Book 6: The Player of Games

I wrapped the second Culture book up this morning. This book is really incredibly well done. It is funny, inventive, insightful, and full of all the things which science fiction is best at (recontextualizing societal situations through a theoretical lens).

The book deals with issues of racism, sexism, colonialism, war, competition, obsession, and gaming culture.

I wish I weren't at work. I would love to sit with the book and detail the tonal shifts, the passages which delighted me, the few instances which I did not enjoy the book, and on and on.

Wikipedia has a good write up of plot but goes on to spoil the whole ending, so I won't get into that, but the Wikipedia entry doesn't really get into a lot of what is subtextually there.

The Player of Games is the second of the Culture novels. Gurgeh, a brilliant, though decadent, game player from the Culture, is entrapped and blackmailed into unwittingly acting as a Special Circumstances agent in the brutal Empire of Azad. Their system of society and government is entirely based on an elaborate strategy game, Azad.