Author Ian Banks died yesterday at the age of 59, two months after announcing that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The author was best known for works like The Wasp Factory, The Crow Road and Complicity. The tragic announcement was made by his wife, Adele and quoted on a fan webside, Banksophilia: "Iain died in the early hours this morning. His death was calm and without pain."

Banks’ publisher, Little, Brown Book Group said the author was "one of the country's best-loved novelists" for both his mainstream and science fiction books.

"Iain Banks' ability to combine the most fertile of imaginations with his own highly distinctive brand of gothic humour made him unique," it said.

The author still has one final book in the pipeline. The Quarry, is due for release on June 20th. Its aim is to describe the physical and emotional strain of cancer. Following his diagnosis, Banks asked his publisher to move the publication date forward, so that he would be able to see his final book on the shelves. Unfortunately, even the June 20th publication date turned out to be too late. But according to the writer, he wasn’t prompted to write The Quarry by his own illness: "I had no inkling. So it wasn't as though this is a response to the disease or anything, the book had been kind of ready to go," he said in an interview with the BBC’s Kirsty Wark. "And then 10,000 words from the end, as it turned out, I suddenly discovered that I had cancer."

Banks leaves behind a large collection of both literary and science fiction. A number of his fellow authors have also come forward to express their grief over his death. Fellow Scottish author Ken MacLeod paid tribute to Banks, saying he had "left a large gap in the Scottish literary scene as well as the wider speaking English world"

"He brought a wonderful combination of the dark and the light side of life and he explored them both without flinching," he said. "He brought the same degree of craft and skill and commitment to his science fiction as he did to his mainstream fiction and he never drew any distinction in terms of his pride in what he was doing."