That's interesting because Azad in Arabic/Farsi/Kurdish means unrestrained, Independent, liberated, not imprisoned or enslaved or simply "free."

Love the book, it also show how far the Culture goes to intervene in others civilization. Even on their own people.

Reminds me of an old hacker saying "if you aren't cheating you aren't trying".

'The Player of Games' was the first Culture novel I read, courtesy of a colleague who was part of the book swap club I was in. What I enjoyed, and enjoy, about the Culture series is that whilst each is part of the series, the series universe is so vast that each book can stand by itself- you don't have to read any of the others unless you want to. 'The Player of Games' takes the idea of the game through many different levels. Even the identity of the narrator is turned into a guessing game. For Gurgeh, the lack of thrills in gaming and life in general in the Culture, leads him down a dark path whose dangers are far more than he bargained for. To then find out he had been literally played, his every move plotted, planned, and shaped so that he would take the assignment regardless, showed him that, as good as he was at playing games, there were others who were better, and didn't scruple at using people as game pieces to get the desired results.

I like Quinn’s little added passion in this video. He doesn’t usually make his own beliefs apparent but something was rather triggering to him on this topic.

I've always wondered how much it was influenced by The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse

The way Banks created tension in the train scene, when the other guy starts to suspect he has cheated, blew me away when i first read it. I was amazed at the way he solved the old problem of "how do you have conflict and tension in a utopian society" in that scene - in a different way than the usual method of setting the story on the fringes.

This book was my gateway into the Culture series. Really enjoyed it

I loved this book! The description of the game was so fascinating. The game was never entirely explained, but aspects of it were so weird. The biologicals. The room sized boards with terrain. I think I'm going to re-read this one.

Quinn, staying with The Culture, I’d love to hear your take on _Use Of Weapons._ This is my favourite of the Culture series, and Zakalwe is probably one of my favourite literary characters.

This is one of Elon Musk's favourite books, so much that his ex Grimes released a song called "Player of Games" and there was an attempt to make a film of it in the 1990s though I doubt that there will be a Culture based series for many years.

One of my all time favourite books. I'm a massive fan of all the Culture books as well as all of Ian Banks work. This was the second book I read after Consider Phlebas which I think is the best intro to the Culture.

I just wanna say thank you for everything you talk about on this channel. I grew up on the rez, so a lot of significant sci-fi pop culture went past my radar. Thanks to you Quinn, I feel like I'm catching up amd learning so much about hidden themes and meaningful messaging. Thank you

I was pleasantly surprised to see "Uploaded 2 hours ago". I discovered the series last year and have just finished reading the last of them. It's sad that such a talented author passed away before his time, but it's great to see that people are still talking about the Culture books :)

Player of Games is my favorite Culture book. Consider Phlebas was good, but this is the one that actually hooked me. I'm glad you're making videos about it, no one else is and it's been my favorite sci-fi civilization for years now.

Great Overview. It took me three tries to get through Consider Phlebas, but I breezed through this one quite quickly because it is so well written, and engaging. I would go so far as to say this is a better introduction to the Culture series as a whole than the first book.

I love this book. The way Banks makes you think about Empires and AI and our own society here through discovering Azad together with the Culture main character is truly fantastic. Very well written, I laughed and was horrified and fascinated chapter by chapter. There is also quite a bit of game theory in this book, and as Quinn mentioned, the connection between that and our reality. “A guilty system recognizes no innocents." is my favourite quote from this one; one which will make sense if you read the book and connect some dots to our current society. Loved the review, Quinn! When I need new amazing Sci-Fi to read, I always check your channel first for recommendations, and oh boy, thanks for those because I loved them. You are a fantastic source ♥

Best part of finding a new channel like this is now I have years of old content to catch up on.

Quinn, I absolutely love everything youve done thus far! Now that you’re exploring the Culture universe, I would be over the moon if you did an in-depth review and analysis of Use of Weapons.

This and Use of Weapons were my top two Culture reads

Thank you, Quinn! One of my favorite aspects of the book was just how Gurgeh strategy to beat the emperor was described. To this day it's still one of the most Cultur-esque things I remember from the series!

I haven't read sci-fi for years then started watching your channel and you have reignited my love of sci-fi!! Thanks so much for your content!!! I always get excited when I see you posted!!

I just had meniscus surgery, being stuck in bed for weeks sucks. But I’m so stoked that you dropped a video!! It made my day

Definitely will have to find this one. I always loved the metaphor of how life is just a game. Your level of involvement effects the world around you and “a simple role of the dice” can instantly change the outcome. No matter how well you stack your deck, a simple coin toss can make your tower fall Ya I know I’m trying to hard for a simple comment! Just love your content

In the end, the lesson from "The Player of Games", was that Jernau Morat Gurgeh himself was but a piece that Flere-Imsaho was playing.

Excellent analysis. It is one of my favorite books. i read it first as a student and then again once I had spent years in a legal career and it hit more powerfully the second time. In some ways law is set up as a game and if you pay attention you can see how unfairly the system operates. We are not so different from the Empire of Azad...

I love sci-fi like this. Deep exploration of systems and people. I may start this series thanks to you. Thanks for the quality video.

I remember a race, in a Sci fi story, that had a society based on chance, sometimes gambling with your life. Every doorway used, calculated the odds of whether it turned into a guillotine & sliced you up, or not. The odds changed on where the doorway led, they dropped if it was a route to a high ranking job, or position, so less survived.

IMB.....probably the greatest SF novelist ever. Love his stuff.

What a great video to watch. And just before work too. Thank you

I'm loving these videos about The Culture Series. I haven't read Player of Games yet, but I've added it to my list of books to read.

This was Banks first full-length Culture novel and a powerful introduction to it. I have to say that Flere Imsaho is probably the most fascinating sentient drone in the whole Culture universe.

My favorite book of the series... Thanks for your insights!

Your channel and messages are fantastic. Thank you for being honest.

That, Sir, was the best summing up and recommendation of PoG I have ever heard or read.

I love the culture series and this is at the top of my list of culture books. Among my favorite books of all time. The metaphor, the tension, the scenes Banka builds, the game itself. A masterpiece.

Recently re read this as part of MDC's Culture read along, I'd always liked it, but this time around I was really blown away by it. Just the quality of the writing, the way it hammers it's ideas home and how much fun it is. Almost as good as Use of Weapons.

Im so happy i discovered you friend, your like " Yo wanna listen bout other universes? " Ur my new routine, I listen to u on my way from work to Home, ur videos are best after dark. Thank you for your work.

The Player of Games remains one of my favourite books of all time. Stunning idea and so concisely delivered.

I liked the idea that language heavily influences thinking.

Listening to your video reminded me about how often Philip K. Dick tackles this theme in his fiction!... From Solar Lottery (a regime seemingly based on luck to decide who is to rule)... to Our Friends from Frolix 8 (a galactic-empire-sized game where people and regions are the stake)... through The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (hallucinatory game to escape a painful state of affairs as colonists on Mars), Galactic Pot-Healer (word games in a society devoid of incentives and purpose for many a commoner), A Maze of Death (featuring a sort of pre-Internet search engine in a world simulator),... Thanks so much for bringing this work to mind! Now I must give it a go :)

Love your videos! Would adore to hear about more of the Starflier in the Commonwealth series!

This is the first video of your that I've come across (thanks, /r/TheCulture!). I like the way you present the point of the novel and I'd love to see a deeper dive on this book (or others). You get it, and you present the social commentary in an accessible way and it'd be great to see you go below the surface

Also, while you're looking at Iain M. Banks, I would definitely recommend reading his Iain Banks novel "the Wasp Factory" it's not sci fi, but it is sooo good!

Thanks, Quinn, again . This is my second fave of the Culture series, the top one being the Use of Weapons.

POG is a little slow and unusual among the culture novels in how it focuses so heavily on one character. Most of the culture novels have several story lines with vastly different perspectives intertwined, but here we are following a single Culture citizen throughout the novel and a single linear story. Most of my favorite parts of the Culture novels are the crowning moments of awesome. Normally these take form as conflicts between ships and minds, but one of my favorites is in POG when Gurgeh has all but given up on winning a game until he learns what his opponent is watching on TV at night.

Had to exit as soon as I figured out what book this was about. Currently listening to it. Great work on the videos!

YOU bring the story to life very well, makes me want to revisit this novel.

Just finished it, great book! Looking forward to reading the rest of the series

This is the first book in the Culture Series I read. From there I went out and devoured the rest. Ian Banks was a great writer!

I would love to see you cover the Dark Eden series. Excellent world building and the society that springs up from the inbreeding of a single family is explored in fascinating detail

The player of games was the first sci fi book I read when I was like 12, it remains one of my favourite reads and one I go back to time and time again :)

i just finished this reading book last night and started reading Use of Weapons, thank you for introducing me to the Culture series

loving your culture lore vids, thank you x

I very rarely reread books but I think Im going to make an exception for this, this review reminded me of so much I had forgotten

Please do: Surface Detail and Matter. Matter features a few scenes that really speak to how fast and rough SC moves (it even has a "Trench Run"), when they want to. Surface Detail, is just. Well, crossing my fingers. Oh the Hydrogen Sonata was excellent as well.

Another book l have to read , you my friend have never made a suggestion did not completely enjoy. I appreciate you , your channel and your thoughts. Thank you.

One of the best most capturing books I’ve ever read

YAS! I love that you are doing more Culture stuff. Player of Games is great.

I grew up in dc and had friends whose parents worked in think tanks. Big international politics think tanks would make literal board games which allowed them to figure out what the best way to respond to a particular scenario is eg, a terrorist group setting off a dirty bomb. Different players would take the role of different countries and this would act as a sort of simulation to allow the think tanks to develop policy. The games were complex in a way that makes warhammer look like checkers, I could never figure it out. Later in life when I learned about cybernetics in college I had the horrific realization that every single facet of human life is getting gamified and simulated, from our social sphere to our economy to international politics. That’s what this book reminds me of, I will check it out Thank you Quinn

yay! i have been hoping you would look at this one. Player of Games is a favorite of mine.

I just finished Use of Weapons and it was AWESOME, definitely my favorite Culture so far (I've just read 1, 2, and 3)

I’m so excited about a discord channel! What a lovely Holiday gift you have made us all.

I'm glad I tried it. I'm halfway through the first book and enjoying it. I was intimidated by its length, but it's easy to read and follow. Each chapter poses a mystery to be opened later. Without a good story to keep me company, I would fall back into depression and drug abuse.

Thanks I been waiting for another Quinn video.

Yesssss. A quinn vid. Just in time for my break

This was the first Banks/Culture novel I read. So good.

Always here for culture content

The only time I get spoiled is when I watch your videos. Thank you Quinn.

I recently discovered your channel. I love you.

I read this maybe 30 years ago, and it remains my all time favourite book.

Thanks Quinn, again a new book that caught my interest ! Maybe next time, you can cover something about the strange and mysterious worlds of Jack Vance. He is one of my favorite SF authors and he has influenced many other writers.

YES! This is my favourite Culture-book

This was the first culture novel I read, and it got me hooked. I highly recommend it.

Interestingly enough, there's a philosopher who argued that language is comparable to a game that we play (a language game). Our capacity to communicate through language is what allows us to reach abstractions, shared ideas, and thus a culture as opposed to a mere community. Which means that our society too is basically a game we play. A game of words.

Will watch later as I've got this out of the library to re-read it after reading it decades ago.

Excellent Brother!!!! Thank you. We need a Jenau Morat Gurgeh! Or an event like his win to hopefully wake more of us up.

I have really enjoyed watching Quinns growth and success. Dude, don't hide your face. lol.

Great book. Great video. I think one of the points of the book is that the mentality the excels at playing games has to view the world in a reductionistic, mechanistic way. This puts you on a potential path towards cruelty and using others as instruments. So the Player of Games is a oddball who doesn't really fit in the culture - the machines come right out and tell him this. He is (unlike everyone else in Culture) always male and only attracted to females, for example. In the Azod he encounters an extreme society of people *like him* and has to confront the worst manifestation of his own type of personality. It's his challenge to be like the Azod enough to win the game, but to still be enough Culture that he feels what is wrong about them and opposes them. There's an interesting bit about how the higher you go in Azod culture the more sadistic you must be. The Minds of the culture had to find one of their own with the right mentality to win.

Love the book, love the video and love how you have ebolved with your content

All this time wrestling with life as a stage and now I've got to start all over again thanks a lot scifi

Every book in the culture series tackles a different "unfair" aspect of the human experience. I love these books for the thoughts they spawn.

So interesting! I wonder if this was influenced at all by the Borges story "The Lottery in Babylon"? I really need to check these books out.

We've missed you Quinn, welcome back... -Sarasti and the Captain

@Quinn's Ideas can you do enchantress from the stars? the idea of immature/young civalations at different levels coming into contact with a advanced one was interesting and i would like to hear your take on it

I been lost without quinns updates

Love your channel !!! Fairness is an illusion as is Freedom ! ✌️💖☺️

Amazing book. Probably my favorite Culture novel.

One of my favorites in The Culture series

Actually pausing this vid @ 3:10 or so. Gonna give this a read and return!

This book was my gateway to sci fi. I will always have a soft spot for it!

Freaking KZfaq finally recommends a Quinn video after he uploaded 4 vids in 8 days.

Sounds like Seto Kaiba's dream world.

Totally agree in highly recommending this novel! I read it about 16 years or so ago and loved it. A great plot twist and I loved the political commentary too and how it managed to steer clear of the doomer pessimism which sadly has become all too common in recent years. Definitely a nice change from both kitsch idealism and the bleak pessimism which has reacted against that. A more solid approach, which is much needed in science fiction!

This is one of very few _TPoG_ reviews that focus on, I think, obvious way in which it speaks of real world society. At the same time it provides, especially for a Culture novices, a fine introduction to _that_ far more rational society, warts and all.

love this book. Do more Culture GSVs

Great breakdown. Player of Games took me a few tries to get into, but I tore through the back half once it really got going. Side question: What's the artwork at the 2:50 mark? That's a really fantastic image.

than you Quinn, another book to read on my list

Hi there, I just stumbled upon this channel(or rather the youtube algorithm, suggested it) and I enjoy it a lot. One thing I would strongly recommend to any fan of Sci-fi, who wants to read novels off the beaten path is to check out the Strugatsky brothers! My guess, as to why they are so unknown, is that they wrote Sci-Fi in the USSR and "everything from USSR equals bad" in the western world, so they never got any recognition outside Russia. In my opinion they are among the best sci-fi writers of all time, and I have read a lot of sci-fi authors. I mean no disrespect to Herbert, Asimov, Zelazny, Philip Dick, Silverberg, Vonnegut, Stanislav Lem and even Lovecraft and Stephen King. They all have wonderful books and I've read several books from each of these authors, but I swear Strugatsky brothers' works are on par and often better. Check out their "Roadside Picnic", "The Doomed City" or "Space Mowgli"(I hate the en caption translation of this one, the original caption was just "The Kid"), or actually any other novel or short story they wrote. I have read most of their work and I haven't read a bad one yet.

One of my favorites so far