Obituary: Iain Banks
Iain Banks
Distinguished supporter of Humanist Society Scotland: Iain Banks, writer, 16 February 1954 - 9 June 2013
Acclaimed by The Times as: ‘the most imaginative British novelist of his generation’.
The writer Iain Banks, who died aged 59, was a distinguished supporter of Humanist Society Scotland. Banks was a self-declared ‘evangelical atheist’ and a man of decided political views. In typically candid style, Banks announced via his website that he had inoperable gall bladder cancer – to an outcry of despair from fans. Known most famously for his novel The Wasp Factory (1984) when he was 30 years old; the writer became synonymous with the science fiction genre. From Excession (1996) to The Hydrogen Sonata (2012), he produced a sequence of seven science-fiction novels, all but one, The Algebraist (2004), belonged to the Culture series. Thought to represent Banks’s own values, the books illustrate democracy, secularism and social justice. Ruminations on the
www.humanism-scotland.org.uk
clash of religious ideas and ideologies likewise feature in Consider Phlebas (1987). In 1991, Banks settled
in North Queensferry, Fife, very near to his childhood home. Scottish colloquialisms in The Bridge (1986) reflect Bank’s love of his homeland; and Scottish settings feature strongly in his writing, particularly in The Crow Road (1992), a Scottish family saga. His 2012 novel Stonemouth is the story of a man coming back to his family home, and it is difficult not to think that this is Banks’s story of himself.
Banks was animated
by political causes and Dead Air (2002) has views little distanced from the author’s, featuring political morality, American imperialism and monarchy. He attracted media attention, particularly in his loud criticism of Tony Blair. In late 2004, he was a prominent member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion. An expert on Scotch whisky (he won TV’s Celebrity Mastermind, his
specialist subject – Scotch whiskies and distilleries; and in 2003 published Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram). He confessed to over-indulgence in this pleasure at some stages of his life, and to the recreational use of drugs. It was characteristic of Banks to state the fact in interviews with journalists. In 2010, Banks publicly joined the cultural boycott of Israel, refusing to allow his novels to be sold in the country. A frequent signatory of letters of protest and a name recruited to causes of which he approved, from secular humanism to the legalising of assisted suicide to the preservation of public libraries, he is someone who will always be remembered – and who will be greatly missed. Adele Hartley, Bank’s partner and recently wife, survives him. l
22
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28