The Player of Games

Rating:
Summary: An excellent read. Highly commended.
Review: The second book from the man with the world's most transparent pseudonym, "The Player of Games" is probably the ideal introduction to the Culture. More straightforward than "Consider Phlebus"; less dark than "Use of Weapons", it is not hard work but is sufficiently complex to reward a second reading.

Banks here further explores his seemingly ambivalent feelings towards his creation. Gurgeh doesn't hate the Culture the way Horza did in "Consider Phlebus" but he's no fan, only the mass-murderers of "Use of Weapons" seem to like it. Well, apart from Banks himself. There is little doubt that this "communist Utopia" is how the author would like the future to be, though he's never crass enough to tell us that. He prefers to paint it through eyes that see it less positively and makes it all the more compelling for that.

A good story well told, with enough novel ideas to keep you alert and enough layers to keep you confused.

And could Dianna [e-mail] from San Francissco keep her ludicrous, political opinions to herself.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: This is in the top ten sci. fi. books I've ever read and I've read a LOT of award winning sci. fi.. It was hard to put down at times. Banks uses some unique and fascinating concepts in his worlds set thousands of years in the future. The concept of totally sentient (and feeling) drones, houses, ships, etc., is so bizarre that it takes a little while to grasp, though it's so likely when you consider it. The story is remarkably captivating and the settings and science are both riviting. In many ways, the alien empire's negative characteristics are very similar to the negative aspects of earth's population currently. It makes you realize just how far we need to go before we are a truly civilized society, and that indeed in thousands or even hundreds of years, our societies will be considered barbaric. Great book.

Rating:
Summary: Don't get me wrong...
Review: ''The Player of Games' lacks the fearsome hypnotic pace of 'Consider Phlebas' and the inexorable mystery of 'Look to Windward' but nonetheless is a considerably compelling read.

As ever the 'Culture' universe is detailed and further defined with languid succulence.

Initially, the player himself is a curiuosly withdrawn, grasping, and at times pompous figure. Exposure to the 'Empire' and the sordid events which both send him there and surround him once he has arrived affect a gratifying change on his psyche. As the stakes increase he is foreced to abandon his flaccid insousciance as he seeks to unravel the web of prevarication that surrounds his whole excursion. This inner change over the course of the novel is one of its more rewarding aspects.

The book spends a significant amount of space working its way through the many games our erstwhile voluptuary is required to play. The games themselves, the strategy and the mental processes involved are all fascinating.

As the compettion proceeds, Banks' own graphic and blatanly critical descrption of the Empire begins to reflect the increasingly desperate stakes of the games being played. Yes, it's a horrible little Empire they have going here and the horrid injustices we are toured through can leave little doubt as to whom will go the spoils of victory.

The denoument, when it comes, is neither shocking nor surprising, despite some reviewers claims. On the contrary, hints and a certain liberal foreshadowing allow for no other possible outcomes.

That doesn't necessarily detract from the impact of the novel itself. Still, where I finished 'Windward' with long and deliberate wonder at its implications, whatever they might be, I found myself only chuckling knowingly at the 'revelations' which
concluded this book. Perhaps it is the inevitable predictability of linear narratives which have this effect. Bah!

It was good, excellent, in fact. By all means read it. 4 stars is nothing to be sneezed at in any shape or form. Then, if you haven't, whip out and get 'Look to windward'- and make it snappy!

Rating:
Summary: Checkmate. Mr Banks wins.
Review: I've read this book more times than I can remember(always a good sign). There are two main reasons why I like it so much, I believe. First of all, I am an avid player of board and strategy games like the ones in the book myself (though sadly not as proficient as Gurgeh!). Secondly, I identify with the hero a lot as he has several of my own personality traits - naivete, curiosity, a solitary nature.

The story is first-class (better than the other Culture novels I've read, Consider Phlebas and Excession). Gurgeh is an excellent, very human character and his behaviour (letting himself slip and getting blackmailed, his fascination with the Empire of Azad when he reaches it) is both realistic and easy to sympathise with.

I suspect the Empire is a sort of exaggerated satire of our own society, though I'm not 100% certain (Banks must take a fairly gloomy view of life today if it's meant only as a caricature rather than a warning of what happens when greed becomes the only driving force in a culture).

And, of course, Banks creates his universe wonderfully. The contrasts between the Culture and the Empire are not too blatantly portrayed, and all the settings are well described. The various games are my favourite aspect of the setting, including one played in a 3-D web, ones that require the use of four or more dimensions, and of course Azad, the game that the Empire sees as the perfect model of life itself and uses as its foundation (the grand tournament held every seven years determines who holds positions of power and what ideas are predominant in the Empire until the next one, the overall champion becoming Emperor). If there is one criticism I make of this book, it's that there's not enough detail of how the game works! This is a fairly personal thing though - what matters is that the game is insanely complex and intricate.

I won't give away the plot as it will make things less tense for the reader, but suffice to say that it becomes grimmer and darker as it progresses towards the exciting and shocking climax.

Oh, and one last thing - don't stop paying attention when it looks like everything's more or less over. There is one last very surprising twist at the end which I didn't see coming at all.

Rating:
Summary: Why Not Here?
Review: Strangely enough, I first found Banks' books in used bookstores while I was travelling in Asia. But to find him here is on par with finding the Grail. This was the first Banks book I read, and the scope and concept was impressive to the point of overwhelming. This is big-concept space opera, with a far-future galaxy spanning near-utopia where the inhabitants, their needs taken care of, play games and design planets. So what happens when the best player of games is invited to a distant empire to play their 'game'? He's an innocent abroad in a degenerate, yet vibrant, society, who has to learn on the fly, for both his own success, and his life. The story is intricate, and compelling. Somehow, though, the Culture, and its ruling 'Minds' are just too powerful, too perfect, and I wanted to see a bit more of a struggle than that of one exceptional, human, character. Off to get more Culture...

Rating:
Summary: Thanks for loaning me this one, Noah!
Review: I like the part where some of the chess pieces are plant matter that ripens and changes moving ability over the course of the game according to color change! Don't shortchange this book on the title. There are games played in the book but they are metaphors to illustrate deeper concepts.

Lengthwise this is fairly short. It's no Dune or anything.

The book became a compelling page-turner by about the third chapter. Banks has created a world with intelligent robots that have jealousy, ambition, and hobbies. Three or four of the main characters are little floating spherical robots and Banks really makes good use of the robot as character to extend the possibilities of the social milieu here. It's analogous to game playing: chess is to checkers as Banks' robot society is to our human society. He plays around a lot with the possibilities of robots as active, socializable entities. And the super-robots called ship-minds are both space vessels and hyper-intelligent transcendent beings floating through the plot like blue whales on earth: big, intelligent, and seemingly benign.

The main star of this book (and I guess Banks' other works) is his future society called The Culture. The culture was so cool of an idea socially that it left me spoiled for lesser science fiction books. When this book got me jonesing for more science fiction I tried to follow it up with Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye. Isn't that supposed to be a classic? Well, I couldn't read it. The whole society portrayed seemed so obsolete and boring, like a Buck Rogers movie. So read Iaian Banks and get spoiled for lesser science fiction!

Rating:
Summary: A Near Perfect Book
Review: I say "near perfect" because as those who've read a lot of Ian Banks know, Banks is somewhat obsessed with cruelty and torture and this book has its fair share. At least here, however, it forms a logical and integral part of the book unlike Banks' Consider Phlebas, where it's so gratuitous and specific that it's really disturbing, and it doesn't form a huge part of the book like it does in The Wasp Factory, which I couldn't finish because of it.

The above aside, the story is compelling, the writing superb, and the author's premise intelligent without being condescending or dense. Banks has created a version of Utopia, called the Culture, and thought it through quite well. Ownership and status have been eliminated, there's plenty of space, there's equality (even sentient machines share the same status as humans), people can internally create whatever drugs/state of mind they need/want and even select their gender, and people are happy and engaged. So when Jernau Gergeh, a professional game player, is recruited to play the game of Azad in the far-distant empire of Azad, he is reluctant to leave his home for the five years the game will take. But Gurgeh does leave, and Azad turns out to be a civilization much more like our own than that of the Culture. Azad is hierarchical, crowded and violent, and status is everything.

One of the interesting things that Banks has done is to make us recognize ourselves in the empire of Azad, while still finding ways to make the Azadians different than the alien races one so often finds in mediocre science fiction writing. For one thing, the Azadians have three genders. Banks also focuses on the difference between the languages of the Culture and the empire, and how language may shape thought. Banks makes us understand why Gurgeh becomes attracted to the empire even with all its flaws, inequalities and cruelty, and to the game of Azad, a brilliantly created giant of a game which is central to the civilization of Azad and all its institutions, and which represents the entire philosophy of the empire.

You might not think that a book about a game and game-playing would be consistently compelling, but in Bank's capable hands it is. A study of competition, cultural differences, politics and human nature, it stays captivating throughout, managing to combine a good story and excellent story telling with thought- provoking premises. This was the first book by Banks I ever read and easily my favorite still. I've read it at least half a dozen times and it holds up on every re-reading.

Rating:
Summary: All in the game
Review: Iain M. Banks seems to be very popular with the nerd crowd. His "Culture Universe" books are stories set in a far future where, for the most part, material worries are a thing of the past, and people are allowed to develop themselves however they want. Taking care of them are various intelligent machines, including giant ships that whole societies live on. This sort of techie stuff is endlessly fascinating, and Banks is very good at creating interesting backdrops. Unfortunately, I find that in many of his books the actual story falls a little flat.

Not so in this book.

In the Culture universe, Jernau Gurgeh is the best living game player. He is also a bit bored. This makes him ideal for being sent on a long trip to a recently discovered society where games are almost synonymous with life. If you win the final game, you become ruler.

This is an excellent book. There is a lot of "hard SF" in it, but it is also psychologically interesting, as Gurgeh delves into the Azad society and discovers just how much life and game are intertwined.

Rating:
Summary: A Galactic Dostojevskijan story
Review: I've most liked the plot and the main carachter,Gurgeh.His moral dilemmas and failings are the most humane, and the setting in the
cruelly depraved Empire of Azad is most compelling.The Culture is a really intriguing concept,and the real game, if you notice that those who are holding the cards aren't exactly the organic beings, can be hard to conjecture, and can be very nasty at the end.Banks' machines have a lot in common whit those of Douglas Adams, only they are "class-conscious" and waspishly witty. They contrast vividly against the almost tragic sense of existentialism of Banks' human personae. The result is peculiarly weird.

Rating:
Summary: Poor
Review: I was not surprised when I heard that Banks had written this a long time before Wasp Factory or Consider Phlebas. Compared to some of his later work, it is appalling!

The story meanders at the best of times and it could have easily been shortened for better effect. It is quite obvious that Banks had no idea about "pace" back then. The language is uninspired.

To clarify my meaning - his editor must have been drunk or asleep or both!!!

The most glaring failure of this novel is the inconsistency of idea, plot and characterisation. For example, at the most basic level, how can a character go to "his" house, when supposedly the Culture has no concept of personal property???
Fans of the Culture novels may argue this, stating that this is precisely the negative aspects of the Culture that Banks is illustrating. But somehow I doubt this is true.

Ill-conceived at best. Give it a wide berth.