Goodbye Iain M. Banks
I in all ways qualify as a fan boy. I am really into and obsess about certain nerd sub cultures and will fight tooth and nail to defend my position against the ignorant savages who want have deluded themselves into believing that the Star Trek reboots were decent films, or that Superman is as good a comic book character as Batman, or that the Alliance is better than the Horde because the characters are prettier (2009 Star Trek image courtesy of the Star Trek T Shirt category). If you ever get me into a discussion of the relative merits of the new Star Wars verses the original three prepare to be either bored or enthralled (depending on your own fan boy status) for several hours as I discuss exactly how Lucas failed and betrayed us all in excruciating detail.
The thing is I am for the most part I am a fan boy of characters and concepts far more than people. I am a huge fan of Han Solo but given the opportunity to meet Harrison Ford I could take it or leave it. My love of Han never got me to become a big fan of Indiana Jones. The point is that one of the few actual real life humans I am a fan of is the late, great Iain M. Banks.
I wrote something about his developing cancer a couple months ago so I am not going to gush on about how great his books are or how much they always meant to me. If you are that interested you can check out the blog I did back then here. Sufficed to say he was one of the few people in the world I would have gone to great lengths to meet and discuss his work with, and with his passing yesterday the world feels like a more bleak place for me. Anyone who knows anything about Science Fiction (or just dark, gothic fiction) knows what he was to our beloved genre, and I hope you all take a minute out of your day to reflect and appreciate what a rare gem he was; a truly creative and humorous soul in a literary world cluttered with sparkly vampires, dragons burning sky worms, and every other rampantly prolific author of pulp designed to regurgitate every trite sci fi idiom as a bland paste.
Iain M. Banks, I for one will miss you.
Dave
P.S. Mr. Banks managed to finish his last novel three weeks before his death. Not at all surprisingly it is about a man with cancer. It is called The Quarry, and I recommend we all buy and read a copy as a tribute to a great author. I am looking forward to it.
D.
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