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An Outside Context Problem or an OCP could be described as a problem of great significance for an entire culture (or civilisation), a potentially terminal crisis caused by an encounter with a more sophisicated civilization. Also it is a problem which one never actually thinks of before it happens, since one doesn't even have the knowledge to realize such a problem can arise. The term was introduced by Iain M. Banks in his novel Excession:

"An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop. The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests."

For a small civilization dealing with their own problems, suddenly being threatened by much larger, incomparably more technologically sophisticated civilization would be an OCP. For imaginary two-dimensional beings, meeting a three-dimensional one could mean an OCP. There have been some examples of cultures encountering such problems in the course of human history, for example tribes of primitive islanders being visited by ships from advanced continental civilizations they were not previously aware of.

In Excession, The Culture meets their own OCP embodied by a large black sphere sitting somewhere in space - the Excession. It appears to exist in both the spacetime continuum of the known universe, and be linked to higher (hyperspatial) dimensions. The most powerful intellects in The Culture (Minds that travel in vast spaceship habitats) believe it to be a connection with alternate, parallel universes. The Excession appears to be violating some basic principles of physics, confounding those Minds investigating this mysterious phenomenon. And also, it aggressively defends its right to remain unknown... or so it would seem.

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