I like your analogy, but I need help seeing how it applies to Consider Phlebas. From my perspective, the story is pretty arbitrary. The aliens have arbitrary features that have no internal reason for they must inevitably be that and not something else. Similarly for characters and plot points. There's a ringworld, but with none of Niven's exploration into the nature of a ringworld. (Fair enough, just borrow from Niven, it just doesn't add any juice.) The gambling game and island cult are interesting, but both are deeply grotesque and kind of counter-examples of treating people well. The Culture seems like Progressivism plus American self-assured knowledge that their system of life is obviously the only right way to behave. (Not arrogance, which is putting down others, or cockiness which has naivite, but just the lack of introspection to even see other perspectives. It reminds me of the smart bombs the US talked about in the Iraq War, as if a "righteous" war with weapons that only killed hostiles and not innocents is morally acceptable. I'm somewhat sympathetic to that idea [assuming it were implementable], but I can also see how that is not terribly compatible with the idea of a peaceful nation promoting democracy, but the messaging did not seem to have any cognitive dissonance.) I do think managing to make the Culture feel like modern America, but two or three decades prior is pretty impressive, but I don't see what extra juice there is. There is no critique of the Culture as far as I can tell (or any justification, for that matter), it just IS and everyone else has to deal with it.
I guess I just don't see where any extra juice is going to come from. Canticle for Leibowitz has a beautiful meditation on human nature. Diaspora shows several very non-arbitrary forms of life, discusses disobeying a person's expressly stated values to save their life, and touches on the consequences of immortality and immortality alone. In comparison, I struggle to see how Consider Phlebas is anything other than solid C-grade sci-fi.
You seem to be doing what movie critics do to movies.
Does everything need to be a criticism, play on or comparative or something? Does everything need some deeper meaning?
It's a fun action sci-fi book. Do you question the motivations of Sam-I-Am in Green Eggs and Ham? Why does he insist so much? Where did this food come from? Does he have an ulterior motivation? Is this a reflection on 1970s conservatism in the UK and societies inability to adventure and explore?
I guess I just don't see where any extra juice is going to come from. Canticle for Leibowitz has a beautiful meditation on human nature. Diaspora shows several very non-arbitrary forms of life, discusses disobeying a person's expressly stated values to save their life, and touches on the consequences of immortality and immortality alone. In comparison, I struggle to see how Consider Phlebas is anything other than solid C-grade sci-fi.