> while - from a vague memory of one of the Culture books - chasing successfully a list with what turned out to be coordinates of all stars in a region of space
That wasn't a Culture novel; it was in The Algebraist, and that society was almost an anti-Culture (highly hierarchical, quasi-capitalist, religious, racist/speciesist).
Thank you for the correction. I wasn’t completely sure that "a list" was really all there was to it, but turns out I was mistaken maybe in a more important part of that sentence.