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Apparently, Mr. Galache tried to get it through as fast as possible but unfortunately Mr. Banks passed away too soon.

I hope Mr. Galache does not mind my reposting of his post from http://friends.banksophilia.com/guestbook :

J.L. Galache on July 2, 2013 at 2:06 am said:
Dear Iain,

We never met, and never will, but your words will remain with me forever. Well, until it’s my turn to turn the lights off. And let me be clear that it’s the Sci-Fi words I’ll keep, not the mainstream ones you used to subsidize them. I admit to not having read all your Sci-Fi novels, but I do have a day job, you know?

Speaking of which, my job as an astronomer at the Minor Planet Center allowed me the opportunity to propose that the International Astronomical Union name an asteroid after you. I really did try hard to get it through the bureaucracy as fast as possible, but alas the naming came a fortnight too late. As I say in my article, I’d like to think you would have been amused by this:

http://minorplanetcenter.net/blog/sci-fi-author-iain-m-banks-gets-asteroid-named-after-him/

Dear Adele,

I hope you can accept this humble gift on Iain’s behalf. Even if he is ever forgotten (and he won’t be), his name will remain as that of asteroid Iainbanks, a 6.1 km hunk of rock orbiting our Sun between Mars and Jupiter every 3.94 years.

May it orbit forever.

Yours,

—JL Galache
Astronomer
Minor Planet Center

Apparently supportive comments, such as this one, on the blog someone set up for him, http://friends.banksophilia.com/28-2/ (already 'slashdotted' even before this post came up on my RSS feed, so check google cache... but when I did it didn't have the latest post), were a great source of joy for him in his final months.

RIP indeed, it's times like this one might wish there was an afterlife. As it is right now my thoughts are mostly for his family and close friends.

We insist on a mobile device manager client being installed. It's a basic firewall and AV for 'Droid, Symbian, Blackberry and Win Mob, and select/full remote wipe for those plus iOS. It can white/blacklist apps, but we don't at the moment. We can push apps, which is nice as we're writing a couple of in-house SAP apps. That should make support a lot easier - pushing updates, etc. We can google map to locate a stolen device, but the user gets alerted, so you can't abuse it for shits and giggles.
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Our people seem to trust we don't snoop and no-one's seemed perturbed the slightest when we install the client.

Speaking of AppleTV, I found one only because it was jabbering away at the firewall, trying to find Steve in the aether. The sudden appearance of a new host getting constantly blocked at the edge tripped the IDS/IPS and I got an email alert.
No biggie - I have no problem with devices being added to the network. One day it'd sure be nice to get a email letting us know what's coming, and maybe inquiring if we have any concerns. I could have reserved it an IP and tried to proxy it out to the big bad world for updates, etc, or given it it's own little firewall policy if it can only do direct WAN access. Which is what I did anyhow...

In a post above, someone accused me of some dictatorial scheme. Tosh - you just have to find a compromise between security and usability. We insist on being secure but aim to be transparent. If a conflict in those two ideals occurs, then sure, every time I'll recommend the secure option, but ultimately the business will decide how much risk they can afford - in both senses of the word.

http://friends.banksophilia.com/guestbook/

The site is now up.

http://friends.banksophilia.com/guestbook/

This is bitter news, Banks is my favorite living author. You have to admire the way he's handled it, though, with typical grace and a solid infusion of black humor.

Here is the link for his special statement about the cancer diagnosis: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/03/iain-banks-cancer-statement-full

And here is a guestbook where you can leave a personal though quite public message for Iain, this page was apparently set up just for well wishers after the news of the cancer broke: http://friends.banksophilia.com/guestbook/

The news looks bad indeed. One can only hope for some kind of last-minute spontaneous remission. Barring that miracle, he will be sorely missed.