Oolite Bulletins

So young...

Too young, too soon.

Very sad indeed. If ever there was a reminder to Carpe Diem, this sort of thing is it.

Cheers,

Drew.

Very sad indeed, even though we all knew it was coming. A huge loss.

http://youtu.be/nAwVkQ-0_u0

A sad loss to us all.

Apparently he was 87,000 works into his last work regarding the impact of someone being diagnosed with Cancer when he got his own diagnosis, 10,000 words from the end. Apparently they rushed the first print run so that he could see what it looked like before he went.

He now has an asteroid! Very cool.

<applauds>

A really interesting appreciation of Iain Banks's SF works (and with a great title illustration!):
http://rationalist.org.uk/articles/4182 ... s-universe

*sigh*

It is an interesting article, no doubt about it, but....

I'm not religious -at all- , but it always pains me to see how someone notable who recently died... All of a sudden becomes easy pickings for people who want to put words in their mouth.

Or worse, posthumously enlist someone into a cause. Even make them a poster-child.

The article might be right in one, several places, or even 200% correct but will we ever know, now Banks cannot humorously refute or acknowledge any of its points?



L'enfer, c'est les autres, indeed.

I don't think Francis Spufford (who wrote the article: also the author of The Backroom Boys, which I believe has a chapter on Bell & Braben and Elite; Red Plenty, the only book of his I've read, which is an amazingly interesting and indeed exciting novelistic history of 1950s and 60s Soviet economics; and Unapologetic, a defence of Christianity against Dawkins, Hitchens et al - Spufford is himself a Christian) is putting words or opinions into Banks's mouth. Iain Banks was pretty forthright about his views on religion, in his fiction and out of it too. The piece is more a summary, an analysis of how these views informed, in part, his science fiction, particularly the Culture novels. I don't know if Spufford knew Banks personally, but he is obviously a huge fan of his science fiction.

Iain Banks was an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a Distinguished Supporter of the Humanist Society of Scotland. There's a short interview from BBC Radio where he speaks about his views on religion here, for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dnCTApJ4Bc
("Basically bananas", is the executive summary ... )

I stand -thoroughly- corrected!

The only non- SF novel I read was about that girl in a sect, (Whit) which rather clearly seemed to show what he thought about religion so I should've known better...

Alas - Frederik Pohl has also departed. One of the greats of the 'golden age'!

This is what I most hate about getting older.. all one's favourite authors disappear..