Consider Phlebas

They were like two vast machines, each intent on the other's destruction. To the Idirans, it was jihad ; a holy war against the ultimate anathema of the communistic Culture and its sentient Minds. To the Culture, it was a matter of principle, the one fight it couldn't walk away from. In a galactic war of staggering scale and ferocity, waged with awesomely destructive weaponry and a numbing ruthlessness, billions died, the great starships burned like clouds of moths, and whole habitats, moons and planets were turned to dust.

Few single entitles could affect the course of such a vast conflict, but one desperate, fugitive Mind just might, even if it was deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, and even if that world was a Planet of the Dead, and it was protected by something very like a God...

The task of the Changer mercenary called Horza was to to the Mind before anybody else did, as quickly as possible, with or without help, and no matter who or what got in his way; the enemy, or his own side.

Consider Phlebas is more than Space Opera, more than just another SF novel; it is set to join the genre's classics.