Detonating New Shockwaves of Possibility: Alternate Histories and the Geopolitical Aesthetics of Ken MacLeod and Iain M. Banks

One of the more interesting developments in the british science fiction boom of the last two decades, and distinguishing it from the earlier New Wave, has been the emergence of major writers based and often setting their fictions in Scotland. Located on the contested periphery of the British nation, and working in a moment when both the issue of national devolution reemerges to prominence and worldwide political and financial crises erupt, these writers are uniquely situated to respond to the set of cultural, social, political, and economic transformations bundled together under the concept term globalization.Two of the most significant figures in this regard are Ken MacLeod and Iain M. Banks.