I finished Player of Games last night. (What I said about the three sexes… a little more detail was revealed later in the book so that’s no longer really a valid post.) This is the second Iain M. Banks novel that I’ve read and the second in the Culture series. I am hooked in a big way. It’s one of the more appealing fictional universes that I’ve encountered.
In Player of Games, Gurgeh, famous for his skill at all kinds of games, travels to the Empire of Azad to be the first person from the Culture to compete in the extremely complex game that everyone in the Empire is obsessed with and believes that no outsider can play well. I found this book highly unputdownable and I was both satisfied and sorry when I read the last page.
April 2nd, 2012 - 6:08 pm
Banks is one of those writers who makes me wish I could see some of the stuff he describes. Like that planet with the fire that eternally burns its way around the planet, just quickly enough to let new fuel seed and grow in its wake before it comes round again.
April 3rd, 2012 - 7:56 am
Yes! I want to visit an orbital. Maybe even live on one but I want to just visit first. and I’d love to be a landscaper. And that fire planet is one of the most amazing ideas I’ve ever seen in science fiction. Not sure I want to visit that one though.
April 4th, 2012 - 12:42 am
I’d rather live in the Polity, myself. AI leading humanity, anti-gravity cars, mental and physical augmentation, and oh yeah a planet where there exists a parasite that makes you very hard to kill, if it bites you.
Yup.
April 4th, 2012 - 8:14 am
Yeah, the Polity seems like it would be a neat universe to live in as long as you didn’t run into Ian Cormac and his associates.