Iain Banks - very sad news

[Guest]

Sadly I read today that Iain Banks - IMO one of our most gifted authors - has only months to live having been diagnosed with gall bladder cancer. I have all his books in hard book - in both of his genres - all eminently re-readable.

[MrGongGong]

I just heard that
very sad news indeed

"Dad, are the Wombles real ?"
"Yes they are son, they're real puppets"

Vary courageous indeed Caliban

[Nick Armstrong]

Sadly I read today that Iain Banks - IMO one of our most gifted authors - has only months to live having been diagnosed with gall bladder cancer. I have all his books in hard book - in both of his genres - all eminently re-readable.

Indeed so ... and a throat-catchingly courageous statement about it http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22016147

(I do find it very scary to hear of back-ache being the harbinger of such doom... I remember it was the same with Philip Langridge: the idea that a chronic twinge in the lower back can betoken such illness is chilling

[Nick Armstrong]

"Dad, are the Wombles real ?"
"Yes they are son, they're real puppets"

Vary courageous indeed Caliban

Don't catch your drift, 2Gongs.

[Mr Pee]

Don't catch your drift, 2Gongs.

Me neither.....not for the first time.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

dreadful news since Ian Banks is also Ian M Banks the genius who wrote the culture novels .... oh how very sad

[MrGongGong]

Don't catch your drift, 2Gongs.

It's one of my favourite quotes from him.....

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

this is the banksophilia website where one may make an entry in the book

[Stillhomewardbound]

I've never met this man and I'm afraid to say I haven't read any of his novels, but gosh, what a response this is to his illness. Obviously the kind of genuine and warm human being who could convey terrible news and yet uplift you at the same time. An example to us all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/03/iain-banks-cancer-statement-full

[MrGongGong]

A very sad day today

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/author-iain-banks-dies-of-cancer-aged-59-8651163.html

I went on the train to Aberdeen this week and while going over the Forth Bridge remembered the end of Complicity (I think ? ) , set in the strange half abandoned buildings on the small islands which got me thinking about how he was doing.

and a glass of Talisker raised to an inspirational man

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

and a glass of Talisker raised to an inspirational man

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

[johncorrigan]

I loved the Crow Road, but wasn't an enormous fan of the others that I tried. But I was an admirer of him. Whenever he was on the box he was always good value. He always appeared, and the tributes show this, the kind of person who brings a smile on your face when you see them coming; just seemed to have terrific attitude to life...and to death.

[amateur51]

I loved the Crow Road, but wasn't an enormous fan of the others that I tried. But I was an admirer of him. Whenever he was on the box he was always good value. He always appeared, and the tributes show this, the kind of person who brings a smile on your face when you see them coming; just seemed to have terrific attitude to life...and to death.

Nicely put, johncorrigan

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

from a final interview in the graun

Banks may have displayed a lack of anger at his diagnosis, but that does not mean that his righteous ire is extinguished. As we chat, he frequently loops off into hilarious denunciations. "I can understand that people want to feel special and important and so on, but that self-obsession seems a bit pathetic somehow. Not being able to accept that you're just this collection of cells, intelligent to whatever degree, capable of feeling emotion to whatever degree, for a limited amount of time and so on, on this tiny little rock orbiting this not particularly important sun in one of just 400m galaxies, and whatever other levels of reality there might be via something like brane-theory [of multiple dimensions] … really, it's not about you. It's what religion does with this drive for acknowledgement of self-importance that really gets up my nose. 'Yeah, yeah, your individual consciousness is so important to the universe that it must be preserved at all costs' – oh, please. Do try to get a grip of something other than your self-obsession. How Californian. The idea that at all costs, no matter what, it always has to be all about you. Well, I think not."