The novel “The Player of Games” by Iain M. Banks was published for the first time in 1988. It’s part of the Culture series.
Jernau Morat Gurgeh is the best player in the Culture but his skill with any type of game leads him to get bored. The Contact section offers him to go to the Empire of Azad to participate in a very special game that goes far beyond the normal concept of board game but that civilization’s home planet is many light-years away from the Culture and the journey would take a few years. The commitment seems too heavy and Gurgeh declines the offer.
The robot Mawhrin-Skel offers Gurgeh help in a match that would allow him to achieve a perfect score. Gurgeh only partially accepts the help and doesn’t achieve perfection but above all Mawhrin-Skel blackmails him to get help from him to be readmitted in Special Circumstances, which had expelled it due to its instability. To do this, Gurgeh ends up accepting the offer to travel to the Empire of Azad.
The Culture is an advanced post-scarcity civilization to the point that its citizens don’t need to work to live. In such a situation, games can be an important way to pass the time and for Jernau Morat Gurgeh they have become a reason for living. However, for a champion like him, it can become difficult to find a challenge that appeals to him. Azad may be what he’s looking for but years of travel are too much even for him, at least until he gets some sort of extra incentive.
Azad is such an important game that the name indicates both the game and the empire and that makes sense because the ranks in the empire are awarded based on the players’ skills. The champion of the great tournament of Azad held every Great Year becomes (or is confirmed) Emperor.
In order to take on players who have in a sense lived their entire life in this game, Gurgeh spends the years of travel preparing to become an Azad player. This represents only the first phase of what becomes an immersion in the game after the start of the tournament, which means immersion in the civilization of the empire. For a citizen of the Culture, the consequences are important on a personal level.
The Empire of Azad is basically an allegory of humanity with the complication that it’s ruled by a species divided into three genders. Gurgeh initially sees its facade but soon starts discovering its dark sides as well, often hidden and not included in a game that is supposed to fully represent Azad. Both the game and Gurgeh’s experiences with Azad’s society have a progressive effect on him.
“The Player of Games” is set only partially in the Culture but, also through the comparisons with Azad’s society, offers a lot of information about this post-scarcity civilization. For this reason, it may represent a much better starting point than “Consider Phlebas” as an introduction to this fictional universe. The novels of the Culture series are generally completely autonomous, so reading them in a different sequence from their publication’s isn’t a problem.
Political and social themes are a constant in the Culture series and in “The Player of Games” they’re included in a novel that progressively increases in intensity as the level of the game increases. In my opinion, it’s one of the best novels of the series and for this reason, I recommend reading it without reservations.
