wretched news from Iain Banks

[curiousa2z]

http://www.littlebrown.co.uk/a-personal-statment-iain-banks.page


A wonderful writer; wishing him all the best.

 

[Cassie]

I haven't read any of his books, but I have some friends who love his writing, and I have been planning to read some for a long time.

WHY DOES CANCER EXIST?

 

[CaptainWacky]

I've only read a couple of his science fiction books, but I liked them. Always meant to read more. I know Headvoid's a fan.

 

[headvoid]

I once gave away his books with a case of caffreys ale. He was a nice man and just asked for a case of the beer delivered to his home near the forth road bridge. I was a fan before, and even more do after.

I also gave away some utter tosh books as well. Now Everyone wants an iPad.

 

[whisky]

Fuck cancer.

 

[CaptainWacky]

I should read The Wasp Factory too.

 

[Cassie]

I have the ebook, but you probably don't have a reader. I actually have lots of his books, but I don't know which one to read first.

 

[FBI parte due]

The Bridge is really really really good, although it's definitely not as "fun" and lighthearted as his Culture stuff.

 

[curiousa2z]

I really really really loved The Bridge. Start there, Cassie, even if you never read anything else he wrote.

 

[CaptainWacky]

Sadly he died today.

 

[FBI parte due]

I don't really feel qualified to write an epitaph, but he was a great writer and it's a massive shame.

 

[headvoid]

I'm going to re-read some of the culture stuff and The Bridge over the next few months.

He was a populist author, but passionate and actually a nice guy by all accounts.

 

[FBI parte due]

The only thing I can't forgive him for is The Wasp Factory.

 

[Fuddlemiff]

I haven't read any of his books. Which would you guys recommend to start with?

 

[Cassie]

I haven't read any either, but I do have several (E BOOKS).

I've got:

The Algebraist
Consider Phlebas
The Crow Road
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
The Player of Games
Surface Detail
Transition
Use of Weapons
The Wasp Factory

I have no idea which one I should read first. Also, I'll gladly share with anyone interested.

 

[CaptainWacky]

I've read Use of Weapons and it was good, but I don't know if it's a good place to start!

 

[headvoid]

Consider Phlebas is the first "culture" novel. I really liked Excession.

The Player of Games is a great book though.

The Crow Road is really fantastic non science fiction book IMO.

I would really Crow Road and Player of Games first personally.

 

[headvoid]

I will warn you that he is DIRTY NO GOOD SOCIALIST

(written in October 2010)

So they're back (The axe falls on the poor, 21 October). The last time the Tories were in power I used to think of them as the hyena party, because they tended to pick on the most vulnerable members of the herd: the young, the weak, the old. Now, after flat-out lying about the inescapability of cuts and the reason we're in this mess, this bunch of upper-class landed louts, this cabinet of share-portfolioed millionaires, this gang of Greedists – along with their willing chums, the hopelessly deluded, now credibility-free Lib Dems – have returned to cut and butcher their way through our society again, picking on the young through picking on their parents, picking on the poor and the vulnerable, the disabled and disadvantaged, running down precisely those least able to help themselves, the very people any decent society ought to be doing most to help, while the bankers and the City boys sip their Cristal and drool over their upcoming bonuses.

A little has changed; the grey vote has held off direct attacks on today's pensioners, but even that is temporary; the old too will miss the buses withdrawn from service and the police removed from the streets, feel ignored and cut off when their local library closes and the remaining post offices turn into charity shops; and the old will suffer most as a hyper-stressed NHS tries to cope with the trauma of yet another needless privatisation-inspired reorganisation. The hyenas that lope and crunch their way across the plains are blameless; just animals behaving as evolution has shaped them, quite free of morality, ethics or guilt. We might have expected better from our own species, but no; the snarling horrors have returned, and we'll rue the wasted years that let all three major parties swing so decisively to the right and present us with so little real choice at the last election.

Iain Banks

It shows a little in the culture novels. This is why I think his science fiction writing is good. He is interested in society, a little like Ursula Le Guin.

Imagine if Ursula Le Guin wrote Space Operas - that is why he is good. He is (was) also much better than other Space Opera Popular novelists like Peter Hamilton

 

[headvoid]

more confirmation he was just a really good bloke.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22838918

 

[CaptainWacky]

Peter Hamilton's pretty good too though!