Ian Banks

Scottish author — wrote literary fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks — creator of the Culture series — who died of cancer at 59 — considered the most important British science fiction author of his generation.

Creates the Culture series — Banks's Culture (a post-scarcity, anarchist, AI-governed society that is the most developed utopian civilization in science fiction) provided SF's most complete vision of a post-scarcity future; the series is the primary fictional exploration of what a genuinely humane advanced civilization might look like.