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: #6804 in Books
• Published on: 1989-08-10
• 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

From the Publisher
Praise for Iain M. Banks

‘Poetic, humorous, baffling, terrifying, sexy - the books of Iain M. Banks are all these things and more’ NME

‘Banks is a phenomenon: the wildly successful, fearlessly creative author of brilliant and disturbing non-genre novels, he’s equally at home writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance’ WILLIAM GIBSON

‘There is now no British SF writer to whose work I look forward to with greater keenness’ THE TIMES

‘Few of us have been exposed to a talent so manifest and of such extraordinary breadth’ THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION

Also by Iain M. Banks

Consider Phlebas
Use of Weapons
The State of the Art
Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward

Customer Reviews

How to like this book...
This is not a book for purists (Iain Banks or Sci Fi). This is the most Culture-d(imho) of Banks' books. All the amusing ship names and foul mouthed witty droids are here, plus excellent alien races and sly and not so sly reference to modern popular culture. There are some great themes about boredom, cheating, redemption and the glory of untamed cultures with primaeval urges and how attractive that can be. The Culture does not come out of this one unscathed; but the rationale for its power and success is evident.

Banks continues a theme started in Consider Phlebas about the importance of games in a society where much of the danger, and therefore excitement has been diluted by obsessive and overbearing technology - people cannot even die decently and eventually get bored and order themselves to be destroyed; it seems that immortality will eventually suck.

The visceral thrill that the protagonist feels when he realises that his entire reputation is on the line because he has cheated is relevant to how we currently live today, fairly insulated from excitement or having hygiencally cleansed experiences like bungy jumping to try and reconnect with our limbic system and some more basic pleasures like, fear, lust and anger.

If you like the Culture element of Banks' books then this is the one to read and if you like a bit of redemption and thoughtfullness then go for it!

How to let a game take over your life...
In "The Player Of Games", an immensely powerful but somewhat lazy and hedonistic man-machine society called the Culture plays a game against the much smaller but aggressively militaristic Empire of Azad. The Empire has as one of its key social drivers a hugely complex board game called Azad (which means Life). Successful players of Azad prosper in the Azadian society, winning promotions in the military and civil service. Every few years the society stages a major tournament at which the best Azad player becomes Emperor.

Into this milieu the Culture plays its "piece", a professional game-player called Gurgeh who has spent his entire life playing every sort of game of strategy but would probably hurt himself if he tried to use any kind of weapon. Gurgeh's attempts to compete in the Azad tournament reflect the many contrasts between the two civilisations - and also show up unexpected similarities.

This fine novel can be read in different ways. On one level, it's simply a blast - pacy, exciting, suspenseful widescreen space opera. Read it on a beach and get badly sunburnt. However, there's a lot more depth there if you want it. Banks raises a lot of interesting questions about how we set the rules of our society and how all kinds of play interact with those rules. Are cruelty and ruthlessness taught by game-play - whether in the children's playground or in multiplayer internet shoot-'em-ups - or do people's choice of games tell you about their society? Banks is a known addict of the "Civilization" series of strategy computer games, which many otherwise mild-mannered people play as brutal conquerors and commit acts which in Real Life(TM) would be war crimes. The Culture itself, of course, has gained power and stability at the expense of what one might call "soul". Most people who read this as their first Iain M novel tend to think the Culture sounds great, but on a re-read, or combined with the other novels, there are plenty of problems. The name itself is a sly joke - after all, a "culture" can mean both a human society and bacteria growing on a plate.

Finally, some reviewers have commented that the book's ending seems a little flat after the immersive, sweaty-palms roller-coaster of what comes before; I feel that Banks has perfectly captured the slight feeling of anticlimax when one finishes a particularly intense game of Civilization!

Among Banks' output, this is the easiest of the "Iain M" books to get into and one of the most enjoyable of all his novels. Intelligent, gripping science fiction with a literary edge - warmly recommended.

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.