The Culture themselves aren't terribly interesting. What really makes the books shine (for me) are their interactions with lower-tech societies.

This is lampshaded pretty hard in Consider Phlebas, I think, where Horza basically hates the Culture for that reason (among others). I also consider Star Trek's Federation boring as well, but worse: at least The Culture meddles in the affairs of other groups (for better or worse!).

So does the Federation. It just lies to itself and everyone else about so doing.

There's an SF fan theory which tends to show up around the late-night bars in conventions that the Star Trek Federation and the Blake's Seven Federation are, in fact, the same Federation --- it's just we're seeing the propaganda films released by both sides.

Naturally, the anti- side doesn't have nearly as much money as the pro- side, which is why the special effects in Blake's Seven are so bad.

The things I miss out on by not going to sf conventions.

It makes a lot of sense, too. I mean, TNG started out with political commissars, even - take a look at Troi's character in Season One, especially e.g. Conspiracy, and tell me that's not exactly the role she's playing.

Hah,. that's brilliant. I always did like Servalan.

There is even parody film, how Federation is totalitarian state. It is filmed in Finland, Federation are Russians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wreck:_In_the_Pirkinning

The Federation has the problem of being completely undefined; it has a president but no elections, politics, news? Does it have money or not? If not how does that work? We haven't really seen how normal people live inside the Federation.

The Culture is a benevolent Matrix where machines make decisions taking the desires and opinions of humans into account to whatever extent they choose to. The amorphous nature of the society is actually part of its explicit nature (whether a ship or population is part of The Culture is kind of up for debate and reassessment at any given time)

The difference between the Federation and the Culture is that Banks actually considered the societal impacts of matter compilers, godlike AI, etc. and tried to describe the results as he imagined them. THe Federation is "kind of like the modern US" with a bunch of tech that would make the modern US make no sense at all.

I think that was the point? :)

It's some of the most subversively existential SF I've ever read.

Will you elaborate? I know those words, but still the point you seek to make with them eludes me.

One of the big themes in the series is how people find meaning in their lives given that they basically want for nothing. When you can have any material possession created for you on demand, what do you do with yourself?

For example, in The Player of Games, Gurgeh devotes his life to games of strategy, and Yay to orbital architecture. Neither character needs to work for a living, so why bother working at all?

IMO, there are much better novels about this subject not involving any techno-magic. Lem's Return from the Stars is an excellent work that explores this very question, and unlike Culture novels, it's down-to-earth and fully self-aware. Hard to explain what that means. Lem realized that the very notion of "meaning" will change in the future.

Many works by Strugackiy brothers also deal with this question.

I realize these writers belong to preceding generations of SF, but their works are still very much relevant and (IMO) far more plausible than futures of Vinge and Banks.

To answer the last question: to define themselves as more than average by joining a community of practice. It is a society where what you do is considerably more distinctive than what you have and where you come from, which is likely to seem strange to us.

Vernor Vinge's two Deep books (I haven't read the third) were right up there for me. Albeit simultaneously terrible from a "Jesus, this is %&#$ed up, but also plausible" perspective.

Good call on Excession. I love the Culture books but can see why folks wouldn't, but Excession is the best in my opinion because it reveals the Culture's flaws and limitations. The rest of the time it's just invincible good guys.

I feel Banks tried to write a novel about the Culture dealing with peer civilizati0ns, but they a;ways ended up being significantly inferior and we're back to Consider Phlebas (which is The Culture vs a clearly weaker civilization).

I feel like several of the other books make it quite clear that invincible, well-meaning good guys can cause a lot of pain. Sometimes it works, sometimes they convince themselves that it was worth it, because clearly their ideology is the better one, sometimes they are terribly sorry for what they did. In any case it will hurt if you are on the wrong end of their meddling. And most of their population doesn't care or even notice, so happy or unhappy are they in their utopia. Really, tons of material to draw parallels from, to all sorts of things in our lives.

I'd put Look to Windward in the "best of" category. It addresses with the issue by introducing a character who has been personally, very poignantly affected by the Culture's meddling, and seeks revenge for it, a bit like a reverse Use of Weapons. It's also the only book to directly reference the events of Consider Phlebas.

I also liked how Matter described a very-low-on-the-civilizational-ladder (literally: It's a located on the lower level of a "shell world", an artificial planetoid constructed of concentric layers of habitation, each home to a different civilization) society whose players discover the Culture and ultimately seek to improve on themselves, while the book concurrently illustrates the other civilizations' underhanded attempts at playing the Culture.

Minor nitpick regarding Consider Phlebas: The Idiran Empire are militarily vastly superior to the Culture at the outset of the war.

Fun fact: "Consider phlebas" and "Look to windward" are both phrases appearing in T S Eliot's poem "The Wasteland".

They're the only two titles drawn from the poem, so I find it particularly interesting that you mentioned the way that they're more directly referential than other works. Makes me think I should try a closer reading of both.

Yes, it's a "sequel" of sorts — in the weakest possible sense — to Consider Phlebas, so it's not an accident that he used another line from the same poem.

That is funny, Excession and Consider Phlebas are only two books I could finish.