The Player of Games

infobox Book |
name = The Player of Games
orig title =
translator =


image_caption =
author = Iain M. Banks
cover_artist =
country = Scotland
language = English
series = The Culture
genre = Science fiction novel
publisher = Macmillan
release_date = 1988
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 288 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-333-47110-5
preceded_by = Espedair Street
followed_by = Canal Dreams

"The Player of Games" is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1988.

Plot introduction

The second of the Culture novels. Gurgeh, a brilliant, though decadent, game player from the Culture, is entrapped and blackmailed to work as a Special Circumstances agent in the brutal Empire of Azad. Their system of society and government is entirely based on an elaborate strategy game, Azad.

Plot summary

Jernau Morat Gurgeh lives on Chiark Orbital, and is bored with his successful life. The Culture's Special Circumstances (SC) section suggests that he travel to participate in a games tournament in a distant and isolated alien civilization, the Empire of Azad. In the Empire, a complex game (also named Azad) is used to determine social rank and political status. At the same time, he is blackmailed by an ex-SC drone into accepting the assignment so that he can use SC's need of him as a lever to have the drone accepted back into Special Circumstances. This drone, Mawhrin-Skel, tempted Gurgeh into cheating in a game, and uses its records of Gurgeh's acquiescence as its weapon.

The game itself is sufficiently subtle and complex that a player's tactics come to reflect their own political and philosophical outlook. As a Culture citizen, Gurgeh naturally plays with a style markedly different from his opponents, and gradually he finds that his (and, by extension, the Culture's) values make for an extremely successful strategy. As he plays against increasingly powerful Azad politicians, Gurgeh ultimately plays against the Emperor of Azad. Belatedly, he discovers that his participation is part of a Culture plot to overthrow the corrupt and savage Empire, and that he, the player, is in fact a pawn in a much larger game. The novel climaxes in the final round of the Azad contest when, faced with defeat, the Emperor of Azad attempts to kill Gurgeh.

Although Gurgeh never discovers the whole truth, it is ultimately revealed to the reader that even the blackmail that forced him to accept the mission was almost certainly carried out with the knowledge and permission of some faction within Special Circumstances itself.

Azad

Azad is a game played in the Empire of Azad. In the language of the fictional Empire, the word "Azad" translates to mean "machine" or "system", but is applied to any complex entities such as animals, plants or artificial machines.

Although the actual rules are not given in the book, the game is primarily tactical and played on three-dimensional boards of various shapes and sizes. Typically the boards are large enough for players to walk around inside them to move or interact with their pieces. The number of players differs from game to game and also influences the tactics, as players can choose to cooperate or compete with one another. As well as skill and tactics, random events may influence gameplay (often as card or other games of chance), and sometimes may change the outcome critically.

Game elements

The game consists of a number of rounds, such as card games and elemental die matching, which allow the players to build up their forces for use on the game's three giant boards (in order; the Board of Origin, the Board of Form, and finally the Board of Becoming) and a number of minor boards.

The game uses a variety of pieces to represent a player's units (military, resource or even philosophical premises). Some of the pieces are genetically engineered constructs, which may change form during the game according to their use and environment. These respond to their handling by a player and appear difficult to understand - at one point in the book Gurgeh is encouraged to sleep while holding some of the more important pieces so he can better understand them in play.

The league and position within the empire

In the empire, the game is the main determinant of one's social status. The game is played in a tournament, initially consisting of some 12,000 players in the main series. Through the various rounds, these are all whittled down until the final game, the victor of which becomes emperor. Players knocked out from the main series may take part in further games to determine their careers. The complexity of the game aims to represent reality to such a degree that a player's own political and philosophical outlook can be expressed in play (the idea being that rival ideologies are essentially "tested" in the game before the winners can apply them in reality). In the novel, the protagonist ultimately finds that his (successful) tactics come to reflect the values of his own civilisation, The Culture.

Literary significance & criticism

"The Player of Games" is considered by some the most immediately accessible of the Culture books, and therefore perhaps an easier introduction to the sequence than the earlier "Consider Phlebas".

Banks was able to use the fast-paced science fiction thriller to make points about racism and sexism. The Azadians have three sexes, of which only members of the intermediate sex -- the "apex sex" or "apices" -- stand a chance of succeeding in the game and advancing to high positions in society. The ultimate point of the book is seen as being the various levels of games being played by virtually every participant.

The fictional game Azad has some similarities with the fictional game Damage in Banks' earlier Culture novel, "Consider Phlebas".

Like most of Banks' early SF work, this was a reworking of an earlier version in 1979.

Bibliography

* "The Player of Games", Iain M. Banks, London : Macmillan, 1988, ISBN 0-333-47110-5 (paperback ISBN 1-85723-146-5)

External links

* [http://www.scwu.com/bookreviews/h/BanksIainMPlayerofGames.shtml Steven Wu's review]