The verdict
Sharp, funny and quietly savage, and the best introduction to the Culture there is.
Quick facts
- Author
- Iain M. Banks
- First published
- 1988
- Publisher
- Macmillan
- Series
- Culture, book two (stands alone)
- Best for
- A standalone novel with a real idea in it, and the friendliest door into the Culture
- Skip it if
- A book about a board game sounds dry to you
Author Iain M. Banks
The Player of Games is Iain M. Banks’s second Culture novel, published in 1988, and it is about a man who is the best in the galaxy at one thing being sent to play the game that runs an empire. It is the book most people recommend as the place to start with the Culture, and it is not hard to see why: it has the ideas, and unlike the first one it has a plot you can follow without a map.
The idea behind it
The Culture is a post-scarcity civilisation with no government worth the name, run by benevolent machine Minds, where nobody needs anything and almost everyone is free to do as they like. Banks knew that sounds boring, so his novels tend to send a Culture citizen somewhere much worse.
Here that somewhere is the Empire of Azad, where social position, career, even the throne itself are decided by a single enormous board game played in a tournament every few years. A society that has outsourced its entire hierarchy to a game is a wonderful premise, and Banks follows it further than a lesser writer would: the game is not fair, and the people who designed it know exactly what they were doing.
The story, spoiler-light
Jernau Gurgeh is a game player of genuine brilliance and a man who has run out of anything to prove. He is bored, he has been quietly compromised, and the Culture’s contact section has a use for him: go to Azad, enter the tournament, and see how the empire works from the inside.
Two things are worth knowing before you start. The middle of the novel is a long, patient tour of a cruel society seen through the eyes of someone who keeps telling himself he is only there to play a game. And the ending is not a twist so much as a verdict, delivered with a coldness that is entirely characteristic of Banks.
What makes it science fiction
The Culture is the science fiction. Banks took the idea of a society with no scarcity and no government and asked what that would actually feel like from inside, which almost nobody else had bothered to do properly. The Minds, the ships with names, the orbitals: all of it exists to make the argument that a genuinely good society is possible and still not simple.
Set against it, Azad is a portrait of an empire with a meritocracy it believes in. Banks is careful to show the parts that work, which is what makes the reveal land. The novel is also very funny in a dry way, and it is more interested in what power does to people than in weapons.
Who should read it, and who should give it a miss
Read it if you want a standalone novel with a real idea in it, clear prose, and a lead character who is clever and a bit complacent and gets what is coming to him. It is also the best first Culture book, ahead of Consider Phlebas, which is more of a war story.
Give it a miss if you want action, or if a book about a board game sounds dry. There is violence, and it is queasy when it arrives, but most of the tension is in a room with two people talking.
Where to start, and what to read next
Start here. The Culture novels share a setting and a mood rather than a story, so the order genuinely does not matter, and most readers find this the friendliest door in. The exceptions are a couple of later books that assume more, and none of them are a problem from here.
The two to pick up next are Use of Weapons, which is the darkest and most structurally daring of the early Culture novels, and Excession, which is the one where the Minds themselves take centre stage.
The rest, for reference: Consider Phlebas, The State of the Art, Inversions, Look to Windward, Matter, Surface Detail and The Hydrogen Sonata.
The verdict
Sharp, funny and quietly savage, and the best introduction to the Culture there is. Read it for the game and stay for what the game is for.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to read the Culture books in order?
No. They are standalone novels sharing a setting and a set of ideas. This one is widely suggested as the first, ahead of Consider Phlebas.
What is the Culture?
A post-scarcity civilisation with no fixed government, run in practice by very advanced artificial intelligences called Minds, where citizens have almost unlimited freedom and almost nothing they are obliged to do.
Is it connected to the other Culture novels?
Only by setting and theme. There is no continuing cast to keep track of and no cliffhanger. You can read them in any order.
How long is it, and is it a hard read?
It is one of the shorter Culture novels and one of the most straightforward. The prose is clear and the plot is linear, which is not true of everything Banks wrote in this series.
Where can I buy it?
It is available in paperback and as a Kindle edition, and the buy links for Amazon.com and Amazon.in are on this page.