If you tone down the hyperbole and try to express your criticisms without insults you might have more chance of a conversation rather than just provoking ire.
I don't really feel his books feature much sadism or horror, it's more a playful disregard for current mores, or a recasting of current taboos in a future where those wouldn't exist - taboos are remarkably fluid. The novels certainly are not intended as hyper-realism, realistic social models or character studies, nor do I think Banks would see them as such. I disagree that his writing is brilliant stylistically, it's interesting and playful, but often pretty lacklustre in terms of craft (plot, character development, language). The ideas he likes to explore I find intriguing however.
It is true that Banks never really explored how Culture society would function, or really how a post-scarcity model would work - all that is just assumed to exist and function well in the books, however I think he was more interested in exploring the accommodation of humans to intelligent machines, the questions raised by extremely powerful and developed civilisations clashing with civilisations which are not as developed, the contradiction of an ostensibly peace-loving yet heavily militarised culture, and the implications of transcending normal human life. These are questions we will have to address at some point even in our narrow world (we haven't yet), and I find it interesting to read his take on them.
So I think while you're right in some sense that the Culture is implausible (or at least not made plausible), the focus is not on the Culture simply because it's a backdrop, and gets him to the place where he can talk about these interesting questions.
> I don't really feel his books feature much sadism or horror
Maybe the poster you're responding to was confusing the Culture stories with Banks' other non-fiction. There's a lot of sadism and basically look-how-bad-humans-are-torture-porn in his other books:
The Wasp Factory
Canal Dreams
A Song of Stone
Complicity
Transition
I don't really feel his books feature much sadism or horror, it's more a playful disregard for current mores, or a recasting of current taboos in a future where those wouldn't exist - taboos are remarkably fluid. The novels certainly are not intended as hyper-realism, realistic social models or character studies, nor do I think Banks would see them as such. I disagree that his writing is brilliant stylistically, it's interesting and playful, but often pretty lacklustre in terms of craft (plot, character development, language). The ideas he likes to explore I find intriguing however.
It is true that Banks never really explored how Culture society would function, or really how a post-scarcity model would work - all that is just assumed to exist and function well in the books, however I think he was more interested in exploring the accommodation of humans to intelligent machines, the questions raised by extremely powerful and developed civilisations clashing with civilisations which are not as developed, the contradiction of an ostensibly peace-loving yet heavily militarised culture, and the implications of transcending normal human life. These are questions we will have to address at some point even in our narrow world (we haven't yet), and I find it interesting to read his take on them.
So I think while you're right in some sense that the Culture is implausible (or at least not made plausible), the focus is not on the Culture simply because it's a backdrop, and gets him to the place where he can talk about these interesting questions.