Another Light Goes Out

"Here we see a long forgotten starport on a long forgotten backwater planet in a forlorn system, deep into the Long Night. The ghosts of the once great Imperium, now long gone can be seen here, in the skeletons and rotting hulks of once proud starships.

"Here, under the light of a distant binary star the planet never truly has a night - in light brighter than an earthly full moon, the dim night light reveals the last vestiges of a star spanning civilization brought to ruin and leather flyers wing over it all in unconcerned ease.

"How melancholy indeed to see mans achievements brought so low, here on the Derelict planet."
- Bryan Gibson

I learned today that Bryan Gibson had finally lost his battle with Double Pneumonia and has passed on.

A well-known craftsman associated with the Society of Creative Anachronism, Bryan was also an artist and has contributed to several editions of Traveller, as well as to numerous adventure books and supplements over the last thirty years. A selection of his art - the picture, above, a melancholic piece that reflects my mood this evening, is taken from the collection - is currently hosted on deviantART. Bryan was also the author of Field Manual for Spica Publishing.

I never met Bryan in person, but I did have the privilege of taking part in a couple of mIRC Traveller games he ran, as well as chatting with him, off and on, via IM. I understand that he was a man of fairly firm views, and could be rather prickly to deal with on occasion, but I always found him immensely creative and interesting to talk to.

"Stand easy, soldier, ere the setting of the sun.

Stand easy, soldier. Job well done."

Iain M. Banks has achieved a Zero Point Energy State

A post on G+ alerted me to the news, this morning. Iain Banks has lost his battle with gallbladder cancer and passed away.

I am currently reading Matter, and have The Hydrogen Sonata to look forward to. And then I can return to the origin point, I guess, and read all his books again.

The BBC News has more details - with various other UK news sources pretty much regurgitating the same press release.

As he was a humanist, I suspect Mr Banks might get a little annoyed about people suggesting that he had gone to a better place. I would prefer to remember him for his "big ideas" science fiction, and suggest that he has now achieved a Zero Point Energy State. My thoughts are with his wife and family.

Iain Banks is officially Very Poorly

I have been a fan of Iain Banks' Culture novels for a long number of years. Banks is a Big Idea writer and the Culture seems to rate up there as a Type III Civilization on the Kardashev Scale.

From a Traveller point of view, the Culture inhabits that airy-fairy technology topography somewhere north of Tech Level 16+, but some of the concepts do help illustrate technology concepts and systems at more mundane levels. Banks is also great at creating and describing very alien aliens in a very believable fashion.

It was very disappointing to read, today, that Iain Banks is suffering from cancer. The official announcement is on his website and it would appear that the prognosis is not good.

It would be great if this announcement is just a late-posted April Fool's joke, but I suspect that it is not.

"I wish you all the best" - Marain characters by Daniel Solis

In Memory of a Friend

I was shocked to learn, a couple of days ago, that an Internet friend had passed away in August.

I never met Andrew Boulton, but I knew him as a moderator on the Citizens of the Imperium discussion boards, and as both a contributor to various other Traveller groups and as a talented artist who seemed to specialize in Traveller-themed artwork.

The Internet seems to both bring people together from all parts of the world and preserve them "in the moment" like one of those Californian Tar pits. Andrew is gone, but I can see all the Facebook posts he was making, right up until the time of his death. It is as if his memory has been prevented from fading by being indelibly imprinted upon the planetary ur-mind.

And the echos of his existence keep returning to me as Facebook persists in recommending pages and links that he liked.

I understand that Andrew tended towards the "atheist" end of the belief spectrum, which makes me wonder how he would have reacted to his imnetmortality - probably with a joke and a link to some funny or amazing thing he had discovered during his surfing across the infinite seas of the Internet.

My heart goes out to his family and to the friends who knew him in the Real. I know that I did not know him as half as much as you all did, but I enjoyed the company of the piece of him I did know.

You failed your Survival roll, mate. No mustering out for you, and no further adventures. Will miss you.