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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 213.106.77.123
Posted on Sunday, June 09, 2013 - 08:42 pm:   

A wonderful writer, and a sad loss even though we all knew it was coming. He wrote some brilliant novels.
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Mbfg (Mbfg)
Username: Mbfg

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 2.220.10.67
Posted on Sunday, June 09, 2013 - 10:28 pm:   

I'll second that
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.24.62.55
Posted on Sunday, June 09, 2013 - 11:17 pm:   

Jesus! I didn't know it was coming!! What happened? I'm shocked!
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.239.242.208
Posted on Sunday, June 09, 2013 - 11:20 pm:   

He announced a few months back that he had a terminal cancer. Great shame.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 212.183.140.17
Posted on Monday, June 10, 2013 - 01:31 pm:   

I've only read 'The Wasp Factory' but it had a profound effect on me in my teens. He's one of those authors I've always intended getting more into and I admired the way he was able to keep such a parallel career going between mainstream fiction and hard sci-fi. A terrible loss. But the books will always be there for us to explore...
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.130.218.151
Posted on Monday, June 10, 2013 - 05:58 pm:   

RIP Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks. Very sad.

I stood next to him at a London world fantasy convention in, I think, 1988. Or rather he accidentally squashed me against the wall with his back as part of a crowd watching an event. I’ve loved whatever I’ve read of his.

Just pre-ordered the hardback of THE QUARRY from Amazon UK. A real book that rocks, no doubt. I also have a strange instinct that this book may mention ‘red wellington boots’, which is already this past month’s homework title for the writers group I’m in.
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 202.174.163.204
Posted on Friday, June 14, 2013 - 05:02 am:   

I adored him from afar and love his work.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.148.174.102
Posted on Thursday, June 20, 2013 - 12:08 pm:   

I have just received the hardback edition of 'The Quarry' which I pre-ordered from Amazon. I intend to review this in due course.
Regarding my post of 10 June above, I see that on page 45 there is mention of 'red wellington boots'. This was my local Third Thursday writer's group homework title set a month ago. Tonight is our next meeting where we read our homework.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.108.201.43
Posted on Monday, June 24, 2013 - 12:29 am:   

There was a half hour TV show on the BBC recently. Banks gave his final interview on it. RAW SPIRIT. Possibly available on i-player still? Certainly worth a watch -- he was in good form, though I think the first signs of the cancer were starting to show in him.

I met him a few times and have to say he was one of the nicest and most enthusiastic writers I've met. He had the gift of being able to be serious about his work when it was called for while never quite managing to be too serious about himself. His books were and are very, very good. I hope he fared as well as he could, and Sublimed* at the last minute if it was at all possible. His final dedication -- at the start of The Quarry -- and lack of need to add an author's note, letting the book and the work stand for itself, are a nice touch and a good measure of the man.

* See his final Culture novel, The Hydrogen Sonata.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.148.174.102
Posted on Monday, June 24, 2013 - 12:18 pm:   

I am about halfway through THE QUARRY by Iain Banks and I suspect that I shall end up thinking that I have been carried halfway up a derelict, lonely tower in my figurative reader-type wheelchair only to be carried down again without reaching the top or, more likely, I shall be effectively taken to the top for a view of a truly great novel…

It is skilfully and compellingly written from the first person narrative point of view of an eighteen year old boy-man suffering from what I see as Aspergers Syndrome – the son of Guy. This narrator is looking after Guy his father who seems to be someone of my own generation, who went to University roughly when I went to University – who is now suffering terminal cancer. This is poignant, humane, inhumane and often humorous.

Guy’s old friends from University gather for a visit, one of whom may be the narrator’s mother…? They ask the narrator to help find a mysteriously embarrassing video tape nested in another video tape, for retrocausal destroying? They are the Returned? The Dam in the current Channel 4 THE RETURNED may equate to the Quarry here. Will our aspergic narrator need to count the rocks meticulously? And this novel is effectively, I guess, the author’s own return…? (More later without spoilers)
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.148.174.102
Posted on Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - 10:15 pm:   

The above review of THE QUARRY is completed here: http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/looking-forward-to-digging-in-the -quarry/

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