Iain (M) Banks is dying

[diankra]

My layman's understanding is that 'cancer' isn't really just one disease, unfortunately.

It's a catch-all term for cells in the body growing out of control when they shouldn't, and stopping the body working properly as a result.
The slight upside is that the most likely cure for it would be based on finding out why they've got stuck 'on' when they shouldn't be, and working out how to turn them off... and that could be reverse engineered to turn other cells that have stopped renewing themselves back 'on'.. which might allow aging cells to repair (osrry, more accurately, replace) themselves and put an end to aging. Or at least keep us healthy to the end.
Not going to happen soon enough to stop us losing a lot of good people though. And Shaka, unfortunately, from what Banksie says, there's no chance of him beating it, just that he'll have a fun last year.

 

[JD]

Forgetting Phlebas

Consider Phlebas. Not one of his best (he'd written it before his three previous novels, but couldn't sell an SF book till he was established), but it tells you what you need to know about the Culture to be able to jump straight into the later, stronger Culture books.

Oops, thanks. I don't know where the Forgetting came from. I had just looked up the title to see how to spell Phlebas before I wrote that, and I didn't even notice that the whole first word was wrong.

 

[xortex]

I heard something on the radio of Proton radiation. I hope it can keep him alive and turn him into a super hero (well more of one) unlike the gamma radiation that David Banner got.

 

[diankra]

Forgetting Phlebas

Consider Phlebas.

Oops, thanks. I don't know where the Forgetting came from.

In the context of the title, 'Consider' means 'Remember (and learn from his fate)' so you were in the right ballpark

 

[Relayer1]

I tried to read one of his novels once - Espedair Street I think. I must have read the first page five or six times before I gave up - there was something about it that just prevented me from taking it in. Considering some of the crap I've read all the way through it surprised me, but I was so put off I've never tried any of his other novels.

Awful about his diagnosis though...

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

"Espedair Street" is considered one of his most accessible works as Iain Banks (sans the M) -- perhaps try "The Wasp Factory" or "The Crow Road" first.

 

[stj]

The Crow Road movie adaptation is pretty engaging too.

The Wasp Factory is the kind of stunt novel that make a career because it was so damn clever. His novel Walking on Glass is also accessible as well as affecting. Complicity is a dandy thriller. But possibly his best novel of all, including all the Culture novels, is The Bridge. (Some of its ideas were re-worked into Feersum Endjinn.)

 

[diankra]

The Crow Road movie adaptation is pretty engaging too.

The Wasp Factory is the kind of stunt novel that make a career because it was so damn clever. His novel Walking on Glass is also accessible as well as affecting. Complicity is a dandy thriller. But possibly his best novel of all, including all the Culture novels, is The Bridge. (Some of its ideas were re-worked into Feersum Endjinn.)

Strictly speaking, The Bridge is a Culture novel (at least, one aspect of it features a knife missile). Mind you, as 'our' contemporary Earth c.1979 is the setting for The State of the Art, all his present day novels are strictly speaking set in the Culture universe, even though the Culture doesn't have any actual role...