Iain [M] Banks Passes Away

June 9, 2013 Jason P. Hunt 793 Views 0 Comments cancer, Consider Phlebas, Iain M Banks

Just months after posting the news of his terminal cancer on his blog, author Iain Banks has passed away.

Author Iain [M] Banks — photo: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian (UK)

Born in 1954, Banks was the award-winning author of twenty-three novels, many of them science fiction, and had just completed work on The Quarry, which will be published in 2014. According to the Guardian, the publisher recently delivered finished copies of the book after Banks requested an acceleration of the release so he could see the finished work on the shelves.

His first science fiction work, Consider Phlebas, was published in 1987. It’s interesting to note that he wrote general fiction as Iain Banks, while his pen name for genre work was Iain [M] Banks. (The M is for Menzies.)

Author and friend Neil Gaiman tweeted: “Iain Banks is dead. I’m crying in an empty house. A good man and a friend for almost 30 years.”