The polarizing literary debut by Scottish author Ian Banks, The Wasp Factory is the bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath. Like life it is complicated, so all the components are there. The Wasp Factory Questions and Answers. Banks decided to try a more mainstream novel in the hopes that it would be more readily accepted, and wrote about a psychopathic teenager living on a remote Scottish island. The Wasp Factory is the first novel by Scottish writer Iain Banks, published in 1984.Before the publication of The Wasp Factory, Banks had written several science fiction novels that had not been accepted for publication. The Factory’s latest prediction involves fire (i.e. His games and puzzles only barely hide his anger, and sometimes fail to altogether. 76436 Ratings. Meet Frank Cauldhame. But you would be mistaken in thinking that he is simply making mischief. Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. In the ceremony I smeared the metal, rubber and plastic of the new device with earwax, snot, blood, urine, belly-button fluff and toenail cheese, christened it by firing the empty sling at a wingless wasp crawling on the face of the Factory , and also fired it at my bared foot, raising a bruise. The Wasp Factory, by Iain Banks, has garnered many accolades since its initial release in 1984. The Question and Answer section for The Wasp Factory is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.. To some, Banks is a visionary crafting a tale of the macabre. The Wasp Factory is a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath - one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels. The reason it can answer questions is because every question is a start looking for an end, and the Factory is about the End – death, no less. Some critics believe the book to be groundbreaking, whilst others deeming it only to be crass. The Wasp Factory itself, we eventually find out, is an elaborately constructed mechanism. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brothe… Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. This is a … the wasp factory by Iain M. Banks ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 24, 1984 Through much of this impressive first novel, almost up until the awkward and misguided finale, young Scottish writer Banks achieves that fine British balance—between horrific content on the one hand and matter-of-fact comic delivery on the other. ‘The Wasp Factory’ was Banks’ first literary puzzle. the designated wasp enters a chamber in which it’s burned to death), which does indeed turn out to be quite prophetic. The Wasp Factory is part of the pattern because it is a part of life and – even more so – part of death. 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