The E-book Membership has been studying Iain M. Banks’s The Participant of Video games
Colin McPherson/Corbis by way of Getty Photographs
The New Scientist E-book Membership moved from the dystopian near-future imagined by Grace Chan in Each Model of You in November to the utopian far-future imagined by Iain M. Banks in The Participant of Video games for our December learn – and it’s been fairly the hit with members.
Set within the intergalactic civilisation of the Tradition, The Participant of Video games follows the adventures and travails of Gurgeh, a grasp sport participant who’s inveigled into taking over the barbaric Empire of Azad at its personal sport. Also called Azad, this advanced and all-pervasive sport is so vital to the folks of Azad that the winner turns into emperor. Can Gurgeh presumably compete, when he’s solely a newbie? What are the secrets and techniques that Azad and the Tradition are hiding? It is a wrap-up of members’ ideas on the guide, so the solutions to those questions, and a number of spoilers, will observe. Learn on provided that you’re accomplished!
The very first thing to say is that this wasn’t a primary learn for many people: 36 per cent of members, together with me, stated they’d already learn this explicit Banks novel. And many us are large followers of Banks, and are nonetheless mourning the truth that there are not any new novels – sci-fi or literary – to return from this glorious author. “Oh, I nonetheless miss Iain. I’ve by no means learn his final guide, The Quarry, as after that there shall be no new ones to learn. I suppose it’s about time now, I’m attending to the age the place I would by no means learn it!” writes Paul Oldroyd on our Fb group. “Similar right here – I’ve by no means completed The Hydrogen Sonata!” provides Emma Weisblatt.
I feel I’ve learn most of Banks’s books, though not for years. The Participant of Video games was considered one of my first, so, given my horrible reminiscence, I got here to it pretty recent. I discovered it an absolute delight – I’m certain there’s tons happening behind the scenes, however Banks offers the air of easy brilliance to the reader. His contact is so mild, so naturally humorous. (I adored, for instance, the small element of the “proto-sentient Styglian enumerator”, an animal that counts all the things it sees. It begins by counting folks, of which there are 23. “Then it started counting articles of furnishings, after which it targeting legs.”)
However there’s additionally a lot to consider, from the character of life in a utopia the place there are not any challenges left, to what it means to be a human in a universe the place huge Minds take cost of all the things. And that’s to not point out the thrill of the plot – I used to be virtually shouting on the web page when Gurgeh was tempted into dishonest on the sport of Laid low with Mawhrin-Skel, and I used to be completely swept up within the Azad video games. This was an actual win for me, and I’m going to return and reread numerous different Iain M. Banks as a post-Christmas deal with.
One side of the guide that I believed Banks dealt with significantly properly was the precise video games Gurgeh performs. It’s not simple to invent a futuristic sport and have it ring true, and I felt he nailed this, giving us sufficient particulars about Azad (and different video games) for them to look actual, however not getting slowed down within the nitty-gritty. This was positively a side that additionally members. “The sport [Azad] was a illustration, an encapsulation if you’ll, of the empire,” says Elaine Li. “Extra typically it was in all probability a critique of Chilly Struggle politics.”
Judith Lazell wasn’t so certain – “I simply took them at face worth, I’m afraid,” she says. Niall Leighton factors out fairly how deep this concept of game-playing goes within the guide. “After which, not least, is the sport through which Gurgeh is a pawn being performed by the narrator, in a sport with no guidelines, through which ends justify the means, whose rounds final many years, whose strikes we’re left to guess at simply as a lot as we’re within the different video games, and through which there might certainly be no ends.” Certainly!
A small apart: once I spoke to Banks’s pal and fellow sci-fi author Ken MacLeod, Ken informed me proudly that it was really him who got here up with the guide’s remaining title. Banks had needed to name it The Sport Participant. I feel The Participant of Video games is a lot better!
Now, to what we considered Gurgeh as a personality. “Gurgeh wouldn’t be a really good particular person if he had not been purchased up within the tradition – he’s a little bit of a creep, a bit self-obsessed. I hope he realized one thing from his adventures,” says Matthew Campbell by e-mail. I’m undecided we’re meant to love him, significantly – he’s a disaffected, boastful cheat, in spite of everything – however I positively discovered myself rooting for him because the story progressed.
Steve Swan, nonetheless, wasn’t as grabbed by the narrative. He put the guide apart “on the level [Gurgeh] was being roughed up” – I’m assuming this was when Mawhrin-Skel meets him on his means dwelling. “Intelligent folks, particularly those that assume they’re, could make the largest errors,” says Steve. “Gurgeh ought to have seen previous the [drone’s] ruse, however his vanity and private needs obtained in the best way. What’s that outdated saying? – he made his mattress and needed to lay in it. No sympathy from me I’m afraid!” Steve felt that Gurgeh fell for Mawhrin-Skel’s manipulation too simply, and it “prompted the disbelief I had put aside to crumble”.
Niall has a special tackle why Gurgeh makes his fateful choice to cheat. “The best way I learn this passage was that his thoughts was being tampered with by Mawhrin-Skel utilizing its effectors. It wasn’t his free will. It was the drone influencing him to the purpose the place he might assume he’d made the choice himself,” says Niall. “He’s manipulated by Particular Circumstances from begin to end. To me, Gurgeh isn’t the titular participant. He’s being performed.” Whereas I feel that’s positively true general, I noticed Gurgeh’s dishonest as a really human response to temptation, quite than one other manipulation… however I’m going to have to take a look at this part once more, because it’s an attention-grabbing supposition.
Whereas Paul Jonas didn’t discover Gurgeh the sport participant “as partaking because the mercenary function in Think about Phlebas or Use of Weapons”, he did assume the set-up with the drone was “pretty credible and tempting for a high ‘sportsman’”. “It’s all a part of the hero avoiding the decision to journey for some time. In any case, why would Gurgeh throw up all his safety and luxury with no little nudge?”
Our sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson had tipped The Participant of Video games as a great way into the work of Iain M. Banks, and after this reread I positively agree. We’re step by step launched to the universe of the Tradition, not with an enormous dump of exposition, however with small particulars about drones and Ships and Orbitals and the like.
We get to slowly perceive that this can be a post-scarcity civilisation the place (virtually) something goes. I beloved Gurgeh’s dialog with Hamin, an Azadian elder, on this subject. Hamin can’t perceive why there’s virtually no crime, and virtually nothing is forbidden, within the Tradition – and he’s informed about slap-drones, that are employed within the occasion of a homicide. What does it do? “Follows you round and makes certain you by no means do it once more,” says Gurgeh. Is that each one, asks Hamin? “What extra would you like? Social dying, Hamin; you don’t get invited to too many events.”
Paul Jonas already had an concept of the utopian worlds of the Tradition when he picked up The Participant of Video games. “[It] builds that world once more very subtly by following Gurgeh and his boredom and lack of problem. Anybody who needs a home like his on a wet mountain can have one. The drones are launched simply as personalities and Ai’s in their very own proper. We’re re launched to ‘Contact’, the Tradition’s service that manages contact with different civilisations and can be its navy and intelligence service,” says Paul. “That’s so nice to name it ‘Contact’ quite than ministry for defence or conflict! So humanitarian. So utopian. However as Adam Roberts says, utopias are troublesome to write down as they develop into boring, simply as Gurgeh has develop into bored by his life. The Tradition’s problem is to unfold their utopianism to different cultures by primarily subtly interfering of their societies.”
A few of our members have been digging into what it’d imply to stay in a utopia. “Gurgeh is an individualist dwelling in a utopia of individualists the place the collective work is generally accomplished by Minds and drones and sentient spaceships,” ponders Paul. “Gurgeh by no means appears to work in a crew of different people.”
Niall factors out that Gurgeh could be “odious”, however he’s a product of his anarchist society, and Banks is out to look at “the boundary between individualist anarchism and collectivist anarchism”.
“Gurgeh’s clearly an individualist, and I reject individualist anarchist philosophies partially as a result of they’re an excuse for behaving like Gurgeh,” says Niall. “One of many Tradition’s issues is that there’s nothing to have interaction its human folks. It’s additionally static, which doesn’t assist, and the consequence is a predictable ennui. It’s maybe value flagging up that this guide was written earlier than Octavia Butler positioned the significance of change in a utopia on the forefront of her considering, nevertheless it’s been considered no less than since H. G. Wells.”
For Matthew Campbell, it’s only the Tradition ambassador to Azad, Shohobohaum Za, who appears “to be actually vitally alive and having fun with life”. “In distinction, Gurgeh and the Azadians are every caught in their very own small worlds, every in their very own means,” he says. “The confrontation between [Azadian emperor] Nicosar and Gurgeh in direction of the top sums it up (and presciently echoes political debates at present – sorry not sorry if you’re a MAGA conservative) – one angrily obsessed with his empire however seeing it solely from a really slender egocentric perspective, and figuring out that it’s all doomed; the opposite having no strongly articulated beliefs in any respect, unable to muster a defence of his utopia, he’s by no means had to consider it.”
There’s much more we might all say concerning the Tradition and The Participant of Video games, and if you wish to proceed the dialogue, do be part of members over on Fb.
It’s time, in the meantime, to maneuver onto our first learn of 2026: January’s guide membership choose and winner of the Arthur C. Clarke award for science fiction in 2025, Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot. That is informed from the attitude of Annie, who’s a intercourse robotic. She is owned by a not-very-nice man, and this novel does go to some darkish locations. However as chair of judges for the Clarke award, Andrew Butler, stated when asserting its win, it’s “a tightly-focused first particular person account of a robotic designed to be the proper companion who struggles to develop into free”. You may strive a taster with an extract from the opening right here and a chunk by Sierra Greer on what it was like to write down from the attitude of a intercourse robotic right here. And right here’s Emily H. Wilson’s assessment – she actually favored it.
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