The Player of Games (Culture, #2)

by Iain M. Banks

Hamin found the Culture’s sexual mores even more fascinating. He was at once delighted and outraged that the Culture regarded homosexuality, incest, sex-changing, hermaphrodicy and sexual characteristic alteration as just something else people did, like going on a cruise or changing their hairstyle. Hamin thought this must take all the fun out of things. Didn’t the Culture forbid anything? Gurgeh attempted to explain there were no written laws, but almost no crime anyway. There was the occasional crime of passion (as Hamin chose to call it), but little else. It was difficult to get away with anything anyway, when everybody had a terminal, but there were very few motives left, too. “But if someone kills somebody else?” Gurgeh shrugged. “They’re slap-droned.” “Ah! This sounds more like it. What does this drone do?” “Follows you around and makes sure you never do it again.”