The Collapsing Empire
2018 LOCUS AWARD WINNER OF BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL 2018 HUGO AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST NOVEL “John Scalzi is the most entertaining, accessible writer working in SF today.” —Joe Hill, author of The Fireman The first novel of a new space-opera sequence set in an all-new universe by the Hugo Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Redshirts and Old Man's War Our universe is ruled by physics. Faster than light travel is impossible—until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field available at certain points in space-time, which can take us to other planets around other stars. Riding The Flow, humanity spreads to innumerable other worlds. Earth is forgotten. A new empire arises, the Interdependency, based on the doctrine that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war—and, for the empire’s rulers, a system of control. The Flow is eternal—but it’s not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well. In rare cases, entire worlds have been cut off from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that the entire Flow is moving, possibly separating all human worlds from one another forever, three individuals—a scientist, a starship captain, and the emperox of the Interdependency—must race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.
Stats for nerds
15recommend
20mentions
18people
2017–2024years
85% recommend5% neutral10% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I read the first three books of the Imperial Radh (Ancillary Justice) series and for all of the love they get online I found them rather dull. There's this fairly dramatic collapse of a galaxy spanning empire happening in the background while the protagonist frets over the level of offense she might cause at the tea party if she chooses to wear the more scandalous gloves. The last book gets a bit more into the fractured psyche of the ruler, but even that gets shoved in the background far more than you would expect so the protagonist can worry about how she might hurt the feelings of the local planetary governor if she doesn't show up for his garden party.
The protagonist is basically a disconnected Borg drone, although in their universe the drones are left with a bit more autonomy than the Star Trek equivalents, but because the protagonist is disconnected it doesn't matter nearly as much as you would expect.
If you're interested in a big space opera about an empire falling apart I found the Collapsing Empire series by John Scalzi to be much more engaging.
- > the drones are left with a bit more autonomy than the Star Trek equivalents
I'm not sure I would describe it as more autonomy. The central ship computer was absolutly dominant within the hive mind, and had control over the ancillaries at all time.
It's more like personalities of the ancillaries feed back into the hive mind at a somewhat subconscious level, and had quite a bit of impact on the overall personality.
> If you're interested in a big space opera about an empire falling apart I found the Collapsing Empire series by John Scalzi to be much more engaging.
Yeah, the Imperial Radch series is not about the empire falling apart. That's just something happening in the background, which sometimes drives the plot forwards. Its primary goal is to explore the question of "what does it mean to be human"
I really enjoyed John Scalzi's Collapsing Empire series, which is directly about the fall of a civilisation, and how to save the people.
The interesting thing is that Collapsing Empire bucks the usual trend of empires falling apart because they grew too big, internal political instability or external rivals. It was stable and only falls apart because the form of FTL they were using to connect their star systems fell apart, and none of the star systems were self sufficient.
Also in the genre of "space operas with collapsing empires", I do recommend Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire.
- Yes -- agree with you on Ancillary Justice (could not finish it) and Scalzi's Collapsing Empire is fantastic. Eric Thomson's Ashes of Empire series is sort of in a similar vein, although IMO not as good.
- I have a nagging feeling that Collapsing Empire isn’t “good” literature (the swearing and sex?) but really enjoyed it, along with the other Scalzi books I’ve read. As others have pointed out, the reason for collapse are unique compared to other collapsing empire stories.
- the collapsing empire books are excellent, and I would recommend them to most SF fans. but even other than that I've found scalzi consistently entertaining - not "omg this was a brilliant book" but fun books that I was happy to have read and kept me interested in reading the next one he wrote.
- I would recommend Collapsing Empire by Scalzi. Here is the blurb:
Our universe is ruled by physics and faster than light travel is not possible -- until the discovery of The Flow, an extra-dimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transport us to other worlds, around other stars.
Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war -- and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.
The Flow is eternal -- but it is not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well, cutting off worlds from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that The Flow is moving, possibly cutting off all human worlds from faster than light travel forever, three individuals -- a scientist, a starship captain and the Empress of the Interdependency -- are in a race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.
