[BRIEF NOTE] On the great Iain Banks

[rfmcdonald]

I was saddened when I saw the news shared by Facebook's John that Scottish writer Iain Banks--known to me particularly as the author of the Culture series--is fatally ill.

I have cancer. It started in my gall bladder, has infected both lobes of my liver and probably also my pancreas and some lymph nodes, plus one tumour is massed around a group of major blood vessels in the same volume, effectively ruling out any chance of surgery to remove the tumours either in the short or long term.

The bottom line, now, I’m afraid, is that as a late stage gall bladder cancer patient, I’m expected to live for ‘several months’ and it’s extremely unlikely I’ll live beyond a year. So it looks like my latest novel, The Quarry, will be my last.

As a result, I’ve withdrawn from all planned public engagements and I’ve asked my partner Adele if she will do me the honour of becoming my widow (sorry – but we find ghoulish humour helps). By the time this goes out we’ll be married and on a short honeymoon. We intend to spend however much quality time I have left seeing family. and relations and visiting places that have meant a lot to us. Meanwhile my heroic publishers are doing all they can to bring the publication date of my new novel forward by as much as four months, to give me a better chance of being around when it hits the shelves.

Banks' influence can be measured by not only by the speed with which the news spread through various social networks, but by the content of the press coverage of the sad news, at io9 and The Telegraph (twice!) and The Guardian and Forbes and, well.

Banks is an author who helped define the modern genre of science fiction for the better. I hope for a miracle, but if the worst happens he'll be missed.

There's a guestbook that well-wishers can sign. I have.