A Gift from the Culture
"A Gift from the Culture", published in 1987, is a short work of space opera, by the Scottish science fiction author Iain M. Banks. The story is an early venture into the "complex and unusual and very distant" setting of the Culture, which Banks would further develop through various of full length novels, stories, and his essay "A Few Notes on the Culture".
A Million Open Doors
A Million Open Doors (1992) is a science fiction novel by American writer John Barnes, the first book of his "Thousand Cultures" series. The story is told from the perspective of a maturing adult from a parochial culture who encounters many obstacles in a different and even more parochial culture which causes him to become a fully engaged citizen in the Interstellar culture. "A Million Open Doors" is a study of the effects of globalization.