The Problem with Heaven
There have been various responses to the announcement by Iain Banks that he is suffering from incurable cancer of the gall bladder. One of the pieces written already, almost as a premature obituary, has reflected on the image of the future that Banks has created in his Culture series of science fiction stories. John Butterworth writing in the Guardian said; 'In his Culture novels, Banks has created what as far as I know is the only convincing utopia in print. Dystopias are relatively common in fiction. You take a bad trend, give it more technology, and extrapolate. They can be terrifying and salutary, and powerful writing about them may help avoid their realisation. But describing utopia seems to be harder. You have to deal with, and incorporate, the flaws. And what is a person, when there are no struggles? What is life for, when everyone already has everything they want? Religions have the same problem as Sci-Fi here, I think. Hell, with fire, demons, liver-tearing-b...