The Player of Games, a sort-of review
Apr. 7th, 2003 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldAt the gym today, I read Iain Banks' 1988 The Player of Games. Iain Banks is an interesting author--he's a household name of sorts in Britain, with numerous consecutive best-sellers, alternating between works of conventional fiction and space-opera science fiction set in the Culture. In all of his works, however, Banks combines a wonderful wit with a recognition of casual brutality impinging on the lives of his characters--the Culture (and our culture) might be antiseptic and decent, an actual functioning anarchic livertarian society (godlike technology helps), but it's neighbours aren't necessarily so.
Consider Phlebas, Banks' first novel in the Culture universe is a perfect example of this: The Culture is fighting, more out of boredom than out of humantiarian sentiments, the Idirans. The title character fights for the Idirans despite their xenophobic expansionism, simply because the Idirans at least are interesting, have some complexity and passionnate drive to them. The Idirans are crushed, of course; the Culture's antiseptic nature is simply too much for them. In The Player of Games, noted gamesplayer Gurgeh is blackmailed into working as the Culture's emissary to a corrupt and violent empire in the Smaller Magellanic Cloud; once there, on the empire's homeworld of Eå he finds himself partaking in the game of Azad, which both mirrors and determines the future of the empire.
Wonderful book; definitely read it. Banks is an excellent writer. And I'll have to make a point of reading a book a day while I'm on the bike. I feel more intelligent after a book, better able to think and communicate what I think. Eh bien.
Tomorrow (if I'm not destroyed by my Honours defense) will be Todd's Après l'empire.
Consider Phlebas, Banks' first novel in the Culture universe is a perfect example of this: The Culture is fighting, more out of boredom than out of humantiarian sentiments, the Idirans. The title character fights for the Idirans despite their xenophobic expansionism, simply because the Idirans at least are interesting, have some complexity and passionnate drive to them. The Idirans are crushed, of course; the Culture's antiseptic nature is simply too much for them. In The Player of Games, noted gamesplayer Gurgeh is blackmailed into working as the Culture's emissary to a corrupt and violent empire in the Smaller Magellanic Cloud; once there, on the empire's homeworld of Eå he finds himself partaking in the game of Azad, which both mirrors and determines the future of the empire.
Wonderful book; definitely read it. Banks is an excellent writer. And I'll have to make a point of reading a book a day while I'm on the bike. I feel more intelligent after a book, better able to think and communicate what I think. Eh bien.
Tomorrow (if I'm not destroyed by my Honours defense) will be Todd's Après l'empire.
