The Player Of Games The Player Of Games
Culture

The Player Of Games

A Culture Novel

    • 4.5 • 236 Ratings
    • £5.49

Publisher Description

The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. His Culture books combine breathtaking imagination with exceptional storytelling, and have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre.

'Banks is a phenomenon' William Gibson

The Culture - a utopian human-machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many expert Game Players, and one of the greatest is Jernau Morat Gurgeh. He is Master of every board, computer and strategy - he is The Player of Games.

Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the cruel and incredibly wealthy Empire of Azad to try their infamous game . . . a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh plays the game, and faces the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death.

Praise for the Culture series:

'Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution' Independent on Sunday

'Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future'
Guardian

'Banks's sci-fi, at its best, is staggeringly inventive, beautifully written, dramatic and often very funny. His stories are packed with ideas, warships with minds very much of their own, alien races, charismatic drones and intergalactic politics' New Scientist

'Jam-packed with extraordinary invention' Scotsman

'Compulsive reading'
Sunday Telegraph

The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata

The State of the Art

Other books by Iain M. Banks:
Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
The Algebraist


Also now available:
The Culture: The Drawings - an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks' Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

GENRE
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
RELEASED
2008
4 September
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
320
Pages
PUBLISHER
Little, Brown Book Group
SIZE
1.1
MB

Customer Reviews

antoniospal ,

The Player of Games by Iain Banks.

Another wonderfully expansive imagining from the late, great Scottish author Iain Banks.

His 'culture' ethos is one the most colourful Utopias to be committed to paper. The balancing act between the thoughtful sensitivity of the brilliant and complex Gurgeh, the 'player of games'; and the ever infinitude of galactic clouds is ultimately moving. Suspense and excitement resolved by a sadness in the human heart. The Empire of Azad is uncomfortable similar to our own planetary economy. The vagaries of our different methods of electing political representatives at least as random as the game that selects the emperor of the Azadian empire. An enthralling read, as ever from this supremely creative author.

Neiliwhoops ,

Neil

Up to the usual IMB standards gaining momentum and immersing one in the protagonist's character giving insight into our human condition and our helplessness in the face of the Minds of culture... and the obligatory twist at the at the end. Loved it!

Pakhawaj ,

-

This is the only sci-fi book which I've read that I enjoyed. Very cool and interesting.

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