Iain M Banks has Passed Away

http://www.risingshadow.net/news/248-iain-m-banks-has-passed-away ^ | 06/14/2013 | Noumenon

[Noumenon]

Author Iain Banks has died aged 59, June 10, 2013, two months after announcing he had terminal cancer, his family has said.

Banks, who was born in Dunfermline, Fife, revealed in April he had gall bladder cancer and was unlikely to live for more than a year.

Banks was the author of a remarkable range of books, most notably his Culture series. He was noted for his wildly imaginative themes, his dark and often savagely funny sense of humor and his wry outlook on the foibles of human nature. He will be missed

[Noumenon]

Banks was one of my favorite authors. Recommended works:

Consider Phlebas

Against a Dark Background

Matter

Surface Detail

"Your table is ready, Mr. Zakalwe."

[Migraine]

I’ll have to look into those. I feel very uncultured concerning more recent stuff. Thanks for bringing this topic up.

[Lurker]

Thanks for the list. Hope you and yours are well.

[Noumenon]

Thanks, friend. Same to you and your tribe. We're hanging in there.

[atomic_dog]

"Your table is ready, Mr. Zakalwe."

"The bomb lives only as it is falling."
"The way to a man’s heart is through his chest."

[Noumenon]

Excellent! Another Banks fan. For those familiar with Banks' work, that last line in Surface Detail was a mind-blower.

We can only wonder what he had in mind for later development.

[atomic_dog]

Twenty-plus years ago I found a paperback copy of "Consider Phlebas" in a bookstore and picked it up on whim. Started reading reading it and could not stop until I was done. The way that story is tied up at the end has to be one of the best finishes in all of science fiction.

"A small, short war that rarely extended throughout more than .02% of the galaxy by volume and .01% by stellar population. Rumors persist of far more impressive conflicts, stretching through vastly greater amounts of time and space....Nevertheless, the chronicles of the galaxy's older civilizations rate the Idiran-Culture war as the most significant conflict of the past fifty thousand years, and one of those singularly interesting Events they see so rarely these days."

[Dr. Sivana]

Banks was the author of a remarkable range of books, most notably his Culture series.

Ehh, he is but a shadow of his great-Aunt Rosie. "Only a Factory Girl" is one of the most influential popular novels of Edwardian England.

[RikaStrom]

ping for home research

[Noumenon]

Yes, that’s one of the things I always appreciated about Banks - his way of coshing you over the head in an almost offhand way with a mind-blowing shift in perspective. You suddenly realize that the context of the tale he’s telling is far larger, far stranger and far, far deeper than you realized.

[Noumenon]

Afraid I missed that one...