Is it even worth reading? Genuine question. I thought it was campty sort of satirical old-timey stuff, but I never read it.
Whether that's worth reading depends on you. It's a big genre too, different authors and works don't all cover the same themes. If you want to see someone experience about what it's like to be a foreigner in a racist society, Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan series explores that. If you want to read an optimistic vision of how computation could look and what ethical implications follow from that (set against a massive backdrop of geopolitics), read Ian Banks's Culture series. If you want to read a discussion of how society shapes our thoughts and beliefs, read pretty much anything by Ursula K. Guin (though The Dispossessed comes especially to mind). If you just want to explore the implications of different physical laws, Greg Egan.
And of course, there's plenty of the campy stuff too. You don't always need to read high-minded narrative philosophy with sci-fi if you don't want to.
In the Culture all real agency humanity has is lost to machines (Minds).
Humans have about as much say in important matters in the Culture as dogs do in ours, when anything really important happens (e.g. the events of Excession) they're not even involved.
For any individual human it's a utopia, I'd probably prefer to live in the Culture, but whether it's a good thing to aspire to is something the reader needs to decide for themselves.
The Culture is explicitly a direct democracy, it's just that the books are mostly about what is effectively a somewhat-rogue intelligence agency's activities in other civilizations.
> Politics in the Culture consists of referenda on issues whenever they are raised; generally, anyone may propose a ballot on any issue at any time; all citizens have one vote. Where issues concern some sub-division or part of a total habitat, all those - human and machine - who may reasonably claim to be affected by the outcome of a poll may cast a vote. Opinions are expressed and positions on issues outlined mostly via the information network (freely available, naturally), and it is here that an individual may exercise the most personal influence, given that the decisions reached as a result of those votes are usually implemented and monitored through a Hub or other supervisory machine, with humans acting (usually on a rota basis) more as liaison officers than in any sort of decision-making executive capacity; one of the few rules the Culture adheres to with any exactitude at all is that a person's access to power should be in inverse proportion to their desire for it. The sad fact for the aspiring politico in the Culture is that the levers of power are extremely widely distributed, and very short (see entry on megalomaniacs, above). The intellectual-structural cohesion of a starship of course limits the sort of viable votes possible on such vessels, though as a rule even the most arrogant craft at least pretend to listen when their guests suggest - say - making a detour to watch a supernova, or increasing the area of parkland on-board.
> The Culture is explicitly a direct democracy
It's not, and what you've quoted at length only reinforces my point.
Sure, humans get a vote in the design of their habitats, and even input on where the ship might fly.
But that's like saying that a modern nuclear power is a democracy because people get to vote on where their local park benches are located.
I'm saying that humans have no say on anything of consequence in the Culture. Anything that matters is decided upon by sentient hyperintelligent machines.
For the campy stuff, people seem to really enjoy The Expanse, both the books and the tv show.
OK, so some of it is campy adventure pulp, but fortunately someone's collated the best and most long-lived works into the SF Masterworks series for people to pick from.
Phillip K Dick would probably get the same kind of praise as Joyce if he hadn't been ghettoized as "SF".
Where would you start with Neal Stephenson? Have you read Iain M. Banks?
As far as The Three Body Problem - it's ok and starts off really strongly, but then just completely falls apart.
I have not read Iain M. Banks, what do you recommend as a start?
If you like Consider Phlebas, you'll almost certainly love the rest. It's a strange start to the series, not least because it presents the Culture as the antagonists quite explicitly, but it's good for introducing some of the technology. The series as a whole is my favourite series of books, it's remarkable.