For someone (i.e. me) who hasn’t read any of the Culture series, or even any Iain Banks, Player of Games is a real eye-opener. Banks is a deft and imaginative writer. This is a series I’m eager to explore further. But as a commentary on games from thirty years ago, it doesn’t have much to offer.
But you will never find giggling ladies in nightclubs playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Not with that attitude. :)
Off to read the rest.
Player of Games is my least favorite of the Culture series that I’ve read. For whatever reason, it just felt like a stereotypical D&D quest. On the other hand, I was quite fond of Consider Phlebas. If you ever get around to reading another in the series, I’d recommend giving it a shot.
I certainly agree here. But I’d say Use of Weapons is one of my favorites. It is dark, very dark, but it really shows Banks’ writing chops.
Interesting. I’ve started it several times but have never made it over the hump, so to speak, to be fully engaged in the book. My last attempt was several years ago, so I guess I should give it another try. I’m currently reading Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time, which is very engaging.
I felt the same way about Consider Phlebas. But that was after the finger thing. It still sticks in my mind. It was a truly horrifying bit of reading.
Really? Okay. But the point wasn’t whether the games of one group were better than another group. That’s the conceit of the author. The point is that the author, whom I love, simplified games in general. Or do you believe that the Culture is a real entity and the games are actually real games?
Edit: While we’re pretty laid back here, if your first ever post is full of invective, you are doing yourself a disservice. Just my take on it.
Only read one Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, and found it a letdown. Not awful, necessarily, just thoroughly unmemorable - didn’t find the characters interesting and therefore found it hard to care what they were doing. Maybe I should write it off as a bad start, skip to this one.
I’ve also only read Consider Phlebas. I liked it well enough, but it wasn’t exceptional. Solid execution, decent concept, but I thought one of the core concepts, the sentient AI often comprising a ship, was better done in another book I read around the same time, that being Anne Leckie’s Ancillary Justice.
Banks focuses more on the ship AI in some other Culture novels such as Excession or Surface Detail.
I do remember finding an anecdote of ship AIs being memorable, actually - the odd sense of humor they seemed to share, and giving themselves terrible pun names.
Hey I intend to go back to the series at some point, just haven’t done it yet. Merely observing that two books I read in close order, and dealing with some similar thematic elements, I found one far superior in execution.
Not that Phlebas was bad, just that it didn’t have as much interesting things to say about that part.
Use of Weapons is so good. Takes a little getting used to because of the way the two narratives flow but damn, so good.
sleight of hand
Okay, I’m keeping score for Consider Phlebas and Use of Weapons. May the best Culture novel win.
Aww, the dude deleted his post and ran off! He was yelling at me on Twitter, but I just can’t track a conversation using Tweets. Ugh. It’s like sending a text using a numberpad.
The ships name themselves? That’s pretty cool.
-Tom
Ugh. My pet theory is that Banks woke up with that compellingly disgusting scenario in his head, and, deciding he just had to get rid of it, and because Consider Phlebas is episodic, he figured he’d just go ahead and stick it in the book. I’d have preferred he put it in a short story I’d never heard of.
I loved other bits and pieces of it. The scene with the pirate captain playing “Damage” was fantastic.
Use of Weapons is just extraordinary, though, front to back.
It’s been years and years since I read it, but I seem to remember that in Complicity, Banks describes some sort of over-complex strategy game that even runs while you’re not playing, the kind of thing that sounds cool but probably would not be any fun to actually play.
Casting a vote for Excession next. It’s my favourite of the whole series for many reasons, not least of which how Banks manages to make the conversations between ship minds so interesting and characterful.
“He spends a few fascinating pages explaining the ecology of a fire-based planet, where most other sci-fi would just say lava and leave it at that.”
While we’re on that, this is a charming reminder of the fun I used to have reading Banks back at the start, but also exemplifies the (imo) terrible bloat that really mired his later output, especially from Matter onwards. Yes, I’m the guy (nay, fan) who wishes his output was half as long and twice as ‘good’. And by that I mean returning to leaner and more pacy storytelling method, like most of his non-SF output.
Must be what happens when you’re so big there’s no-one left to say no. I’m looking at you Ridley.
Complicity had two games, I think the other one was some kind of a massively multiplayer flight sim?
But yeah, Banks was a big into all kinds of games, which occasionally showed up in the books. There’s a Banks interview about games that I think is pretty cool. (Wait, his favorite Civ was Civ 3? Forget I said anything…)
Warning, personal opinion incoming!
Use of Weapons is definitely the best culture novel. Hands down, no question about it. It has definitely the best structure, as well as thematic consistence. It’s also one of the human-focused books, as opposed to ship-focused. I like the ship focused books more, tbh, since that’s what makes the series so special, but Use of Weapons is just too well written, as others have said.
Consider Phlebas is the first book in the series and I think it shows, for the worse. I liked it but it’s somewhat too militaristic (the only Culture novel set in an all out war) and has weird concessions to the place of humans the other books frame in more interesting ways. Which is to say the woman climbing mountains in Consider Phlebas (and everything she represents) sucks and is contrary to The Culture series ethos and worldbuilding. Plus it’s so on the nose it’s embarrassing. It’s a decently written book, but it has little special in it except the genesis for the world building the series would build upon. Very formulaic in theme and structure.