Books

I have never read Reynolds looks like time for me to check him out.

Banks is the best post-scarcity space opera I have ever read. The galaxy (ours...) is filled with millions of sentient beings at various tech levels and many stories involve The Culture's interaction with civs below (and sometimes above) them on the tech tree. The human civ, The Culture is always my answer to the question: If you could live in any fictional universe, which would it be?.

Each book is a stand-alone story that stretch across about 800 years of time and can be read in any order. A good starting point is Player of Games.