Surface Detail's portrayal of Hell struck me as ugly and vulgar but not very disturbing. Some of the gratuitous nastiness in Consider Phlebas was worse, for example (the Eaters scene in particular), and so were some of Vatueil's simulated battle scenes; I think they came across as more salient because they didn't map onto cultural tropes I'd already rejected, and because they didn't come across as being scripted for a quasi-political morality play.