Iain Banks, best known for his novels "The Wasp Factory" and "The Crow Road," has died from gall bladder cancer at the age of 59, the BBC reported Sunday.
The Scottish writer announced his illness to fans in an April 3 post to his website, saying he was "officially Very Poorly."
Banks said that doctors had given him a year, at most, to live.
As a result, I've withdrawn from all planned public engagements and I've asked my partner Adele if she will do me the honour of becoming my widow (sorry - but we find ghoulish humour helps). By the time this goes out we'll be married and on a short honeymoon. We intend to spend however much quality time I have left seeing friends and relations and visiting places that have meant a lot to us. Meanwhile my heroic publishers are doing all they can to bring the publication date of my new novel forward by as much as four months, to give me a better chance of being around when it hits the shelves.
Born in Dunfermline, Scotland, Banks published his first novel, "The Wasp Factory," in 1984. In 2008, the Times called Banks one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
Banks also wrote science-fiction, like the 2012 novel "The Hydrogen Sonata," under the name Iain M. Banks.
Literary critic and friend Stuart Kelly wrote Sunday in the Scotsman that Banks' "fusion of realism and the fantastical" made him one of Scotland's most important writers.
In 'The Bridge,' and 'The Wasp Factory' and 'A Song Of Stone' and 'The Crow Road' and 'Transition,' Banks displayed a creative alchemy that united the absurd and mundane, the weird and the quotidian, the out-there and the everyday.
Condolences poured in Sunday from writers who heard of Banks' death.
"RIP Iain Banks. One of the finest writers and greatest imaginations ever," Irvine Welsh tweeted.
"I hoped that he'd get better. Or that he'd have time. He didn't. Hearing of his death hit me hard," author Neil Gaiman said of his literary colleague.
"If you've never read any of his books, read one of his books. Then read another. Even the bad ones were good, and the good ones were astonishing," he added.
