Why sci-fi novelist Iain M. Banks was an ‘astounding’ world-builder

As an author of space operas set in alien universes, I’ve always written extensive world-building material, from character graphics to hyper-detailed plots to encyclopedic entries on the cultures I create. It’s a vital part of my process, and I’ve studied some of the best: The late Iain M. Banks, who died in 2013, was an incredible world-builder.

Best known for his Culture series, Banks described cultural civilization as a “secular paradise.” Its human/machine/AI population has reached a post-scarcity utopia where benevolent AIs (called Minds) manage the health and maintenance of society. Unlike other works of science fiction that imagine AI overlords eradicating or enslaving humanity (think The Matrix), in Culture, humans and machines share equal rights and maintain meaningful and trusting relationships. Yes, ultimately it’s the machines that decide, but they usually do it correctly, and their human citizens don’t experience oppression.

Of course, it’s not always that simple. At banks The games player (1988), the protagonist Gurgeh is bored with his perfect cultural life; when he visits the relatively devious Azad Empire, its inhabitants are hostile to the supposed utopia of culture. They have good reasons. Culture takes an ethnographic and condescending look at other civilizations. He wonders whether to leave them alone or take them back. In the news State of the artContact members recognize that absorbing Earth into the Culture would kill billions, but that’s acceptable if it creates something better in the long run. This tension between paradise culture and supremacist empire is a well-known theme, and Banks finds fascinating ways to explore it. Its world-building is part of that.

As a writer obsessed with world-building, I recently devoured Banks’ posthumously published work. Culture: drawings. The book reprints a large collection of Banks’ handwritten drawings and notes.

We see him answering questions that are also important for my own writing: what language do the characters speak and why? What are the naming conventions for people and places? What is the impact of technology not only on large societal structures, but also on the smallest details of daily life? In Banks’s drawings, he answers these questions with sketches of ships, complex diagrams of weapons, rows and rows of numerical calculations, and maps labeled down to every corner. These documents emphasize both the idyllic character of the Culture and its militaristic aspects. Through these details, we see the complexity of Banks’ writing process and how he achieved his fully developed universe and civilization.

I’m currently working on a novel that also features an advanced alien civilization. I keep coming back to Octavia Butler Lilith’s Broodwhose benevolent aliens deny humans the power to act in their own lives. I also think of Jacques Sternberg’s short story “So Far From Home”, where an alien visiting Earth walks around with constant disgust for humanity. And then there’s Banks, whose work serves as a guide for how I might make my world real, lived-in, accessible, even familiar. I don’t have Banks’ drawing talent, but I identify with his need to visualize his society, to map out the plans of the ship where everyone hangs out, or to draw a star map of important places.

For me this is the delicious pleasure of science fiction. The imagined world.

But there are other, more subtle ways in which Banks constructs his worlds. My entry into banks was the same State of the artwhose protagonists are extraterrestrial visitors to Earth. This is an enjoyable group that approaches Earth’s history and culture with curiosity, even horror at its atrocities. But even though much of the story has a lighthearted tone, Banks creates sinister moments that show us the culture’s intrinsic problems.

For example, there is a scene at the end of the novella, a dinner party, where Li’s character eccentrically argues for the destruction of Earth. His companions heckle him, but without the despair they showed in the face of earthly atrocities like the “Final Solution”. The scene climaxes when Li presents his guests with a dish of laboratory-grown human cells, that is, cooked human flesh. “If they could see us now!” a character exclaims happily. “Cannibals from space!” »

This moment of world building fascinates me.

Eating vat-grown human steaks is clearly on a different scale than the Holocaust, but both reveal a carelessness about human life, the laughter-tinged indifference of humans toward those they view as subhuman. This gives us a glimpse into the culture that Banks’ drawings of weapons and superships may have alluded to, but don’t necessarily capture on an emotional level. In other words, the worldbuilding in Banks’s novels is not limited to geography, linguistics, and technology. It is about tone. The disturbing mix of lightness and fear that shows him as a master of his craft.

Anyone new to Banks should check out their technical drawings and descriptions. They provide rich insight into the process and mechanics of creating a new world. I also urge you to pay attention to the moments of contradiction and uncertainty that run through character dialogue and introspection, areas in which Banks particularly excels. Watch his tone. Observe his humor. For me, this is where the most cutting-edge lessons lie.

Bethany Jacobs is the author of the award-winning Philip K. Dick novel These burning stars (Orbit). Iain M. Banks Culture novel The games player (Orbit) is the December 2025 reading for the New Scientist Book Club. Sign up to read with us here.