Transition, the next novel from famed British sci-fi master Iain M. Banks, is to be made available as a serialised free podcast (audio download), starting on the scheduled publication date, 3 September 2009.

According to Banks’ publisher, Orbit, there will be twenty four, 15 minute episodes released on iTunes in the US and UK every Thursday and Saturday for 12 weeks, until the entire novel is available. Orbit’s blog on the subject doesn’t mention other countries such as Australia, although it is likely the podcasts will become widely available online shortly after they are released in the US and UK.

Orbit’s blog entry also included this line from Banks himself on the release:

“I had barely caught up with the later half of the Twentieth Century, when here I am being ensnarled by gizmology from the Twenty-First. I am left breathless by the pace of technology.”

Not much information about the book itself is available online, apart from the product description from Orbit parent little, brown:

A world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse, such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organisation with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?

On the Concern’s books are Temudjin Oh, an un-killable assassin who journeys between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice; and a nameless, faceless torturer known only as the Philosopher. And then there’s the renegade Mrs Mulverhill, who recruits rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, hiding out from a dirty past in a forgotten hospital ward. As these vivid, strange and sensuous worlds circle and collide, the implications of turning traitor to the Concern become horribly apparent, and an unstable universe is set on a dizzying course.

Commentary
OK, this is seriously cool. I haven’t read much of Iain M. Banks’ stuff, despite the constant nagging of my friends. However, I am halfway through Use of Weapons at the moment, and enjoying it greatly. It has just the right blend of humanity (on the part of machines) and inhumanity (on the part of real people) to be categorised as cool.

Publishing Transition as a free podcast will sit will with hardcore Banks fans and offer much of the rest of us (including the blind community) an easy way to catch up with his latest book on the train.