IN Iain M Banks’s sci-fi novel The Player of Games, one of the best game players in the galaxy, Gurgeh, is sent to play a fiendishly complex game called “Azad” on an alien planet. 

Azad is played on a vast three-dimensional board with a dizzying array of cards, pieces, and strategies. The alien civilisation venerate it so highly that they are known as the Empire of Azad, and they hold a regular tournament where the overall winner is crowned emperor.
 
Gurgeh has been sent by his civilisation in an attempt to destabilise the aliens. He has only a few years to learn how to play, using his knowledge of all other known games in co-ordination with mind-enhancing drugs. The novel hinges on his growing addiction to the game of Azad, to the extent that he overlooks the wider games in which he is just a small part.
 
The novel is Banks at his satirical best. Gurgeh is from The Culture, a future “post-scarcity” civilisation run by benevolent AIs called “Minds.” The Culture don’t officially intervene in other alien worlds, but in this novel they unofficially they send Gurgeh to undermine. 

In contrast, the Empire of Azad is not dissimilar to our present society: a strict hierarchy with vast suffering and cruelty. Banks manages to make the reader sympathise with Azad, understanding its citizens’ outrage as “superior” beings with unfair advantages condescend to play games with their civilisation at no risk to themselves. Banks allows for ambiguity in Gurgeh’s motives: is he doing it for the love of the game or to prevent the suffering of others?