Extrait :
Do you have any idea how long you plan to continue the Culture series for? Is there an end in sight?
Iain M Banks : Not really! The honest answer is as long as I find new things to write about and make me excited about it. At the moment I still do, and the thing that I love about the Culture at the moment is that it’s enormous fun for me, and as long as it stays fun for me you have to hope that it’ll transmit to the reader. There’s no built-in timescale, and one of the things that’s been said about the Culture is that it does keep on going. One of the seductive problems and opportunities that science fiction offers you is that every single time, in every story, every novel, you can destroy the universe – it’s in your power. But that kind of gets a bit boring, it’s like watching Doctor Who – ‘Oh no, we’ve got to save the world. Again.’ And once you can do it, twice becomes… anyway. One of the things I wanted to do with the Culture is not destroy it, and part of the point of it is that it does just keep on going, it’s kind of, deliberately surfing the breaking wave of technology and progress or whatever. So its continuance is kind of the point in a way, for the foreseeable future, I don’t know, another couple of novels. Half a dozen!