Original Illustration by Sarah-Louise Thomas
To put it crudely, there are roughly two types of author. On the one side there are your genre specialists, the high fantasists, romantic novelists, horror masters etc. Then, on the other, there are those whose work occupies no particular genre other than that which can be categorised as “mainstream”, or, if you’re feeling suitably pompous, “literary”.
However Scottish maverick Iain M. Banks has consistently defied such stringent categorisation by being one of few novelists to have successfully written in two entirely separate strands of fiction. And yet, he seems remarkably nonchalant when asked whether he finds it difficult to come up with new ideas for the two genres within which he writes. “Fairly, I guess. No shortage but no glut, either.”
