{"id":612,"date":"2013-04-03T17:57:27","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T15:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=612"},"modified":"2013-04-03T17:57:27","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T15:57:27","slug":"enjoying-iain-m-banks-to-the-last-a-sad-announcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2013\/04\/03\/enjoying-iain-m-banks-to-the-last-a-sad-announcement\/","title":{"rendered":"ENJOYING IAIN (M.) BANKS TO THE LAST: A SAD ANNOUNCEMENT <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was planning to make something special of my posting number 200 but the unexpected has taken me over. Completely.<\/p>\n

Today I have sent an abstract for a paper on Iain M. Banks\u2019s The Hydrogen Sonata<\/em> (2012), a novel I have discussed here (see 1-XI-2012, LET\u2019S SUBLIME: A POLITICAL READING FOR THE HYDROGEN SONATA<\/em>). The paper is for the 16th Culture and Power International conference on Cultural Studies, to be celebrated in Murcia this time with the theme \u2018Space\u2019 (http:\/\/www.cultureandpower.org<\/a>\/). I have decided to develop what I wrote here as a paper and to consider in more depth how Banks\u2019s very Scottish sense of humour has altered the parameters of space opera. On this very same day a colleague has emailed me to announce that Iain M. Banks has made it official: he has terminal cancer (see his personal statement at http:\/\/friends.banksophilia.com\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Banks, who is only 59, explains that he is \u201cexpected to live for \u2018several months\u2019 and it\u2019s extremely unlikely I\u2019ll live beyond a year. So it looks like my latest novel, The Quarry<\/em>, will be my last.\u201d He has just asked his \u201cmy partner Adele if she will do me the honour of becoming my widow (sorry \u2013 but we find ghoulish humour helps).\u201d As he takes final journeys and says goodbye to friends and family, \u201cmy heroic publishers are doing all they can to bring the publication date of my new novel forward by as much as four months, to give me a better chance of being around when it hits the shelves.\u201d I don\u2019t know what to think of this part of the announcement, shocked as I am by the idea that I\u2019ll be considering what Banks means by the Sublime in his last SF novel, as he faces death. There\u2019s a grim chance that I present my paper (in October) as he lies dying. A very grim chance. I do hope that \u2018ghoulish humour\u2019 helps us all, writer and fans.<\/p>\n

Yet, I know what\u2019s coming now: on the fan front, the greediness to buy it all (is The Quarry<\/em> SF or mainstream?); on the academic front, a flood of publications, conferences… you name it!! It is a kind of macabre, advanced necrophilia that is really making me shudder to the point that for a while I have even considered withdrawing the darned abstract. Now I think that this would be wrong for that paper will be my homage to the man I have been calling my favourite writer for many years now. Actually, as I prepared the abstract this morning, amidst nausea caused by stomach flu, I was thinking of re-reading all of Banks\u2019s SF novels again \u2013call that a nauseous intuition of the end.<\/p>\n

I met Banks once years ago and he signed my copy of The Wasp Factory<\/em>, always, indeed, a little treasure for me. A big, charming fellow, when I told him that I had just taught his novel his reaction was a candid: \u201cWhy?\u201d I liked him very much for that. I must confess, as I think it\u2019s obvious, that I have never enjoyed his mainstream fiction as much as his first-rate science fiction. I need, though, to thank him for all his books and for brightening many, many hours of my life (I have done so already in the guest book of the website I have mentioned). I never thought I could be made so sad by the (inevitable) death of someone who is not an actual friend. This is the mystery of Literature: how we connect with people we may never meet and with the imaginary persons they make up.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll miss buying your new books regularly, Mr. Banks, but I will not miss you, as I\u2019ll make sure you keep me company until I myself sublime… Thanks, thanks, thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was planning to make something special of my posting number 200 but the unexpected has taken me over. Completely. Today I have sent an abstract for a paper on Iain M. Banks\u2019s The Hydrogen Sonata (2012), a novel I have discussed here (see 1-XI-2012, LET\u2019S SUBLIME: A POLITICAL READING FOR THE HYDROGEN SONATA). The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,31],"tags":[408],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-science-fiction","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}