The cache is NOT at the listed coordinates, although it’s not all that far away. To find out exactly where, you will need to solve the puzzle below. Alternatively, you could send me lots of cash and I will tell you… Parking is available at the listed coordinates.
Description
‘Empathise with stupidity, you are half way to thinking like an idiot’. One of many memorable quotes from Iain Banks.
And the best opening line ever? Has to be from The Crow Road: ‘It was the day my grandmother exploded’ (this has to do with a crematorium and a pacemaker, but I won’t even try to explain it here).
Born in Fife in 1954, Iain [Menzies] Banks was educated at Stirling University, where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. His first science fiction novel, Consider Phlebas, was published in 1987. He continued to write both mainstream fiction (as Iain Banks) and science fiction (as Iain M. Banks), until his untimely death at the age of 59 on June 9th, 2013.
He is acclaimed as one of the most powerful, innovative and exciting writers of his generation: The Guardian has called him "the standard by which the rest of SF is judged". William Gibson, the New York Times-bestselling author of Spook Country describes Banks as a "phenomenon". I just enjoyed reading his books. All of them – especially the Culture series, which ranks high among the best science fiction I have read.
Throughout both his mainstream and science fiction writing, he shows an instinct for fierce black comedy, perceptive character analyses, bitingly witty dialogue and a fascination with our increasingly digital world. Scottish tributes rightly place Banks’s mainstream fiction in the pantheon of Scottish literature - he was a novelist who wrote from Scottish roots and sensibilities, but as a platform to bigger themes. Any Scot reading The Bridge knows it is about the Forth Bridge, but it speaks to readers around the world who will never see the bridge, being about much more than that.
In a fitting tribute to a science fiction writer of such quality, the astronomer José Luis Galache at the Minor Planet Center put forth a request that an asteroid be named after Iain M. Banks. Sadly, it was too late for Iain to hear of it, but on the 23rd of June 2013, this was approved by the International Astronomical Union. Asteroid Iainbanks now resides in the Main Asteroid Belt of the Sol system; with a size of 6.1 km (3.8 miles), it takes 3.94 years to complete a revolution around the Sun. It is most likely of a stony composition – not entirely inappropriate, with book titles such as ‘A Song of Stone’; ‘Stonemouth’ and ‘The Quarry’ in the Banks catalogue.
Bibliography
Fiction as Iain Banks
1984 – The Wasp Factory ISBN 0-333-36380-9
1985 – Walking on Glass ISBN 0-349-10178-7
1986 – The Bridge ISBN 0-06-105358-9
1987 – Espedair Street ISBN 0-333-44916-9
1989 – Canal Dreams ISBN 0-333-51768-7
1992 – The Crow Road ISBN 0-349-10323-2
1993 – Complicity ISBN 0-349-10571-5
1995 – Whit ISBN 0-349-10768-8
1997 – A Song of Stone ISBN 0-349-11011-5
1999 – The Business ISBN 0-316-64844-2
2002 – Dead Air ISBN 0-316-86055-7
2007 – The Steep Approach to Garbadale ISBN 0-316-73105-6
2009 – Transition ISBN 0-316-73107-2
2012 – Stonemouth ISBN 1408702509
2013 – The Quarry ISBN 0-316-28186-7
Science fiction as Iain M. Banks: Novels - The Culture series
1987 – Consider Phlebas ISBN 0-333-45430-8
1988 – The Player of Games ISBN 0-333-47110-5
1990 – Use of Weapons ISBN 0-356-19160-5
1996 – Excession ISBN 1-85723-394-8
1998 – Inversions ISBN 1-85723-763-3
2000 – Look to Windward ISBN 1-85723-981-4
2008 – Matter ISBN 978-1-84149-417-3
2010 – Surface Detail ISBN 978-0-316-12340-2
2012 – The Hydrogen Sonata ISBN 978-0356501505
Other novels
1993 – Against a Dark Background ISBN 1-85723-179-1
1994 – Feersum Endjinn ISBN 1-85723-235-6
2004 – The Algebraist ISBN 1-84149-155-1
Short fiction collections
The State of the Art (1991) ISBN 0-929480-06-6
The Spheres (Birmingham Science Fiction Group, 2010)
Non-fiction
Raw Spirit (2003) ISBN 1-84413-195-5 — a travelogue of Scotland and its whisky distilleries
Introductions
Banks wrote introductions for works by other writers including: Viriconium (1988) by M. John Harrison, the Unwin edition, ISBN 0-04-440245-7.The Adventures of Luther Arkwright: Book 3, Götterdämmerung (1989) by Bryan Talbot from Proutt Publishing, ISBN 0-907865-03-8.The Orbit Science Fiction Yearbook Three (1990) edited by David S. Garnett, ISBN 0-07-088833-7.The Human Front (2001) by Ken MacLeod, the PS Publishing edition, ISBN 1-902880-30-7 (hbk) and ISBN 1-902880-31-5 (pbk).
The Puzzle
I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of Banks's works, whether mainstream or science fiction, or indeed his non fiction tour of Scottish distilleries. If I had to choose a top ten, the following would have to number among them: Whit; Complicity; The Business; Surface Detail; Matter; The Bridge; Transition; Look to Windward; Walking on Glass; Excession
The Cache
The cache is a small cliplock container (they probably have better descriptive terms than that, but I don't know what they are). It contains a logbook, and a wee IKEA pencil!