“Everyone seemed to have a Banksy story. Something personal, something funny, something inspirational. So many stories began with the phrase: “I didn’t know him well enough to call him a friend, but..”
So writes the author Neil Williamson, about the online reaction to the far-too-early death of Iain Banks this weekend. I too didn’t know Iain Banks well enough to call him a friend—at best I could say we had several friends in common, although that didn’t seem to matter with Iain. I was a sufficiently familiar face to always inspire a friendly hello, and enquiries about what and how I was doing. I had even been part of a writing and drinking “retreat” he’d hosted one January weekend in the depths of snowy Fife. I remember him then as enjoyable company down the local pub and a source of insightful, positive critiques on all our writings; and he never for a moment pulled rank as you might fear a best-selling author would do.
Yet while I, too, have personally important stories about the man and his work— not least my shock on discovering that my mother, a voracious reader, had read my copy of The Wasp Factory and enjoyed it!—I like to think that I must be one of the few people around who actually wrote a short story featuring Iain Banks.
Back in 1995, there was a small independent magazine called Scottish Book Collector. Although the publication was chiefly filled with antiquarian and bibliographic articles, editor and publisher Jennie Renton had started a regular fiction slot. Quite a few of the stories she published (all of which had to have some connection with books or book collecting) were written by members of the then East Coast SF Writers Group. As I was a member of this group (other members included Andrew C Ferguson, Gavin Inglis and Andrew J Wilson), I somehow or other ended up being commissioned to write a short story for a proposed special issue on Iain Banks.
With the typical arrogance of a wannabe writer, I opted to follow in the path of Robert Bloch’s The Man Who Collected Poe and Kim Newman’s The Man Who Collected Barker with my own take, The Man Who Collected Iain Banks. Re-reading it today, I’m rather pleasantly surprised, not least by my authorial decision to use a magazine journalist as the main point of view character—rather prescient given how I now earn a living! (I did, however, choose to make the journalist female, if only for the sake of narrative distance.) And, of course, the story also touches on my distrust of extreme fannish behaviour, given that the story is focused around a magazine interview which is interrupted by a self-declared “Number One Fan”, who honestly believes he’s an exiled warrior from another dimension and that Banks is “a sage” sent by his peers to offer him an escape route home.
Given I can barely remember things I wrote a couple of months ago, the process of writing a short story from the best part of two decades back has little chance of popping up on my radar. I may be biased, but I think it stands up reasonably well; if nothing else, I think The Man Who Collected Iain Banks did the job assigned to it.
Even though the “deal” had already been done with Scottish Book Collector, I was sufficiently clued up even back then to only submit the story with Iain’s approval. I handed him a copy at some point during a convention (in Glasgow, if I remember rightly) and was rather pleased to receive, a week or so later, a postcard from the man himself thanking me for the story, which he was more than happy to see published. With only a few (mildly annoying) editorial nips and tucks, it was. (Volume 4, Number 9; February-March 1995, should you be interested in tracking down a copy.)
Unfortunately, I’ve lost that postcard at some point during several house moves, but I remain grateful to Iain for his gracious acceptance of his fictionalisation by my hands. Not least, I have to admit, because The Man Who Collected Iain Banks remains my only published short story for which I actually received hard cash. Given that I’m now a freelance journalist who won’t consider starting to write anything until a fee is confirmed (unless I’m in a good mood), that’s rather special.
So, goodbye Iain. Thanks for everything.
