Does anyone know his financial situation, too many authors (two examples, RAW and PKD) seem to end up dying while having to eat dogfood if that, and unable to pay the rent and other bills. Not that its fun to die if you're rich, just that he shouldn't have to eat dogfood in addition to the stress of the disease. If he's in bad financial shape I could easily buy a couple more of his novels in kindle form (not that I need to buy them in yet another form, but if he needs some cash, well now's the time...)
He lives in a country with socialised health care. What that effectively means for someone with an aggressive/incurable disease is that instead of leaving your family bankrupted by heroic but statistically futile treatments you get high quality palliative care courtesy of the state. Amongst developed countries I think sick people resorting to dogfood is extremely rare.
Perhaps, although he doesn't seem as well known, even among SFists, in the US as some other authors. However, when I say broad popularity in the UK, I mean in the entire literate population, not just SF, as his non-SF books are also highly regarded there, while fairly unknown in the US.
If you go into an American book store, you may find a couple of Banks books in the SF section, if it's a large and intelligent store. In my brief experience trying this, if you do the same in a British book store, you'll generally find his entire bibliography, SF and non.
I don't know of his situation either, but instead of buying a copy for yourself, it'd be even wiser to gift a copy to good friends or simply spread the word of his great work here and elsewhere.
I guess what I'm getting at is if he can't pay the electric bill today, if I finally get around to reading his 5th culture novel in 2015 that's unfortunately going to be a bit too late to help him out. So he's better off if I buy a copy today even if I don't read it for awhile. On the other hand if he's very "comfortable" then there's little point in my accelerating my purchase. I'm enough of a fan to have read and liked some books but not enough of a fan to have crawled up into his financial life, for all I know he's the richest author in the UK. I just don't want him to have to eat canned dogfood like PKD supposedly had to.
