In this week’s Time magazine, Lev Grossman reviews Matter:

The Culture novels (there are eight of them) are about the challenges of a world in which thinking beings must deal with one another across vertiginous gulfs of cultural and technological difference–a world, in other words, both completely different from and identical to our own.

And in an interview at the NerdWorld blog he asks Banks if the Culture is a utopian society, and if he’d live there if given the chance:

Good grief yes, to both! What’s not to like? …Well, unless you’re actually a fascist or a power junkie or sincerely believe that money rather than happiness is what really matters in life.

You can read the complete interview here.