Oh, no. No, no no. Iain Banks is dying of cancer:
The bottom line, now, I’m afraid, is that as a late stage gall bladder cancer patient, I’m expected to live for ‘several months’ and it’s extremely unlikely I’ll live beyond a year. So it looks like my latest novel, The Quarry, will be my last.
From IO9, an introduction to The Culture, the galactic civilization threaded through most of Banks’ SF novels.