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"Iain Banks has died, aged 59. The Scottish author passed away two months after announcing he had terminal cancer.  &amp;gt; Iain Banks dies - Neil Gaiman, Irvine Welsh, more pay tribute His publisher stated that Banks was &amp;quot;an irreplaceable part of the literary world&amp;quot;. The writer had explained that he was suffering from terminal gall bladder cancer and was unlikely to live over a year. Last month, Banks revealed that he was considering undergoing chemotherapy in the hopes of prolonging his life, but said that he would stop if the side-effects were too strong. Banks&amp;#039;s final book The Quarry is to be released on June 20. It draws heavily on his own battle with the disease, following the final weeks of a character named Guy. Little, Brown Book Group said that Banks was &amp;quot;one of the country&amp;#039;s best-loved novelists&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;Iain Banks&amp;#039;s ability to combine the most fertile of imaginations with his own highly distinctive brand of gothic humour made him unique,&amp;quot; it said. The Wasp Factory, The Crow Road and Complicity are among his best known novels. Along with his contemporary fiction, Banks also wrote top science fiction novels and short stories as Iain M Banks, including 1987&amp;#039;s Consider Phlebas and last year&amp;#039;s The Hydrogen Sonata. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/showbiz/news/a488421/author-iain-banks-dies-aged-59/>