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Goodbye Iain M. Banks

asydhouse said:
Iain gave me a smile of knowing complicity, and that was all we needed at that moment. After a short while I left him to enjoy the respite from the constant partying he was expected to perform by the heavy drinking crowd that usually monopolised his time at conventions (I'd seen him looking sort of bored and forbearing at other conventions, and thought the poor guy was a victim of his "life-of-the-party" reputation... in fact, he wrote that sort of situation into a novel subsequently, [but I can't figure out which one!] wherein an ambassador to a heavy-partying, deeply violent species [like even more boisterous and dangerous Klingons!] has to pander to their nature at a dinner party. As I read that scene, in my mind's eye I replayed what I'd seen at that con.)
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Excession, I think - the Affront were the species.

I'm choosing to believe Iain Banks is still around, as long as I have his books.
 
lionking said:
I really liked his last book, "Stonemouth" even though it was a major departure from his scifi classics. I'll be buying "The Quarry" as soon as it comes out, in a week or so.
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Not so much a departure from his SF as a continuation of his mainstream fiction. I'm glad that there are still two or three of his books I've still got to look forward to (Stonemouth being one of them).

I think I first discovered him around the time the BBC produced a version of The Crow Road, though I can't remember now if I'd read one or two of his books before then.
 
lionking said:
I really liked his last book, "Stonemouth" even though it was a major departure from his scifi classics.
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Me too. I've only read a few of his books, but loved all of those that I did read. "Stonemouth" in particular.

I read another of his mainstream fiction books many (maybe 12?) years ago, and its one of the few books that I think really had an effect on me, and that I often think about.
 
I used to love his books, and thought he was one of the most imaginitive writers I had ever come across; the last book of his I read was "Dead Air". I also bought the Algebraist but never read it. Friends of mine told me that he had somewhat lost his touch and I put it down to the possibility that publishers of his books no longer bothered to properly edit his books anymore.

However, if anyone can recommend a really good book from his later years, I will happily go out and buy one.
 
angrysoba said:
I used to love his books, and thought he was one of the most imaginitive writers I had ever come across; the last book of his I read was "Dead Air". I also bought the Algebraist but never read it. Friends of mine told me that he had somewhat lost his touch and I put it down to the possibility that publishers of his books no longer bothered to properly edit his books anymore.

However, if anyone can recommend a really good book from his later years, I will happily go out and buy one.
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I really enjoyed Surface Detail.

Not sure if that's a recommendation or a caveat.
 
A sad day for his family and all his friends. His novels, all the sci-fi and some of the others have given me great joy, awe at the breadth of his vision and had me laughing out loud at many points.

His friend and fellow author, Ian Rankin, refused to review his last book, The Quarry, and is doubtful he will read it. He feels his friend will in some sense live on while there is more to discover. I remember the deaths of Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke but this has affected me far more, perhaps because he was still in the prime of his career.
 
angrysoba said:
I used to love his books, and thought he was one of the most imaginitive writers I had ever come across; the last book of his I read was "Dead Air". I also bought the Algebraist but never read it. Friends of mine told me that he had somewhat lost his touch and I put it down to the possibility that publishers of his books no longer bothered to properly edit his books anymore.

However, if anyone can recommend a really good book from his later years, I will happily go out and buy one.
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The only thing wrong with The Algebraist was that it wasn't a Culture novel! Seriously, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think your friend had a bad day when he read it or something. Mind you, I did notice that he'd adopted a somewhat confusing flashback structure during the first 100 or so pages, wherein he would suddenly be recounting events from the past without any warning or even contextual indicators.... you had to sort of realise it was suddenly a past event as you went along... I had to reread a page or two a couple of times to "catch up". But that settled out as the story really got going.

Personally I thought Surface Detail was one of his best. Mind you, so was Matter.

Of his non sf novels, my favourite was The Crow Road, which I read before the BBC did their quite good adaptation of it. The voice of the author is especially fine in that one. I stopped reading the non sf when I found Song of Stone not so inviting (but I only read the first page... should I read the non sf from then onwards after all, anyone?).
 
lionking said:
I really liked his last book, "Stonemouth" even though it was a major departure from his scifi classics. I'll be buying "The Quarry" as soon as it comes out, in a week or so.
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I hope you mean a major departure for _you_ since he's published more non-scifi (as Iain Banks), than scifi (as Iain M. Banks) and was quite successful with those as well.
 
If you're not familiar with his non-sf read "Espedair Street" - best realized character ever. The Steep Approach to Garbadale - awesome depiction of how early experiences limit us until we see past them. The Bridge - sf or not? Who cares, read it.
 
Thanks Wudang. I've read all the early works (both sf and non)... The Bridge is a unique and quite effective piece of work! It was an early sign that Banks was more than a punk author!

I'm curious what people think of his later non sf. I shall read The Steep... next. Which others, anyone?

Eventually I'll read them all, but Song of Stone put a chill on me for some reason, and I haven't looked at the non sf since.... and I've so many books on my "to read" "list" (which exists only in my head) that I've realised that time will run out before I get to a lot of them...(I'm 60 now!)... so a good recommendation would ensure that I get to it before it's too late.
 
asydhouse said:
Eventually I'll read them all, but Song of Stone put a chill on me for some reason, and I haven't looked at the non sf since....
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I think the reason is it's not a very good book, I haven't read any of his literary books after this one, since I thought it was a sign he was going downhill. I did read The Hydrogen Sonata, but wasn't terribly impressed with that either.

I might go back and read some of his earlier books that I missed. Espedair Street and The Bridge sound good.
 
I feel kind of bad that nearly all my friends in England are huge Banks fans, and clearly he was a great guy (and, sadly, another supporter of independence who hasn't lived long enough to see it happen), but I've only read a couple of his books and didn't immediately rush to find more.

I feel it's my fault for not appreciating genius, but on the other hand the books remain and perhaps in another five years I'll get hooked and read them all. It's all just too sad at the moment.

Rolfe.
 
I've just seen in the new edition of Radio Times that (on 18 June, BBC 2 at 23:20) the BBC are going to broadcast a new interview with Iain which they recorded after he announced his illness, in which he talks about "his life, career, writing and facing up to the inevitability of death".

It was previously already shown on BBC Scotland, and this is a revised version for the rest of us.

@Guybrush: the only other book of his that I found unsatisfying was Canal Dreams.
All the other early ones are rewarding in some way or other(s).

I do wish he'd done more Culture novels, but non-sf books like The Crow Road (my favourite, sorry to repeat myself) had a lived reality* to them which, at his best, was the finest quality of all his writing.

*by which I mean the genuine voice of the human being speaking direct from the heart/mind of the man.
 
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Okay, I recently read Use of Weapons. I liked most of it except for the bit that I think is supposed to blow everyone's little minds. I didn't think that added anything.

However, one thing I have always loved about Iain M. Banks is the way that this song works so well for his universe. In this case, the song is some kind of mixed up extended version:



I listened to this extensively during my reading of Against a Dark Background.
 
angrysoba said:
Okay, I recently read Use of Weapons. I liked most of it except for the bit that I think is supposed to blow everyone's little minds. I didn't think that added anything.

However, one thing I have always loved about Iain M. Banks is the way that this song works so well for his universe. In this case, the song is some kind of mixed up extended version:



I listened to this extensively during my reading of Against a Dark Background.
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Knowing that there is a twist coming is a bit different to reading the book "clean" and at the end realising that a phrase far earlier in the book had already told you the twist, but in such an ambiguous way that it had seemed to imply the opposite.
 
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While I love his books, I'm always annoyed that his culture novels nearly always contain some kind of fundamental physics error. I've just hit the second one in Surface Detail.

Not a spoiler, this is not plot centric.

The earlier one in SD concerning confusion about circumference and radius of a circle.

This one concerns a lake of mercury, and a character floats an ingot of gold on it. He goes into a description that lead would sink. This is wrong. Gold sinks, lead floats. Then to compound matters, the description of why this is the case is totally bogus. It goes into mentioning it being because of the atomic number -- gold is 1 less than mercury, so it floats and lead is 2 more, so it sinks! Archimedes figured this out 2,000 years ago, this is no longer rocket science!

Fortunately, as usual, this doesn't affect the plot, but it's just mentally jarring.

There was one in the Algebraist (I think that was the one), which messed up the physical properties of water. He seemed to have corrected that in SD -- the same circumstances arise but the outcome is different and it goes into a correctish description of water/ice behaviour.

I really should ask him to have his plots reviewed by a scientist. Oh, no, wait ...
 
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