| The Player of Games | 
 enlarge | Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
Category: Book
List Price: $12.99
Buy Used: $6.50
You Save: $6.49 (50%)
New (41) Used (11) from $6.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  75 reviews
Sales Rank: 13776
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0316005401
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780316005401
ASIN: 0316005401
Publication Date: March 26, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Express and international shipping from postal hub in Dallas. Light shelf wear on cover and corners. Cover is very glossy. Binding is very tight. Pages are bright, crisp and glossy with no writing, underlines or highlights. No dog ears.
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Amazon.com Review
In The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks presents a distant future that could almost be called the end of history. Humanity has filled the galaxy, and thanks to ultra-high technology everyone has everything they want, no one gets sick, and no one dies. It's a playground society of sports, stellar cruises, parties, and festivals. Jernau Gurgeh, a famed master game player, is looking for something more and finds it when he's invited to a game tournament at a small alien empire. Abruptly Banks veers into different territory. The Empire of Azad is exotic, sensual, and vibrant. It has space battle cruisers, a glowing court--all the stuff of good old science fiction--which appears old-fashioned in contrast to Gurgeh's home. At first it's a relief, but further exploration reveals the empire to be depraved and terrifically unjust. Its defects are gross exaggerations of our own, yet they indict us all the same. Clearly Banks is interested in the idea of a future where everyone can be mature and happy. Yet it's interesting to note that in order to give us this compelling adventure story, he has to return to a more traditional setting. Thoughtful science fiction readers will appreciate the cultural comparisons, and fans of big ideas and action will also be rewarded. --Brooks Peck
Product Description
The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game...a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death.
Praise for Iain M. Banks:
"Poetic, humorous, baffling, terrifying, sexy -- the books of Iain M. Banks are all these things and more" -- NME
"An exquisitely riotous tour de force of the imagination which writes its own rules simply for the pleasure of breaking them." -- Time Out
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| Customer Reviews: Read 70 more reviews...
 Stupid- Unless you have read..and understand the others December 1, 2008
Don't bother unless you have read, and understand, the other Culture books. The description of this is deceiving. If you don't know everything about the Culture, none of this will make sense. The book is supposed to make sense due to all the things the Culture is capable of. Banks seems to make up stuff as he goes along. The Game is never really explained. I guess it is if you understand The Culture. I didn't and the only reason I finished the book at all was to see if and how the guy made it through. If that's enough for you, then by all means...
 a short story made long August 30, 2008
better say a good short story made too long.
the main idea of the book is very good: someone is playing games for his living, and he encounters a game which is life itself.
but most of the book describes in length this someone playing a game which you can't actually understand. and that is getting real boring after a while.
 One of my favorite books August 30, 2008
Reading a "Culture" novel is great. If you haven't read a Iain M. Banks book about the "Culture" give this one a try. There is a little bit of sociology, linguistics, and humor.
An Absorbing, Exciting, Science Fictional Exploration of Gamesmanship from Iain M. Banks August 21, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
"The Player of Games" remains one of the best in distinguished British author Iain M. Banks's highly literate, quite sophisticated, "Culture" space opera series of novels. It is also among the earliest in the series, and one that is certainly most notable for its engrossingly in-depth study into the character of Gurgeh, the Culture's premier master of every game - especially those devoted to strategy - known to this long-lived space-faring human civilization. At the very pinnacle of his success, Gurgeh is bored and restless, until he accepts the seemingly impossible challenge of mastering Azad, the very game of life played by the ruling elite of the relatively primitive, autocratic, almost totalitarian, Empire of Azad, located in one of the distant Magellanic Clouds. It is a game that is rich not only in its intricate strategy, but also, in elaborate deception; an intense game whose very outcome may mean life or death for anyone playing it, especially Gurgeh. Told in incandescent, quite pyrotechnic, prose, Banks' novel comes across as a futuristic Graham Greene thriller set amidst more conventional - if elaborately descriptive - space opera settings. A splendid science fiction novel that is not merely a major landmark of Anglo-American science fiction, but one which ought to be reckoned as high literary art written by one of the foremost writers of fiction - in any genre - in the English language.
Today's crew of game obsessed YA is going to relate to this book! July 22, 2008
I've always liked books from a series that "stand alone." The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks, is the second book written in the "Culture" series. You'd never know it, and you don't need book one. However, this one is intriguing enough to make you want to read more of them.
Culture is the future culmination of humanity and artificial intelligences (and probably a number of other sentient species; not the real focus of this volume). Jernau Gurgeh, a Culture-wide game player of significant renown, finds himself "volunteering" to serve the Culture as a member of Contact, an element of Culture that interacts with new beings, cultures, and empires. He's invited to a game tournament in the Empire of Azad, a game played every six years that determines one's place in Azad society, even the Emperor (as long as you are not a male or a female).
Gurgeh finds himself surrounded by a race that considers games of greater importance than even he does.
Culture finds Azad society troublesome.
Gurgeh cannot win. He should not win. Yet he must win.
It is, after all, THE Game.
Banks writes well. The characters are interesting, the various cultures are imaginative, and the story is engaging.
What more can you want from a sci-fi novel about life in a distant human universe? Except for the other books in this series, of course!
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