Brad's Reviews > Use of Weapons

June 9, 2013

It's a sad day for me. I won't speak for anyone else on the passing of Iain (M.) Banks. I will only speak for myself, and for myself this is a sad, sad day.

I came to Banks circuitously. A close friend of mine was teaching Wasp Factory in a class he'd designed about serial killer literature, and of all the books on his syllabus he told me to read Wasp Factory, so I did, and I loved every page. And then I drifted away from Banks for a good long while until my sister moved to Scotland and told me she'd bumped into him at her Borders, so I picked up Complicity and loved it and drifted away from Banks again until China Miéville kicked me in the ass and told us all, in his list of fifty works all good socialists should read, to read Use of Weapons, so I did, and I more than loved it; it became a part of me, and my drift away from Banks was over.

I've been devoted to his work ever since. His books are always looming over my head in the stack beside my bed, but more importantly they are always hovering in my mind, working on me in my deepest recesses, making me ponder the world around me in ways I didn't before. Use of Weapons is probably the book of Banks' that has affected me most. Zakalwe is not a man I would like to be, like Ursula LeGuin's Shevek, but he is more like the man I am. I get him, I empathize with him, and I work on me the way he worked on himself. It's a funny relationship that I have with Zakalwe, because it is a relationship I also had with his creator.

I never knew Banks, not really, and he never knew me (although he knew me all too well), and now we will never know one another. But my non-relationship with Iain Banks exemplifies what I think matters about writers, their writing and their readers. In his way, Banks meant as much to me and who I am every day as my parents, my ex-wife, my wife, and my kids and all those others I've loved. Just like my teachers and coaches and priests and friends, Iain Banks was my family. We were metaphysical blood. I will miss him until I die.

I wish the Culture had uploaded his consciousness today. I wish they'd made him the Mind of a General Systems Vehicle (GSV) called "In Search of the Perfect Dram." Then I could climb aboard and mess with some alien races for Special Circumstances and join in the search for the perfect whiskey. That would be heaven.

Fantasy aside, I hope you are resting in peaceful oblivion, Iain. I loved you. You will be in my mind ... always.