The Player of Games

The Player of Games (A Culture Novel Book 2)

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1S5C83IT0YGFR?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This is the second installment of Iain Banks's The Culture series. Moid Moidelhoff of Media Death Cult calls this book nearly perfect.

I don't know if this book is perfect, but it is very good. The background, characters, and plot are very engaging. The background setting of “the Culture” is a character in itself.

The Culture was introduced in Banks's “Consider Phlebas.” It is very high tech, wealthy, almost transhuman society. The society is wealthy enough to create its own planets and orbital artifacts. Its military operations are handled by “Contact” and “Special Circumstances.” The society treats humans and machine intelligences as equals. The society seems to be run by artificial intelligence “Minds,” which are super-intelligent and virtually immortal. The economic structure works as a functioning socialist economy where ownership is unknown and people change genders at a whim.

The problem is that the satisfied population is bored. Playing games is a major occupation (just as it seems to be in our culture.) Gurgeh is a preeminent game player. He is blackmailed to represent the Culture in a game tournament in the Arzad Empire, located in one of the satellite galaxies around the main galaxy (which may not be our galaxy - it's not clear.)

The Arzad Empire is structured around the game of Arzad. The winner of the tournament becomes the emperor.

The Arzad Empire is brutal. Its elites thrive on entertainment involving torture and executions. The master species consists of three sexes - male, apex, and female. The Apex are the master sex of the species. They can swing both ways with a reversible vagina and they treat their males and females as second class citizens.

But it is not clear that the Culture is all that much better. The Culture seems to be an imperialistic and colonial power in its own right. It sweeps aside lesser cultures and imposes its egalitarian, socialist ethos on others. Given the choice between Arzad and the Culture, I'd go for the Culture, but that doesn't relieve the Culture of its own form of totalitarianism.

The story is tightly plotted. It reveals enough of the Culture to give the book a grand sweep. The characters are empathetic. There is action and tension. I recommend this book as fun and entertaining.