The Player of Games (The Culture) (Paperback)

Gurgeh's journey into the treacherous unknown is paralleled by his mental voyage of understanding. It is essentially a story about one man who appears to have attained his life's goals in the opening chapter. Set within the protective utopia that is the Culture: superficially an idyllic existance where death is impossible and the child-like hedonistic naivette of the Culture's citizens is preserved at all costs.

On the outside, Gurgeh appears to have everything. On the inside he detests the utopian prison and the perfect society that restrains him. He courts death to experience the rush of danger denied him by the overwhelming power of the Nanny state in which he lives. He cheats the system in a time where the very concept of cheating or lying had been made redundant centuries before. He seeks a return to the barbarism of olden days, a concept that is almost wholly absent from the molly-coddled heads of his contemporarys...

What Gurgeh gets from the Culture is a shocking eye-opener that uncovers the bestial, disgusting reality of human (and sub-human) nature. As the layers of protection offered by the Culture are peeled back one at a time, Gurgeh is brutally indulged in his dangerous fantasy and thrust into the real dystopian existance beyond the Culture's walls.

As ever, Banks' interplay between the animal and android remains fascinating and throws up a beautifully crafted twist at the end. The over-riding feeling throughout the novel is of an ever-increasing understanding of the limitless power of The Culture whose Big Brother status lurks beyond the immediate narrative like a hulking shadow. Who is The Player of Games? Gurgeh thinks it is him, but as both Gurgeh and the reader come to appreciate the scale of the game being played, it becomes obvious that we are both more pawn than player.

I would suggest that the education of any Sci-Fi lover is incomplete without reading this book, it is a perfect work of fiction and in my opinion has not been bested by Banks himself, or any other SF writer since.

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.