The Gamesman

by Barry N. Malzberg

A staggering vision of Earth in the not-so-distant future. . .

In a controlled and mechanical world, the only reality is fear and killing boredom. The only escape from mind-blowing monotony is the Game, with predictable rules of stimulus and response. And if you pit yourself against the Games Master, you may lose your last vestige of sanity. Or your life!

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia

188 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1975

About the author

Barry Nathaniel Malzberg was an American writer and editor, most often of science fiction and fantasy.

He had also published as:
Mike Barry (thriller/suspense)
K.M. O'Donnell (science fiction/fantasy)
Mel Johnson (adult)
Howard Lee (martial arts/TV tie-ins)
Lee W. Mason (adult)
Claudine Dumas (adult)
Francine di Natale (adult)
Gerrold Watkins (adult)
Eliot B. Reston

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Gamesman is one of Malzberg's longest science fiction novels, though it's from 1975, one of his most productive years. It's a Dystopian metaphor about a near-future world in which the Game is the bread-and-circuses/Rollerball entertainment that is the only alternative to killing boredom. As is most of his work, it's a Kafka-esque world, with cynical, insecure, paranoid uncertainties dominating the philosophy, and Malzberg is in his element with long, rambling sentences that look like they'd collapse if you look at them for too long. For example, in the very first sentence of the novel, which takes up the majority of the page, we find this parenthetical interlude "(sometimes I think of myself in the first person and other times I think of myself in the third; it is this shift of perspective, of the panels of attribution, which makes me the complex and valuable human being which I am)". And it goes on and on... a little Malzberg goes a long way... it's a good read, but not among my favorites; it's overly similar to some of his other books.

[Brian Boutwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

You finish the book. The work is over but it's dirty work reading Malzberg. He has a way of sticking to you like some adhesive residue that you can't quite get to rub off your fingers or oil or dirt that gets stained to your hands. Malzberg is dark, multifaceted and full of conviction. He believed in his mission. Malzberg is good. Read him.

[iambehindu · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We’re just a couple of motes intersecting in a void; our lives and relationships are defined by the roles we play.”

Once you’ve read a handful of Malzberg’s work, you begin to recognize his recurring themes, his particular type of protagonist, and his consistent approach to dialogue—balancing the unreliable internal voice with the external world. Like Kafka, Malzberg often depicts an ambiguous totalitarian structure presiding over a hopeless, jaded population. His protagonists, however, tend to be exceptions to the rule. With all their borderline-insane idiosyncrasies, they summon the courage to face the impossible, to seek truth, and to defy a corrupted power structure. And, presuming the theme holds, they always fail.

The Gamesman aligns with Malzberg’s other novels like The Cross of Fire and In the Enclosure, in which the protagonist endlessly searches for understanding, convinced that conditions can be changed, that an identifiable force can be opposed and conquered. Yet, like Kafka, the abstracted angst prevailing their world only intensifies in tandem with their efforts. What begins as a determined struggle for change becomes a mere drop of water on a forest fire.

The story is likely an exhibition for a condition of life, and given the presence of tyrannical malevolence, The Game itself may serve as nothing more than a public distraction—a bureaucratic trap designed to further cement rulership. It is a mechanism of complete self-entrapment, where the ego dive is so central to achieving victory that it reveals a psychological truth: obsessing over one’s problems, drowning in the conditions of self, only serves to exacerbate them. Malzberg’s characters are frequently imprisoned by their own rumination. Every aspect of their introspection is contaminated by a seething aspiration—to improve, to win, to be sexually competent, desirable, successful, to lead and be followed—only for that drive to collapse inward, folding back on itself like a dying star.

I remember reading Beyond Apollo immediately after Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr. and noticed similarities—the bleak portrayal of humanity and the relentless, almost persecutory dialogue. Selby’s characters, like Malzberg’s, are deeply flawed, often immoral, but unmistakably human. Malzberg’s protagonists are always likely to be atomized by a form of technological estrangement, unable to place themselves into the world. Which, in turn, is an existential comment on humanity’s vexation with placing itself into the universal condition.

No matter where one ultimately lands on Malzberg’s work, it’s evident that he is, and will remain, one of the most singular voices in science fiction. He takes the genre’s tropes and shatters them with a hammer of existential stasis. There are no galaxies awaiting exploration, no preternatural terrains in Malzberg’s fiction. His worlds are black grids of interlaced dread. Yet, despite their defining lassitude and pessimism, they are often satirical, humorous, and—at times—capable of delivering faint but strikingly human moments of optimism.

Malzberg’s oeuvre isn’t without its flaws, but I can’t help but feel shortchanged by how consistently overlooked his work has been. In some alternate world, Barry might have given us a 400 to 600-page award-winning science fiction epic. His subtle world-building is, at times, so brilliantly original that I’m left tantalized by what could have been.

Still, I’m grateful for what he did deliver, given the conditions.

[B (Zigzagoon) · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Gamesman is that pseudo-intellectual incel who sits next to you in literature class and answers all of the professor’s questions with long, rambling sentences that are somehow both thematically on point and entirely lacking in originality, heart, or true life experience, like they were pulled from Sparknotes and reconstructed using a thesaurus to make said incel sound well-read, when in reality many of the thesaurus’d words don’t even make sense in the context of the sentence and he just can’t stop thinking about sex and oh god is that jizz on his pants?

… damn, I just pulled a Barry N. Malzberg there.

Kidding (kind of). Don’t come for me, guys. I’m just a girl. Malzberg did not intend for my innocent eyes to ever see this.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

“The Game is not a metaphor. The Game is not a closed system which represents something larger; but the choices made within its pathways are exactly that, choices which have to do with the immediate outcome. It would be a mistake to think of the success or failure in the Game having anything to do with the world. There are not metaphors. There are no outer significances. There is merely the Game itself and what it accomplishes upon its participants” (37).

In Jorge Luis Borges’ 1941 short story, “The Library of Babel” the universe is conceived of as a vast library stretching in all directions. In this spectacular environment—an endless series of hexagonal rooms, each one with the same number of shelves with the same number of books with the same number of letters inscribed on each page, etc. Borges brings into sharp, and unsettling relief, complex metaphysical speculations.

In The Gamesman (1975) Barry N. Malzberg creates a similarly sculpted world with two bifurcated environments—the outside world where all points are linked by the Transporter [...]

[YT BarelyHuman77]

Hi there :) Below is the script to my YouTube review of the book, viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3pIZ...

Thanks for checking it out!

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Introduction
- At 188 pages it’s a short and very focused book. There’s no bloat; every page furthers the simple but by the end well flushed out metaphor at the crux of The Gamesman.
- Exposition
People in Malzberg’s bleak depiction of future earth are miserable, and there doesn’t seem to be any of your classic hobbies like sports, gardening, video games, etc. Depressed and with no other options to turn to, the world is dominated by what they call “The Game”.
- The Game is this ill-defined, life-controlling game where players seem to be given individualized tasks for them to complete, and if you lose there seems to be dangerous or even deadly outcomes. I say “seem to” because the rules are never even close to being fully explained; readers are just sort of piece-meal fed the rules when certain caveats become important.
- At the start of the book we’re only given two sample rounds of what the game even is, one being essentially a history trivia game and the other one being, you guessed it, ejaculating specifically inside of a woman’s vagina.
- The latter task was assigned to our main character “Papa Joe Block” at the start of the book. He’s a 27 year old living high up in an apartment complex in the bleak future earth. He lives in a city akin to Coruscant in Star Wars, it’s an overpopulated, over-technologized hellscape. He lives in his own tiny cubicle apartment and that’s all he has. Although as someone paying downtown rent right now that feels pretty utopian but yah, I digress.
- In this future, technology is at a point where you can “live a life insulated from strong emotions of any sort”. Because of this, people are pretty depressed: half of humanity kills themselves before they reach 25, the “Age of Choice” as they call it, as before you reach 25 it’s seen as “natural” and “normal” to take your own life but after 25 it’s seen as a “High Crime”.
- And that’s like 90% of the world building we get in this book. I can probably count the concrete world building elements we’re given on one hand. Even in terms of characters, we only meet like 8 in the entire book, 5 of which are even titled, and only one of which, the main character, is actually named.

Meat
- Block is a prototypical guy in society: he is obsessed with the game; it’s all he has in life, it’s his only interest and his only meaning. One day, though, his “Gamesmaster”, pretty much his referee when he’s playing the game, tells him that it’s all a trick, the game is not what he thinks it is, they’re all set up to fail and that it’s actually impossible for anyone to win the game.
- The rest of the book is essentially Malzberg strengthening and utilizing this metaphor of The Game as how our modern society functions. There are clear ties to the Game being capitalism or, like, “The American Dream”, and I certainly see aspects of The Game being just like groupthink and fitting in to social norms and other things as well. It’s a flexible metaphor.
- This book, essentially, is Malzberg finding this big, juicy metaphor piece of meat and he takes a massive bite and the entire book is him just masticating on this metaphor, chewing on every nook and cranny of it.
- As I said earlier, the worldbuilding and characters in this book are sparse, everything has its meaning. I do a lot of crossword puzzles; the book is like crossword clues: they’re so short that every punctuation mark, capitalization decision, and italicizing means something.
- I want to go over some of the ways Malzberg uses the game as a metaphor for humanity. The brilliance of this book is really in its accuracy of this metaphor, and I think the best way I can depict that is by giving you some spoiler-free examples of the metaphor in action.
- It’s used to show how the system is unfairly run by elites who prey upon the rat race of the game contestants for their own prosperity
- The gamesman that spills the beans to Block early in the book tells him that “the few at the very top of this miserable society who control everything know that if people truly understood their position, the unfairness of it, they would be toppled by a revolution within minutes because they're so outnumbered… But they use the idea of the game so that they can fixate on that, so that people have the illusion that they can use the game to improve their position. But it's all a lie!”
- Initially in denial, Block says he recognizes this but believes even if 99% of society can’t “beat the game”, he’ll be the 1% that does. He says, “we hold onto the belief that there is some possibility and that we might be the ones to beat it”. It's like playing the lottery.
- Malzberg touches on the hopelessness of people thinking that the social norm of “The Game” is simply the only even somewhat successful way society can be structured
- Multiple people in the book, when confronted with the evidence that it’s all fake, basically just say, “I don’t care, I’m just here to mind my own business, keep my head down and stay quiet.” One character even says "if the game is a lie then why should I lose?”.
- Another character even makes a startlingly good argument that it’s unfair to simply tell people the truth of the game without giving them any better offering. Even if you’re just perpetuating a lie how is that much worse than just living in hopelessness.
- The book depicts the difficulty of saving yourself from a system of lies
- When Block’s Gamesman dumps the info hazard of the game being rigged on him it greatly disturbs Block. He doesn’t know if he can take the truth, “If he questions the assumptions of the game wholly then he is denying his life… what is a man without his life… he is not simply constituted to make that kind of leap”
- Block notices how nobody really wins in this unethical system.
- Block incorrectly assumes that, at worst, it’s a zero sum game that he’s going to win, but in reality everyone, one way or another, loses.
- “He had always envisioned his problem with the game as one of mastering its circumstances and prevailing to its end but what he did not expect… Was that the winning would only open a new and awful set of problems.”
- The novel is not without it’s hope though, Block grapples with what it means to fight back against a system he sees as corrupt
- He holds power when he recognizes that life is within his own hands and the hands of people around him. The game is not controlled by some omnipresence. It's controlled by the people within it. Block shows some somber hope that, regarding destroying the corrupt system, “It will look for a while as if everything will collapse because the game is so important, but it won’t.” Block’s internal and sometimes actual confrontation with the system is what makes up the main conflict of the book.
- Alright, moving on a bit from the plot and the meaning of the book I want to talk a little about how The Gamesman is written.
- The only other Malzberg book I’ve read is Beyond Apollo, and this is just as odd as that one in terms of its writing. The narrative switches from first to third person, and some chapters play with how books are supposed to be written. For example, chapter 4 is just, like, a table (like a chart). I don’t know, I’m not sure if I like this but it’s certainly unique.
- Also like Beyond Apollo, this book is extremely explicit. I totally love it; graphic depictions of sex are a huge part of the plot, but I always feel like Malzberg does his graphic depictions of sensitive subjects in an artfully “in your face” type of way.
- Malzberg’s characters, at least in the books I’ve read are, like constantly horny, but not in the way other new age sci-fi books are. Sex is omnipresent and his characters are lecherous, but it’s in, like, an honest and usually self-demeaning way. It’s not in the exploitative, low-key misogynistic way that so many authors in this time period wrote. Although I will say that as a man it’s probably unfair to claim this so I’m open to feedback but that’s at least how I generally perceived it.
- I've got a few other things I want to touch on.
- I've mentioned we don't get to learn a lot about the world, but one thing I haven’t mentioned that we do learn about is seemingly the only other alternative to The Game people have for coping with life, and that’s these things called “transporters” which basically, for a menial amount of money, just teleport you from one place to another around the world.
- This is clearly meant to be some sort of metaphor, but I think it's kind of funny to mention the straightforwardness of this analogy as well. As someone with a good amount of friends in their late 20s that work in tech, I know a lot of people with disposable income, and it’s crazy how many of them are severely unhappy and use their money to sort of just try to find happiness through lavish, uncomfortable vacations across the globe.
- Maybe I’m just a salty, broke bitch, but I don’t know I kind of liked the validity of that as a direct comparison to our real world rather than it being an analogy. Not that I think it was meant to be interpreted that way.
- Anyway, next, I loved the ending. It’s very short story-esque, and I don’t mean that in bad way, I think that works great for a short book like this. There’s this little plot twist and punch line and you can almost hear the deep base note that would hit as the credits roll.
- Okay let’s move on to a few criticisms I have of the book.
- There are some things that I personally appreciated but wouldn’t be surprised if they grinded some peoples gears. People are going to have their own thoughts on things like Malzberg’s writing style and his extremely sparse worldbuilding in this book to name a few. Also, for you to like this book the theme has got to land and mean a lot for you, since commentary on it takes up the vast majority of the book.
- But from a literary standpoint there were really only two bigger things I can think of when it comes things that actually bothered me.
- First, the whole schtick and message are, for the most part, laid out in the first 3 chapters or so. Someone who dislikes the book could argue from this point on the message is essentially just regurgitated but I think the way its rehashed and commented on is generally really clever. And I mean Jesus the book is so short anyway.
- Playing off my own metaphor of Malzberg just taking a huge bite of meat and chewing on it the whole book I suppose liking the book would depend on if you like the taste of the meat he’s chewing on.
- The other potential issue I have with the book is that Block buys into the fact that his entire life is a lie really, really quickly. Like, within one conversation. It seems a little bit unrealistic but I understand that that expediency is somewhat necessary in a book of this length.
- While I did end on these potential negatives I do really think this book is worth the read. The Gamesman is short and pointed while still being memorable. There's no bullshit and the coarseness in Malzberg’s writing style lends itself incredibly well to the presentation of the metaphor.
- I wouldn't overthink it if you're looking for a quick read and you like the idea of the metaphor and the societal commentary, go for it!
- Also, Barry Malzberg just passed away a few months ago so if you want to honor his legacy and read a book of his I think this is a great book to pick.
- So rest in peace to a great writer and thanks Malzberg for your refreshingly concise yet memorable book, The Gamesman.
- Thanks for watching.

[David Agranoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read six Malzberg novels in the last year. This might be my favorite so far. Some quick thoughts but a more detailed review (and an episode of Dickheads is coming). This is the third in what I consider the Games Machine Trilogy. The World of Null-A by AE Van Vogt (1940s), Solar Lottery by Philip K Dick(1950s), and The Gamesman by Malzberg in the 70s. A surreal dystopia about a future society that has erased social disorder by re-creating culture about "the game." Quizzes and physical components are used to control society. This novel certainly will have you thinking about how much of politics, popular media and our work life is a "game" we never question.

[Sean Farrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I nearly hit a brick wall the first few pages in due to the sexual content. Given that much of the sci-fi content produced in the 70s suffered from poorly written women and interactions with them, I was prepared for more of the same. I'm not sure that I can say that the sexual content is integral to the plot, it does play a large part in defining the character of the protagonist and does come back in the end in a definitive way. It's possible that Malzberg could have used another hook on which to hang the plot, but it likely would not have had the same effect on the reader.

The Gamesman is a dystopian novel that explores a unique system of control within which people volunteer to participate. We spend the entirety of the novel within the head of Block, a willing participant in The Game who fully expects to be one of the rare souls destined to win. The prose is intricate, the plotting is Kafka-esque, and you can expect to find shades of Orwellian atmosphere. There is no optimism to be found here. If you are in the mood for such a frame of mind, then you'll find The Gamesman will get you there well enough. Maybe don't read it before bed.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is from a brief period in the 60's & 70's when there was a subgenre of SF that used Freudian/Jungian psychoanalytics as a way of exploring mind-state and metaphorically, or directly, relating it to the human experience as a whole, or at least to critic the American social order. Philip K Dick is a more fun example of this otherwise very self-serious trend. A few of these works are literarily successful, or at least conceptually adventurous and inspiring to later works.

This book is a prime example of both the creativity this trend introduced, and its too often ponderous and ultimately, "so what?" results.

Gamesman is that friend who smokes a bit too much weed during work hours and then calls you from the bathroom to dissect every already obvious symbolic moment of a dream he had last night, and who will never listen as you explain for the hundredth time that its all just the white noise of anxiety and he's got to quite that job he hates, rather that deliberately fucking it up until he gets fired. And you will fire this book.

[Ryan Pennell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Gamesmen probably won’t land for readers hoping for a strong plot, emotional payoff, or the usual beats of classic sci-fi. But if you’re into existential stuff—think Kafka, Beckett, early Samuel R. Delany, or the more paranoid corners of Pynchon—this book hits hard.

It’s not easy reading, but it’s sharp and unsettling in a good way, built to leave you with small, uncomfortable truths.

I kept thinking about 1984 while reading—not because of the story or characters, but because of the mood. There’s this heavy, inescapable feeling running through it, like the system is so airtight that fighting back is both necessary and kind of ridiculous.

If you like your sci-fi introspective, ambiguous, and a little cruel, this one’s worth your time.

Thanks to Bookpilled for the recommendation!

[Jupe · Rating 5 out of 5]

haaaaa-lle-lu-ja, haaaaaa-lle-lu-ja

Banger book. Best I’ve read yet from Malzberg. Great concept explored beautifully. Have seen complaints about Malzberg being all monologue and I don’t get it. I love how rambly Malzberg writes. He has such a precise control on it even though it can seem or feel haphazard. I think that the feeling like Malzberg is just spewing everything in his head out all at once is a pro rather than a con, because he’s so good at it. He sticks the landing again and again and again. He’s spewing this out, but he’s spewing genius. His books are not perfectly crafted in the sense that he reviewed each syllable with a fine-tooth comb, but they are precise, and he says things exactly as he means them. BEAST!!!

[Tim Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10

Dude. Trippy. A lot of this went right over my head but I really loved it. Lots of rich thematic and psychological writing. It was somehow minimalist and maximalist at the same time and I don’t know how to explain that. Sparse physical descriptions. Almost entirely focused on psychological descriptions which makes for some incredible sentences and imagery. Vary cool.

[Wilson Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly don't know what to think of this book. I didn't hate it, but I certainly didn't love it. I did enjoy the twists the main character took throughout, and I am glad that I read it.

[John Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thought-provoking philosophical science fiction. Everything becomes part of The Game. And when you win, you really lose.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bizarre story, but it is strangely engrossing.

[Michael D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird, unsettling, Kafkaesque SF. Well written, does the job, leaves. And starts again.

[Nicholas · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is probably the standard Kafka thought his work amounted to. It must have been unbearable.

[Solim · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 A book that is a good example on what life is promised to be in the US and what it really is. Some parts were a bit dry and confusing but it was decent overall.

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

7.5/10

Still definitely getting a grip on Malzberg. The book is so opaquely written that it feels like you're looking into a frosted sphere and you can see all of the superficial details and the general shape of the book but you never fully penetrate into what the fuck is actually going on. Nothing's really explained, the society, the game itself, the world in which the book inhabits, yet I found I was still fairly engrossed in the story just trying to piece together the cryptic and introspective monologues of the main character. Between this book and The Men Inside, I was not expecting how important a theme male impotence would be.

Very interesting and confusing book, but in a good way.