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.
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.
Yesterday the world lost one of its great contemporary literary lights. Iain M. Banks, named “one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945” by The Times in 2008, died of gall bladder cancer that had only been diagnosed this February. He finished his last novel — ironically, it’s a story about the final weeks of a man dying of cancer — very recently, and it’s due to be published before the end of the month. From all reports, he passed peacefully, having spent as much of his last months as possible spending time with his wife and close friends.
Just to collect all the links from our Forum on Iain M. Banks’ The Hydrogen Sonata into one coherent place:
Chris Brown: A Triumphant Return to Form | Gerard van der Ree: Learning from Utopia | Iver B. Neumann: Religion and the Sublime | Patrick Thaddeus Jackson: Actors on the Sci-Fi Stage | Dan Nexon: To Sim, Perchance to Dream | and Iain M. Banks’ reply
General Warning: this is emphatically not a spoiler-free Forum! Hence all of the text all of the contributions will be safely below the fold, and only the identifying information for the author of the contribution will be here for even causal browsers to see.
Iain M. Banks is a celebrated author of both science fiction and “regular fiction.” According to his Wikipedia page, in 2008 The Times named him in their list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945.” Continue reading
General Warning: this is emphatically not a spoiler-free Forum! Hence all of the text all of the contributions will be safely below the fold, and only the identifying information for the author of the contribution will be here for even causal browsers to see.
Daniel H. Nexon is Associate Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
General Warning: this is emphatically not a spoiler-free Forum! Hence all of the text all of the contributions will be safely below the fold, and only the identifying information for the author of the contribution will be here for even causal browsers to see.
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson is Professor of International Relations and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the School of International Service at American University. Continue reading
General Warning: this is emphatically not a spoiler-free Forum! Hence all of the text all of the contributions will be safely below the fold, and only the identifying information for the author of the contribution will be here for even causal browsers to see.
Iver B. Neumann is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics. For some reason he doesn’t have a personal page at the LSE, so here’s his Wikipedia page instead. Continue reading
General Warning: this is emphatically not a spoiler-free Forum! Hence all of the text all of the contributions will be safely below the fold, and only the identifying information for the author of the contribution will be here for even causal browsers to see.
Gerard van der Ree is Assistant Professor at University College Utrecht. Continue reading
General Warning: this is emphatically not a spoiler-free Forum! Hence all of the text all of the contributions will be safely below the fold, and only the identifying information for the author of the contribution will be here for even causal browsers to see.
Chris Brown is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics. Continue reading
Iain M. Banks, an especial favorite author of mine and someone on whom I‘ve written before, published a new novel earlier this Fall: The Hydrogen Sonata, the latest installment in his ongoing series of novels about The Culture, a post-scarcity pan-human civilization largely controlled by hyper-advanced artificial intelligences called Minds. I invited four other scholars — Dan Nexon, Iver Neuman, Chris Brown, and Gerard van der Ree — to write short critical essays on the novel, and sent the package to Iain for his comments. I now have all of the pieces in hand, and over the next few days I’ll post them here. Happy holidays. You’re welcome.
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