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Iain M. Banks: Upload For Everlasting Life

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ramonmercado

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Iain M. Banks: Upload for everlasting life
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/cultu ... -life.html
13:40 11 November 2010


Clare Wilson, features editor

Iain-BanksBlog.jpg

(Image: Rex Features)

The author of the sci-fi "Culture" novels contemplates how and why you might upload yourself to a computer - and the place of torture in his novels

Your latest book, Surface Detail, is based on the tantalising idea that we may one day choose to upload our minds to computers. How would that work?

The contents of your brain would be scanned down to the last molecule and electrochemical impulse and then translated non-destructively into digital form, so the essence of "you" is recreated inside a computer - your consciousness, personality and memories.

What would it feel like to exist in this world?

It would feel just like real life, or as different as it's possible to imagine

Just how implausible is the idea of creating a digital self?

Arguably, it's impossible. But in a sense it is just engineering. Given that the alien civilisations in my books who do this are thousands of years old, I'm assuming they'll have had time to develop it.

How do you create a faithful copy when we don't yet know what consciousness is?

That's the trouble: How do you get from a physical thing in the shape of a brain, neurons and synapses, to what we all experience as consciousness? It obviously exists in some form; each one of us is aware of being inside our bodies, with at least the appearance of free will. But where does it come from? I'm not claiming to have the answer, I'm just taking some interesting assumptions and running with them.

Would you describe yourself as a transhumanist, who wants to develop this sort of technology so we can live forever?

Not really. It all sounds a bit too narcissistic.

In your book, virtual minds can get sent to a virtual hell for bad behaviour. What gave you this idea?

Part of a science fiction writer's job is to think how we would manage to fuck up something so potentially cool and life-affirming - so virtual hells seemed almost as obvious as virtual heavens.

Do you think humans would create a virtual hell if they could?

Maybe. We simply don't know where we fall on the spectrum of behavioural possibilities that exist for sentient beings, though I've a sneaking suspicion we're near the nasty end.

Torture is a recurring theme in your books. Why is that?

You reflect the real world that you write within. I've been appalled at the suggestion from certain politicians and commentators that torture is OK, so long as it's us - the west - doing the torturing.

When do you think we might get the technology to download our brains?

I have no idea. Though maybe the internet will wake up tomorrow and go: "Hello, I'm here." After that, it's just a matter of time. Or not, of course. According to New Scientist, both AI and power generated by nuclear fusion are about 20 years into the future. But I've been buying the magazine for three decades, and you've always said that...
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Surface detail hides deep questions in new Banks novel
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/cultu ... novel.html
18:00 3 November 2010
Books
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Clare Wilson, features editor

Do we need religion to keep us good? A lot of the action may concern high-tech aliens resembling miniature twin-trunked elephants, but Iain M. Banks's latest sci-fi novel, Surface Detail, still raises theological questions that are close to the human heart.

This is another novel concerning the Culture, Banks's 9000-year-old humanoid civilisation in which hedonism rules, anyone can be immortal and downloading your brain onto a computer is routine. The Culture is unhappy that the elephant-aliens use the brain-downloading technology to send their citizens to online heaven or hell after their death.

Torture and sadism being a familiar theme of Banks, he dwells on the virtual hell, of course, sparing us none of the gory details. There are other Banksian leitmotifs, such as the arch-villain wielding absolute power in his own, relatively backward civilisation, whose comeuppance at the hands of the Culture you long for.

The best character is an avatar representing an arrogant and foul-mouthed warship, which takes sadistic glee in fulfilling the role it was designed for - killing other ships and their crew. Its charged relationship with a vulnerable humanoid in its care forms a welcome counterpoint to the cut and thrust of the incessant space battles.

But the point of reading Banks is not for the space battles: it's the mind-bending questions raised by the high-level tech, such as, if you download your brain into a computer, would it still be you? And do you really die if another version of your consciousness is resurrected in a computer program? And if you lose all memories and knowledge of your suffering, have you experienced it in any meaningful sense?

Banks explores these issues along with age-old conundrums such as the validity of religious beliefs, and it is unsurprising to learn that Banks is a self-professed "militant atheist". Combining deep philosophical questions with the fast-paced multiple sub-plots that are standard in Banks's novels these days, there's something here for everyone. Fans of the Culture genre will not be disappointed.
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My mind would end up in a zx spectrum :cry:
 
titch said:
My mind would end up in a zx spectrum :cry:
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At least you'd have Jet Set Willy for company (f'nar).
 
This theme is the basis for William Gibson-penned X-files episode Kill Switch (1998).

For the record, I think Iain Banks is a terrible (and very overrated) writer - has anyone tried to struggle through A Song Of Stone? I've never read any Iain M. Banks, though.
 
Never read A Song of Stone, but have enjoyed plenty of his other books, The Wasp Factory is very pleasingly nutzoid, Complicity was an engrossing thriller and The Crow Road was a great family saga in its weird way. Funnily enough, I tried one of his Iain M. Banks novels and didn't enjoy it.

I met him once and he was a very nice man.
 
The Wasp Factory was good in the way it took a severely, dreadfully, twisted character and made them somehow nicer and more agreeable than a normal person
 
James_H2 said:
For the record, I think Iain Banks is a terrible (and very overrated) writer - has anyone tried to struggle through A Song Of Stone? I've never read any Iain M. Banks, though.
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I'm so glad someone's come out and said this! I've never read A Song of Stone but Banks is one of those writers who seems to always be writing about stuff I should really be interested in - sci-fi, mysteries, the human condition etc, but I just can't get engrossed in his writing style at all. Just this week I finished his recent novel Transition, and while there were themes and threads which were fascinating I really had to push myself to get through it all, and was extremely pleased to get to the last page and chuck the bloody thing.
 
gncxx said:
Never read A Song of Stone, but have enjoyed plenty of his other books, The Wasp Factory is very pleasingly nutzoid, Complicity was an engrossing thriller and The Crow Road was a great family saga in its weird way. Funnily enough, I tried one of his Iain M. Banks novels and didn't enjoy it.

I met him once and he was a very nice man.
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Yup, I'd agree about The Wasp Factory. I also enjoyed Walking on Glass and, especially, The Bridge.
 
I couldn't finish Song of Stone either, but I really enjoyed Feersum Enjin and Player of Games, both are short n sweet really, almost toilet books, but a quick route into his sci fi stuff.
 
Dr_Baltar said:
Yup, I'd agree about The Wasp Factory. I also enjoyed Walking on Glass and, especially, The Bridge.
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I remember when The Wasp Factory came out and the general reaction was "What the hell...?!" The last one of his I read was Whit, an amusing tale of religious cults, sort of his comedy book. I understand Espedair Street is a classic of its kind (books about fictional rock bands) but I've never read it.

I did hear more grumblings about his work the longer he went on, which might be why I've had a copy of The Business for years and never opened it.

As an aside, the cover design of his books is something I've always liked, very elegant.
 
Oh, did he write that too?

One of the few fictions i have ever really enjoyed
 
mr_macabre said:
James_H2 said:
For the record, I think Iain Banks is a terrible (and very overrated) writer - has anyone tried to struggle through A Song Of Stone? I've never read any Iain M. Banks, though.
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I'm so glad someone's come out and said this! I've never read A Song of Stone but Banks is one of those writers who seems to always be writing about stuff I should really be interested in - sci-fi, mysteries, the human condition etc, but I just can't get engrossed in his writing style at all.
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Yep, this is my attitude too. I've read him with and without the "M", but didn't get really drawn in.

Possibly SF readers of a certain age feel they've already been there and done that, and find the younger generation of scribblers are just rehashing old ideas, even though it seems new stuff to the younger generation of readers.
 
In terms of uploading personalities into computers, that's not a new idea. And it's a metaphysical nightmare in terms of whether it's immortality or not. Why should I care if there's a computer with my memories and personality if it's not actually me? Or is it?

And how do you upload a personality? What constitutes me as opposed to a really good copy of me?

I don't see it working anytime soon.
 
I enjoyed Consider Phlebas and The Wasp Factory.
I bought Matter recently, but I haven't worked up the energy to read it yet.

One of the finest writers ever.
 
Wasn't sure where to put this, so feel free to move or change the topic heading.

Iain Banks diagnosed with gall bladder cancer

Scottish author unlikely to live longer than a year and latest novel The Quarry set to be his last, he revealed on his website

Iain Banks, whose darkly humorous presence has enlivened Scottish literature for 30 years, has announced he is "officially very poorly" with gall bladder cancer and may have only months to live.

Banks, 59, is recovering from jaundice caused by a blocked bile duct. "But that – it turns out – is the least of my problems," he said on his website.

The author's trademark deadpan humour was to the fore as he broke the news: "I've withdrawn from all planned public engagements and I've asked my partner Adele if she will do me the honour of becoming my widow (sorry – but we find ghoulish humour helps)," he wrote.

His website soon broke under pressure from wellwishers who wanted to read the news and leave tributes.

Banks has delighted fans with his prolific output under two names, and outraged literary puritans with his blithe assertion that he aimed to devote no more than three months a year to writing, because there were so many more interesting things to do – like driving fast cars and playing with fancy technology.

So it must have seemed a very black joke indeed when he discovered a back problem he had ascribed "to the fact I'd started writing at the beginning of [January] and so was crouched over a keyboard all day" was something much more serious.

"When it hadn't gone away by mid-February, I went to my GP, who spotted that I had jaundice. Blood tests, an ultrasound scan and then a CT scan revealed the full extent of the grisly truth by the start of March," he wrote.

"I have cancer. It started in my gall bladder, has infected both lobes of my liver and probably also my pancreas and some lymph nodes, plus one tumour is massed around a group of major blood vessels in the same volume, effectively ruling out any chance of surgery to remove the tumours either in the short or long term."

He said he and his new wife intend "to spend however much quality time I have left seeing friends and relations and visiting places that have meant a lot to us".

His publishers, meanwhile, are doing all they can to bring forward the publication date of his new novel, The Quarry, "by as much as four months, to give me a better chance of being around when it hits the shelves".

Banks, who made his literary debut in 1984 with The Wasp Factory, is really two authors: he writes bestselling, mainstream, literary fiction as Iain Banks, and award-winning science fiction as Iain M Banks, about the Culture universe.

Last summer he described his development as a writer in a typically jocular column for the Guardian Review book club, which featured the first of his Culture novels, Use of Weapons. "The original draft … dates from 1974 and was packed with purple prose of the look-I've-got-a-thesaurus-and-I'm-going-to-use-it/never-use-one-adjective-when-six-will-do school. (Oh, I should add that, having written three unpublished novels by this time, one of them immensely long, and a 30,000-word novella, I must have decided that writing one book at a time was somehow too easy, so when I started writing UoW I started another novel at the same time.)"

His happy-go-lucky front conceals a stubborn streak, which he also revealed in the column, recalling how he had initially ignored the advice of two mentors – science fiction writer Ken MacLeod and publisher James Hale – as to how to liberate the novel from its "manically complicated structure that was really only comprehensible with a diagram". Having initially told both men "they were mad", he eventually realised they might have a point. "As a result, what may still be my best SF novel is largely the work of others."

MacLeod, the award-winning Scottish science fiction author, who is a friend of Banks from high school days, said the support went both ways. "It's very hard to take. Iain has been a tremendous support and encouragement over the years. You couldn't ask for a better friend, and I'm just holding out for a statistically improbable recovery."

Banks said he was still deciding whether to undergo chemotherapy "to extend the amount of time available". He told friends and colleagues about his cancer diagnosis a few weeks ago

"The way Iain has reacted to his situation is not really with a sense of unfairness but more that it's just the way the universe works, the way matter works, that there's nobody out to get us, nobody to blame for it all," said MacLeod. "It's a very courageous and stoical attitude in his situation. There's no doubting the style of the man. What you see is what you get, and the Iain who comes across in his books is very much how he is."

MacLeod said Banks thought of himself as principally a science fiction writer who happened to have published a literary novel first. "He wrote several of the Culture novels in first drafts before The Wasp Factory and he got many rejections. He was almost embarrassed when he wrote a mainstream novel in The Wasp Factory and wondered if his friends would think he was selling out."

Banks's friend Ian Rankin, creator of the archetypal Scottish detective Inspector Rebus, said he preferred the literary novels to what Banks called his "skiffy" [sci-fi] books. "The exciting thing about reading Iain Banks is that you never know what kind of book it's going to be.

"It could be weird, it could be other-worldly, it could be literary fiction, a family saga, about a disc jockey – you don't know what you're going to get, so every time a new book comes out there was that excitement."

Rankin said he and Banks were part of a group of writers who would get together "fairly regularly, either for a few beers in Edinburgh, or a curry."

"He has this huge belly laugh with his head thrown back … He's a really interesting guy to spend time with – a mind fizzing with energy and ideas, with a childlike wonder at the world. He's also quite engaged with politics – I remember him destroying his passport in protest at what he saw as Tony Blair's warmongering, and then suddenly realising he needed it for a tour to Australia. He wears his politics and his passion on his sleeve, and he's full of quirks – really engaging quirks. He was attempting at one point to drive along every single road in Scotland, for example, keeping very detailed road maps."

Rankin said Banks's comment about asking Adele if she would do him the honour of "becoming my widow" was typical of the author.

"That combination of the macabre with the comedic is something he pulled off time and again in his fiction," said Rankin. "He's taken it with good grace and humour and stoicism. I hope I have the chance to have that drink with him in Edinburgh."

Banks wrote an exploration of the history of malt whisky, Raw Spirit, which gave him an excuse to expound his political beliefs. He began his journey, shortly after Iraq had been invaded, in a car festooned with anti-war posters. Given its timing, he wrote, the book "can't help being about the war", but then whisky had always been "up to its pretty bottle neck" in politics.

These days, Banks flaunts his political views with a FTT (Fuck the Tories ) T-shirt. But a courteous side was shown in his statement that the treatment he had received from the NHS in Scotland had been "exemplary, and the standard of care deeply impressive. We're all just sorry the outcome hasn't been more cheerful."

"It's very moving indeed how many people are very sad," said MacLeod. "Everybody who knows him is just devastated by this."

Banks's statement was reposted on a new website called Banksophilia: Friends of Iain Banks, which has been set up for friends, family and fans to leave messages and check his progress.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/03/iain-banks-gall-bladder-cancer

I'm quite upset at this. I came to his books fairly recently and have been gradually going through them. I really enjoyed The Bridge, Walking on Glass, The Player of Games and Use of Weapons, but all of what I've read so far has been really great and incredibly imaginative. I feel like I'm losing an old friend. By all accounts he's also a friendly and compassionate bloke. F*cking cancer always gets the good ones... :cry:
 
Banks' description of his symptoms and diagnosis was an interesting read: you don't normally get that level of detail.

His mysterious backache would have told my mother straight away what was wrong. She reckons that if you get back pain when you haven't been lifting heavy things or whatever, it's a sure sign of cancer. :shock:

Anyway, it's sad news. Sounds as if he's got his head round it all though.
I hope he can be comfortable in his last few months.
 
Yeah, I was very sad to hear this, I loved his books at an impressionable age and though I hadn't read one of his recent ones the thought that he won't be writing anymore is very bleak. I met him once, and though I was very nervous he was really nice, so it's true what they say about him being a great guy.

Anyway, I ordered Espedair Street because that's one of his classics that I somehow never got around to. Stonemouth has a decent reputation, too, might get that next.
 
Yeah, sad news indeed.

I think I must have bought "The Wasp Factory" at least eight times - I keep buying it, reading it again and then lending it out.

And I never get it back! I'd like to think each one is making its way around the land, passing on the torch. 8)
 
I'm very saddened by this. After reading his books, I feel as though I know him, a little. :(
 
Oh, was `Espidair Street` his? One of the few novels I actualy enjoyed.
 
I remember sitting on a plane next to someone who was reading Raw Spirit while I was reading The Algebraist; I'm sure that they didn't even realise Banks wrote SF as well.

I also remember the day he won Celebrity Mastermind and (as team captain) Celebrity University Challenge. He's got the largest vocabulary of any British writer writing in the modern era, if I recall correctly.
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22835047
Iain Banks dies of cancer aged 59 Iain Banks was best known for his novels The Wasp Factory, The Crow Road and Complicity

Author Iain Banks has died aged 59, two months after announcing he had terminal cancer, his family has said.

Banks, who was born in Dunfermline, Fife, revealed in April he had gall bladder cancer and was unlikely to live for more than a year.

He was best known for his novels The Wasp Factory, The Crow Road and Complicity.

In a statement, his publisher said he was "an irreplaceable part of the literary world".

A message posted on Banksophilia, a website set up to provide fans with updates on the author, quoted his wife Adele saying: "Iain died in the early hours this morning. His death was calm and without pain."

Publisher Little, Brown Book Group said the author was "one of the country's best-loved novelists" for both his mainstream and science fiction books.

"Iain Banks' ability to combine the most fertile of imaginations with his own highly distinctive brand of gothic humour made him unique," it said.

After announcing his illness in April, Banks asked his publishers to bring forward the release date of his latest novel, The Quarry, so he could see it on the shelves.

On Sunday, it was revealed the book - to be released on 20 June - would detail the physical and emotional strain of cancer.

Banks wrote sci-fi titles under the name Iain M Banks It describes the final weeks of the life of a man in his 40s who has terminal cancer.

Speaking to the BBC's Kirsty Wark, Banks said he was some 87,000 words into writing the book when he was diagnosed with his own illness.

"I had no inkling. So it wasn't as though this is a response to the disease or anything, the book had been kind of ready to go," he said.

"And then 10,000 words from the end, as it turned out, I suddenly discovered that I had cancer."
Little, Brown said the author was presented with finished copies of his last novel three weeks ago.

Banks' first novel, The Wasp Factory, was published in 1984 and was ranked as one of the best 100 books of the 20th Century in a 1997 poll conducted by book chain Waterstones and Channel 4.

In 2008 he was named one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945 in a list compiled by The Times.

The writer also penned sci-fi titles under the name Iain M Banks. His most recent book, The Hydrogen Sonata, was released last year.

Fellow Scottish author Ken MacLeod paid tribute to Banks, saying he had "left a large gap in the Scottish literary scene as well as the wider speaking English world".

"He brought a wonderful combination of the dark and the light side of life and he explored them both without flinching," he said.

"He brought the same degree of craft and skill and commitment to his science fiction as he did to his mainstream fiction and he never drew any distinction in terms of his pride in what he was doing."

Another contemporary, Iain Rankin, told the BBC that Banks was "fascinating, curious and full of life".

"He didn't take things too seriously, and in a way I'm happy that he refused to take death too seriously - he could still joke about it," he said. "I think we all thought he would have a bit longer than he got.

"What made him a great writer was that he was childlike; he had a curiosity about the world. He was restless, he wanted to transmit that in his work, and he treated the cancer with a certain amount of levity, the same that made him a great writer.


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Author Ken MacLeod says Banks' writing was a "wonderful combination of both the dark and the light side of life"
"You never knew what you were going to get, every book was different."
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Excellent interview with him on BBC2 Scotland tonight, try to see it if you're at all a fan. He faced death with great humour and clarity. Doesn't make it any sadder, though.
 
Adaptation of Stonemouth on BBC2 tonight -
Stewart Gilmour arrives home in Stonemouth after two years in exile. Sad circumstances bring him back: his best friend has died, apparently at his own hands. Convinced it can't be suicide, Stewart resolves to find out what really happened, which means he must face the girl he left behind.

Based on the best-selling novel by Iain Banks.
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...has anyone tried to struggle through A Song Of Stone?..

Yes, I have. and it was rather hard going. I was actually considering re-reading 'Consider Phlebas' in an attempt to make something of it.

Apparently one either get the point in his stories at an early stage or you struggle valiantly in the hope that it will all become clear as you progress.
A bit like Ursula Le Guine.
I once had to read 'The Dispossessed' as part of a college project.

INT21
 
Mythopoeika said:
Amazon is going to adapt 'Consider Phlebas' - wow!
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/consider-phlebas-tv-series-works-at-amazon-1086840
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How? Much as I'd love to see The Culture make it into film or TV, his writing is too...well literary to translate properly. There's a lot of just talking, a lot of internal monologue, and a lot of conceptual stuff that I don't think can translate well.

I mean Consider Phlebas involves a character that completely changes his physical appearance a couple of times, and has strange abilities beyond that which could be awkward if you have to explain them.

I suppose some of the more complex bits could be excised, or re-written, but that has the risk of losing the point of the story. I'd be much happier about them trying if he were still alive to advise. I suppose they could consult some of his colleagues in the Scottish Socialist Utopian SF field, but would they want to be involved?

And from the article:
“Iain Banks has long been a hero of mine, and his innate warmth, humor and humanism shines through these novels,” Kelly said. “Far from being the dystopian nightmares that we are used to, Banks creates a kind of flawed paradise, a society truly worth fighting for — rather than a warning from the future, his books are a beckoning."
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I worry that the writer they have on board might not quite get it. Still, I'll wait and see.
 
I hope they can do it justice, yes.
 
Wandering ever so slightly off-topic.

Has anyone read '334' by Thomas M Disch ?

Here is a bit from WIKI in it.

...Most of the novel's characters live in a huge housing project at 334 East 11th Street, in Manhattan. The title also refers to the year 334 AD, during the later years of the Roman Empire; numerous comparisons are made between the decline of Rome and the future of the United States.

Maybe they could make the film and call it 'Trump Towers'.

Just a thought.

INT21
 
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