The endless lives of Iain M. Banks: the late science fiction novelist grappled with a fundamental existential--and libertarian--question.

• Author: Suderman, Peter

TOWARD THE END of his 2009 novel Transition, the late Scottish author Iain M. Banks has the story's voice of wisdom describe libertarianism as "a simple-minded right wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own self-regard."

It's safe to say that Banks, who died in June at age 59, shared this opinion. An avowed anti-Thatcherite and outspoken critic of New Labour, Banks was prone to unprompted rants about the "greedism" and "marketology" advocated by the "intellectually facile." "It really gets my hackles up, the right wing cover of libertarianism," he told Wired in 2012.

And yet Banks' science fiction novels drew heavily from the universe of libertarian interests, particularly in his Culture novels, a long-running set of loosely connected space operas that deal with a high-tech post-scarcity society comprised mainly of biologically advanced human beings and artificial intelligences. Banks may have hated libertarians, but the fictional worlds he built were founded on fundamentally libertarian ideals and morality. For a quarter century, he offered a sweeping science-fiction vision of how those ideals might survive a brilliantly imaginative series of practical and moral tests.

The Culture series can be read as a sprawling, intergalactic left-libertarian thought experiment. It's a functioning anarchist society with no government, no laws, and no money. Powerful artificial beings known as Minds work with humans to solve large social problems, but governing groups are formed and managed on a mostly ad hoc basis.

Culture humans have dramatically extended lifespans, occasionally thousands of years long. Most are equipped with special drug glands that allow them to alter their moods, attitudes, and sensory experiences with a mere thought. In the absence of resource constraints or inevitable death, most people can do pretty much anything they want, as long as they are not coercing others in the process. The only limiting factor is individual consent.

The first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, appeared in 1987. By the time it came out, Banks had already published three essentially realistic mainstream novels. Phlebas was his first explicit foray into science fiction, which his publisher denoted by adding his middle initial to the byline. For the rest of his career until his death, Banks published about a book a year, trading off between science fiction and more mainstream work, using that middle initial to differentiate between the two.

It's clear which side of that divide his passions laid. Banks said that before the publication of his first novel, he always considered himself a science-fiction writer. And he described the Culture, which eventually fanned out across eight official novels, several short stories, and a novel presumed to take place in the same universe, as a "secular heaven"--his own "personal Utopia."

Banks was a technological optimist with a keen interest in both the how and why of technological development. Perhaps the greatest joy in reading his science fiction is the freewheeling sense of invention, especially when it comes to physical spaces. He was a master world-builder who worked on the grandest possible scale.

Few Culture citizens live on...