To give you a micro taste of the story, the villain, the Archimandrite Luceferous, keeps the head of his enemy preserved alive for years after having it taken off surgically after defeating him, hangs it from the ceiling in his office and uses it as a punching bag.
I'm not sure it's clear that Luceferous is even the villain. He's pretty unpleasant, obviously, but almost a side-issue.
The other major non-Culture sci-fi novel, Against a Dark Background, is also notably un-Culture-y.
I don't get why people think great books should be made into movies.
Some books just shouldn't.
The Culture should never be made into movies, and why would you want to, except for some sort of Hollywood reason.
Edit: I remember it vividly as I took one day off between handing in my final year project on the CS degree I was doing and starting the final round of revision for the exams that were starting soon.
Wandered down to Bauermeister Books on the George IV bridge and picked up a copy and spent the rest of the day (until the wee small hours) reading it.
Because some of us suffer from aphantasia and can't just fully experience a book.
Feersum Endjinn would like to have a word with you
Is it not? The Nasqueron Dwellers are very culture-y in their habits an eccentricities. The Sleeper Service GSV is described to be holding gas dwellers on-board in Excession. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some cross contamination between the Culture and the inhabitants of Nasqueron.
Most culture novels are about the minds and their humanoid charges. But we also know that the minds keep not just humanoids, but also inhabitants of gas planets. They just rarely show up in the other novels because it is hard for our humanoid heroes to interract with them.
The way the dwellers live their lives: hedonistic, inward focused, and when they are attacked blasts the attackes with a before-then unknown superweapon is very Culture. I posit that we are seeing an offshot of the mainline Culture.
So that is my point. Even I clearly recognise that this is an unorthodox reading of the work, definietly not the mainstream interpretation. But you can’t just argue against it by saying “wikipedia says no”.