Iain Banks has announced today that he is “officially Very Poorly”.

With typical black humour he has stated that he is suffering from gallbladder cancer and is unlikely to survive the year.

Iain’s first novel, The Wasp Factory, was published in 1985 but he is probably better known to Starburst readers as Iain M. Banks, the author of numerous sci-fi novels including the sublime Culture books that started with Consider Phlebas in 1987 and, we must now assume, finished with last year’s The Hydrogen Sonata.

He says he has asked his partner Adele “if she will do me the honour of becoming my widow” and his publishers have brought forward his new novel, The Quarry, by several months so that Iain may have a “better chance of being around when it hits the shelves.”

Iain is, perhaps, Britain’s greatest novelist and, in this writer’s opinion, one of the Good Guys. Starburst receives this news with great sadness but also with great admiration at Iain’s stoicism and extraordinary good humour. An example to us all.

We humbly salute you Iain. Thanks for the stories, it’s been a blast.

More information here: http://www.orbitbooks.net/2013/04/03/a-personal-statement-from-iain-banks/

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