Contact asks Gurgeh to participate in this tournament as a representative of The Culture, and at first he refuses. Every so often a grand tournament is held and the winners of various rounds accumulate power and influence in Azad, and the final winner becomes Emperor. They’re a very aggressive humanoid society whose culture revolves around a very complex game, also called Azad. And a special subset of Contact, called Special Circumstances, is called upon when some sort of dirty tricks are needed to neutralize a threat from one of these alien societies.Ĭontact has identified such a culture. Those who are not are often recruited by Contact, which is the civilization’s arm of outreach to non-Culture beings. Most of the trillions of souls – whether flesh-based or created Minds – in The Culture are pretty happy with their lot. The games are never actually described, but they seem to be some combination of board game and multidimensional computerized or holographic interface. He’s become quite the homebody, preferring not to leave his beautiful mansion in the mountains, although he occasionally can be coaxed out to play a game. He lives on Chiark orbital, one of the immense ringworlds that most Culture citizens live on, if they don’t live on an immense General Systems Vehicle ship, which can be dozens of kilometers long (and nearly as deep and wide) and be home to millions. Except, he thinks he’s content with that life. Gurgeh is a bit bored with his life, which doesn’t offer him many challenges anymore.

They’re playing a long game of keeping civilizations that are less stable and less peaceful – barbaric, if you will – from posing a threat to the peace and stability of the Galaxy. And the games they play as they work to keep it stable and safe. The Player of Games takes readers within this ancient and stable civilization and rather subversively introduces us to the Minds who run it. Just who the book’s title actually refers to is but one of the bits of authorial legerdemaine we’ll contend with as we follow the story.īanks’s first Culture novel Consider Phlebas introduced us to The Culture through the eyes of a freelance warrior on the other side, who’s fighting against The Culture because he hates what he sees as its smug decadence. The story begins with a battle that is not a battle and ends with a game that isn’t a game, we’re told. From the very outset we’re told by the unidentified narrator that all is not what it seems.

It’s a deceptively layered story, something of a game in itself. This is the story of Jernau Morat Gurgeh, one of the best gamers in The Culture. It already has many of the hallmarks of his truly spectacular later Culture books like Matter and Surface Detail, although the plot is more streamlined and the action less sprawling.

Banks’ second novel of The Culture, originally published in 1988.

The player of games by iain m banks