I have a hard time reading The Culture books as anything but a satirical condemnation of the current society. Which is not at all the position that Banks, in in

I have a hard time reading The Culture books as anything but a satirical condemnation of the current society. Which is not at all the position that Banks, in interviews, claims to take. I thought Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky presented a much more sympathetic picture of a cosmopolitan trading culture, in its clash (and hybridization) with a conservative warrior culture. That book did make "the liberal capitalists" sympathetic.