The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

[Sally Ann Melia]

Readers of SF&F nearly always have one book they reread every year. The book most frequently quoted as being the one which is reread every year is the Lord of the Rings. Famously Christopher Lee liked to reread Lord of the Rings.

It is true I have read and re-read Lord of the Rings, but the book I have read every year, and sometimes if feels like it is permanently on my bedside table is this one. The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks.

This is a Culture book, for those of you who may not be =Familiar with Iain M Banks, he created a great civilisation called The Culture. And though he never set put to write a Trilogy or a series, the universe he created was so popular he returned to it again and again. The full list counts ten titles: Consider Phlebas, 1987; The Player of Games,1988; Use of Weapons, 1990; The State of the Art, 1991; Excession, 1996; Inversions, 1998; Look to Windward,2000; Matter,2008; Surface Detail, 2010; The Hydrogen Sonata, 2012.

The Player of Games is thus the second Culture book and I first read it in the year it was released. I have the 1989 edition paperback which has to my mind the most eye catching of all the covers ( see here ).

Its an interesting precursor to the gaming culture we are now all familiar with, and actually echoes Iain M Banks life long obsession with complex multiplayer board games, which is also writes about under the name Iain Banks in The Steep Approach to Garbadale. Iain M Banks, Iain Banks experience of games reflects my own university years, when not many students had TVs or Cars, and computers were locked away in a lab that was only open 16 hours a day unless a friendly tutor gave you a key and that was normally only for the most obsessive Computer Scientists.

As a student we would gather around a game board with the most arcane rules and while away 6 to 30 hours in play, banter and generally just being.

So Iain M Banks touches on this moment in time and add an element of competitive chess players to create the main character Jernau Morat Gurgeh abbreviated to Gurgeh throughout the book, and tells a tale of a man taken as we would now said 'out of his comfort zone', to play the greatest game of old.

In this book Iain M Banks does not build one civilisation but two, we have a blinding illustration of life in the Culture and this is easily contrasted with life in the Empire of Azar.

I don't think you are supposed to like Gurgeh, but his story as an individual who is unhappy but cannot see why he is unhappy, is compelling from the very first. The action really takes off when he reaches Azar, and here there is a skillful creation of a place which while The giant Culture Minds (great entities of Artificial Intelligence) believe is evil, but where Gurgeh finds a bloody beauty and a vitality that he never before experienced.

I always think there are echoes of our own world in the Empire of Azad, and I find it a strangely comforting place to be. I have no idea if that was the authors intent and is a very personal feelings.

I always recommend this book but with a hesitation. It has been on my bedside and in my life every day through all these long years back to 1989. So yes, a good read, more than that I cannot say.

 

[reiver33]

I've just finished re-reading this as well and, while I would recommend it, the background ethos of the 'Culture' may put some people off. It's a high-tech Anarchist wet-dream, where everything is by collective decision (ish) and bourgeois concepts of racism, sexuality, incest, and just about every contemporary taboo/moral judgement has been swept aside. Even its language has been constructed so as to be inherently non-judgmental, which is a difference Gurgeh experiences when he begins speaking (and thinking) in the language of Azad.

The background manipulation and cynical disregard for other societies evidenced by the 'Minds', the AIs who keep the Culture running, is nicely brought out, although the realities of a 'post-scarcity' interstellar economy are skipped over, to say the least. The Azad Empire is a hierarchy of ownership and can't understand the concept of 'held in common', where nothing really belongs to an individual in terms of property or ships.

So, yes, dip into the universe of Iain M. Banks, but be aware it comes with a side-order of politics.

 

[Rodders]

The Player of Games has been a favorite book of mine ever since i first read it, and i have read it about 12 times now. Although i must say that haven't read it recently. It's a subtle book and there were a few things that really grabbed me;

I love the change in Gurgeh as he gets more entrenched in Azad. You can see his thought patterns changing through the book. In particular, there's a paragraph explaining postcards that his friend Chamlis sent him. The postcards were heavily edited but one of the images was of people walking around his home, Ikroh. Gurgeh's initial thought of "Who the hell did they think they were" contrasts with his Culture upbringing as he starts thinking of things in terms of property.

I think that it's fair to say that the game of Azad was the pinnacle of Gurgeh's life but by winning he destroyed it. Gurgeh's portrayed as quite a loner in the book, so would it be fair to say that he destroyed the only thing that he loved?

Although the Culture is set up as a benign and free society, i wonder how free anyone can be when intellects the size of the ships minds can plan and manipulate us so?

Anyway, a stunning book. I think i might go away and reread this, now.

 

[Vertigo]

This was my second Iain Banks read and my first Culture read (bizarrely enough my last Culture was Consider Phlebas! Go figure) and I loved it. Probably still my favourite Culture book. I must re-read it sometime, Though, with the sad demise of Banksie, I've been thinking of a complete re-read at some point in the future. Problem is always finding time to spare to read books I've already read when there's so many I haven't

 

[The Judge]

By coincidence I've just read this, but in my case for the first time. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but with reiver's reservation that the politics are a bit too in-your-face -- it isn't enough that the Azad rulers are, horror of horrors, sexist, racist, xenophobic (and no doubt homophobic and everything else non-liberal) capitalists with a rigid caste system, they have to be shown as completely amoral sadists intent on grinding the faces of the raped and dismembered poor in their own excrement. It would be interesting to speculate, though, whether Gurgeh would have chosen to continue to play if those nightmare scenes hadn't been available for him to see. His manipulation -- even creation?? -- by the Minds does make one question the whole peace-love-wonderful vibe of the Culture, though. As for Gurgeh himself, I definitely think he came to love aspects of Azad, and he wouldn't be able to face the fact he had destroyed it.

 

[Vertigo]

You'll struggle to find many Banks books that don't get at least a little political. I think he mellowed somewhat in his later writings.

In the Culture I think Banks always plays with the juxtaposition of the manipulation of the Minds and the apparent freedom provided by them. Possibly one of the most interesting of the themes that run through all his Culture books.

 

[VALIS13]

Being a socialist, I always enjoyed how Banks wore his politics on his sleeve, and how some of the more shady meddlings of the Culture violated the ethics the society supposedly embodied.

I'll have to go back and re-read this, it's been too long.

 

[Sally Ann Melia]

Thanks for all your comments. I'm glad I'm not in a minority on this book. It is a solid rip-roaring read.

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree that this is a very entertaining novel. While Consider Phlebas is great, The Player of Games is less episodic and more tightly focussed. I think Banks is very clever in building tension in a game whose rules are never fully explained to the reader. I’d make two points:

The Empire of Azad is a full-on evil dictatorship, no doubt about it, although not vastly worse than many human dictatorships, at least in principle. It’s just a bit more honest than most about having misery and degradation as a policy objective. IIRC, Banks did discuss the ethics of intervention in less awful regimes elsewhere. I agree that it’s interesting how Azad reflects the nasty side of Gurgeh’s personality, and perhaps allows it to flourish.

I don’t think this is a political rant, certainly not in the crude way of, say, Starship Troopers. I’ve seen the Culture referred to as a libertarian paradise rather than a Socialist one, because there are so few restrictions on what you can do – no pesky Government coming to take your lasers away and stop you marrying your sister. Personally, I think Banks does discuss political issues (broadly) but never completely comes down on the Culture’s side: this particular book seems unusual since the Culture is so clearly the good guy. To be honest, the fact that there is never any scarcity in the Culture side-steps one of the main issues around Socialism and perhaps libertarianism too, so I’m not sure that I’d categorise it as either.

 

[J-Sun]

I think Banks is very clever in building tension in a game whose rules are never fully explained to the reader.

That's one of its many flaws - it held no tension for me, in part because of that handwaving.

I don’t think this is a political rant, certainly not in the crude way of, say, Starship Troopers.

I don't think Starship Troopers is crude. It's rare for crude rants to inspire over 50 years of discussion and numerous literary progeny such as The Forever War and, even now, many people take away different things from the book and argue what it all means.

this particular book seems unusual since the Culture is so clearly the good guy.

I don't know - look at the way the hypergenius AIs treat one of their citizens. That's the best they can come up with? And a disinterested observer might say they are ruthless destroyers of the Other. In this case, maybe hard to argue against, but the same methodology may apply to more appealing (to humans) but insufficiently Cultured (to AIs) cultures. I'm not saying Banks is making the Culture the bad guys here, but I don't think they're so clearly good either. Like Starship Troopers, it's not as black-and-white as it might seem.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Being a socialist, I always enjoyed how Banks wore his politics on his sleeve, and how some of the more shady meddlings of the Culture violated the ethics the society supposedly embodied.

I'll have to go back and re-read this, it's been too long.

That's the greatest thing about the Culture books. We are supposed to think of the Culture as a utopia--a perfect society. But it does things that give us pause and make us wonder about whether being "better" gives it the "right" to do as it pleases. And Banks doesn't provide any easy answers.

 

[Nerds_feather]

I don’t think this is a political rant, certainly not in the crude way of, say, Starship Troopers. I’ve seen the Culture referred to as a libertarian paradise rather than a Socialist one, because there are so few restrictions on what you can do – no pesky Government coming to take your lasers away and stop you marrying your sister.

Anarchism is probably a better lens, as it shares the values but not the methods of socialism.

Another way to view it would be as the endpoint Marx and Engels envisioned for socialism; after the eventual success of the Revolution, the state would "wither away." In Engels' words:

The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished,” it withers away.

and

The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong–into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.

 

[Ursa major]

That's the greatest thing about the Culture books. We are supposed to think of the Culture as a utopia--a perfect society. But it does things that give us pause and make us wonder about whether being "better" gives it the "right" to do as it pleases. And Banks doesn't provide any easy answers.

Well, I tend to see the "humans" of the Culture as pets** of the Minds, but one could also argue that if the "humans" have any true agency, the Culture may be the ultimate deployment of Bread and Circuses.


** - Some of whom may be working animals -- like sheep dogs -- that can be useful under certain conditions