Maybe Banks had enough imagination to think up the Culture, but not enough of an imagination to think up any interesting stories that would be internal to the C

Maybe Banks had enough imagination to think up the Culture, but not enough of an imagination to think up any interesting stories that would be internal to the Culture... I suppose Wodehousian or Jane Austen-style comedies of manners set on Shipboard probably weren't really his forte. Plus, presumably an all-seeing Ship AI probably wouldn't permit the atrocities required to drive most Iain M Banks (or, for that matter, Iain Banks) plots. A would-be molester or rapist on Shipboard would presumably get his brainstem lightly zorched by the ship's effector before he got too close a victim, depriving Banks the opportunity to write a vivid description of the act, and the subsequent opportunity to write about the Bad Person getting incinerated, shot, torn apart by hundreds of tiny drones, etc. etc. I enjoyed that vignette where everyone on board some ship are getting the common cold for fun. I didn't particularly find the writing in Colin Greenlund's "Take Back Plenty" that interesting, but it was fascinating reading space opera in that general genre that wasn't violence-driven.