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04-04-2013, 12:25 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-04-2013, 08:14 AM by stevebowers..)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22015175
Quote:The Scottish writer posted a message on his official website saying his next novel The Quarry, due to be published later this year, would be his last.
The 59-year-old's novels include The Wasp Factory, The Crow Road, Complicity and the Culture series.
The statement said his health problems came to light when he saw his doctor, suffering from a sore back.
He was diagnosed with jaundice, before further tests established the full extent of his illness.
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Really sad - but at least we have one more novel to enjoy, and he'll be around to share it too. Banks is the only sci-fi author I've managed to get my girlfriend to really enjoy and only very recently.
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He once won Celebrity Mastermind on the same day his team won Celebrity University Challenge; amazing.
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That's just very depressing
When appropriate we should give some thought to a memorial page for him on the OA site. IIRC he's already mentioned on our Links page. Perhaps we could expand what is already there?
Todd
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(06-10-2013, 03:46 AM)Dfleymmes1134 Wrote: May he rest in Peace.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22835047
Very sad. His Culture series was a major source of inspiration for Orion's Arm and my own setting. I loved most how embraced high technology and utopia, whereas most sci-fi these days seems to limit itself to a slightly more hi-tech and interstellar version of modern society. The Banks Orbital is a fascinating construct and my personal favorite megastructure.
I wish more Culture novels were to come and I will miss his writing.
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At one point, I seem to recall, literary analysis determined that Banks was using the largest vocabulary of any major writer in the UK. This may have been helped by the segment in Excession where the Minds start using deliberately obscure (but real) words for comic effect.
He was astonishingly clever - in 2006 he won Celebrity Mastermind on the same day his team won Celebrity University Challenge (he was, of course, the captain).
He was famous as an author in three, almost orthogonal fields; SF, mainstream literature, and non-fiction about whisky. Once I sat next to someone reading Raw Spirit on an aeroplane; I was reading The Algebraist, and my neighbour was unaware of Bank's other writings.
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Iain Bank's rules of good writing
http://io9.com/11-rules-of-good-writing-...-512191076
1. There are no good guys
2. Utopia is not perfect
3. Never give your protagonist a simple motivation
4. History will fuck you up
and so on.
![[Image: Gaylien1.png]](https://www.orionsarm.com/im_store/Gaylien1.png)
