That´s Brave new world and 1984 on space opera steroids, one of the best allegories on human culture ever written, described from the point of view of an objective observer of a far higher developed civilization who visits the primitive, cruel, capitalistic, hierarchical bigots. Us in our past, current, and future manifestations of madness and more or less hidden dictatorship government styles.

This reread in 2 sittings blew me away so hard that I´m hardly able to do more than to suggest to freaking read this masterpiece as soon as possible. Immediately, go, quickly, forget the rest of the review, don´t waste your time with it, go, enjoy, and get wiser by the way. There's is nothing coming close to this out there.

Maybe best to start the amazing journey here
I had the luck to read this, probably his best novel, as one of the first out of Banks´ amazing universe and in contrast to the other, often very complex, eclectic, and multi-plotted novels it stays focused on the main premise to show us how freaking average and dull we are. I guess Banks did it on purpose, as a stylistic element, to say much with less, and because it might have seemed inappropriate and weird to mix present day history with the lighter space opera elements and humor of his other novels.

Owning everything
There are more or less direct in your face satires, comments, and criticism of how capital, ownership, and debt let a society degenerate to neofeudalism, the disadvantages of monogamy under a theocratic regime, slavery in the form of military service with punishments such as death penalty, sexual restrictions and sexism, selling talent and lifetime to the ones who can effort to buy it, the institutionalization of tradition to condition the population, prison system, slums, unfair fiscal and tax systems that make the rich richer and the poor poorer, total fixation on socioeconomic status manifesting in the behavior of each specific group, superficial trends, kings and gods emperors, controlled propaganda media, permanent warmongering, an extreme income gap, sedating the population with cheap booze, bread, and games, etc. It´s nothing more than an exact description of what most, even democratic countries, are moving and degenerating towards while doing as if the end of history has created a utopia for everyone.

Everything is the game aka the predatory behavior to rise to the top of a mountain of corpses by actively producing them.
To integrate "The game" as an element of selection in an authoritarian government is a marvelous plot vehicle, looking at you, Hunger Games, Battle Royale, The Long Walk, etc., but mixing it with higher, superior entities that could wipe the floor with the dictators while optimizing quantum gravity time dilation multiverse theoretical physics stuff with the other, (and doing whatever with as many hands, tentacles (I know what some of you are thinking now, shame on you!),... as they wish to have and create gripping devices by telekinetic manifesting them with gray/green goo nanotech in nanoseconds. nano nano nano) makes it both entertaining and insightful.

Show them who is boss and philosophy
Although it might be unrealistic that any evil despots might take the risk of participating in unfaked, unmanipulated competitions instead of letting the suppressed population kill each other in epic battles to keep them calm Roman emperor style. Except the tech is so highly advanced and secure and the probability of black swans so unly that they come down from their throne from time to time to slay their own people directly and under frenetic applause instead of conventionally killing them with secret police and incompetent agriculture politics to make Malthus happy. Another aspect is that the style the game is played depends on the cruelty and inhumanity of the culture participating in it and that it would be possible to play it in a cultivated, mind opened and friendly way with emancipated, enlightened citizens of a post scarcity society. Something no government really wants, so they prefer war and genocides.

Only Lem and Banks play in the same league
Just this moment I am realizing for the first time that Banks could be compared to Stanislaw Lem, another author that dived so marvelous and smooth into the depts and dirt of human nature. Of course, Lems´ complexity is unreached and the space opera focus makes the comparison difficult in some regard, but the authors' main intentions seem similar to me, especially because their dark sarcasm is unreached by all other titans of the genre.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...banks-m-iain323 s Kevin Kelsey428 2,276

A good book is entertaining, tells an interesting story, and occupies your mind while youÂ’re reading it. A great book does those things, but also changes you, changes the way you think about things, changes the things you think about. When you finish it youÂ’re not the same person you were at the start. The Player of Games had this kind of effect on me. This book is a Trojan horse.

When IÂ’m heavily invested in a book, I tend to fit in a chapter everywhere I can, often alternating between the physical book and audiobook depending on the situation I find myself in. I remember reading The Player of Games for the first time amid a period of domestic responsibility, with not much uninterrupted time to sit down with a book. I particularly remember listening to the audiobook while walking rows of blueberries on a small farm in Tontitown Arkansas, hoping to pick a gallonÂ’s worth of berries early in the morning before the glaring sun had a chance to bake my skin.

I donÂ’t remember how picked-over the rows were that year, or how the blueberries tasted that season. I was too enraptured with that angry, sneaky little drone; heavily intrigued by the ins and outs of life on this Culture orbital; trying to figure out who the narrator was, what game they were playing at, and with whom.

If I had a gun to my head and were forced to pick a favorite novel, it would be this one. I adore The Player of Games and reread it every few years. Each time it feels ripe with new detail and interpretive possibility, but itÂ’s also just a great story.
favorites read-2015 read-2018 ...more157 s mark monday1,719 5,466

UPDATED REVIEW, 2nd read in 2015:

even more ingenious the second time around.

The Player of Games is taken to the Empire of Azad to play the greatest of games. the game is Azad is the Empire of Azad is the U.S. and the U.K. and all such toxic empires. in a civilized culture, all empires must fall. the game is feints and surprises and moves within moves; the game is the past that must be broken on the wheel of the future. Banks brings all of his customary elegance, intelligence, humor, and angry frustration at the stupidity and short-sightedness of humanity. he understands the allure but still seethes at the very thought of brutality, let alone brutality as an ingrained governmental program or system. or as a way of life, for any so-called human. much Banks, I am on the side of the AIs.


UGLY OLD REVIEW, 1st read in 2010:


an often brilliant allegory. it is interesting to compare the rather spare quality of this novel with the more luxurious expansiveness of the rest of the Culture novels... almost as if it is Iain without-the-M Banks writing about the Culture this time. and the themes are very much in line with banks' non-science fiction suspense novels. banks' wit and imagination are still in play. as are the wonderful drones! well, one drone in particular.

mea culpa: so i have been recommending that folks start the Culture series from the beginning. perhaps this is entirely due to reading Consider Phlebas more recently and seeing how much sense it makes as the first novel of an incredible series. well, Player of Games was actually my own first Culture novel, and it worked out fine for me in the long run. so, whatever. choose whichever Culture novel you want to start off with.

the challenge that i had with Player was its feeling of sparseness, when compared to the often over-stuffed feeling i get with more traditional space operas...and that nearly too-rich feeling is exactly what i'm usually looking for. i want that swarming of detail and incident, i want to be plunged into some richly imagined world-building. Player did not have that for me. i recognized its brilliance, but that brilliance was in a more intellectual mode, not one that i responded to emotionally or viscerally or as a means of escape into a completely realized yet often rather standardized universe. this is far from a critique (how could a person ever promote the rote and predictable? never!)... but it also did not exactly inspire me to keep reading Culture novels. after Player, it took some time for me to get back into the series. perhaps the escapist in me longed for a less rigorously intellectual pastime. or perhaps something that was less about aliens written humans and more about actual aliens.

still... great book.scifi-60s-70s-80s x-culture z-iain-banks107 s Stephen1,516 11.6k

Tis Official...Iain Banks can write his flesh cushion off. Okay, so for many of you that is not exactly breaking-news scrolling across the ticker, but I still thought it was worth repeating.


I had previously read and loved The Wasp Factory, Banks' classic first novel which was a fascinating glimpse into the psychology of a very disturbed young man in serious need of a hug. I also really enjoyed Consider Phlebas, which is the first of the Culture novels. With Banks having two big wins under his belt, I went into this second installment of the Culture series with fairly high expectations and that always makes me nervous and twitchy. It seems that whenever I go into a book hoping for mega, I more often than not crawl away from it feeling .... um....kinda uh....

Yeah...just THAT!!!!

Well I'm a pleased as punch happy camper to report that there was no nut-crushing disappointment encountered during this read and Iain came through in fine fashion in this sophomore Culture novel.

BACKGROUND:

Briefly, the Culture is an extremely advanced, post-scarcity, inter-galactic, utopian civilization. It is a symbiotic union between humans and god- AI machines, with the AIs performing the administrative and governing functions (i.e., basically ruling) while humans live a leisurely existence enjoying the benefits of UNLIMITED RESOURCES. There are no laws, little reason for internal conflict and force is rarely needed and used only when necessary to protect people from harm. It is basically a giant, all-expenses paid, never-ending vacation in the most amazing high-tech resort you can imagine where the citizens of the culture get to eat....drink....

sex it up....be pampered royalty....and explore all manner of hedonistic entertainment.


In fact, because of the utopian nature of the Culture, everyone is pretty “kumbaya” and there is little to zero tension within the Culture itself. I know, I know…DUH!!

Therefore, the Culture novels mainly deal with either individuals outside of the Culture or with the Culture's efforts to expand its influence over a non-Culture society. Despite the many positive qualities of the Culture, they will definitely cut “ethical corners” and take a very “ends justify the means” approach to bringing other societies civilizations under their benevolent rule.


PLOT SUMMARY:

The Player of Games deals with just such a situation. The main character is Jernau Morat Gurgeh who is among the greatest “game players” in all of the Culture. Through his numerous bio-enhancements (another perk of the Culture), he has mastered 1000s and 1000s of games and can absorb and master new ones incredibly fast. Well, this is just the kind of skill that the Culture’s “Special Circumstances” needs at the moment. I would describe Special Circumstances (SC) as a cross between the CIA and the State Department because they both investigate and establish ties with other cultures in order to learn their customs so they can then determine how best to manipulate them into joining the Culture.

It is seriously sweet.

Well SC wants Gurgeh to employ his talents to learn a new game. There is a massive civilization called the Empire of Azad that derives its name from an incredibly complex game calledÂ…uhÂ… Azad.


This game is central to the entire structure of the Empire's society and is so incredibly complex and nuanced that it takes a lifetime to be able to play. However, SC hopes that GurgehÂ’s special aptitude will allow him to learn the game in just over two years (the travel time to the Empire).

That should be enough background and I will stop there so that I donÂ’t spoil any of the central plot for you. BanksÂ’ writing is top-notch and his imagination is exceptional as he provides a ton of details about life in and out of the Culture without allowing the pacing to get bogged down in a whole lot of exposition. He controls his story very well and you can be confidant that you are in capable hands.

This is space opera done very well by someone who has the writing chops to actually convey the wonder of his imagination to those of us who can only envy his talents.

4.0 to 4.5 stars. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
1980-1989 cyber-punk-prep-and-post galactic-civilizations ...more94 s Matt's Fantasy Book Reviews307 5,591

Watch my video review by clicking here.

A decent read but suffered from a constant feeling of blandness and nothing really captivating at any point.89 s3 comments MannyAuthor 33 books14.8k

In 1938, Yasunari Kawabata, a future Nobel Prize winner, was assigned by the Mainichi newspaper to cover a Go match between Honinbo Shusai, the top player, and his challenger Kitani Minoru. Go has an importance in Japanese culture that is hard for a Westerner to understand, and was one of the four traditional arts that a Samurai had to excel in. The match was very even until Kitani played an unexpected move just before an adjournment; its only purpose was to force a response, giving him extra time to think about his next play. This is completely standard practice in chess, but, although permitted by the rules of Go, was contrary to the complicated etiquette of the game.

The rest of this review is available elsewhere (the location cannot be given for Goodreads policy reasons)

games pooh-dante science-fiction ...more77 s Infinite Jen89 572

Have you ever, after fresh and petty violence has been visited upon your person by the resident small minded hooligans of your local, backwater high school, stood in front of your bedroom mirror and watched as the cosmic microwave background radiation gently fizzing from your television, with its diminutive anisotropies having ballooned during the inflationary epoch to produce large scale inhomogeneities which resulted, through a tortuously complex confluence of events, in this subjective experience of humiliation and animal pain, penetrating into your bones and causing your silhouette to phosphoresce europium-doped, strontium silicate-aluminate oxide powder and push against the total darkness of the room/moment the screeching hull of a deep sea submersible under approximately 15,750 psi, with your spectral image sapped of all color save for the vivid welt on your hand which marks the impact which shattered the silvered Pangaea and shot your tenebrous image through with fractal tectonics, leaving your face a mess of coastal irregularities, and causing the blood running from your dilated nostrils to proliferate in sharp, impossibly angled, tributaries, collectively cresting the embankment of your split lip and falling away into nothingness, and all the while Celtic Frost is playing in the background, with the lyrics:

Frozen is heaven and frozen is hell
And I am dying in this living human shell
I am a dying God, coming into human flesh.
I am a dying God, coming into human flesh.
I am a dying God, coming into human flesh.

And in that moment you saw the scale of the suffering, on which the entire system is built, bloom with infinite levels of granularity, a conceptual fission, and the r-process is underway as the neutron flux swings wildly into the exponential, causing concepts to scatter grapeshot and render higher order clusters of meaning unstable, inducing them, in turn, to belch subatomic invectives in a great chain of sinister self similarity, across all levels of strife: the first replicators trying to withstand environmental shocks in order to cohere long enough for stable information transfer, microscopic life forms occupying protein synthesis pathways until their hosts deform and burst with viral particles, prokaryotic microorganisms being cooked inside feverish bodies, plants scrambling to outstrip their nearest rivals by growing higher and spreading their roots further, trophic levels delineating nutritional relationships between organisms, natureÂ’s food pyramid of consumption and waste, transferring energy through digestion and defecation, tool using primates pruning the biosphere with increasing adroitness, rampant coalitionary violence scourging the earth, technology in the service of annihilations more total, sentients dying of hunger amongst abundance, dying of cold while adjacent to warmth, of thirst where the concern for hydration is so unequally distributed that luck dictates whether it will ever register in the mind of a citizen as a biological imperative, succumbing to curable diseases inside a web of perverse incentives, dehumanizing ideologies out competing memes for tolerance through big tech algorithms, rarefied intellects pursuing more ingenious high frequency speculation in lieu of existential risk prophylaxis, Ordovician-Silurian. Late Devonian, Permian-Triassic, Triassic-Jurassic, Cretaceous-Paleocene, Extinction, a senseless pummeling because you wanted to paint your nails instead of play baseball with the other boys, your blood boiling and your canines unsheathed in atavistic rage as you become just another adrenalized marionette hellbent on articulating the language of fight or flight, and you hear your dad quietly call your name and you spin and shout:

“Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago--centuries, ages, eons, ago!--for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane-- all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell--mouths mercy and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!”

To which he replies, “Dinner is ready, sweetie.” And you say, “Oh. Be right there, dad.” Wipe your nose and teeter down the steps with the cadence of the recently concussed, all the while thinking that the teeth of this sharp incongruity between the placid surface of communal harmony and the sacrificial machine which disenfranchises, consumes, and destroys is asphyxiating you a felid throat clamp with the stench of fresh death on its muzzle, thinking that, to be both aware of the hideous schism between these two realities, and the depths of one's impotence to seriously alter it, and not shudder, to hear a call so loud and not heed it, to see the multilevel game with its nested, inscrutable rules, predicated on death and suffering on a scope and scale which would embarrass even the most ambitious of psychopaths, and not scream yourself comatose, is to have your soul fatally impugned?

Then you are perhaps uniquely positioned to appreciate how Jernau Morat Gurgeh, (a man who so thoroughly trounces all the competition that The Culture has to offer him across its myriad games that he has to load himself into a sentient star ship and slingshot himself across hyperspace in order to participate in the holy grail of all games, one which an entire alien species has constructed its society around, the complexity of which aims to represent reality to such a degree that a playerÂ’s own political and philosophical outlook can be expressed in play, so that rival ideologies are essentially tested in the game before the winners can apply them in reality. A game, which the protagonist eventually discovers, embodies the incumbent preferences of the social elite, reinforcing and reiterating the pre-existing gender and caste inclinations of the Empire, putting the lie to the fairness which is generally perceived to govern the outcome of the tournament and thus the shape of Azadian society.), an indolent, but brilliant game-theory obsessive, who has been coddled by the peaceful, egalitarian ways of The Culture, reacts when he glimpses the workings of the Azadian political apparatus, with all its rampant inequalities, xenophobia, and casual/commercial sadism, which precipitates an existential exegesis in him across many fronts, ranging from linguistic relativity, to the impossibility of remaining apolitical. Here we see the aloof maestro of all structured forms of play extrapolate games beyond mere abstract diversion and reflect on how his obsessions have informed his conduct.

This is Banks hitting his stride. Using the lens of an alien civilization (no effort is made, or subtlety employed, to cloak this satire of modern earth society) to display his primary vision of humanity to great effect, illustrating its decadence and numberless contradictions. Distinguishing itself from his first outing in Consider Phlebas by containing a smaller cast of characters who are better realized, with a plot thatÂ’s considerably tighter, and allegories more clearly delivered.68 s Joel563 1,773

This was my first book in Iain M. Banks sprawling Culture series. I have been reading a lot of sci-fi and fantasy lately, because for some reason that's all that sounds interesting to me, but I have to admit it is very annoying knowing that every book I pick up is the first in a _______. Usually that blank is "trilogy," except when it isn't (or it really isn't). And while there may be lots and lots of Culture books, they are all standalone stories with a beginning and an end. You can read one published in 1987 and one published in 2010 and it won't make a difference. This is very soothing to my nerves.

So anyway, the Culture. I wanted to read this series because of a Goodreads review I came across for Excession which noted that half the book is smartass back-and-forth between two sentient artificial intelligences. I love stories about wiseacre supercomputers; in my book, HAL 9000 is the hero of 2001: A Space Odyssey and all the humans just get in the way of the computer in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. My favorite episode of Futurama is the one where the ship (voiced by Signouney Weaver, natch) falls for Fry ("You're just jealous! Nobody loves you because you're tiny and made of meat!").

The Culture is a society ruled by these machines, which instead of going the violent Skynet route...



has decided that hey, humans aren't so bad after all.



In the Culture, the machines take care of everything; no human goes hungry, disease and famine are a thing of the past. Sci-fi nerds call this a post-scarcity society, but basically it means that people don't have to actually do anything to survive. They don't even need to work, because no one needs money in a society with no wants. So basically because you are still going to need to do something with your existence, the human citizens of the Culture devote themselves to creative pursuits art or repeatedly undergoing sex changes or, Gurgeh, playing games.

Gurgeh is, in fact, the best Player of Games in the entire Culture. Board games, we're talking. Not sports. For this he is super-famous anyway, and frequently hosts parties, writes papers and speaks at symposiums. This would be if the nerds who play Magic: The Gathering were as idolized as Magic: The Johnson. But Gurgeh is so good at all the existing games that he jumps at the chance to travel to a newly-discovered alien society known as The Empire (subtle!) and play the game known as Azad, which is so complex and revered that it has come to form the basis of the Empire's power structure. Meaning it would probably piss some people off if a foreigner came by and casually won, thus destroying the foundation of their entire society and such (symbolism that I totally missed is revealed in Manny's review).

That's a pretty good setup right there, I think. I stories about games (the obvious parallel is, of course, Ender's Game), and this is a good one, even though Banks doesn't really explain Azad to us (this is just as well; it takes Gurgeh over a year of dedicated study to begin to understand the rules; reading them would be confusing/boring/underwhelming/all three). We don't have any idea what is going on, but the loosely sketched matches still make for exciting reading, as do the sometimes heavy-handed comparisons between the refined politeness of the Culture and the raw barbarism of the Empire, as well as the musings on the morality of state-building, i.e. intervening in a less advanced society because you know better, i.e. the Prime Directive Paradigm).

But what really made the book fun for me were the trappings of the Culture itself. The idea of a post-scarcity society is really interesting to me, and Banks has fashioned a good one, with a lot of fun examples of the ways humanity (so to speak) has dealt with its status as a largely extraneous life form in the grand scheme of galaxy-spanning sentient worldships. The AIs themselves are collectively my favorite characters, from the massive spaceships, so big they are controlled by robotic hive minds, to the small drones that follow humans around and make fun of them. And swear. I imagined them this, but sassier:



I always d that movie. I bet if I watched it again I would discover it really isn't very good, Jessica Tandy aside (Tandy power!).

Despite my series-stress, I am definitely going to read more Culture novels.

Facebook 30 Day Book Challenge Day 5: Book you wish you could live in.2011 30-day-book-challenge book-club ...more65 s Apatt507 814

My third Culture book, a series of epic space opera about a post-scarcity human society in the far future. If you are not familiar with this series you may want to read this Wikipedia entry first and come back (or not, as you prefer). I love Consider Phlebas but I followed that up with fan favorite Use of Weapons and it nearly put me off the entire series. I don't want to go into why I do not that book, if you are curious you can always find my review. Still, I love Consider Phlebas so much Use of Weapons could not completely eradicate the goodwill I still have for Mr. Banks and the Culture series. The Player of Games then is the book that will make or break the rest of series for me.

Make it is.

The Player of Games is complex, intelligent yet easy enough to follow, none of that mucking about with multiple timelines or switching to and fro between "the present" and flashbacks in some weird reverse order sequence. The story simply revolves around a single protagonist Jernau Gurgeh, possibly The Culture's greatest games players. That is saying something given how important games are to the indolent citizens of The Culture who are supplied with every material thing they can possibly want. Gurgeh is approached by the "Special Circumstances", the Culture's secret service / black ops type organisation to take part in an "Azad" game tournament at The Azad Empire, a rival civilization just a few light years away. This game is so important that it is the cornerstone of The Azad Empire. The winner is elevated to the Emperor status. As to why the Special Circumstances want Gurgeh to take part in this tournament you will have to find out for yourself by reading the book. You can thank me later.

The most fascinating feature of this book for me is the Azad game, it seems a hyper-chess game with various card games and philosophy thrown in. Its is so complex it makes Quidditch look Snakes & Ladders. Though the author does not describe the game in so much detail that it would be playable if you had the mega-board, the pieces, the cards and other things to hand, the description is done so well that you can imagine such a game existing. As with the other Culture books I have read Banks has populated the novel with quite a few well developed characters, though most of them tend to be AI or wee robots ("droids"). The central character Jernau Gurgeh is complex and interesting though not particularly likable, a typical trait of Banks' protagonists it seems. Still, at least he is not a tough-as-nails anti-hero, which is getting a bit old for me, his extreme focus and obsession makes him quite vivid. I also love the humorous moments interspersed throughout the book, these are mainly based around an indignant droid in a clunky disguise. The grand finale which takes place on a planet regularly burned by a perpetual wave of fire is wonderfully exciting though little plot twist at the end is not particularly surprising. Iain Banks' prose style is as literary as ever and is a pleasure to read.

This book has made me re-commit myself to reading The Culture series, I look forward to reading many more volumes.favorites sf-top-2063 s FeliciaAuthor 46 books128k

If I had to pick a favorite of Iain Banks...well, I haven't read them all yet, and anyway I couldn't pick, because each one I read becomes a favorite for a different reason. This one is a fascinating study of a complex character, set in an insanely well-drawn world. If you're a gamer you will definitely appreciate this book on another level, so pick it up!sci-fi58 s Dirk Grobbelaar595 1,155

This was the second Culture novel I'd read, after Consider Phlebas. IÂ’m trying to read them in order. Well, publication order in any case.

So IÂ’ll come right out and say it: if you are a fan of Space Opera you should be reading the Culture novels. They vary a lot, stylistically and thematically, but theyÂ’re all pretty damn cool and very, very clever. Banks managed to juggle sense of wonder elements with intrigue almost effortlessly. Not to mention some gnarly political commentary.

I read somewhere, someplace, sometime, that people have ned The Player Of Games to Ender's Game, but I'm not sure I agree. There is a 'game' element in both books, obviously (even the titles suggest that), but that was where the similarities ended for me. I have also learned (possibly from this same vague, indeterminate source) that there are those who look down their noses at Consider Phlebas, stating that The Player Of Games is by far the better of the two, and that you might as well start your Culture journey right here.
Who can tell? This kind of thing is too darn relative, but I will say that Consider Phlebas was (for me) more fun to read. And, in fact, IÂ’ve rated it higher than Player Of Games. So there. IÂ’ve said it. It canÂ’t be unsaid.
TheyÂ’re actually two very different beasts. I just warmed better to the protagonist in Phlebas, possibly because I perceived The Game Player to be somewhat aloof and detached. No doubt an important aspect of his identity, so it isnÂ’t really a criticism.

Nitpicking aside (how the hell did I get onto that tangent?), this is still a great book. Because less-than-optimal Banks is still better than most stuff out there, and this is Banks in fairly-close-to-optimal mode. The Player Of Games introduces us to one Jernau Morat Gurgeh. He plays games. He's very, very good at it too. We’re not talking about chess or checkers, or even your favourite RPG, MMORPG, FPS or LARP (or any other of a million other acronyms), but complicated and lengthy affairs from a variety of different (spacefaring) cultures. Fascinating, albeit complex, stuff all round. Gurgeh is therefore known as ‘The Game Player’.
All is well, until he is invited to a (very) distant empire to play the game of Azad. At first glance this doesn't seem so big a deal, but it soon becomes apparent that Azad and Empire politics are intertwined and inseparable to a disturbing degree. Without giving the game away (so to speak), I will only say that Gurgeh at last seems to have bitten off more than he can chew. On second thought, contrary to my statement above, this is possibly where the Ender comparisons originated…. The whole “playing for keeps” thing. But Mum’s the word!

That is more or less the gist of it. DonÂ’t worry, itÂ’s much more exciting than IÂ’m making it sound. Being Banks, itÂ’s a lot of fun. There is a lot of intrigue and maneuvering, and the game sequences are proficiently portrayed. Why not five stars? Well, it doesnÂ’t have the same sprawling feel that Phlebas had (which is something I appreciate in my Sy-Fy). This one is more contained, more hush-hush, more conniving.

At this stage it seems safe to say that the Culture books are stand-alone, so there is no pressing need to read Consider Phlebas before this. But you might as well, because this is the good stuff when it comes to big league Space Opera.

Recommended.

update

As of 2018 there appears to be a TV series in development, for Consider Phlebas specifically. One can hope they don’t muck it up, and if they manage to get it right, one can hope they expand it to include the other Culture novels (such as this one) as well. books-i-own science-fiction46 s BradleyAuthor 4 books4,326

Starting my second read today, for a group read with a great group of people.... and I've finished my second read.

I'm much more impressed with the novel on the reread than I was the first time, so I've bumped my stars up from 4 to 5, and I don't think I'm being generous at all. It deserved it.

My main problem with either reading was that I just didn't quite care with the whole overt premise of a game player. I'm a game player, myself, but reading about games that are completely foreign and strange with rules only obliquely intersecting any that I've ever known strikes me as pointless and strange. It strikes as much interest in me as, say, reading a novel about Hockey or American Football. My boredom is so palpable that even my dog can smell it on me.

And then, there's the other side of this book, the one that reads a jousting tournament, full of heavily laden knights with shifting alliances and champions for opposing kingdoms. That part is quite exciting. It only gets better because it's set in the Culture, the ultimate let's-all-get-along mega-spanning galactic anti-empire filled with all types of aliens and machine minds living with (pretty much) no coercion, unless, of course, a bit of finesse is "Really" required.

And that's where we come into the story, and we get to play and be a piece on the board at the same time, feeling all the ups and downs, the close-calls, the frustration, the elation and the triumph. Often all in a single night, oft repeated, but never dull, and this is true for me even though, as I said, the idea revolves around a freaking game with which I have no real stake.

Well, that's true, I guess, until later, but by then the stakes take on a completely different flavor, and the fall of galactic civilizations are at stake. (Well, one is at stake, anyway. If you're reading this for the first time, I'll let you discover which one I'm talking about.)

I paid closer attention to the descriptions of settings and people, this time, and was pleasantly surprised to see how they matched pace with the games this time, especially the one with the Big Guy on the Flaming Planet. And of course, no author can beat the wonderful names of the Culture Ships.

I am glad I read this a second time. I actually forced myself to really try and imagine the game, or at least make up some heavy approximation of it, and in the end it became just another worldbuilding exercise. A lot of us readers to fill in the blanks and use our imaginations to build a living and breathing world out of the hints and implications of authors, and I think I failed to do that last time. I focused on the world and enjoyed that plenty, but then I forgot to focus on the game. If you don't read this novel with the explicit intent to get into the game, itself, rather than just the interesting characters, then you're missing out on more than half the novel.

That might turn some people off, just as it threatened to turn me off, but I feel better for sticking with it. The novel became really quite awesome by the end, and not just a clever plot.



If you're really interested in what I wrote a few years ago about the novel then, here's what I threw together:

"The novel is surprisingly deep for a character to start out so shallow. A very different novel from the first Culture novel and a much more direct plot-line with just as much of a great touch when it comes to the ebb and flow of the story. Very amusing satire that is only given a light touch, thank goodness, and used primarily to raise the tension. All in all, great writing, even if I won't put the novel among my top 100, but definitely a good read."sci-fi space-opera46 s Jonathan775 109

While not as strong as Consider Phlebas for me it's ending makes it so damn close though.

I thoroughly enjoy these vignettes Banks presents us as a potential, often horrific, future of human(oid) species.horror science-fiction37 s aPriL does feral sometimes 1,973 453

'The Player of Games' by Iain M. Banks is a wonderful novel! I am so pleased by it! Awesome multi-layered story! This novel is the second in the Culture series. It is stand-alone, but I think to fully understand the world-building of the author, readers should begin with Consider Phlebas.

I d the character Mawhrun-Skel from the beginning. Just saying. A true player!

I thought Jernau Morat Gurgeh, our hero, a shallow snob at the start of the book. He is a bored dilettante, his chosen passion beginning to clink off-key in its siren song. Gurgeh, the top board-game player in the Culture, was ripe for an adventure. If one was offered him, it would definitely intrigue him enough to briefly amuse him thinking about it in the overly-familiar comforts of living within the advanced-technology cocoon of the Culture. Still, Gurgeh, although a little discontented at having almost reached the pinnacle of the rewards of his hobby, is reluctant to lose what he has. To push him out of the soft gentle cocoon, he would definitely need a kick in the posterior.

Mawhrun-Skel, a sentient drone, provides the kick. Or, as it seemed to me, as a putative cousin of Dante's Virgil, Mawhrun-Skel, an inside-out tongue-in-cheek deus ex machina, lifts a field suspiciously shaped a shoe. Banks is a funny guy.

Gurgeh becomes a reluctant ambassador of sorts for the Culture. Special Circumstances, a secretive department which is part of Contact, the diplomat service in the government of the Culture, asks Gurgeh to learn a game played by an imperial empire discovered in another galaxy. The empire on the planet Aë is harsh and militaristic, ruled by a cruel aristocratic leadership (it is very familiar to me, seemingly very some Earth countries). Besides competing for power within their own hierarchy, they spend a lot of their time destroying nearby civilizations on other planets.

But the empire has an odd way within its government to determine its leaders - a game called Azad. Azad is as institutionalized as its religion. Whoever wins the game, played over many weeks, becomes Emperor. Azad is tremendously complicated. Gurgeh is fascinated by it when the game is explained to him! He is not impressed by the Culture helper, a library drone, Trebel Flere-Imsaho Ephandra Lorgin Estral, that is assigned by the Culture to advise him about the game and the crude violent civilization of the planet Aë.

It takes Gurgeh two years to learn the game Azad. That is also how long it takes for the General Systems Vehicle (GSV), Little Rascal, to travel to Aë at hyperspace speeds.

Gurgeh grows into his full powers as a board player. He is not happy after the safety blanket technology of the Culture is stripped from his body, though, to match the the tech and bodies of the people of Aë. He not only endures several attempts on his life and other dangers once he is living on Aë, he sees poverty and physical abuse (again, there is a certain similarity of these scenarios which mirror the civilizations here on Earth!) for the first time in his life. But does any of his involvement as an alien guest in a civilization hostile to civilized mores have a purpose beyond acquiring knowledge of a nationally important game? Is Culture playing him as a pawn in a triple-layered board game?

Oh! I have to stop! American football is on the TV! I wonder what players will be injured and taken down today? Oh, oh! Does that player have blood on his face? They are bringing out a stretcher! Hit playback, would you, gentle reader? I donÂ’t really think football is symbolic of Who We Americans Truly Are, as Banks might believe so. ItÂ’s just a game. Right? Right?

In a way, the innocent Gurgeh didn't survive the supposed ambassador job he undertook, gentle reader. He got enlightened. He was a failure at The Great Game, after all, and he realized this by the end of his assignment. I think it very very ironic how Banks sets up Gurgeh at the end of the novel to choose having his ashes being immolated in a sun after his true death! dropped-the-mic favorites literary ...more36 s Milda Page Runner304 263

Sorry to say but it didnÂ’t really work for me. My main issue being that storyline only became interesting in the last 30% of the book.
I appreciate intelligent prose, the humour and interesting world (at least on CultureÂ’s side). I also d the ending, hence 2 stars.
The list of the things I didnÂ’t is unfortunately longer:
Two thirds of this book is really slow. Nothing really happens – no danger, no conflict, no intrigue or mystery, nothing to hook you in and keep turning pages.
Descriptions – there are a lot of (often lengthy) descriptions of landscape, sunset, interior, ship compartment etc. that are irrelevant to the story. On top of already slow plot…
Main character – is not exactly able. Arrogant, selfish, almost wilfully ignorant of what is happening around him, worried about winning his games more than about people. I couldn’t care less about his reputation or whether he wins or loses. Normally I’m all for the grey characters – but un-relatable character in combination with un-engaging plot – leaves no drive to the story.
Main subject – games - who would have thought it could be boring. The games in this book are not simulations. They are more complex version of chess and card games. There is no explanation of how they work but plenty of descriptions. Now playing a game yourself is exciting, but imagine watching a chess match or a snooker without even understanding the rules (ZZZzzzz… Snore… Huh. What?!).
science-fiction35 s Cindy C145 24

Use of Weapons was far superior, in plot and characterization. Player of Games offered no surprises especially if you have read other Culture novels. The plot twist is reminiscent of Ender's Game, and is alluded to in the very first sentence. The central game is never described, and therefore too vague of a concept to care about. Any exposition about the human condition, racism, and sexism were poorly entwined into the book, and did not fit naturally into the plot.This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.Show full reviewreadin200735 s Kevin KuhnAuthor 2 books623

Jernau Morat Gurgeh is a master “Player of Games.” In fact, he is so masterful, that he is becoming jaded and cynical. His success allows him to live an idyllic existence surrounded by friends and admirers. a mountain climber who has crested Everest, what’s left? Cue a series of events that will lead him to a hidden empire – The Empire of Azad. This entire culture is built around a game – a game so complex that the winner becomes the emperor.

I greatly enjoyed this novel mostly due to its fresh, unique storyline. I guess the only thing that comes close in my reading history was “Ender’s Game.” You can feel the clarity of plot that Banks had in his mind when he wrote this and that makes it an accessible and engrossing tale. In addition, the Culture universe is complex and sophisticated, filled with cool space megastructure, amazing ships, and interesting AI self-aware minds and drones. This is my second read in the Culture universe and it’s a fun place to explore.

As to downsides, my primary disappointment was with the Empire of Azad itself. I d the ambiguity of ‘Consider Phlebas,’ where it was often difficult to determine who to root for. In that tale the main character saw flaws in both the Idirans and the Culture and that led to subtleties and a realistic texture. In this book, while there are still flaws in the Culture’s approach, once the underbelly of the Empire of Azad is revealed, there is no longer any doubt of who to favor and that weakens that plot in my opinion. At that moment, you know how the book must end. I also felt Gurgeh accepted some plot points way too easily, which went against his earlier-established character and values. Unfortunately, I can’t explain this deeply without revealing spoilers. None of this ruined the novel, but ultimately, it lessened the ending greatly in my opinion.

Four puzzle-pieced stars for this wildly imaginative, energetically paced, and intellectually constructed space opera entry into the Culture universe. YouÂ’ll want to break out your Risk Shadow Forces board game (or any sci-fi related complex strategy game) after youÂ’ve read the last word.science-fiction34 s Phil1,920 181

Banks' second foray into the Culture established him as a major talent for good reasons and this book stands the test of time very well (still hard to believe this came out over 30 years ago). While ostensibly a story about a champion gamer from the Culture recruited to play a new game in foreign empire by Special Circumstances, the 'intelligence' wing of the amorphous culture, the underlying and for me more interesting story concerns the juxtaposition of Culture's society and the Imperial Azad and with it, the light cast on our own society.

Gurgeh, our lead, is from the Culture and is a game master; not of one specific game, but games in general. In a society of trillions, encompassing who knows how many species and societies, you can imagine the wealth of games devised over the years. Given that the culture is a 'post-scarcity' society, where people can do what ever they want with their abundant free time, games and game fests attract no small number of players. Still, Gurgeh is a little bored with life and looking for a new challenge and a friendly (if a bit obnoxious) drone suggests Gurgeh get in touch with 'Contact', the group in Culture that deals with new alien societies. After some arm twisting, Gurgeh embarks on a journey to Azad to play their famous game, an amazingly complex game of many 'boards' that the aliens study and play for a lifetime. The winners of the game assume the role of leaders in their empire, and indeed, the Emperor is decided by the winner of the 'grand game' every 6 years.

Gurgeh is a product of the Culture and as such rather naive in the ways of the Empire, which is based on power, money and status. There is no money in the Culture and indeed, little power or such; status is based solely on accomplishments, and Gurgeh has some as a master gamer, having written numerous papers and books on game theory as well as playing so many games masterfully. Hence, his is in almost shock when he encounters Azad society.

He learned more about the Empire itself, its history and politics, philosophy and religion, its beliefs and mores, and its mixtures of subspecies and sexes.

It seemed to him to be an unbearably vivid tangle of contradictions; at the same time pathologically violent and lugubriously sentimental, startlingly barbaric and surprisingly sophisticated, fabulously rich and grindingly poor (but also, undeniably, unequivocally fascinating).

After he arrives he attends a ball given by the Emperor:

Every few meters along the walls, and on both sides of every doorway, gaudily-uniformed males stood stock still, their trousered legs slightly apart, gloved hands clasped behind their rod-straight backs, their gaze fixed firmly on the high, painted ceilings.

"What are they standing their for?" Gurgeh whispered to the drone in Eachic, low enough so that Pequil couldn't hear.

"Show," the machine said.

Gurgeh thought about this. "Show?"

"Yes; to show that the Emperor is rich and important enough to have hundreds of flunkeys standing around doing nothing."

"Doesn't everybody know that already?"

The drone didn't answer for a moment. Then it sighed. "You haven't really cracked the psychology of wealth and power yet, have you, Jernau Gurgeh?"

The first part of this tale is a little slow as it introduces Gurgeh and the gaming culture in Culture, but it moves quite nicely once he arrives for the great game of Azad. Banks does not even attempt to flesh out the rules; doing so would really take way too much time and space. Instead, he has Gurgeh explore the society of Azad, with all its warts, its grinding poverty on the (many) fringes, the notion of owning someone with the power to compel them to do things; basically the major aspects of a society based on wealth and power.

Great speculative fiction usually induces the reader to look at their own world in a different way. Banks, while telling a story of a complex game integral to the Azad society, lays that society bare and the similarities to modern society are subtly laid out in fits and starts. Also, on this latest reread, it is pretty easy to discern the influences of Jack Vance on the world building. Great stuff1 4.5 starts, rounding up!science-fiction30 s nostalgebraistAuthor 4 books527

My first Banks experience. It was OK. Some cool concepts, writing wasn't awful, the left-wing space utopia was fun, the plot had some twists. But but but.

Banks, though he seems a cosmopolitan guy who's aware of the tropes he's using and their limitations, still commits the basic sin that makes so much science fiction so much less enjoyable to me than it could be. The sin: blandness. Blandness of writing, characterization, worldbuilding, humor -- everything. The problem, and it's not one with an easy or obvious solution, is how do you present an alien world -- with alien biology, technology, culture -- to a reader without being unintelligible or repulsive? I know of two ways to handle this well. The first is to just ditch the idea of true alienness entirely, make the characters basically human, and focus on making them as vividly and enjoyably human as possible, subordinating all superficially alien traits to that goal. A lot of comedic or light-hearted SF takes this path, and in that context it's hard to object to. (Zaphod Beeblebrox, Karkat Vantas, and the Doctor are basically just people -- but what people they are!) The second approach is to truly recreate the experience of being suddenly immersed in another culture. This necessarily involves all sorts of deliberate confusion, including linguistic confusion -- a culture other than one's own (esp. one at a different level of technological development from one's own) is going to mentally carve apart nature at places one is not used to, and that has to be reflected in the way the text uses its own terminology.

The best exemplar of this second approach I've encountered is John Clute's Appleseed, a dizzying linguistic assault that leaves the reader wondering, almost once per paragraph, things : "is there a difference between 'flesh sapients' and 'flesh sophonts'?" or "what the hell is a 'breakfast head"?" or "wait, have the 'Caduceus wars' ever been mentioned before?" I read Appleseed a few months ago, and was unsure how to feel about it -- I enjoyed it but by the end I was getting tired of not knowing what Clute was going on about. But in retrospect, I think that's simply the way it had to be -- Clute was trying to depict a situation so truly alien that it shouldn't have been comprehensible after a mere 400 pages of contact.

Where was I? The Player of Games. Don't want to go on and on about this because the point is very simple. Banks doesn't take either of the two paths I just described. a lot of science fiction, he's at the low point in the middle: his characters are alien enough that they're not allow to talk in the terms used by Banks' own (20th century western) culture, but Banks can't bring himself to create a different set of terms, as that would risk Clute-style incomprehensibility. As a result, everything has a bland, schematic quality. The dialogue all feels kind of abstract and perfunctory, lacking the clutter of real (or even of conventionally-fictional) speech. The humor, lacking any bank of shared references, is weightless and generic. There are machine intelligences in Banks' world, but they do not differ in any interesting way from people, and the imperialist aliens encountered by the book's protagonist -- despite having three sexes and basing their entire society around an elaborate board game -- ultimately seem indistinguishable from a generic earth empire. The science fiction elements feel stage clothing; the scenes about aliens and drones would not be meaningfully different if they were just about people, and the scenes about alien board games would not be meaningfully different if they were about chess.

That alien empire is a particularly telling example. Here is how the empire's use of that board game is initially presented to us:

The game of Azad is used not so much to determine which person will rule, but which tendency within the empire's ruling class will have the upper hand, which branch of economic theory will be followed, which creeds will be recognized within the religious apparat, and which political policies will be followed. . . . The idea, you see, is that Azad is so complex, so subtle, so flexible and so demanding that it is as precise and comprehensive a model of life as it is possible to construct. Whoever succeeds at the game succeeds in life; the same qualities are required in each to ensure dominance.

Sounds fascinating, doesn't it? But when we actually meet the aliens, there is no indication that the game pervades their thinking about anything but the game itself. They use it to determine who rules, but their speech and thinking about everything outside the game does not seem noticeably colored by the game itself (whose structure is, perhaps wisely, left mostly to the reader's imagination). The same thing goes for their three sexes. The third "apex" sex dominates over males and females, but Banks decides to refer to the apices using male pronouns to make things easier to read for humans from patriarchal societies, and as a result the differences between apices and males is indistinguishable from the difference between male aristocrats and male grunts in a human society. Everything that makes the empire interesting also creates the potential for confusion and distance on the reader's part, and Banks is so committed to being understood -- to "storytelling" in the sense of just getting the plot points across -- that he can't allow those interesting features to persist.

(Of course, one interpretation is that the empire is a satire of modern earth society, and that Azad and the three sexes are just there to distract us so we don't realize we're looking at ourselves in a mirror. But if it's a satire, its substance comes down to "we're obsessed with power and judge people according to arbitrary standards." Which is . . . true, I guess, but it's so broad and obvious a critique that I don't think it justifies the ruse.)

I've heard that many of the other Culture books have more alienness in them than this one, so I still intend to read some of the others at some point. For now, I prefer too much alienness to too little, and Clute to Banks.boring-futures reviewed sf ...more30 s1 comment Penny172 358

Well played Mr Banks. Well played.

I'm struggling to find the words to express my awe in the wake of finishing this book. I feel much as I'd imagine a wizened game player would watching true masters dance across the board. Unable to do so myself, but completely transfixed by the beauty and depth of their movements.

I don't think I can recommend this highly enough. It isn't necessary to have read Consider Phlebas which is the first book in the Culture series. I've read half of it and had to stop to read a book club book and haven't pick it up since though I'm not sure why. Kim really enjoyed this one and suggested I add it to my challenge. I'm so so glad I did!

It started out a bit slowly, but it wasn't in any way dull or boring. We learn a lot about the Culture and how those who are born within it live. It's a fascinating society. Highly technologically advanced, they live in a nearly utopian world where each citizen is free to do whatever they find most enjoyable.

The Empire by contrast is not as advanced nor as accommodating. It's a brutal place where people have little in the way of rights and the Emperor rules supreme. Interestingly they choose their ruler by means of a highly complex and competitive game called Azad.

I couldn't help but draw parallels between the planet Ea and Earth. Of course this was the worst possible parts of Earth and humanity, but it was in my head from near the beginning. You learn more about Ea as the book progresses that makes your blood run cold and I wished I hadn't made that connection in my mind early in the novel. I don't know if it was intentional on the part of Iain M. Banks but it resonated deeply in me.

The game theory aspect was fascinating. It's always been a subject that I find interesting and it was put to such good use here. (This next bit is a spoiler since it only comes out near the end, but I don't think it ruins any part of the story at all. I'm marking it anyway for those who are completely spoiler averse.) I also particularly d the way language was demonstrated to impact the way you think and feel. Speaking only the language of the Empire for an extended period of time had a noticeable effect on the protagonist which was a subtle but genius touch I thought.

Besides being brilliant it's also just a really fun ride.

I'm really looking forward to reading more in the Culture series. I'll be thinking about this one for months yet!aliens bookclub dark ...more29 s Scott302 344

Sometimes an author writes a novel so great that while you're reading it you realise you're holding not only a kickass book, but the promise of many more amazing stories to come.

The Player of Games is one of those novels - the sort of book that gives you that rare, sweet premonition of a future filled with tens of hours of pure reading pleasure.

This novel is the second book in Iain M. Banks' Culture series and while Consider Phlebas kicked off Banks' famous universe it is The Player of Games that marks its entry into the illustrious ranks of the all-time greatest science fiction scenarios.

This is a novel of riotous and fascinating imagination.

Protagonist Jernau Gurgeh is a citizen of the post-scarcity, AI/human civilisation known as The Culture. Across a vast society of ringworlds, planets and moon-sized starships The Culture is a utopia whose people are free to pursue whatever interest or obsession takes their fancy. Sport, learning, sex, whatever - you can push the limits to your heart's (and other organs'!) content.

Gurgeh has used this freedom to become an obsessive who spends his life playing and mastering all forms of games. He's known for it, and regarded highly for it. It's fair to say that playing games is central to who he is. This innocuous hobby has, however, drawn the eyes of some of The Culture's shadier citizens.

For the culture, as friendly and utopian as it is, s to meddle in the fates of more barbarous civilisations via its covert-ops division, Special Circumstances. SC has taken an interest in Gurgeh and by taking advantage of his obsession with winning they are able to blackmail him into agreeing to complete a job for them.

Gurgeh is pressed into travelling to a faraway empire, a society somewhat less utopian than The Culture that uses a series of games - where the stakes can be life and death - to determine who will be their next leader. Gurgeh is to enter these games as a Culture observer, under the close protection of his Special Circumstances AI drone, but of course, his role may be a little bigger than he anticipates...

I won't divulge any more as I would hate to spoil your reading fun, and what fun you'll have! Bank's wit, so rare in an SF writer and liable to make you laugh alou
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