Like your SF hot? Read Iain M. Banks
By lpb. Filed in Writers On Writing |
by Lauren P. Burka
Noted British Science fiction author Iain M. Banks does not write erotica. Yet in some ways his books are as as steamy as anything published by Circlet. Let me tell you why any erotica-loving SF reader should check out Mr. Banks.
My aunt, who has written uncounted romance novels, told me twenty years ago that writers write what gets them hot. She was so right. The effort getting ideas out of your head and onto the page is too draining for us to work with ideas that don’t reward and satisfy us. For many erotica writers, this means that we start with the particular kinds of sex that interests us, then create characters to have it, then come up with plots so that they have something to do between sex scenes. There’s nothing wrong with writing this way; most of my writing works out just like this.
But sometimes I think that we’re limiting ourselves at best and making clichés inevitable at worse. I feel this the most after I toss yet another manuscript about aliens who have come to earth in search of life energy or semen to save their dying planet into the ‘no’ pile. Yet I also feel it when I read a story that is good and satisfying, but lacks the extra flavor that could have made it a great story.
Iain M. Banks starts with worlds and characters first. By the time he gets them naked, he knows his characters so well that that they have histories and agendas to bring to bed with them, and they’re much more interesting to watch than two-dimensional vehicles for an author’s personal fetish.
In The Algebraist, a pair of spies passes information by a finger-pressure code that is easily disguised as the caresses of sex. Their encrypted conversation includes pleas for more passionate lovemaking, and not just because they’re concerned they might blow their cover if they don’t make enough noise. What’s not to like?
In The Use of Weapons, the protagonist, from a backward society that still fights wars, is given the duty of fighting wars for a culture so advanced that it doesn’t know how anymore. When he penetrates his lover, his joy is always haunted by the feeling that sex is an invasion, along with the terrible memories of the atrocities of wars justified by people who believed that the alternatives were much worse. She in turn has never known war and will never understand his pain.
Against a Dark Background is a tale set in a civilization where low-level wars are a constant, but which may be tumbling towards something worse. The people behind the scenes are tied in webs of family, personal, and sexual rivalries that may be stronger than any of their other motivations.
To be fair, I am comparing short stories, where there just isn’t enough space for deep characterization, to Mr. Bank’s novels. His works are not erotica. The sex is barely even explicit. I still feel that many writers may benefit from his example.
If Mr. Banks has a fetish, it may well be for something as subtle as deep characterization. If you’re thinking of submitting a story to one of our new ebooks, you could do a lot worse than picking up a Banks book from your local library.
(FYI: Iain M. Banks and Iain Banks are the same person, but all of the scifi gets published under Iain M. Banks.)
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Lauren P. Burka is the author of Mate, is Assistant Editor at Circlet Press, and is editing the upcoming anthology of erotic sf/f Up for Grabs. Her stories have appeared in Absolute Magnitude, By Her Subdued, and Best American Erotica.
Saturday, June 14th 2008 at 12:12 pm |
Thanks for the reading recommendation and for the look at technique in writing erotic SF. More and more these days, I often find myself turning to the question of “what if” when I write rather than focusing specific sexual acts. It’s a really basic thing, but that question lets me build stories around both the sex and the science fiction element at the same time, rather than just around the sex.