Iain Banks Dies of Cancer At 59

An anonymous reader writes "BBC News is reporting that Iain Banks, best known for his Culture series novels and The Wasp Factory, has died of cancer aged 59. It had been announced several months ago that he was suffering from bladder cancer, and he had stated his intentions to spend his remaining time visiting places which meant a lot to him after marrying his partner."

Immortal now.

[Spottywot]

Thank you for giving me a universe that will live in my mind long after your death. You have uploaded your mindstate to me and many others.

RIP Iain

[Coisiche]

Farewell Sun-Earther Iain El-Bonko Banks of North Queensferry; that's the Culture style name he gave himself once. I don't think there will ever be a fictional place that I wanted to live in as much as your Culture.
I encountered him a few times at Edinburgh Book Festival events and other signings. It was handy being able to say "Make it to Iain, spelled the same way".

Inventor of the Lazy Gun

[Dr. Tom]

When the Lazy Gun is fired at humans, many different things may occur. An anchor may appear above the person, giant electrodes may appear on either side of the target and electrocute them, or an animal may tear their throat out. Larger targets such as tanks or ships may suffer tidal waves, implosion, explosion, sudden lava flows or just disappear. When fired at cities and other such targets, thermonuclear explosions are the norm, although in one instance a comet crashed into the city.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_a_Dark_Background [wikipedia.org]

Another interesting fact about a Lazy Gun is that it weighs three times as much when turned upside down.

Re:Farewell, good sir.

[Charliemopps]

Consider Phlebas is a great book, but difficult to start the series on even if it was the first. Many of the culture series are down right depressing, but worth reading anyway. Excession is probably my favorite, followed by player of games. You do not have to read them in any particular order.

Re:Oh

[Dupple]

Just what I thought.

I was lucky enough to meet him a couple of times at readings in the UK. I still think Walking on Glass is my fave.

Take it easy wherever you are

Re:Oh

[newcastlejon]

No large inter-group disagreement is possible?

Yes, this was touched upon in the book I named earlier, specifically the groups that were for and against the pylons with the suspended boat-things.

Maybe some significant section want to break away.....

Happened with the Elench and others.

The point I was trying to make is that the sort of problems a person might face in a post-scarcity society are somewhat less interesting than so-called "First World problems"*; Banks would usually use the Culture to provide some contrast with another, less advanced society.

*For example, if we hadn't already had a peek into the reasons behind Quilan's visit then the composer's struggle to avoid meeting him might have been interminably dull.

Re:Farewell, good sir.

[joh]

You can basically start with whatever book you want, especially since Banks didn't write them in the order they were published anyway.

I would recommend either "Player of Games" or "Surface Detail". The first takes a while before it really takes off but gives you a good grounding into the Culture and has a pretty much single-track and fascinating plot. The latter is more complicated but is full of good stuff (like a murdered and revived slave girl on a revenge mission and some whistle-blower aliens exploring the AI after-live hells of their species).

But frankly, all are read-worthy. You won't stop before you have read them all anyway. His non-SF books are good too, especially since some of them veer quite a bit into the fantastic. "Transition" isn't actually SF, but anything involving things like travelling between parallel worlds is close enough for me...

Re:Immortal now.

[Blue Stone]

A great article where Iain talks about his thinking behind the Culture - A Few Notes on the Culture [vavatch.co.uk]

FIRSTLY, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: THE CULTURE DOESN'T REALLY EXIST. IT ONLY EXISTS IN MY MIND AND THE MINDS OF THE PEOPLE WHO'VE READ ABOUT IT.

That having been made clear:

The Culture is a group-civilisation formed from seven or eight humanoid species, space-living elements of which established a loose federation approximately nine thousand years ago. The ships and habitats which formed the original alliance required each others' support to pursue and maintain their independence from the political power structures - principally those of mature nation-states and autonomous commercial concerns - they had evolved from.

The galaxy (our galaxy) in the Culture stories is a place long lived-in, and scattered with a variety of life-forms. In its vast and complicated history it has seen waves of empires, federations, colonisations, die-backs, wars, species-specific dark ages, renaissances, periods of mega-structure building and destruction, and whole ages of benign indifference and malign neglect. At the time of the Culture stories, there are perhaps a few dozen major space-faring civilisations, hundreds of minor ones, tens of thousands of species who might develop space-travel, and an uncountable number who have been there, done that, and have either gone into locatable but insular retreats to contemplate who-knows-what, or disappeared from the normal universe altogether to cultivate lives even less comprehensible.

In this era, the Culture is one of the more energetic civilisations, and initially - after its formation, which was not without vicissitudes - by a chance of timing found a relatively quiet galaxy around it, in which there were various other fairly mature civilisations going about their business, traces and relics of the elder cultures scattered about the place, and - due to the fact nobody else had bothered to go wandering on a grand scale for a comparatively long time - lots of interesting 'undiscovered' star systems to explore...