Product Description

The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game...a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9820 in Books
• Published on: 1989-08-10
• Released on: 2005-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks presents a distant future that could almost be called the end of history. Humanity has filled the galaxy, and thanks to ultra-high technology everyone has everything they want, no one gets sick, and no one dies. It's a playground society of sports, stellar cruises, parties, and festivals. Jernau Gurgeh, a famed master game player, is looking for something more and finds it when he's invited to a game tournament at a small alien empire. Abruptly Banks veers into different territory. The Empire of Azad is exotic, sensual and vibrant. It has space battle cruisers, a glowing court-- all the stuff of good old science fiction--which appears old-fashioned in contrast to Gurgeh's home. At first it's a relief, but further exploration reveals the empire to be depraved and terrifically unjust. Its defects are gross exaggerations of our own, yet they indict us all the same. Clearly Banks is interested in the idea of a future where everyone can be mature and happy. Yet it's interesting to note that in order to give us this compelling adventure story, he has to return to a more traditional setting. Thoughtful science fiction readers will appreciate the cultural comparisons, and fans of big ideas and action will also be rewarded. -- Brooks Peck

Review
'Few of us have been exposed to a talent so manifest and of such extraordinary breadth' The New York Review of Science Fiction 'Poetic, humorous, baffling, terrifying, sexy - the books of Iain M. Banks are all these things and more' NME

Synopsis
The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game...a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death.

Customer Reviews

Arguably the best Culture book
Since Iain M Bank's series of books about 'The Culture' are such wonderful soft sci-fi this necessarily does make it a great sci-fi novel compared to any other sci-fi authors out there but also is very good compared with the author's other sci-fi work and makes (again some people may disagree) a better entry point to the series than 'Consider Phlebas' which is the first.

Living in the Culture, one basically wants for nothing. Iain M Banks has remarked that since everything is so utopian in the Culture, to get stories, things have to be set on the edge of the Culture or told about outsiders. In the Culture everything that people could want is provided for them but for the protagonist and one of the greatest games players in the entire Culture, Jernau Gurgeh - this is stifling him. Always ready to help, Contact (the society's starfleet-like arm) offer him a chance at real danger and excitement and at playing the most complex game he has ever come across. He journeys to the Kingdom of Azad to play a game so like life itself that the ultimate winner of it becomes emperor.

Exactly who though is manipulating Gurgeh? The aliens he has come to play, unwilling to let an alien beat them at their own game? Or his own people? That is a big question and is answered quite beautifully with different layers of complexity as you read through the book. Its very unlikely you'll see the final twist coming.

The game has plenty of excitement and raises questions relevant to our own culture. Superb science fiction.

Games of life and death
Gurgeh is The Player of Games in The Culture, a player who has won every game but who allows himself to be blackmailed and forced to travel to a distant Empire to participate in the Game of Azad, an intricate strategy game which determines the social statues and career development of the participants. As Gurgeh wins through round after round of the Game, he finds himself becoming more and more absorbed by the challenges it poses.

Like all of Banks's fiction, the depth and fertility of his imagination is stunning. His fantasy worlds are rich in texture and detail. Azad is a place where cruelty and violence are commonplace and where the superior members of the dominant classes are able to watch scenes of mutilation and torture. It is a strictly heirarchical autocracy unlike the Culture, one which struggles to accept Gurgeh and his mastery of the game.
The figure of Gurgeh himself is shadowy, an observer of the life forms around him ,concentrating only on the game itself, and on his participation in it.

This is a rich and entertaining novel, one which is beautifully written and leaves the reader with much to reflect on.

Absorbing and imaginative - a novel with many layers
"The Player of Games" is Iain M. Banks' second novel set in the universe of the Culture, a human-machine symbiotic society spanning most of the Galaxy. Jernau Morat Gurgeh is a master of board games - indeed he is regarded as one of the best human players the Culture has ever seen - but despite his many successes is nevertheless unable to find contentment. However, when the Culture's covert operations branch, Special Circumstances, invites him to travel to a newly-discovered empire to compete in the championships of Azad - thought to be the most intricate and complex strategy game ever devised - Gurgeh soon accepts the challenge. Because to the Empire's citizens, Azad is not just a game; it is everything, determining social and political rank - and ultimately, the man who will become Emperor. But not everyone in the Empire likes the idea of an outsider competing with them - and succeeding - at their own game...

In contrast to other books of his Culture series - such as "Excession" - "The Player of Games" is centred around the story of one character - Gurgeh. Talented and intellectual, he nonetheless remains naive in many ways about the nature both of the Culture and of the Empire and about the exact role he is playing in their relations. The existence of a main character, towards whom it is easy to feel sympathetic, ensures that a strong narrative thread is maintained throughout the book. Likewise the pacing is generally well managed; rarely is the plot allowed to drift, although the climax is unfortunately somewhat rushed.

Banks's informal, almost conversational style of writing may not be to everyone's taste, but he uses this to his advantage in this book, employing a mystery narrator whose identity is not revealed until the end. Indeed this is one of several games being played in this book: a game played by the author with his readers, which mirrors that between Gurgeh and his opponents and also that between Culture and Empire. This latter struggle is an underlying theme of the book, and one which becomes more prominent as the Empire's dark side is revealed. For though at first sight it appears exotic and colourful, it is also a society driven by sadism and violence - a stark contrast to the utopian vision that the Culture purports to be. But what is most fascinating in this book is the way in which the Culture itself comes across (for the first time in this series) as somewhat ambiguous - even lacking - with regard to its own morality.

"The Player of Games" is an absorbing and highly imaginative novel, with rich settings and fascinating characters combining to create a narrative with many layers.