So the problem is that I don’t truly like hard science fiction. Or hard fantasy. Or I mean, I do sometimes, occasionally, but on those occasions it’s sort of despite the trappings of the genre, rather than because of them. So it may be that Iain Banks, whatever his virtues, is just not the author for me. (Which isn’t to say that I hated The Player of Games.)
And Banks has created a fascinating world here: A civilization called the Culture has asked one of their finest game-players, Gurgeh, to pop over to an alien Empire and have a stab at their primary game, Azad, which determines the status of the society — the emperor, therefore, attains his position by dint of being the most gifted game-player in the empire. Gurgeh isn’t expected to win; just to discover whether a member of the Culture can master the game-play at all.
The Player of Games feels like what people like to call classic science fiction, with the women subsidiary and the men unemotional. Which is not a strike against it, exactly, but it made an interesting contrast with the last two sci-fi books I read, Claire North’s Touch and Jennifer Marie Brissett’s Elysium. Although The Player of Games, like those last two, does things with gender (there are three genders in the empire of Azad, while citizens of the Culture are able to switch between genders with very little trouble), the ideas it’s interested in exploring have nothing to do with gender and its impact on identity on personhood. Instead, it’s interested in power and its exercise.
Again, nothing wrong with that. The book is slow to start, and I had to reeeeally plow through to get to the good bit, but once I did, I was hooked(ish). It’s just interesting what different people want to read about — and, crucially, what they think is worth reading about.
This has been my maiden effort with Iain Banks, and although it’s not what I’ll want to read every single day, it was certainly interesting enough — and sufficiently well put-together, which is something I care about — to keep me interested in trying more books by him in the future. When I’m in a sci-fi mood.
I had this book checked out from my library for a month and a half before I read it, because it was slow to start. Once Zuckerberg announced it was his next book club pick, though, I thought it would be the nice thing to do to return the library’s only copy so that other folks could read it if they want to. I figure people who are reading it for Facebook book club are probably going to want it badder than I do. THAT IS JUST THE KIND OF SAINTLY PERSON I AM.