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The Player of Games
Iain M.Banks
Internet Top 100

Quickly moving, hard-to-stop reading, deep and subtle adventure. Always enough mystery and suspense to inspire turning another page. Always more fascinating environments to imagine, challenging psychlogical puzzles to unravel. A feint within a feint within a feint.

And beyond the purely entertainment value, many social and philosophical ideas add depth and a further dimension. "To glory in the defeat of another, to need that purchased pride, is to show you are incomplete and inadequate to start with." "A guilty system recognizes no innocents." "In short, it's all about dominance...one thing that empire's are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness."

The book jacket calls this "a science fiction novel like none other" but it reminds me more of the saying, "We can see further now because we're standing on the shoulders of giants." The basic structure of the game Azad echos with images from Hermann Hesse's classic novel, Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game). The irreverent, independent androids harken back to Rudy Rucker's Software. The sex changing humans evoke memories from Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness. Even James Clavell's Shogun seems represented.

The science fiction collective consciousness library of ideas builds on itself, grows and evolves. Player of Games adds immensely to this progression.

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