has well and truly begun. We have a limited amount of signed and numbered reading copies of Stonemouth to giveaway to 5 readers - all we ask in return is for the lucky recipients to let us know what they think of it once they've read it!

To win one of the copies, just fill in the form below and tell us why you'd like to recieve a proof copy. We'll choose the 5 best ones and put the winners names on the website. Once the winners have written their review, they can just send it to us and we'll post them here. The review can be as long or short as you like, though the more in depth the better. No spoilers though! For terms and conditions see here.

The competition has now closed. The winners will be contacted via email shortly. Good luck to all who entered!

After so many of you voted to see an Iain M Banks title on the World Book Night 2012 list, we were thrilled when it actually happened and The Player of Games made the final list of twenty-five titles.

World Book Night 2012 will be held on April 23, and they’re looking for 20,000 ‘givers’ to volunteer. These givers will have the opportunity to give away twenty-four copies each as a way to share their enthusiasm for The Player of Games.

Share your love for Iain’s books and The Player of Games by signing up as a giver. Simply register through the World Book Night website before February 1st, and select The Player of Games from the Book Choice drop down.

For more information, or to order a copy of the magazine, head to the Albedo One website.

More information can be found on the BBC Radio 6 website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017pncn

Listen to Iain discussing 'Meet On The Ledge' by Fairport Convention from the show.

"The book is a picture of disturbance, a kind of punk's-eye view of the world, which is a place of gothic horror and badness. Yet, as Iain told us, "Frank thinks he is relatively normal - it's as simple as that."

For the full report, see here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/2011/11/bookclub_the_wasp_factory.html

This year's awards will be announced on 4th November. In the meantime, The Player of Games is available as an audio download from Audible.co.uk, Audible.com (for US-based listeners) and the iTunes store.

"I'm patron of a local charity for victims of abuse called Safe Space. They've just brought out a booklet of writing by some of the survivors and I've written the foreword. The booklet costs £5.00, is called 'The Hope of Diamonds' and the address of Safe Space is St Margaret's House, 9 St Margaret's Street, Dunfermlines, KY12 7PE, or: contact@safe-space.co.uk."

More information about the charity can be found at their website: www.safe-space.co.uk.

Writing tutor Alan Spence will be leading course attendees through a series of sessions designed to help aspiring writers hone thier skills. Guest tutor Iain Banks will be leading one of the sessions.

Tickets are £400 and there are only 15 places available. More details from www.guardian.co.uk.

"The Wasp Factory will be featured on the BBC Radio 4 programme Bookclub on Sunday November 6th (and repeated on the 10th). It was recorded in Edinburgh on Monday."

There's no scheduled programme information on the R4 Bookclub page just yet, so keep an eye out for confirmation nearer the time, or check the Bookclub iPlayer page after Nov 6th for online access.

Update: Scheduling Info as follows:

BBC Radio 4 Book Club with Jim Naughtie – 4pm on 06.11.11 and 4pm on 10.11.11 as well as Podcast on i-player.

See www.bbc.co.uk for more information.

The event has been organised by the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh and admission is free.

See www.word-power.co.uk for details.

Thanks to David H of The Banksoniain for the heads-up.

From RadioTimes.com:

"Season 16 Episode 6 sees Suzi Perry and Ortis Deley create their own interactive e-books, using digital technology to revamp two classic novels - Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Best-selling author Iain Banks judges the results of their task. Repeated on Saturday 24 at 04:30 and 10:50."

Many thanks as usual to The Banksoniain's David H for the heads-up.

Iain will be appearing at 19.00 on Thursday 22nd. More details at the festival website. And here's the full programme of events [pdf link].

Thanks (as usual) to David H of The Banksonian for the heads-up.

If you're as keen as we are to see a Banks book on the final list of 25 that will be sent out to thousands of participating readers, you can do your bit to make that happen by creating an account on the worldbooknight.org website and then choosing The Wasp Factory as one of your favourite books.

Voting closes on the 31st of August, folks.

The Guardian is holding a live webchat with the man himself at 13.00 hours today.

"When we asked you whom you'd like to see more of on the site, one of the names that came up over and over was Iain Banks. And who are we to argue?"

Details of how to participate are at www.guardian.co.uk.

[Heads-up via the always-vigilant David H of The Banksonian]

Tickets for the event are £10.00 and will be on sale from 8.30am on Sunday 26th June.

More information can be found at www.edbookfest.co.uk.

There's also a rumour on Twitter that Alex Salmond will be conducting the interview on the night.

[Many thanks to David H of The Banksoniain for the heads-up on all of the above.]

And the winner, by a significant margin, was our very own Iain M. Banks' Use of Weapons.

The Register reports:

"The 50 candidates attracted a whopping 27,088 votes, with the winner securing 10,032. Runner-up was Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote In God's Eye, which was honoured with 7,099 votes. You can see the full results right here.

Worth noting that Consider Phlebas, Excession, The Player of Games and The Algebraist also featured, polling a few hundred votes between them. But it's clearly Use of Weapons that people want to see on the big screen.

Hollywood movie moguls, take note!

• Friday 3rd June: Alt Fiction, Leicester
• Sunday 5th June: Hay Festival
• Monday 6th June: British Library (with Francis Spufford)
• Saturday 11th June: The Sage, Gateshead

As always, please check the individual event organisers' websites for ticket prices and other relevant information.

There's more information on the event over at www.abdn.ac.uk/word.

Visit www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer to hear presenter Sue Lawley quiz Iain on what he would have taken to his hypothetical desert island at the back end of the nineties...

[Thanks to David H of The Banksoniain for the heads-up]

Here's the video recording of the interview (available via YouTube) which took place at the Cheltenham Literature Festival last year. Derek talks to Iain about various topics, including the digitisation of books, his writing process and the impact of world events on his work.

An audio recording of the interview is also available via audioboo.fm.

Many thanks indeed to David H (editor of Iain Banks fanzine The Banksonian) for the heads-up!

Visit www.ayewrite.com for more information on the event, plus ticket booking details.

I'll let Mat explain:

At the book launch for the new Culture novel Surface Detail by Iain M Banks I asked people one question:

What do they want to see become science fact?

Initially inspired by the 50 people 1 question films by Deltree I thought that an audience gathered to see the most successful science fiction author since Asimov could be fertile ground for thoughtful comments on the future.

Many thanks to all contributors and the De La Warr Pavilion management for letting me shoot.

Shot on a 7d with a simple edit in FCP.

And here are the results:

Science Fact? from Mat McD on Vimeo

One again, the narrator is Banks-regular Peter Kenny and the download is available via Audible.co.uk, Audible.com (for US-based listeners) and the iTunes store.

• Iain M Banks SFX Fannish Inquisition, part one
• Iain M Banks SFX Fannish Inquisition, part two

The show will be repeated on Friday 12th at 08.00 and 16.00 on Sky Arts 1, as well as at 17.15 on Friday 12th, 11.15 on Saturday 13th and three times on Thursday 16th, so plenty of opportunities to tune in or to set your Sky+ boxes to record.

Here's a short taster clip from the interview, via thebookshow.skyarts.co.uk.

[Thanks to David H of The Banksonian for the heads-up!]

The narrator is Banks-regular Peter Kenny and the download is available via Audible.co.uk and the iTunes store.

And December 2nd is the official release date for the unabridged audio download edition of The Player of Games, once again narrated by the multi-talented Peter Kenny and available from Audible.co.uk and iTunes. Details will be posted on (or around) publication day.

"We interviewed Iain at the Luton Library Theatre before he went on stage, in a half-hour interview which turned out to be both amusing and insightful. The full interview is only available in our printed and digital editions."

Here's a taster question to whet your appetite:

The View From Here: Is there a grand plan for the Culture, are you taking it somewhere or just having fun with it?

Iain M Banks: "No – and yeah... it will go on until I stop having fun with it and then I will just sort of leave it to be. There's no overall strategic plan and in a sense that is the plan, having no plan is the plan. The plot of the Culture is not going to come to some huge climatic end, well unless I come up with an idea that can only work in those terms but I'll try not to.

"That is, the Culture just keeps on going: it's this society where by now you might have expected it to sublime, to retire from the normal matter base life of the galaxy and the universe and go off into this magical realm. (Which I may have to deal with as I keep getting asked about it these days, so I’m going to have to explain what the hell it is.)

"But it's definitely not doing this, deliberately staying back and surfing the crest instead of going down the wave - it wants to keep on doing good works, it wants to be part of the normal life of the galaxy. So it's deliberately not doing what it’s expected to do. So that theme of continuance, of sticking around – like passiveness, almost bloody mindedness is why it can't just all suddenly come to a big crashing stop and I think eventually it will fade away, but it’s going to leave lots of echoes.

"That was one of the questions today during the Twitter thing which I had to put in quite concise terms: somebody said, will the Culture ever fall? And I said, it’s not going to fall but it will fade and that’s going to leave echoes everywhere. ( Mock evil laughter )"

If you want to read the full interview you'll need to pay The View From Here the princely sum of $1 (one US dollar) or 69p (sixty-nine British pence) for the downloadable pdf edition, or $7.35 / £4.99 for a copy of the print remix.

More information from www.theviewfromheremagazine.com.

Five readers, two of whom (including a former editor of 2000AD) had never encountered a Culture novel before, discuss their reactions over at www.scotsman.com.

Photographer Ben Hodson was there on the night and he took a whole series of fantastic shots of the event, which you can view via his gallery.me.com page.

Here's a quick shot of Iain in full flow:

("I tell you, that knife missile was this big...")

Many, many more great shots on that gallery page.

You can listen to the whole show until October 25th via the BBC iPlayer (visit the link above and look for the 'Listen Now' link) and the BBC have also extracted the following highlight from the show (Iain talking about his position on evangelical atheism) which is also available on YouTube.

[Heads-up thanks to David H of The Banksonian and huge thanks also to Guy Oldfield of BBC Radio 5 Live for sending through the vid clip]

To propose a question for Iain, tweet it with the hashtag #mbanks. Waterstone's are offering the chance to win signed copies of Surface Detail if you submit one of the best questions.

The update includes exclusive additional content for Surface Detail, such as Iain's planning notes, videos and background information the Culture.

More details are available from itunes.apple.com.

Visit www.timhaighreadsbooks.com for an earlier interview with Iain on the subject of his previous novel, Transition.

[Podcast produced and hosted by Green-Shoot.]

To propose a question for Iain, tweet it with the hashtag #mbanks and the Waterstone's crew will scoop 'em up and pick the best ones to put to the man himself on the 19th, then tweet the resulting answers.

"Banks’'ability to combine humour and horror, the cosmic and the human, as he builds an action-packed story on a moral framework, as well as his wonderfully original characters and, of course, the lavish descriptions of weapons and spaceships, makes Surface Detail all you could ask for in a space opera. Nobody does it better."

[I'd normally link to the full article, but it's behind the Times Paywall, so there's not a lot of point.]

The font can be downloaded from Daniel's website at danielsolis.blogspot.com.

He's also posted a video about the creation of the font:

More details on the Appearances page of the site or direct from www.s1.gourock.com.

Topics of discussion include Iain's writing history, his take on mainstream literature's opinion of science fiction, his influences, recommended writers and whether he thinks ebooks will eventaully take over form print media.

Read the interview at www.SciFiNow.co.uk.

[Another big thank you to David H of the Banksoniain for he heads-up!]

The show is available to listen to until October 7th via the BBC website.

[Many thanks to David H of The Banksonian for the heads-up!]

SFX Magazine said that Surface Detail is "...one of the most entertaining Culture novels for a long time".

Sci-Fi Now Magazine said: "Famed for his profoundly dark and intelligent humour, Iain M Banks has succeeded in weaving another intricate tale that offers fascinating insight into the human condition."

And TheBookBag.co.uk's Robin Leggett summed Surface Detail up thusly:

"There's double-crossing aplenty, action, revenge, love stories, virtual and real action, tech and humour and some terrific characters. But what sets this book apart is the quality of the writing and the depth of the author's imagination. Amongst all the mayhem, Banks raises some interesting questions about identity, death and the whole point of Hell."

More info over on the Surface Detail page of the site.

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• Tue 02.11.10 - Forbidden Planet Megastore, Bristol
• Wed 03.11.10 - Heffer's Bookshop, Cambridge

As always, further details and links to relevant websites are available on the Appearances page of the website.

• Tue 12.10.10 - Waterstone's, Edinburgh West End
• Wed 13.10.10 - Waterstone's, Glasgow Sauchiehall Street
• Thu 14.10.10 - Waterstone's, Manchester Deansgate
• Sat 20.11.10 - Lennoxlove Book Festival

As usual, please check the appearances page for more details and then follow the links for relevant contact details and booking information (all these events are ticket only, so advance booking is highly recommended).

Dave says:

"This issue reports on 2010 up to the publication of Surface Detail tracing the development of the book. Iain's appearances during the year so far, including Eastercon, are also examined. The Iain Banks iPhone App is discussed as are Hungarian translations, and as Surface Detail is out next month there are more than the usual number of events in the Calendar. Media Scanner highlights the interesting press coverage Iain has received since the last issue. There is a smattering of film news and a few snippets about book after next."

Download Banksoniain #16 from www.banksoniain.netfirms.com.

Details as follows:

Friday 15 October 2010 at 7.30pm

Venue: Morley Town Hall, Leeds LS27 9BD

Tickets: £5

Box Office: 0844 848 2706

As always, contact the event organisers for ticket details and don't forget to double-check before travelling, in case of last-minute alteration or cancellation.

The first, a talk on Monday August 16th, is already sold out according to the EIBF website, but tickets are still available (at time of posting) for a second event, called 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger?' on Saturday August 28th, from 7.00 - 8.15 p.m.

Here's the event description from the Festival brochure:

In his guise as a science fiction writer, Iain M Banks has created a utopian interstellar civilisation known as the Culture. This imaginary community populated by 'transhumans' has real-life parallels in the work of Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at Reading University. The subject of Warwick's research is his own body, and he has transformed himself into the world’s first Cyborg. In this event Warwick and Banks are joined by Steve Yearley, Director of the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum, to contemplate the future of human beings.

Tickets are £10 / £8 (concessions) and can be booked via www.edbookfest.co.uk.

'An Evening With Iain Banks' will be chaired by Professor Rory Watson, retired from Stirling University and is part of Off the Page, the Stirling Book Festival (see pages 16-17 of the online Tolbooth brochure for more details of the festival).

Tickets for the event are £7.00 each and can be booked via www.ticketsoup.com.