Ken Macleod on Iain Banks

18 June 2013, 1155 EDT

We missed Ken Macleod’s public eulogies for Iain Banks: he did an interview for As it Happens, wrote an article in The Guardian, and has some brief personal words on his blog.

From the conclusion of his Guardian piece:

The reputation and reception of Iain Banks as a mainstream author may fluctuate in the future. His verve and talent will always be recognised, and his work will always find and enthrall new readers, but tastes change unpredictably as decades pass. But the place of Iain M Banks in science fiction is already assured, and permanent. He was one of our very best, a star whose light will travel a long way, and fall on places not yet built.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.