A Culture book from Banks. The Culture needs contact with an empire that places a great importance on a certain game, so they commission a master player to participate as their representative.

This is like Banks's writing in general: captivating, surprising, and a bit whimsical as well. It is also one of the best introductions to the Culture books, with the bonus that it's much shorter.

Making available through the 1001 library.

Thanks Jaakko196! Great writer, but have never gotten the hang of what's the difference between book written by Iain Banks or Iain M. Banks. Do you know? Maybe the next reader will have an answear to this intriguing question...

Got it in the mail today, thank you Jakko196!

I'll start reading it as soon as I'm finished with my current book.

=)

At first I didn't like the book, it didn't 'drag me in' to the story at all. But after a while it got better an I started to enjoy it. However, I'm not so sure that I want to read another of his Iain M. Banks books, I prefer the Iain Banks ones.

Thanks Jakko196 for sharing and thank you 1001-library!

This book is now back on the 1001 library bookshelf and can be borrowed by PMing ThursdayN:)

If you want to take this book from the library but don't know how to proceed, please refer to the library bookshelf.

Got this from ThursdayN at a BC-meetup yesterday. I'll read it as soon as possible!

I found this in Wikipedia about the author's name:

"Interviewed on Mark Lawson's BBC Four series, first broadcast in the UK on 14 November 2006, Banks explained why his novels are published under two different names. His parents named him Iain Menzies Banks but his father made a mistake when registering the birth and he was officially registered as Iain Banks. Despite this he continued to use his unofficial middle name and it was as Iain M. Banks that he submitted The Wasp Factory for publication. However, his editor asked if he would mind dropping the 'M' as it appeared "too fussy". The editor was also concerned about possible confusion with Rosie M. Banks, a minor character in some of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels who is a romantic novelist. After his first three mainstream novels his publishers agreed to publish his first SF novel, Consider Phlebas. To distinguish between the mainstream and SF novels, Banks suggested the return of the 'M', although at one stage he considered John B. Macallan as his SF pseudonym, the name deriving from his favourite whiskies: Johnnie Walker Black Label and The Macallan single malt."


I also had to struggle to get through this book. I didn't find the main character aspecially sympathetic and I didn't care much about what happened to him. The Empire was fairly interesting and I liked the planet he went to in the ending. I liked the drones and wouldn't mind having one of those at home.

This book is now back on the 1001 library bookshelf and can be borrowed by PMing Panzeranzi:)

If you want to take this book from the library but don't know how to proceed, please refer to the library bookshelf.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

On its' way to LaPitchoune!

I'm playing a game. It consists of a labyrinth made of various piled-up science fiction books and a single player: me, who's desperately trying to hind her way through the maze of incomprehensible space settings and foreign races. The goal of the game is for the player to find and finish a science fiction and, most importantly, get its message and like it. So far all my attempts have failed, but based on significant tips, this could be the victorious product.

I asked Panzeranzi to kindly send the book to me all the way from Sweden and it arrived last Thursday. Thank you so very much! This time I really have my hopes up: if only this could be the one...

A nice read. Now it's time for a few comments.

The story revolves mainly around Jernau Gurgeh, the Player of Games, who masters all the games ever invented and never forgets a single rule. Even though Gurgeh slips from being distant and solitary to cold, irresponsible and downright cruel, this novel is not a Bildungsroman, but rather a story about addiction and obsession with games.

As this was the first science fiction novel I had ever read, coming to terms with the alien species and grasping the idea and concept of Culture was a little demanding at first. Deep down I was anxious to discover new worlds and universes authors such as Iain M. Banks are capable of creating.

The milieu in The Player of Games seems ideal and emptiness of space, as we know it, loses (or gains?) some of its meaning as it becomes an accessible element and a conveyor to other worlds. Life on a more tangible everyday level seems to be of only secondary importance to the protagonist, who prefers to experience life inside the mind, with the help of drugs.

The rush of Sharp Blue surrounded him, invaded him. The fragrances on the warm night air, spilling from the line of opened doors behind, carried on the tide of noise the people made, became like separate strands of air, fibres unravelling from a rope, each with its own distinct colour and presence. The fibres became like packets of soil, something to be rubbed between his fingers; absorbed, identified.

There: that red-black scent of roasted meat; blood-quickening, salivatory; tempting and vaguely disagreeable at the same time as separate parts of his brain assessed the odour. The animal root smelled fuel; protein-rich food; the mid-brain trunk registered dead, incinerated cells… while the canopy of forebrain ignored both signals, because it knew his belly was full, and the roast meat cultivated.

He could detect the sea, too; a brine smell from ten or more kilometres away over the plain and the shallow downs, another threaded connection, like the net and web of rivers and canals that linked the dark lake to the restless, flowing ocean beyond the fragrant grasslands and the scented forests. (p. 8)

Flere-Imsaho, the seemingly innocent and funny little drone (who ultimately became my favorite character in the book, not least because of its great name), on the contrary, spends its time in the more commonly shared reality, bird-watching and admiring the local landscapes (see p. 110, for instance). In Culture (and Empire) everyone values games over anything, which makes the human characters seem more machine-like than the machines themselves. As a consequence, the function of the drones in the novel is to accentuate the loss of humanity. On the other hand, they provide the necessary comic relief, as in the following scene:

Flere-Imsaho floated in above the heads of the crowd, but despite trying to shout people down to gain their attention, all it succeeded in attracting was their hair, with its static (p.149)

Jernau Gurgeh’s most recognizable human attributes tend to be rather negative: his stubbornness, his ability settle in amazingly well where there's injustice and his seeming disregard of the little drone helpers (who are often - pejoratively or affectionately? - addressed to as 'machines', 'calculators' or 'junk' by Gurgeh and his companions). On the other hand, Gurgeh has a rearkable will to lay all his eggs in one basket, namely to believe in hope, however little of it there might be. If there is a chance to survive, he will not hesitate to take it. This might actually be something we could look up to, since the greatest achievements of humankind are based on this kind of linear, ambitious thinking and persistence.

From today’s perspective the developing (but already existing) addiction to games can be read as an allegory to many events, results and developments, ranging from the Industrial Revolution, which has lead to the rise of today’s Internet technology (which again has brought up new addictions) to a physical dependency on a repeated action. Whatever reading one chooses, the addiction itself is by no means a pleasure.

This is a game. Don’t you get any pleasure from this sort of thing? – No. And neither will you after a while. (p. 5)

Sex is another underlying theme throughout the book. The novel is even called ‘sexy’ in the blurb. In fact, the game sequences are written to resemble erotic acts. The participants’ physical movements and looks are described alongside their mutual expectations and feelings in the exciting situations, which exclude all outside distractions, even live spectators. They are captivating situations even for the reader. Still, practically every sexually promising situation turns into a dangerous disaster scene. The final victory seems like an unreachable myth, just like the perfect game. There seems to be a constant threat of death and/or mutilation, which might partially explain why Gurgeh stays out of major trouble.

Inclate and At-sen quietened fractionally and set about telling him what a naughty boy he was for not being more naughty. (p.60)

To sum up, my favourite things were the drones and the carbon-titanium exoskeleton. I am perfectly willing to read more Culture books after this, so thank you so much for sending this one to me!

While waiting for my next space experience, I’ll have a double standard measure of staol and chilled Shungusteriaung warp-wing liver wine bottoming a mouth of white Eflyre-Spin cruchen-spirit in a slush of medium cascalo, topped with roasted weirdberries and served in a number three strength Tipprawlic osmosis-bowl, or your best approximation thereof.' 'Male or female warp-wing?' the module said. 'In this place?' Za laughed. 'Hell; both.' (p.183)

p.s. By the way, what are the plans for the book? Should I send it on to someone?

p.p.s I adored Banks's naming policy. Wouldn't you just love to cruise through space on Size isn't Everything, Kiss My Ass or Screw Loose?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_(The_Culture)

p.p.s The entire novel is available online at:
http://chariot.valodi.hu/ebook/Iain%20M%20Banks%20-%201988%20-%20The%20Player%20Of%20Games.html

This book is now back on the 1001 library bookshelf and can be borrowed by PMing LaPitchoune:)

If you want to take this book from the library but don't know how to proceed, please refer to the library bookshelf.

I received this today in the mail from LaPitchoune - thanks! :-) I have read nearly all of the Culture novels and enjoy them very much, but this one I haven't read in English before and will be curious to do so. I'll probably get into it as soon as I get through my current detective story phase.

I first read this in Finnish in 2000 or 2001, I think. I'm glad I did read it again: either I didn't really get a lot of the story the first time round, or I had just totally forgotten. It's a very solid, entertaining and thought-inducing Culture novel, neither as dark and cruel as The Use of Weapons nor as technical as Excession (which as such is probably my favorite Culture novel; I'm a sucker for the outrageous names of Culture ships, and So Much For Subtlety is a pretty tame one, compared to some). I tend to like Minds and drones best as characters, but I also enjoy getting into the heads of many of Banks's human(oid) characters; they're rarely sympathetic, but they're frequently psychologically complex, believable and quite interesting. Here, I ended up liking Jernau Gurgeh and Flere-Imsaho* about equally well.

If there's something I might complain about, it's that Banks fairly obviously hasn't put all that much thought in the actual rules, practices and technicalities of the various sorts of games mentioned and played in this novel. In fact, he quite carefully avoids giving even a clue of how they're actually played. But then again, that's rather beside the point. (I'd guess that Azad was at least partially inspired by the Chinese game mahjong, though.)

Oh, and may I just point out that there are few quarters as devious as Special Circumstances?

Returning the book to 1001-library now - thanks for the loan, and I hope someone will request the book soonish!

*I do wonder how Banks comes up with these names... I suspect though that he uses whatever pops into his head (instead of, say, the "Tolkien method"), or else takes interesting real-world names of people and places and twists and combines them to suit his purpose (or both). The fact that I recently happened to run into a group Indian Ocean islands called the Nicobars in a book sort of supports the second option.

This book is now back on the 1001 library bookshelf and can be borrowed by PMing Niora:)

If you want to take this book from the library but don't know how to proceed, please refer to the library bookshelf.

Sorry it took a bit to make this JE, but things got a bit out of hand at home.
I got the book during the meeting we had last Thursday in Helsinki. Thanks a lot Niora!