Not completely wrong - except the bit about blandness. If I want bland characters and dialogue I'll just crack open Three Body Problem again.
Seriously though: Matter, Surface Detail, and Look to Windward are all fairly clear counterexamples to your template.
The first involves an explicit refusal by various advanced civs (including the Culture) to help a deposed leader of one such primitive society to reclaim his throne. The last one deals explicitly and at length with various Culture citizens reckoning with its actions both recent and long past, and the consequences thereof.
Meanwhile, Three Body Problem is an impressive series with interesting ideas which nonetheless left me unmoved. I didn't care about any of the characters, and as someone pointed out elsewhere, the dialogue is not great, which to be fair could just be an issue of translation.
I agree TBP's characters aren't great. It makes up for that by the bold concepts.
I don't think advanced civs not getting involved is a counterexample to the colonialist template. "Get involved or not" was a standard dilemma that e.g. the British Empire, or indeed the US, faced – think of the US after the 1990 Gulf War, for example, debating whether to enter Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. Empires don't always choose to interfere, and non-interference does not mean they exert no effect on their neighbours.
One way to check whether Banks' characters are bland: look through these posts. There's a bunch of fans posting here! Lots of them talking about their favourite books. Not one mention of a favourite character. Now, imagine talking about LOTR without Frodo and Sam, or The Left Hand Of Darkness without its hero.
In the Culture novels, the characters that stand out most to me were his Minds rather than any of the pan-human non-AI. What's most intriguing to me, something I rarely ever see in science fiction is how utterly "human" and warm his AI creations always were. Just read Look to Windward, Masaq Hub in particular, for the ultimate example.
You grant Liu his bold concepts but not Banks? As someone else pointed out, TBP would fit inside the greater Culture universe but not the other way around.
> I don't think advanced civs not getting involved is a counterexample to the colonialist template.
Your criticism was of a supposed simplistic pattern of plotting across the books, not that the Culture's behavior is generally colonialist. The "template" I understood you to be talking about is one of plot.
> One way to check whether Banks' characters are bland: look through these posts.
Yeah I'm not sure about that. What sci-fi novels claim fans with this enthusiasm about the characters? Especially non-serialized space operas?
Even if the characters aren't all-time greats, the personality he writes into even the bit players is commendable. The drone escaping the Peace Makes Plenty at the beginning of Excession comes to mind.
Not completely wrong - except the bit about blandness. If I want bland characters and dialogue I'll just crack open Three Body Problem again.
Seriously though: Matter, Surface Detail, and Look to Windward are all fairly clear counterexamples to your template.
The first involves an explicit refusal by various advanced civs (including the Culture) to help a deposed leader of one such primitive society to reclaim his throne. The last one deals explicitly and at length with various Culture citizens reckoning with its actions both recent and long past, and the consequences thereof.
Meanwhile, Three Body Problem is an impressive series with interesting ideas which nonetheless left me unmoved. I didn't care about any of the characters, and as someone pointed out elsewhere, the dialogue is not great, which to be fair could just be an issue of translation.