Iain Banks (born on 16 February 1954 in Dunfermline, Fife) is a Scottish writer. He writes mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks, and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, including the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies. In 2008, The Times named Banks in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was a professional ice skater. Banks studied English, philosophy, and psychology at the University of Stirling.

After attending the University of Stirling, Banks moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edinburgh and then Fife.

Banks met his future wife Annie in London, before the 1984 release of his first book. They married in Hawaii in 1992. It was announced in early 2007 that, after 25 years together, they had separated. Annie died in 2009, two months after their divorce had become final. Banks currently lives in North Queensferry, a village on the north side of the Firth of Forth, with the published author and founder of the Dead by Dawn film festival Adèle Hartley. The two have been together since 2006.

Stephen Meredith Potter (1 February 1900 – 2 December 1969) was a British author best known for his mocking self-help books, and film and television derivatives from them.

After leaving school in the last months of World War I he was commissioned as a junior officer in the British army, but by the time he had completed his training the war was over and he was demobilised. He then studied English at Oxford, and after some false starts he spent his early working life as an academic, lecturing in English literature at Birkbeck College in the University of London, where he published several works on Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Finding his income inadequate, he left the university and took up a post producing and writing for the BBC. He remained with the BBC until after World War II, when he became a freelance writer, and remained so for the rest of his life.

His series of humorous books on how to secure an unfair advantage began in 1947 with "Gamesmanship", purporting to show how poor players can beat good ones by subtle psychological ploys. This sold prodigiously and led to a series of sequels covering other aspects of life. They were later adapted for the cinema in the 1960s and for television in the 1970s.