Iain M. Banks

Iain Banks was a Scottish author who wrote mainstream fiction under his own name and science fiction as Iain M. Banks. His debut, The Wasp Factory (1984), was followed by Consider Phlebas (1987), the first of the ten Culture novels, which include The Player of Games and Excession. Banks wrote full time after that early success and died in 2013 at the age of 59, having revealed earlier that year that he had inoperable cancer.