...did you know that in English, the names 'Ian' and 'Iain' are, in fact, unrelated? It's a little-known fact that the word 'Ian' is actually an abbreviation for the word 'Cyclopian' --- which, as everyone knows, means to have only one I.

(Stolen from Mr. Banks himself, when he came to my university to do a talk. Still miss him.)

I blame my phone... Thanks for pointing it out. Of course it's Iain.

Iain M Banks and Terry Pratchett are the two I lament the most, One showed me what humanity is and the other what humanity could be.

Don't forget about Douglas Adams!

I can't help but interpret that as saying what humanity came from. And by golly dammit, we haven't gotten too far from that, have we :)

Golgafrinch?

I still have the one book of his I haven't read on the shelf, unopened...

I'm gonna go ahead and assume it's "The Quarry".

If so, it's well worth a read. Intensely poignant and personal, but brilliant Banks as ever.

I was terribly underwhelmed myself.

Really? How so?

The fact that he got his diagnosis whilst writing the thing makes it even more poignant for me.

There are parts where you can tell that what your reading is his personal reflections on his own situation.

I always found his latter day fiction to be a bit dull, but Quarry is kind of an exception.

Just a whole lot of nothing. I've read all of his works right from when Wasp Factory came out. This one fell flat. Which is obviously a double shame for me, in context.