Rogue Print's inaugural tee design for 2020 is a mashup Iain Banks (previously, RIP)/Black Flag tribute available as a baseball tee or a regular one — both ship with a set of writers as bands stickers.

The late, lamented Scottish writer Iain Banks (previously) was several kinds of writer, but one of his main claims to fame is his role in developing the idea of fully automated luxury communism, in his beloved Culture novels, a series of wildly original space operas about a post-singularity, post-scarcity cooperative galactic civilization devoted to games, leisure, and artistic pursuits, populated by AIs, city-sized space cruisers, spy networks, and weird bureaucracies.

Niall sends us, "a newly-published 5,500 word interview with Iain Banks, conducted by Jude Roberts in 2010 as part of her PhD on The Culture, and includes discussion of how themes of gender, embodiment and violence work themselves out in his novels; published as bonus content for this year's fund drive for Strange Horizons."

One year ago today

Iain Banks doesn't write sf for the money: I think a lot of people have assumed that the SF was the trashy but high-selling stuff I had to churn out in order to keep a roof over my head while I wrote the important, serious, non-genre literary novels. — Read the rest

When Iain Banks announced in April that he was dying of gall bladder cancer, he said that his forthcoming novel The Quarry would be his last. I've just read it, and though I came to it with high expectations, I find that I was still surprised by just how good this novel is, and how it revisits so many of the motifs from Banks's earlier novels, and what a spectacular blend of emotions it carries. — Read the rest

CBC radio's excellent magazine show As It Happens conducted a short, lovely interview with Scottish sf writer Ken Macleod about Iain Banks, who had been his friend since high school. It's a beautiful piece of audio, and a heartfelt one. My condolences, Ken.

Iain Banks died yesterday. The Guardian's John Mullan does justice to the long and important career of one of the best writers in two fields:

In 2010 he gave an interview to BBC Radio Scotland in which he spoke with painful frankness about the breakdown of his relationship with his first wife.

Iain Banks, author of bizarre literary novels and visionary science fiction, is dead at 59.

Barely weeks ago, Banks announced that he was a cancer patient and that his latest book would be his last. Yesterday, the Sunday Times published an interview with Banks, in which he discussed the disease's impact and how it took form as The Quarry, which will be released June 20.

SF/thriller writer Iain Banks has weighed in to quash a rumor that he only wrote his amazing SF novels to pay the bills because the (also amazing) high-brow literary thrillers didn't bring in enough:

I wish I did have the time to reply to everybody individually but I don't.

Sad news: Iain M Banks, beloved author of brilliant science fiction novels and (to my taste), even better thrillers, has terminal gall bladder cancer that has spread to his liver, pancreas and lymph nodes, and is unlikely to live for more than a year (and he may live for less time). — Read the rest

One of my favorite authors, Iain Banks, announced that he has less than a year to live "It looks like my latest novel, The Quarry, will be my last." Read More.

Iain Banks, the acclaimed Scottish sf and thriller writer, has joined with an illustrious list of prominent Scots in calling on the British government to reform the Royal Bank of Scotland. RBS received a titanic tax-funded bailout (much of which was diverted into a stupendous pension for Fred Goodwin, the bank's erstwhile CEO, who led it to ruin), which means that the taxpayer is now a major shareholder in the bank. — Read the rest

Alex sez, "In a first for Orbit, we're serializing the abridged audio edition of Transition by Iain M. Banks as a podcast., starting today. For free. New chapters launched Tuesday and Friday. This is the abridged edition — the full book is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook editions today. — Read the rest

Author Iain Banks answered questions solicited by his publisher from the general internet, and it came out just fine:

From Mark Wilson:

Q: What do you think is the one, single, most vital collective development that humanity needs to make before it has any hope whatsoever of evolving into a Culture-like society?

Today in "I don't know what I expected": former Blackberry engineer and YouTuber Matthais Wandel's ingenious but doom-laden wasp vacuum.

Tell you what, Happy Mutants, if you like this and fancy a light, uplifting read, be sure to grab Iain Banks' debut novel The Wasp Factory.

It took me a few moments to realize that the flies were being shuffled into a can rather than mechanically chopped to pieces by the rotating fins. So you end up with a can writhing with live flies! And yet there is still no screen version of Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory. — Read the rest

A sprawling interview with artist and filmmaker Johannes Grenzfurthner on his latest movie Glossary of Broken Dreams.

Brianna Rennix wants to know why the major current in "space utopianism" is right wing — Elon Musk floating a "creepy private colony on Mars for ultra-rich survivalists who can shell out $200,000 for their spot" and punched Nazi Richard Spencer bloviating, "We weren't put on this earth to be nice to minorities, or to be a multiculti fun nation. — Read the rest

The Bookworm Rug (100% woven polyester) come in 2' x 3' ($28), 3' x 5' ($58) and 4' x 6' ($79), and feature a selection of spines from some rather good books, including Iain Banks's debut "The Wasp Factory" some Virginia Woolf, Charles Bukowksi and Haruki Murakami. — Read the rest

Photographer Ernie Button noticed that the sediment from dried up single-malt at the bottom of his glasses was extraordinarily beautiful and set about creating a set of gorgeous, interstellar-looking photos documenting the residue from different whiskies.