h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't think I've been as upset by the death someone I didn't know since May 11th 2001.

I remember him announcing that he was dying a few months back. His words were "a bit poorly". He hoped to have his latest book published before he died.

The greatest science fiction writer of our age.

aww Hoo, it was very sad news.

Oh no.


His books mean such a great deal to me. He was one of only a handful of authors whose books I kept and re read. And he was my all time favourite out of all of them.

How very, very sad he's left us so soon.

Here's hoping the Culture secretly implanted him with a neural lace when they were here in 1977, and even now he's waking up in a new body to the soothing tones of an avatar of a Mind, telling him everything's going to be OK...

BBC2 Scotland had a programme on earlier called 'Raw Spirit' with Kirsty Wark interviewing him. It was pretty entertaining.

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

Time to reread The Player of Games..

I started doing a Banks reread earlier this year with some of the ones I'd not looked at for a while: Inversions, Walking On Glass and Feersum Endjinn. I've only read A Song of Stone and Complicity the once, and that was when they first came out, so I may give those another go, and perhaps work through the others. I might give Dead Air a miss though. If I was asked to list my top ten favourite books I'd probably never give the same answer twice, but I'm pretty sure that The Crow Road and Use of Weapons would always be in there.

Thanks for reminding me of that programme, I wanted to watch it.
At least he was able to realise how much his work is appreciated.

I'm hoping all his earlier books will be readily available now.

Is it really true that he's best known for his non-sci-fi stuff? I used to think that was something of an afterthought on his career, and then as a significant but secondary part. All the reports seem to be saying "Writer of The Wasp Factory and the Crow Road" though, and not always even mentioning the Culture stuff at all. Do other people not think of him as a huge science fiction writer who also wrote some other stuff?

No, it's the non SF that first made him famous and, I read somewhere recently, has the highest sales. I didn't read any of his SF for a while, even though I loved his other books, and loved SF. I thought he was going to another of these mainstream writers who thought that they could shows those SF people how it should be done (Doris Lessing, anyone?).

Bizarre. It's like finding out that Tony Blair's old band actually went multi-platinum and still sell well today, with many fans who have their (multiple) albums not even knowing which government position he later took up.

For anyone who hasn't read his mainstream stuff, I strongly recommend that they do themselves a big favour and do so. I personally prefer his earliest stuff: The Wasp Factory, Walking on Glass, The Bridge (Banks's own favourite, apparently), Espedair Street and the truly superb Crow Road.

Post 6 in this thread has made me wish we had a "like" button more than any I have read in ages (if not ever).



RIP Iain Banks

FB

The first novel of his that I read was The Crow Road. The first thing I did after reading it, in just over a day, was to read it again. And a few days later I found Consider Phlebas in the library. The former is the most enjoyable book I've ever read, and the latter was an introduction to the greatest SF world I've known.

That was a good week.

This was his last interview (which has just inspired another thread...). It's always nice to know one of your heroes was such a nice bloke.

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

I've read, I think, every science fiction book he wrote, and none of the others.

I haven't read any of his books ... am I a bad person? I have read Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Ray Bradbury (hand me downs from a relative) and a few others but now I tend to read science books ...

I gather he wrote science fiction ... was there a specific angle he explored? I assume all this can be found on his wiki page

His most famous creation is the Culture, a galactic 'empire' (as you might call it) which is so advanced that it is essentially without want. The people who live there can have anything they desire without ever denying anyone else, and so almost all citizens live lives entirely given over to leisure. It's an incredibly powerful idea. Obviously though, it reduces the options for conflict, so most of his stories tended to be set on the fringes of the Culture, dealing with how it interacted with neighbours not free from want, and how they react to it.