The Player of Games

293 pages

English language

Published Nov. 1, 1997 by HarperPrism.

ISBN:
978-0-06-105356-6
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OCLC Number:
35280627

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4 stars (31 reviews)

The Player of Games is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1988. It was the second published Culture novel. A film version was planned by Pathé in the 1990s, but was abandoned.

22 editions

Great

4 stars

Even though it was a re-read I read this within 3 days. The story is very captivating. The second of the Culture novels we get a deep dive into it and then we get another deep dive into another alien culture which is quite imaginative. At the heart of this novel is the thrill of games. A lot of people can relate to that nowadays and yet, there aren't that many genre books focussed on that. Although this was written at the end of the 80s the use of they as a single pronoun wasn't yet a thing in literature and the view of gender presented in this book is quite binary (and also heteronormative). Even though gender relations and policy play a big role in Azad and are discussed in the novel. Well, you can't have it all, I guess. A must-read for all sci-fi fans.

Review of "L' homme des jeux" on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

La bonne SF distrait, la grande SF questionne.
je pense que c'est sur ce préambule qu'il faut entamer cette note de lecture de l'Homme des jeux.
En effet, dans ce roman, on est distrait, mais on est aussi instruit, sur des choses fondamentales : le rôle essentiel du langage et du jeu en tant que modèles de civilisation, l'humanité des machines et l'inhumanité des êtres vivants, et tant d'autre chose.
Mais commençons donc par un rapide résumé.
Dans la Culture, Jernau Gurgueh est un joueur-de-jeu, un homme habile à tous les jeux et reconnu, dans cette civilisation de l'abondance, pour cette qualité. On pourrait même dire qu'il en est un champion. Et comme tout champion, il s'ennuie, seul, sur le sommet inaccessible de sa gloire. C'est pourquoi, à la suite d'un enchaînement de circonstances spécial, se retrouve-t-il entre les mains de Contact, le sous-ensemble de la Culture désireux d'entrer en …

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