Sad news: Iain Banks Very Poorly

Banks has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has been given less than a year. See http://www.orbitbooks.net/2013/04/03/a-personal-statement-from-iain-banks/

Very sorry to hear that. Not even 60 yet.

The Orbit Books link seems unreliable. Here's a newspaper item:
http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/books/features/iain-banks-reveals-he-is-dying-...

Yep Iain's website is suffering as well. The BBC is running the story too http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22015175 and their servers aren't going to get swamped.

F**k.

Oh how sad, he is still so young, so sad for him and his new wife. He does sound to have a good plan for the coming months (I can't bear to say the rest of his life....)

Saddened to hear this too... far too young. :(

No Way! Very very very sorry to hear that... damn it

:(

Wish that it was still April 1st.

:(

I just heard from my partner, shocked. 59, with so much more promise!
Genuinely nice guy too from what Ive heard.

what a sad bit of news.

Dreadful news.

Just awful. Really sorry to hear this.

Just came across an article on this and came here. Sad news.

Yeah. This news has hit me more strongly than most such stories. For a long time, I've thought of his books, and his public voice, as a dependably good part of life. He'll be missed, damn it.

At some point we should do the celebration thing, of his life and of his work. But for the moment, just -- damn it.

When I did my review of The Hydrogen Sonata, I acknowledged that it wasn't great Banks, but suggested that in time it'd be seen as a solid, mid-series book, establishing useful hinterland for the sprawling tale that the Culture was becoming. And now it'll be his last word on the subject. Damn, damn, damn....

Personally speaking, I've been in shock for most of the day after hearing about this.

It's bad news... even if he was not a known person.
At least he will have the time to say good bye.

> 18: I suspect that Iain didn't get as much popular exposure in the States as he has done here; certainly in the UK, he's been the "acceptable" face of science fiction for quite some years now, even if some of his more literary interviewers haven't really known how to cope with that. His dual literary personality was often a source of great amusement, both to him and the rest of us in the British SF community. ("You are an imposter! We demand to know what you have done with the REAL Iain Banks!" someone said at the Hay Festival a couple of years ago...) Iain Banks would always stand up for sf publicly, so this is dreadful news on that count as well as so many others.

>19 RobertDay:

I used to live in Bulgaria so I am aware of who he is in the UK SF. I like his work both in SF and in the more literary styles.

I lost my father unexpectedly... being able to say good bye is something you do not value until it is taken away from you. Thus the comment.

Dreadful news. I have followed his work from the beginning and am quite shocked to hear the news. If only "The Culture" were real the drones could sort this out.

He will leave a massive void when he is gone.

Pat Cadigan posted about it this morning on FB - very sad. I wish him well.

Very sad. I do think -- huge aside given the news -- that his work (SF and not) and stature are fairly well known in the US, at least among SF readers.

He has a wonderful attitude.....I will have to read a few of works soon.

He will certainly not be forgotten! He left a mark in SFs history!

Aw, hell.

And I had just naturally assumed that he was fully backed up.

Banks apparently died this morning. Not good news.

Two months since the diagnosis, that was very fast. Very sad.

It's not unexpected. It was the same for my father. He'd been ill for a month, they told him he had pancreatic cancer at the beginning of September 2010, and he didn't even see his 70th birthday on 22 October that year.

Very, very sad. The world won't be the same without the expectation of a Culture novel every couple of years.

Sorry to hear about both deaths. Pancreatic cancer is something that should exist only in bad movie plots.

Too soon. I will remember him as the lovely guy and great entertainer who also wrote books. Nicholas Whyte recorded his Guest of Honour session at MeCon in 2007. This is the way I will remember him.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/913129.html

He faced it very bravely, talking about it publicly.

I blogged about Iain Banks back when he announced his diagnosis and when we thought he'd have a good few months left to us (http://robertday154.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/non-stop-2/). And now he's gone, just when many of us were beginning to come to terms with it. (What makes it worse for many of us is that he was One of Us, not only as an sf writer but also as someone of our - well, my - generation.)

A lot of what we'll see in the coming days about Iain Banks will be from the point of view of his mainstream work, because certainly the BBC have paid little attention to his sf. (Though when the BBC News interviewed Ian Rankin this evening, Rankin commented that as many of us knew sf was Iain's first love.) Of everything I've seen written about Iain today, Charlie Stross has perhaps the best take on what Iain leaves behind him in the form of The Culture. (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/06/fuck-every-cause-that-ends-in-.html)

Those who haven't read Iain's sf really should go out and discover The Culture - probably 'Player of Games' or 'Use of Weapons' would be the best introductions for beginners - which would not only complete their picture of the man and his works, but also serve as a very good introduction to the best of current literary British science fiction, which is as far beyond the characterless thought experiments and pulp adventure writing of the so-called 'Golden Age' sf writers of the 1930s, 40s and 50s as it is possible to get.

Neil Gaiman blogged a nice piece.

Sad that cancer sometimes takes best of people. :(

I just put an interview with Iain that I made in 1999 up on the web. I edited it the way Locus Magazine does, took out the questions and tried to make the replies into a first-person narrative. As a result, I think Iain's personality shines through quite well in it. I can still hear his voice when I reread it now.

ETA: Yeah, the link, of course... https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/81347521/banks.pdf

> 37
Thanks! Very interesting.

Being new to the Culture series (I finished Consider Phlebas a week ago), this interview has pointed me to the next book to tackle, as well as which of his mainstream books to keep an eye out for.

The final interview - "… let's face it; in the end the real best way to sign off would have been with a great big rollicking Culture novel." .... Tis very true!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/15/iain-banks-the-final-interview

very nice John. Thank you

#39 by @roundballnz> I read that interview yesterday (it was what prompted me to dig out my own). It was great.

BBC2 screened Iain Bank's final TV interview last night (Tuesday, 18th) at 10pm.

>42 pgmcc: - except in Scotland where it was broadcast the previous Tuesday. The interview we got was also twice the length.

#42 Thanks for that information, Jargoneer. I will have to find some means of seeing the version broadcast in Scotland.

Try this - only works if you are in the UK sadly am not .......

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b02xf70k/Iain_Banks_Raw_Spirit/

Thank you, Roundballnz.

Roundballnz, thank you. I got it on BBC iplayer.

Read the Guardian interview last night and caught the BBC interview on the iPlayer this evening. Heartbreaking.

I was intrigued to hear that he'd outlined the last Culture novel in case of a miracle cure. Can't we get Ken MacLeod to write it on Iain's behalf?

Just downloaded the BBC interview from, er..., one of those places. I will watch it later.

I am sure Iain would have liked the news that an asteroid has been named after him. What more appropriate memorial could you imagine for him.

http://minorplanetcenter.net/blog/sci-fi-author-iain-m-banks-gets-asteroid-named...

> 50: And if you read the citation, you'll find he was an extra in 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'. Sounds daft to me - I'll buy it.

#51 It's true. He was in the crowd scene at the end when the police car appears to stop the charge. He said he was never able to spot himself in the crowd although he had tried many times, even with freeze-frame functionality.

A nice appreciation of Banks by Francis Spufford:

http://rationalist.org.uk/articles/4182/iain-m-banks-universe