Others: Leaning positive The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer, and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game ... a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - a very possibly his death.
Genres: science fiction
Lists: …
Alfred Bester
1951 · 208 pages · 6 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveIn a world in which the police have telepathic powers, how do you get away with murder? Ben Reichs heads a huge 24th century business empire, spanning the solar system. He is also an obsessed, driven man determined to murder a rival. To avoid capture, in a society where murderers can be detected even before they commit their crime, is the greatest challenge of his life.
What made the match, strongest first
Barrington J. Bayley
1976 · 206 pages · 3 reviews
Others: Mostly positivePeder is not just a tailor, but a sartorial--a lowly trade that has now been elevated to an incredibly high standard. Sartorials compete fiercely in creating new apparel, and Peder has heard that the greatest of them all are in the Caeanic worlds, where clothing is a way of life and a philosophy of living. In Peder's sector, though, Caeanic clothing is prohibited, and he has fallen in with a band of pirates attempting to salvage a Caeanic freighter. In splitting the loot--clothes--Peder cleverly spots a legendary suit, one of five in the entire galaxy, and walks off with it. And no sooner does he put it on than his personality changes; he becomes self-assured, clever, successful--it almost seems as though the suit of clothes is wearing him! A whimsical tale of a suit of clothes that really makes the man.
What made the match, strongest first
Robert A. Heinlein
1985 · 385 pages · 1 review
Others: NegativeMission: retrieve the computer backups that can restore the sentient computer who masterminded the 2075 revolution that freed Luna.
What made the match, strongest first
David Gerrold
1972 · 279 pages · 1 review
Others: NegativeA stunning first novel that grapples with the definition of consciousness and what it is to be human. The novel is primarily a series of conversations between a computer programmer / psychologist and his invention, H.A.R.L.I.E., a self-programming computer that has total access to information and knowledge through something similar to the Internet. As the computer matures, the question of what it means to be human becomes a serious one for the financial backers of the project concerned with the cost of the program. If HARLIE is conscious then he can't be disconnected: That would be murder. However, to keep him connected and working for the company amounts to slavery. HARLIE must figure out a way to be both financially viable and free at the same time. HARLIE reappears in Gerrold's later Starwolf novels.
What made the match, strongest first
Adrian Tchaikovsky
2015 · 624 pages · 17 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveThe last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home. Following their ancestor's star maps, they discovered the greatest treasure of a past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New monsters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare. Now two civilisations are on a collision course and must fight to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
What made the match, strongest first
Stanisław Lem
1968 · 262 pages · 2 reviews
Others: MixedA six-man crew crash-lands on Eden, fourth planet from another sun. The men find a strange world that grows ever stranger, and everywhere there are images of death. The crew's attempt to communicate with this civilization leads to violence and to a cruel truth-cruel precisely because it is so human.
What made the match, strongest first
Loved itI enjoyed the gradual reveal of the true nature of the Azad Society outwardly very respectable but with a very unsavory underbelly. I like the layered deceptions that got GG to the games in the first place and there's a nice reveal at the end of the book concerning a certain drone of GG's acquaintance
MixedI did finish player of games it was fine it was too long it was bloated it takes over 100 pages even to get underway with the main plot.
