Tag: The Player of Games

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…