# Iain M. Banks Iain M. Banks (1954–2013) was a Scottish writer who, under the "M." byline, produced [[The Culture]] novels — the most fully imagined post-scarcity utopia in science fiction, and the source of the names on [[Elon Musk]]'s SpaceX droneships. Banks is the canon's sharpest illustration of selective inheritance: a committed socialist whose vision of the good future is borrowed, name and all, by the very people who reject its politics. ## The Culture The Culture is a galaxy-spanning, post-scarcity civilization with no money, no laws in the conventional sense, and no real government — run benevolently by superintelligent AIs called **Minds**, with humans free to do as they please. It is, by design, an anarcho-communist utopia: abundance has abolished economics, and the AIs administer it without coercion. Banks was explicit that the Culture represented his own politics — left-wing, anti-capitalist, hostile to American libertarianism, which he regarded as a recipe for cruelty. The Culture's ships are sentient, witty, and bear deliberately absurd self-chosen names: *Of Course I Still Love You*, *Just Read the Instructions*, *A Shortfall of Gravitas*. ## Influence on the tech elite [[Elon Musk]] named SpaceX's autonomous droneships after those Culture ships — a "posthumous homage to Banks" — has called *Excession* his favorite, and tweeted "I am a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks." The tension is the point: Banks's utopia is money-less and AI-governed, the opposite of a billionaire-driven market order, and Banks himself loathed the libertarian politics now associated with Musk. [[Mark Zuckerberg]] also read *The Player of Games* in his 2015 book club. Banks is the central case study in [[Science Fiction and the Tech Elite]] for how the cohort keeps the grandeur of a vision while discarding its values. ## See also - [[The Culture]] — the novel series - [[Science Fiction and the Tech Elite]] — the hub - [[Elon Musk]] — the most prominent borrower