The Bridge has been described as a ‘secret Culture novel’, a mystical key to Banks’s literary universe. It blurred the boundaries between genres – and revealed his sense of fun and games
Iain Banks was “two of our finest writers”, as Tom Chivers pointed out in a touching piece in the Telegraph. Approximately half of Banks’s novels were Earthbound, mainstream (or arguably literary) fiction. For the other half, he added the middle initial “M” to his name and wrote reach-for-the-skies science fiction: universe-traversing space opera generally set around the machine-mind utopia provided by the Culture fictional society.
Except, of course, as with most things related to Banks’s fiction (aside from his early covers), matters aren’t entirely black and white. The 2009 novel Transition, for instance, was published under the name Iain M Banks in the US, partly as Banks joked for “commercial reasons”, because by the time the book came out the Culture novels were outselling his Earthbound fiction in the US. Partly because it was an attempt to write “something like The Bridge” again – a complicated, multifaceted novel teasing out several complicated plot strands, loaded with symbolism and blurring the boundary between mainstream fiction and SF. A novel which is, in fact, a bridge between the two different elements of Banks’s career. A novel that also contains all kinds of references to the other universe Banks had already created in his mind.
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Except, of course, as with most things related to Banks’s fiction (aside from his early covers), matters aren’t entirely black and white. The 2009 novel Transition, for instance, was published under the name Iain M Banks in the US, partly as Banks joked for “commercial reasons”, because by the time the book came out the Culture novels were outselling his Earthbound fiction in the US. Partly because it was an attempt to write “something like The Bridge” again – a complicated, multifaceted novel teasing out several complicated plot strands, loaded with symbolism and blurring the boundary between mainstream fiction and SF. A novel which is, in fact, a bridge between the two different elements of Banks’s career. A novel that also contains all kinds of references to the other universe Banks had already created in his mind.
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