For November’s Book Club we will discussing The Girl with all the Gifts by M.R. Carey. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite. But they don’t laugh.

“Heartfelt, remorseless and painfully human…as fresh as it is terrifying. A jewel.” — Joss Whedon

What we discussed at the October’s Book Club meeting: The Player of Games (Culture #2) by Iain M. Banks. The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Jernau Morat Gurgeh. 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.

The main conflict in The Player of Games is one of moral extremes, cruel oppression versus enlightened coexistence. In the end the distinction becomes less clear as ends and means come into question. Banks uses the Culture to show us how good we could be but in the Player of Games he’s also showing us the worst of ourselves.

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