title: Dead Air
author: Iain Banks
description: Iain Banks' daring new novel opens in a loft apartment in the East End, in a former factory due to be knocked down in a few days. Ken Nott is a devoutly contrarian vaguely left wing radio shock-jock living in London. After a wedding breakfast people start dropping fruits from a balcony on to a deserted carpark ten storeys below, then they start dropping other things; an old TV that doesn't work, a blown loudspeaker, beanbags, other unwanted furniture...Then they get carried away and start dropping things that are still working, while wrecking the rest of the apartment. But mobile phones start ringing and they're told to turn on a TV, because a plane has just crashed into the World Trade Centre. At ease with the volatility of modernity, Iain Banks is also our most accomplished literary writer of narrative-driven adventure stories that never ignore the injustices and moral conundrums of the real world. His new novel, displays his trademark dark wit, buoyancy and momentum.
zlib_text: Iain M. Banks: Against a Dark Background
  
  v1.0 (17-mar-01) Scanning, layout and quick proofing by 4i Publications.
  
  **Prologue**
  
  She put her chin on the wood below the window. The wood was cold and shiny and
  smelled. She kneeled on the seat; it smelled too, but different. The seat was
  wide and red like the sunset and had little buttons that made deep lines in it
  and made it look like somebody's tummy. It was dull outside and the lights
  were on in the cable car. There were people skiing on the steep slopes
  beneath. She could see her own face looking back at 'her in the glass; she
  started to make faces at herself.
  
  After a while the glass in front of her face went misty. She reached up and
  wiped it. Somebody in another car, going down the hill, waved at her. She
  ignored them. The hills and the white trees tipped slowly back and forward.
  
  The cable car swung gently as it rose through the mountain air towards the
  cloudbase. The trees and runs on the slopes beneath were equally white; a
  fr