Gameplayers of Zan (1977)

An advanced offshoot of humanity keeps mostly to itself.

The mostly of course is good, otherwise you'd have not much of a plot for a novel if no-one ever went off the reservation and/or did bad things.

Plus, of course, your super people can have secrets of their own that they are not too keen on the normal people learning about.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2009/12/game-players-of-zan-m-foster.html ( )

I want to say some nice things about this book, especially because it tried so hard and was an honest, truthful heartfelt effort.

I liked the writing. The writing was the best part for me. He has many nice passages, and as one who is ever fascinated by the precision and lacunae of memory, here is a good example:

"The things that really stand out in your memory of the past were, at the time you recorded them, so ordinary and unprepossessing that they were truly unmemorable. Yet the things which you imagined to be stunning and ever-memorable cannot be recalled save as vague blurs, phantoms, mergings, and rubbings. We admit to a problem here: we fail to learn what is significant until its significance and immanence serves no purpose save to haunt us."

Proust, no. But he writes nicely and intelligently.

Rather than make sundry comments and observations of which many might be offered, I am going to cut to the two principal difficulties I have with the book.

1. This book would have been assisted by major editorial surgery. It needed to be more concise, and as it stands the (considerable) effort expended is not adequately repaid. Too long, at places repetitive, not sharp, not focused, poor pacing.

2. Coherent motives of the main characters are essential to the ultimate success of a book, no matter how well written.

Looming over the book is the tragic story of Maellenkleth, whose downfall we enter into in the difficult and grueling first chapter. We struggle to make sense of her bravery, her nobility, her devotion to a cause whose nature we will surely come to understand.

The question is posed directly in the text for our consideration, but it need not have been, as the question is core to the story:

Why did Maellenkleth venture on the mission of sabotage, when no use was being made of the artifacts in question, and her action served to alert the opposition to secret enterprises of which they were otherwise completely unaware?

Unfortunately, the motive for this venture is a risky and usually unsuccessful one in a work of fiction. I arrive at this motive, after several hundred pages and seemingly as many hours, and I can do nothing but bury my head in my hands. And try not to cry. ( )

I rate this as one of the best SF books - indeed, one of the best books, full stop - I have ever read. As far as I know this is the only one of Foster's books to be published in the UK, and now long since out of print - I had to buy the other six books of his that I own from the USA!
'Gameplayers' tells the story of a genetically engineered super race, the ler, who live in their own commune alongside humans. The ler lifestyle appears rural and primitive when contrasted with the humans' technologically advanced society - yet it is the ler who are the sophisticates, compared to an increasingly chaotic and uncontrollable humanity.

The ler know, however, that it is only a matter of time before the humans turn on them, and they have plans of their own... Now one of their leading game-players has turned up dead, outside the ler reservation, and both ler and humans have to find out what is happening.

The glory of this book is in the depth it manages to convey without becoming long or wordy. Ler society, with its customs and language, are superbly evoked without laboured explanation. The 'game' of the title is based on Conway's 'Life' game - now a mathematical field known as cellular automata - but is just a small part of the overall story. Ler language and marriage customs are equally fascinating.

If you have the chance to read this book, do so - it rates with the best work of better known SF writers such as Ursula LeGuin and Frank Herbert. There are two sequels, too - both excellent but, alas, even harder to find. I'm glad to see that the enlightened publisher has now re-issued these books - and Foster's others - in omnibus editions: maybe I will now replace my battered paperback copies. ( )