Late author’s friend Ken MacLeod is to publish a collection of the writer’s own images, sketching out the science fiction universe where he set 10 books

A final glimpse into the galaxy-spanning imagination of the late Iain M Banks is on the way in a collection of previously unseen drawings, maps and sketches from the Culture universe, many of which date from before Banks began writing the acclaimed science fiction series.

Due to be published in 2019 by Orbit, the collection of Culture drawings, some annotated by the author, will be brought together by Banks’s estate and his friend and fellow science fiction author Ken MacLeod. Along with commentary from MacLeod, the book will contain Banks’s own notes on the Culture, its history, language, technology, philosophy and values.

Banks died in 2013, aged 59, two months after announcing that he had terminal cancer. As well as his 10 Culture books, which he wrote under the name Iain M Banks, he left behind novels including The Wasp Factory, his debut, which was voted one of the 100 best books of the 20th century in a Channel 4 poll.

“I knew that Iain had done some drawings – I saw them way back in the 1970s, so I knew they existed,” said MacLeod. “But I didn’t know quite how many there were. It was Adele Hartley [Banks’s wife] who found them. Iain was a very organised writer and a very organised person … Many of them are very clearly labelled, but there are one or two that you need to have read all of the books to see what they’re about. We sifted through them together.”

The previously unseen images are a mix of drawings, maps and sketches. MacLeod described them as “very carefully drawn” and “the first imaginings of the Culture universe”, ranging from ships to planet designs.

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“Iain used them in his own world-building – as he designed the Culture universe,” he said. “They were also a very convenient aide memoire to him, I would imagine. One of the things I find in writing space opera is that it is incredibly annoying to have to flick back through a manuscript to see how fast a particular spacecraft can go, or the size of a particular planet.”

MacLeod is embarking on a reread of all of the Culture novels in order to pull the book together. “I’m particularly struck with how he has a consistent imaginary physics which enables all these types of faster-than-light travel, for example,” he said. “The pictures would have helped with that consistency.”

MacLeod said working with his old friend’s papers was an emotional experience. “I read all of the early novels in manuscript. It’s quite moving for me to revisit them. There is a real pleasure in it – I’ve read and reread them over the years, but this is, for me, going to be a close rereading all at one go, and then relating passages in them to the drawings.”

Orbit publisher Tim Holman said: “These many drawings, maps and sketches reveal both the astonishing imagination behind the Culture and Iain’s passion for every detail of the universe he created. It’s incredible to see how the Culture was taking shape even before he wrote the novels.”