The Wasp Factory: Ian Banks

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HOWEVER, despite the positive aspects of casually dating a fictional sociopath or psychopath, it is still important to exercise caution when deciding to court (or allow oneself to be courted by) one of these individuals as there are some very troubled individuals that it is best simply to avoid. Therefore, as a public service I have been maintaining a list of these “DO NOT TOUCH” individuals and now need to make an addition to the list.

When one of the three murders is committed by Frank, you can see his deductive reasoning there. But the author’s idea of putting an adder in a child’s prosthesis left me spell-bound and I actually laughed to my shame. So yes, this book is strong meat. It's got deeply twisted characters enacting their damage before us, the safely removed audience. It's making a serious point about human nature. And it's doing all of that in quite beautifully wrought prose, without so much as one wasted word. Prometheus Award for Best Novel – Nominees". Libertarian Futurist Society. LFS. 2003–2012 . Retrieved 6 April 2013.Banks met his first wife Annie in London before the 1984 release of his first book. [31] They lived in Faversham in the south of England, then split up in 1988. Banks returned to Edinburgh and dated another woman for two years. Iain and Annie were reconciled a year later and they moved to Fife. [43] They were married in Hawaii in 1992, [31] but in 2007, after 15 years of marriage, they announced their separation. [44] Caroti, Simone (26 July 2018). The Culture Series of Iain M. Banks: A Critical Introduction. McFarland. p.24. ISBN 978-1-4766-2040-4– via Google Books. The Crow Road, with its cast of eccentrics and its exactly observed local detail, was successfully serialised for BBC television in 1996 by the screenwriter Bryan Elsley. The production was directed by Gavin Millar, who several years later also directed a TV version of Banks's next novel, Complicity (1993). This was a less buoyant and formally more restive work. Its protagonist, a Scottish journalist called Colley, finds himself implicated in the crimes of a serial killer. The novel alternates the narration of the journalist, written in the first person, with the narrative of the murderer, told in the second person.

In 2010 Banks publicly joined the cultural boycott of Israel, refusing to allow his novels to be sold in the country. He was a frequent signatory of letters of protest to the Guardian and a name recruited to causes of which he approved, from secular humanism to the legalising of assisted suicide to the preservation of public libraries. Banks himself was a self-declared "evangelical atheist" and a man of decided political views, often expressed with humorous exasperation and sometimes requiring ripe language. He relished his public status as no-nonsense voice of a common-sense socialism that had an increasingly nationalistic tint.Transition (2009). London: Little, Brown Book Group. ISBN 978-0-316-73107-2. (Published in the United States as Iain M. Banks.) Author Iain M. Banks: 'Humanity's future is blister-free calluses!' ". CNN. 6 January 2009 . Retrieved 3 April 2013. On 13 May 2019, the Five Deeps Expedition broke the deepest ocean dive record in the DSV Limiting Factor. [66] The support ship was named DSSV Pressure Drop. Both vessels were named after ships in the Culture series, which is much admired by the explorer Victor Vescovo, also the financial sponsor behind Limiting Factor 's design and construction. [67] Awards and nominations [ edit ]

Over the course of a week Eric calls Frank from locations across Scotland, coming closer and closer. He eventually arrives on the island to Frank’s excitement and dismay—he is happy to see his older brother, but he is also afraid of being on the receiving end of the destruction and violence he knows his brother is capable of. In April 2012 Banks became the "Acting Honorary Non-Executive Figurehead President Elect pro tem (trainee)" of the Science Fiction Book Club based in London. The title was his creation and on 3 October 2012 Banks accepted a T-shirt inscribed with it. [46] Iain M. Banks – Award Bibliography". isfdb database. Al von Ruff. 1995–2011 . Retrieved 6 April 2013. The Wasp Factory is written from a first person perspective, told by 16-year-old Francis Cauldhame ("Frank"), describing his childhood and all that remains of it. Frank observes many shamanistic rituals of his own invention, and it is soon revealed that Frank killed three children before he reached the age of ten himself.FRANK CAULDHAME from The Wasp Factory (who joins the list near the top). Frank is a 16 year old boy living with his "not all there" father in a very secluded (thank God) Island near Scotland. Frank is a smart, imaginative, resourceful, EXTREMELY DISTURBED sociopath. Frank’s entire life is about rituals and ceremonies (hence the title which is explained during the story). Frank spends his days trapping and killing animals on the island and placing there heads on “Sacrifice Poles” set up along the perimeter of his family’s property. While these rituals are bizarre and gruesome, they are not arbitrary and Frank has a detailed, rigid belief system behind his actions which is both fascinating and very unsettling. Empire Games, the seventh book in The Merchant Princes series by Charles Stross published in 2017, is dedicated "For Iain M. Banks, who painted a picture of a better way." [65] In September 2012 Banks became a Guest of Honour at the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention, Loncon 3. Neil Gaiman's Journal: Iain Banks. With or without the M". Journal.neilgaiman.com. 5 November 2011 . Retrieved 10 June 2013. I am! Angry that I read this book! The vulgarity of the world makes me angry. We have abolished Ancient Roman gladiator games and Medieval public executions, only to find ourselves being completely absorbed by morbid stories, psychopaths and their victimization. I am angry! I've had enough!"

On the whole this story gives us an insight into Frank's mind and why he was like that. And then there was also a huge revelation at the end which just left md numb for sometime and I kept repeating to myself, no this can't be true. Frank reminds me of Ronnie from Toy Story 1. As Ronnie got a deep satisfaction by breaking and destroying toys, Frank got high on killing insects, animals, and humans. In 1997 he produced A Song of Stone, a bleak political fable set in some unnamed land where civilisation has collapsed. Always a man of the left, Banks was animated by political causes and his pronouncements began to attract journalistic attention. The Iraq war made him a loud critic of Tony Blair. The impress of his political views was increasingly evident in his fiction and it seemed to some of his admirers that they were exerting too strong an influence. Dead Air (2002), featured a narrator, Ken Nott, whose views seem little distanced from his author's and who is licensed to berate the reader about political morality, American imperialism, the Royal family and the like. By the time that Banks was duly named as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 1993 (aged then 39) he was an established name with a strong and often youthful following. The Human Front (2001) by Ken MacLeod, the PS Publishing edition, ISBN 1-902880-30-7 (hbk) and ISBN 1-902880-31-5 (pbk).

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Baker-Whitelaw, Gavia (24 January 2015). "Elon Musk's new drone ships pay tribute to a revered sci-fi author" . Retrieved 8 December 2015. Francis Cauldhame is a monster, a sort of teenage Hannibal Lecter. He is also the narrator of this deranged fairytale, casually mentioning to the reader that he became a serial killer before his tenth anniversary... Theatre: The Curse of Iain Banks, Gilded Balloon". The Herald Scotland. 11 August 1999 . Retrieved 6 April 2013. Frank has a mysterious disability serving as yet another reason he's disinclined to venture very far from the island. And speaking of taking a pee, Frank pisses on the Sacri