Iain Banks and the cosmic ray with his name on it
Stuart Kelly’s final interview with Iain Banks us up on The Guardian, and Banks’ thoughts on the cause of his cancer: As we walk to the door, Banks pulls one final, left-field surprise. “Do you know that I know what caused the cancer? …cosmic ray,” he says. “I won’t brook any contradiction; it was a high-energy particle. A star exploded hundreds or thousands of years ago and ever since there’s been a cosmic ray – a bad-magic bullet with my name on it, to quote Ken – heading towards the moment where it hit one of my cells and mutated
