I really, REALLY tried, but I'm hanging it up. DNF @ 75%. I read Consider Phlebas and thought it was weird. Then, someone told me the next book was better. Well, the verdict is in and I completely disagree.

First of all, this story is about gaming. I'm not a gamer myself. In the far-off future, gaming has reached epic proportions and has become a highly respected pastime. There's this guy named Gurgeh who has built up such a reputation for winning that he backs himself into a corner, leaving him vulnerable to the temptation of cheating. *gasp* His enabler, a has-been droid, blackmails him into accepting an invitation to participate in a high-stakes new game that Gurgeh has never heard of before.

At this point, I'm thinking okay, things are about to get good! I've been patiently waiting through a bunch of background information and infodumping, and I'm finally ready for the good stuff! Unfortunately, it never materializes. The pace remains slow, and the plot is simply boring.

I really should have given up on this one long before now. Oh well, live and learn.

This is the second Culture book that I have delved into. The initial one was Excession, and it was most definitely not the ideal choice to commence with. I found myself completely befuddled, unable to make any sense of it whatsoever.

Thankfully, the second one that I ultimately selected wasn't the very first book in the series either, but at least it was the second installment. And it was significantly more approachable. Phew!

It's important to note that the remainder of this review has been taken down as a result of the alterations in Goodreads' policy and enforcement. You can peruse the reasons behind my decision here.

In the meantime, you have the option to read the entire review at Smorgasbook.

The Player of Games: A Captivating Exploration of a Complex Game and Its Societal Reflections

The Player of Games (1988), the second installment in the renowned Culture series, offers a fascinating look into a post-scarcity utopian galactic empire. Iain M. Banks skillfully delves into the interactions between the Culture and the more primitive Azad empire, which is centered around the complex game of Azad. Every six years, a tournament with 12,000 players commences, and the winner becomes the Emperor, based on the belief that a brilliant game master is worthy of ruling.

Jernau Gurgeh, one of the Culture's greatest game players, feels unfulfilled despite his prowess. When presented with the opportunity to play in the Azad tournament, he is initially reluctant but is ultimately pushed into action through a bit of blackmail. This aspect seems a bit implausible for a strategic genius like Gurgeh. As he participates in the tournament, which is a massive media event in Azad, he faces increasing hostility from the Azadians as he defeats stronger opponents and evolves his gameplay.
The story draws parallels to the success of foreign sumo wrestlers in Japan. Just as the Japanese initially regarded gaijin sumo wrestlers with curiosity but later became alarmed when they achieved too much success, the Azadians react similarly to Gurgeh's progress in their sacred sport.
The climax of the book occurs when Gurgeh reaches the final round and faces the reigning Emperor. At this point, he is solely focused on the game and not overly concerned with the consequences of winning. However, he fails to consider the larger implications of the Culture's involvement in the tournament. The book is well-paced and engaging, with the game itself being the main attraction. Banks does an excellent job of keeping each round unique and interesting, and it serves as a great entry point into the Culture universe.

Under the arguable utopianism of The Culture and the misleading excitement of the Azad game, lies a profound and critical commentary on contemporary society.

Specifically, it targets the aspects that we thought we had left behind while embracing modernity. With this perspective, Bank’s The Player of Games feels like a journey from the future to the past, making us cringe at the parochialism and stupidity that were once accepted as norms under the guise of ‘tradition’.

Jernau Morat Gurgeh, the Culture’s top gamer, embodies much of what I aspired to be as a child, and perhaps even now. In his world, dominated by the company of drones, work is optional for individuals unless they seek to combat the utopian boredom. Bank’s Culture is an egalitarian AI-managed (?) interconnected network of worlds, free from poverty and the general hardships of life. The story commences when our professional gamer is dispatched to an external Empire constructed entirely around a ‘game’, serving as both a player and an emissary.

The Azadian Empire bears a resemblance to what the Oasis in Ready Player One might have looked like if set in medieval times, with gunters replaced by board game strategists. Through Gurgeh’s outsider perspective, the book guides us through the strategies and metrics of the game while subtly criticizing everything the Empire represents, as well as the Culture. If the Culture can be regarded as a benign form of Hegemony, the Azadian Empire would be its Maui Covenant, and Gurgeh its Fedmahn Kassad.

Although the Culture represents the utopian endpoint on the spectrum, Banks does not position the Azadian Empire at the opposite extreme. Instead, it occupies a middle ground. The game determines the Empire’s social hierarchy, which, in theory, one can ascend by improving their gameplay. With this political setup that offers a game-based nonviolent solution, it is not entirely incorrect to attribute some elements of utopianism to the Empire. However, the social ladder of this seemingly glamorous Empire is later revealed to be ill-defined and oppressive, rife with xenophobia and sexism.

The equality of opportunity in the game is severely limited, with Azadian women being marginalized from learning the moves. Through Gurgeh’s eyes, readers gradually witness the dystopian side of this game-obsessed world, lacking any rule of law, where people have the legal and moral right to oppress those beneath their earned status. There are even secret broadcasts that capitalize on this violence, similar to the hottotts in Oryx and Crake.

To me, many of these elements seem to be subtle digs at reduced versions of eastern civilizations in general. The word ‘Azad’, which means freedom in eastern languages, is an oxymoronic choice for an empire enslaved by the game. The use of board games or gambling in statecraft settlements can trace its origins back to as early as the Chess games in Mahabharata, the epic of the Indian subcontinent. Instances where wisdom prevails over or avoids battles are also a recurring feature in many later eastern stories.

Furthermore, I was inclined to extend the nature of elimination, where the inferiors do not progress to the next round, to the subcontinent’s caste system and aristocracy. Additionally, the game had a unifying aspect within the Empire, with generalists sharing a common culture that legitimized imperial rule through their sense of achieved merit. This bears similarities to the Chinese Imperial Exam and Indian Civil Services. Interestingly, the Azadians had three genders – Male, Female, and Apex, with the latter exercising superiority over the former indigenous conjugals. My colonial readings led me to view them as the Imperial oppressors who were determined to maintain a monopoly over the civil services and, consequently, the administration of their subjects.

While we assign these allegorical meanings, it is worth noting the usage of the word ‘game’ by Empires throughout world history, both colonial and otherwise, from ‘The Great Game’ to ‘The New Great Game’.

Although Banks polarizes the civilizational differences, he leaves them open to interpretation. The more Gurgeh plays the game, the more he becomes aware of the perspectives he plays for and against, namely the Culture and the Empire. Perhaps the Culture is not as utopian as it appears, perhaps he was simply born and raised in a way that made him perceive it as such, perhaps the utopia he belongs to does not offer free will, or perhaps it is simply boring. The State of the Art delves deeper into these aspects in the series. Readers are only granted peripheral views of the Culture in this book, and interestingly, the same is true for the protagonist. With a title like Player of Games and a titular character who is an intergalactic Game theorist, the book was somewhat disappointing in terms of the strategic aspects of the brainy boss fights. Instead, much of the story unfolded like unskippable old cut scenes, albeit with amazing cinematics.

In a sense, Bank’s game empire represents a past that we are relieved to have overcome. There is also a hint of future retrospection that evokes a similar sentiment in us. Let’s hope that the latter will be more bearable with Musk’s Just Read the Instructions and Of Course I Still Love You, and the like.

I was truly astonished by the extent to which I relished this particular work. I don't typically regard myself as an ardent Banks enthusiast. However, I simply found this to be an unadulterated delight from beginning to end.

There is a profound sense of how life functions within the Culture, a perception that I did not glean from Consider Phlebas. For me, the emphasis on a smaller number of locations rendered this a more gratifying book. The intricate game of Azad is a brilliant conceit. Banks is meticulous in providing us with sufficient details about its mechanics to afford us some understanding of what is transpiring, yet not so many that most aspects of the game are left to our own imaginations. (In my mind, it is a sort of hybrid between Stratego, Jenga, and pot-holing.)

Since Banks has demonstrated such a propensity to dispatch his central characters, one can never anticipate a happy conclusion in his books. He makes you feel grateful for any glimmer of hope proffered to his assemblage of anti-heroes. I won't disclose which direction this one takes, save to say that I found the ending exquisitely executed and immensely satisfying. There is a characteristically playful little twist at the end, suggesting that the author enjoys engaging in games not only with the reader but also with himself.

Witty, incredibly imaginative, smarter than genre fiction is generally credited for – and above all, an enormous amount of fun.

The story begins with a battle that is not truly a battle and concludes with a game that is not simply a game.

"The story starts with a battle that is not a battle, and ends with a game that is not a game."

In the post-scarcity society of the Culture, men and machines coexist with the freedom to do anything or nothing at all. They can travel the universe in the magnificent Culture ships, accompanied by their infinitely complex Minds. They can revel in idleness or choose any subject and pursue it with unwavering zeal. Jernau Gurgeh, in particular, has chosen games as his passion. He spends his life learning, playing, and, above all, winning games from the diverse societies now incorporated into the Culture.

When a member of Contact's Special Circumstances approaches Gurgeh and invites him to try his hand at the mind-bogglingly intricate game called Azad, he is intrigued. Azad is far more than just a game; in a distant empire, it is intertwined with every facet of society. Careers are made and broken by it, people meet their fates because of it, and emperors rise and rule through it.

"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 set-up assumes that the game and life are the same thing, and such is the pervasive nature of the idea of the game within the society that just by believing it, they make it so."

SC wants to recruit the Culture's most brilliant gameplayer to serve as their representative to the empire, and unfortunately for Gurgeh, a moment of rash stupidity forces his hand. He is now a pawn in the Culture's game, and the odds are stacked against him.

I have several friends who have been trying to persuade me to read the Culture books for years. At least one of them adores these books with a passion that rivals my love for the Discworld books. However, I must admit that until I read Player of Games, I failed to see the appeal.

Now, I do.

The Player of Games is a captivating and multi-layered story of wheels within wheels and games within games. Through Gurgeh's eyes, the world is like an Escher drawing, where reality may contain the game, but only the game's reflection reveals the full picture of reality. There are numerous layers to the games within the story, and game and reality are inextricably intertwined.

Beyond this central theme, the story is rich in complex and evocative details. From a society where a labyrinth is used as a form of punishment to a planet whose ecosystem depends on an eternal wall of flame that travels across it, representing destruction and rebirth, the narrative is filled with vivid imagery. Throughout the story, the Azadians attempt to redefine truth, action, and intent, adding further depth to the plot. There are also many moments of pure entertainment.

For Gurgeh, the first shock of Azad culture is gender. In the Culture, gender is an unimportant and easily modifiable aspect of the self, and this is reflected in Marain, the Culture language.

"Naturally, there are ways of specifying a person's sex in Marain, but they're not used in everyday conversation; in the archetypal language-as-moral-weapon-and-proud-of-it, the message is that it's brains that matter, kids; gonads are hardly worth making a distinction over."

In contrast, Azad has three genders: male, female, and the dominant "apex" gender, whose reversible vagina transfers sperm from male to female. In a culture where status and pronouns are defined by gender, the standard Azadian gambling penalty of castration takes on a whole new meaning. With such high stakes, what could be the appeal of the game?

Within the Culture, Gurgeh values the game as a means to "find the measure of himself," but he is dissatisfied with a game that poses so little risk. As his friend explains,

"You enjoy your life in the Culture, but it can't provide you with sufficient threats; the true gambler needs the excitement of potential loss, even ruin, to feel wholly alive."

In Azad, however, both winning and losing can have devastating real-world consequences, either for oneself or the other player. This creates a zero-sum society, where in a world where everything is part of the game, there is no room for mercy.

Azad creates a world where victory, ownership, and dominance are everything. To a member of the egalitarian Culture, every aspect of Azadian life appears to be slavery. Competition breeds a world where nothing is ever enough. Just as the pleasure of winning is inextricably linked to causing others to lose, Azadian society ties even sexual gratification to the abasement of others. Although our culture more closely resembles Azad, Gurgeh's Culture eyes offer a sympathetic perspective. Despite his strategic prowess, Gurgeh is an innocent; in real-life situations, he has all the street-smarts of a stoned deer on a highway. Gurgeh's fascination with the game goes beyond a simple desire for victory; he sees it as a beautiful, intricate system of unpredictable patterns.

For Gurgeh to win Azad, he must understand Azad. Yet, there is a fine line between understanding someone and becoming them. Banks emphasizes this change through the use of language.

"When Culture people didn't speak Marain for a long time and did speak another language, they were liable to change; they acted differently, they started to think in the other language."
In the case of Azad, thinking in the native language means thinking in terms of sharply-defined genders, in terms of hunting and stalking, winning and losing, possession and humiliation.

One of my favorite quotes in the book comes from Banks, who talks about how conquering changes the conqueror.

"The barbarians invade, and are taken over. Not always; some empires dissolve and cease, but many absorb; many take the barbarians in and end up conquering them. They make them live like the people they set out to take over. The architecture of the system channels them, beguiles them, seduces and transforms them, demanding from them what they could not before have given but slowly grow to offer. The empire survives, the barbarians survive, but the empire is no more and the barbarians are nowhere to be found."

I have always had some serious issues with the Culture. Even the arrogant sense of superiority in their name, the singularity of that article, grates on my nerves. At least from the outside, they seem self-satisfied, decadent, culturally imperialistic, meddlesome, and self-righteous. Who are they to act as arbiters of justice? The Culture is willing to do truly terrible things, to let the ends justify the means, but they prefer to avoid getting their hands dirty. But, as Player of Games asks, who are they to stand by and let atrocities occur when they have the power to stop them?

I live in the U.S., a country that, despite all evidence to the contrary, still generally views itself as the city upon a hill, the policemen of the world. We have seen how poorly meddling with other countries often turns out, we have seen how we have worn our arrogance as armor and treated "different" and "barbaric" as synonyms. But if there are indeed intrinsic rights, then there are also intrinsic wrongs. How can we sit idly by and allow indisputable evil to happen?

One of the most difficult aspects of reading this book was realizing that I don't believe a Culture is possible. I want to believe in a world that strives for egalitarianism, where, as Gurgeh tries to explain,

"No, life is not fair. Not intrinsically [...] It's something we can try to make it, though, [...] A goal we can aim for. You can choose to do so, or not. We have."

I don't believe we will ever reach a post-scarcity future where laws are few and ordered anarchy prevails. I don't believe we can ever give up the idea of possession, ownership, and debt. I don't believe we can ever create a world with a set of universally agreed-upon, irrefutable, objective rules, where breaking those laws does not require the drama of courts and juries, where all disputes end with a unanimous decision, and where a "no" is always taken as a "no" and retribution and revenge are not even considered. I don't believe in a future where the Culture could exist.

I wish I did.

But as Banks says,

"We are what we do, not what we think."

\\n  Excerpted from my review on BookLikes, which contains additional spoilers, quotes, and comments that I was too lazy to copy over. Plus, I figure that this review is long enough already.\\n

That's Brave new world and 1984 on space opera steroids, one of the best allegories on human culture ever written.

It is 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. 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 unlikely 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, Lem's 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...

So it has been an incredibly long time since I delved into the first book of Iain Banks's Culture series, Consider Phlebas. However, that's completely okay as the stories within the series are independent, merely unfolding in the same shared universe. In this instance, it's set in the far future within a technologically advanced post-scarcity human society. Well, I say human, but in reality, it's operated and organized by highly advanced artificial intelligences. Everything is wonderful, safe, and people self-actualize. But it's all rather dull, which is precisely why these stories occur on the periphery of the Culture or within alien societies.

\\n  This is the story of a man who journeyed far and wide for an extended period, all just to engage in a game. The man is a game-player named \\"Gurgeh\\". The story commences with a battle that isn't truly a battle and concludes with a game that isn't quite a game.\\n

Gurgeh is one of the preeminent game-players in the entire Culture. He's not just a player of games (notice the play on words there?), but also a theoretician and a highly sought-after quasi-celebrity. In a society where everything is provided for free and is perfectly safe, something has to help people pass the time. But the very same low-stakes social conditions that make games so popular also drain the excitement of game playing for Gurgeh.
\\n  

\\"...With no money, no possessions, a large part of the enjoyment the people who invented this game experienced when they played it just...disappears\\"

\\"You call it enjoyment to lose your house, your titles, your estates; your children maybe; to be expected to walk out onto the balcony with a gun and blow your brains out? That's enjoyment? We're well free of that. you want something you can't have Gurgeh. You enjoy your life in the Culture, but it can't provide you with sufficient threats; the true gambler need the excitement of potential loss, even ruin, to feel wholly alive.\\"

~~~

\\"This is not a heroic age. The individual is obsolete. That's why life is so comfortable for us all. We don't matter, so we're safe. No one person can have any real effect any more.\\"

\\n

It's rather easy for a particular type of individual to be overcome with ennui in such a situation. I know, post-scarcity world problems, but that's the funk Gurgeh finds himself in. After making a few poor choices, he finds himself dispatched to a far-distant alien empire to participate in a gaming tournament, unsure if he's a player or a game piece on the board of a larger game.



And not just any game tournament, but one that determines numerous governmental and military positions, as well as the head of government.
\\n  

\\"I thought the colleges just taught people how to play.\\"

\\"That's all they do in theory, but in fact they're more like surrogate noble families. Where the Empire gains over the usual bloodline set-up is they use the game to recruit the cleverest, most ruthless and manipulative [individuals] from the whole population run the show, rather than have to marry new blood into some stagnant aristocracy and hope for the best when the genes shake out. Actually quite a neat system; the game solves a lot.\\"

\\n

As a huge fan of \\"sci-fi as an exploration of alternative social orders\\", I greatly relished how Banks constructed this highly alien society and culture around a (albeit extremely complex) game and followed the logical consequences of such an arrangement. I found the alien culture, the Azad, utterly fascinating. The game in question, also called Azad, binds their society together in a particularly powerful way. It lies at the center of their culture and shapes the way their society thinks. Banks's exploration of this culture and its people was a highly effective driver of the story. Gurgeh's experience in the gaming competition and all the politics and gossip that swirl around it made for a truly captivating story, especially as his intense exposure to the game and its strategic mindset influenced his own personal outlook and mode of thinking. In this case, the proverbial abyss not only stared back at him but also invited Gurgeh in for a nice chat over coffee.



I discovered that most of the characters, while not overly deep, were interesting enough to serve the story and plot. This was a very rapid and engaging read with plenty of twists and turns in the plot beyond simply being a book about games. So even if you haven't read the first book in this series, you can still fully appreciate how enjoyable this installment is without missing out on much of anything.

Starting my second read today, for a group read with a great group of people. It's been an interesting journey.

And now, I've finished my second read. I'm truly amazed at how much more I appreciate the novel this time around. I've bumped my stars up from 4 to 5, and I firmly believe it's well-deserved.

My main issue with either reading was the whole premise of a game player. As a game player myself, I found it hard to engage with games that were completely foreign and had rules that seemed strange to me. It was like reading a novel about Hockey or American Football, which just didn't hold my interest.

However, on the other hand, there's the part of the book that reads like a jousting tournament. It's full of heavily laden knights with shifting alliances and champions for opposing kingdoms. This part is really exciting, especially since it's set in the Culture, a mega-spanning galactic anti-empire filled with all types of aliens and machine minds.

And that's where we come into the story. We get to play and be a piece on the board at the same time, experiencing all the ups and downs, the close-calls, the frustration, the elation, and the triumph. It's a thrilling ride that never gets dull.

This time, I paid closer attention to the descriptions of settings and people. I was pleasantly surprised to see how they matched the pace of the games, especially the one with the Big Guy on the Flaming Planet. And of course, the wonderful names of the Culture Ships are a delight.

I'm glad I read this a second time. I forced myself to really try and imagine the game, and in the end, it became just another worldbuilding exercise. I think I failed to do that last time. If you don't read this novel with the intent to get into the game, you're missing out on a big part of it.

Sure, it might turn some people off, but I'm glad I stuck with it. The novel became really awesome by the end, not just a clever plot. It's a great read that I would highly recommend.

If you're interested in what I wrote a few years ago about the novel, here's what I said: "The novel is surprisingly deep for a character to start out so shallow. It has a very different plot-line from the first Culture novel and a much more direct story. It's a great satire that raises the tension and has some really amusing moments. All in all, it's great writing, even if it's not in my top 100."

Science fiction novel from 1988.

The plot centers around Gurgeh, who is one of the best players of every game invented in his world, thus achieving fame and prestige. However, after being blackmailed by a robot, Gurgeh decides to accept participating, as the representative of "the culture", in a game in the distant empire of Azad, a barbaric and dictatorial society in which your skill in its supreme game determines your political and social status, without knowing that his participation is actually part of a complex plan to bring down the corrupt and savage empire.

To start with, I must clarify that I quite liked the novel. However, it has one of the most boring beginnings that I have ever read. It took two or three attempts before I finally managed to get past page 100 and start enjoying the novel, although once you get into the rhythm, you don't want to let go of it.

The society of Azad is very interesting and to a certain extent very similar to our own. Here they present us with this game in which if you manage to win, you automatically become emperor. However, the matter is so rigged to a certain extent that it is very difficult for the unprivileged to ever reach a high-ranking position (mmmmh... it kind of reminds me of something). In this case, the dominant sex are the apexes, an intermediate between female and male, who generally are the ones who come to hold the most important positions.

However, it is also here where the author starts to disappoint me. When comparing these two societies, the Azadian and that of "the culture", the author shows us each of the flaws of the first, while that of "the culture" tries to show it as perfect in an illogical way, almost bordering on the delusional... With just one sentence, the author's great naivety is evident when trying to describe to us the society of "the culture" as perfect... And it is so utopian that it tells us that it is "based on abundance", without bothering to explain to us how it is possible for something like this to happen (well, supposedly it is because of the great technological advances and bla, bla, bla... things of that kind) but if we analyze it conscientiously, not even then. For there to be abundance, work is required, in this case from the machines, and an exploitation of resources at such stratospheric levels that surely they would end up consuming every new planet that was annexed to the society of "the culture".

Just imagining the level of voracity that would take place with the idea of keeping the billions of inhabitants who make up the society of "the culture" comfortable and rich (with an abundance of everything) makes my stomach turn with disgust. Fortunately, what the author presents us here is only utopian, otherwise we would already know who the villains of this novel are.

In short, a very good novel that from page 100 or so kept me hooked like few books have been able to. If its beginning wasn't so boring, I would surely rate it higher.

To the lovers of science fiction, I recommend it!

3.25 stars.

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks is a well-known entry point to the Culture series. The Culture series is a popular science fiction series that features some interesting concepts and settings. Like the Culture, the title of the series examines utopia and the opposite side of the culture. AI, gender choosing, floating islands, and more are all part of the world-building in the Culture series.

I have mixed feelings about this book. The Player of Games is one book in a long series and didn't impress me as much as I expected. I can see that if I had read it in high school, I might have been more impressed. However, one of the major drawbacks is that the author doesn't explain the games that Gurgeh plays. I had no idea what the rules were or how the scores were calculated. I'm not sure if the author deliberately chose not to introduce the rules to the readers, but it seemed that the writing didn't elaborate on the games due to the tournament of Azad. Sometimes, when Gurgeh learned something new about the games or the culture in Azad, the plot would change before fully exploring the new concepts.

I did like how the author mirrored the culture of Azad to our real world and the interactions with Gurgeh in the story. Although the book didn't awe me, it seems that the story has a big frame but lacks a solid structure to support the interesting concepts. The protagonist, Gurgeh, felt more like a plot device than a real character to me. On the other hand, the drones/AI were more vivid in my reading experience. Especially in the audiobook version, the hilarious dialogues by those drones were enhanced.

Special Circumstances (SC) and Contact, the Culture's combined diplomatic/military/government service, are the major forces in the story. In The Player of Games, they are more of a background setting, but in the end, it becomes clear that they play a crucial role, even though they aren't explicit in the story developments. The ending is like Ender's Game ending and was quite disappointing to me as I noticed it in the middle of the book.

Overall, the Culture series has the potential to be a superb science fiction series. The Player of Games was lower than my expectation, but the rest of the books might be better. I hope to see Banks explore more interesting concepts in the remaining books of the Culture series.

In a truly shocking turn of events, this particular incident was an absolute banger. Seriously, it was that impactful. I just finished on my way to the book club, and I have to say, I'm completely blown away. I will definitely be back to share some gushing, somehow, about Iain Banks. His work is simply outstanding and has left me with a profound sense of admiration. The way he weaves his stories and develops his characters is truly remarkable. I can't wait to discuss his work with the other members of the book club and hear their thoughts and perspectives.

It's moments like these that make me truly appreciate the power of literature and the ability of an author to transport us to another world and touch our hearts. Iain Banks has definitely achieved that with his latest work, and I'm excited to see what he has in store for us next.