Author Iain M. Banks died Sunday at 59. Neil Gaiman talks about his personal experience with the man, how funny and honest he was. Alan Jacobs talks about the ideas in his novels, leading with the fact that his “Culture” civilization is his secular imagining of heaven. Jacobs asks what Banks is trying to say in the conflict of his novels. Is it that we should expect a little suffering of the innocient for the good of civilization? And if so, just how much suffering would we allow to perfect our own culture?