The SF world has long been familiar with the schizophrenic nature of Mr. Banks. Omit his middle initial and he is a respectable and hugely successful writer of mainstream fiction who gets invited to literary festivals. Add that middle M. and he becomes the equally hugely successful writer of thoroughly disreputable science fiction novels that no one in the UK literary establishment would be seen dead reading.

What, then, are we to make of the provocatively titled Transition? As this review in The Independent points out, it is published under the name of the respectable, M-less Banks, but it is undeniably a world of science fiction. It is a book about parallel universes, and a secretive organization that controls passage between them (spookily similar in some ways to The City & The City, though both books must have been written at around the same time).

Ignore, therefore, the rather silly comment of reviewer Doug Johnstone that the book somehow has more gravitas because it is set of Earth rather than on some alien planet. Ponder instead on what Mr. Banks might be saying to his mainstream audience here. Is he perhaps saying, “times have changed, we won the culture war, it is time to open your minds a little”?

I don’t know. I can’t pretend to be able to get inside his head. But I do want to read that book.