On Hearing of the Death of Iain Banks.

So, Iain Banks has died. It is not often that two of the best novelists of our times die on the same day. Banks is the first of the great novelists of my time that I'll miss.

As my dad put it in a text message to me. “Very sad to hear of Iain Banks’ death. He’s given us a lot of pleasure and would have writen a lot more.”
( There are no spoilers here. Not any more. )

The Culture was a place I wanted to live. A place where I and everyone I knew would be much better off and much better.

What I hoped for in future Culture novels, what I’ll miss, is an exploration of what it was like to be an ordinary Culture citizen going about your life in ordinary times. I wanted to hear the story of the Cultureniks who built the cable car system on Masaq. If the Jane Austen were Banks what would she write?

On Being Sad About Iain Banks

Sad though I am about the premature, indeed early, death of Iain Banks I’m finding it difficult to connect with the collective mourning. Social media seems full of similar notes on his passing, my own included.  They seem sincere and respectful but a little distant. Lots of electronic glasses of whisky are being drunk in his honour.

Perhaps I don’t believe that all that many those glasses are being actually being drunk.

Would a Banks Dinner be well attended?

On Macabre Inheritance Musings

This is the last of a triptch on Iain Banks. Very much one for the macabre lawyers out there.

Banks died after taking possesion of his author copies of Quarry.  These presumably form part of his estate and pass to his heirs.  Being the author copies of a posthumos work by a famous author gives them some extra value to collectors. The provenance would be hard to prove, one book looking much like any other book.  Unless he had signed them.

An unsigned book might sell for a little over its face value. A signed copy, one of only a box full that will every be signed, signed by the dying author, perhaps for thousands of pounds, maybe more. I’m thinking of the situation where Apollo astronauts signed huge numbers of autographs as form of life assurance policy for their families ahead of the rocket launches.

There are three scenarios. The author signs the books then leaves them in his estate. He signs the books then gifts them. He gifts the books, then signs them.

So what’s the inheritance tax position if the author gave the books unsigned to someone – a small ordinary gift exempt from inheritance tax and then signed them, a small ordinary action which together represented the gift of a substantial monetary value?

It is not to my credit that this sort of question keeps me awake at night. Nor is it to societies credit that it exists at all.