C'est une question qui a été posée à plusieurs auteurs américains, en l'honneur des 25 ans du cycle. 

Voici la réponse de David Brin : 

Iain Banks is a very smart fellow. One of his unique accomplishments is to see past what I call the “idiot plot.” Yes, as an author, you must contrive ways to keep your hero and heroine in pulse-pounding jeopardy for 500 pages … or ninety minutes of film… but most writers and producers do it by grabbing the simpleminded cheat — assuming that society as a whole is unwise and filled with fools who cannot or will not help people who are in peril. If you posit that civilization sucks and is incompetent, then sure, a story of lively antics and hairs-breadth escapes can ensue without the inconvenient presence of skilled professionals (exactly what you hope and expect to see, when you’re in real life danger) arriving to muck up the tension! (Sure, most adventure stories show such professionals, briefly, in order to kill or write them off, or else showing them in cahoots with the villain.) 

Banks chose another route, which I also travel. He asks: “Suppose humanity as a whole makes a truly wonderful and wise civilization. Operating under that brutal handicap, can an author still find ways to throw the protagonists into lovely peril?” I like a challenge. So does Iain Banks. He shows us how our descendants might be vastly better than us – the goal for which we live our lives! But that it still may be possible — even probable — to find the cracks, the chinks, the gaps, the inevitable errors that call for courage. That call for heroes.