SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Over at Ars Technica, Annalee Newitz has an interesting review of John Scalzi's latest novel, The Collapsing Empire:
In his new novel The Collapsing Empire, bestselling writer John Scalzi builds a fascinating new interstellar civilization in order to destroy it. The Interdependency is a thousand-year-old interplanetary trade partnership in humanity's distant future. Its member planets were once connected to Earth by the Flow, a natural feature of space-time that allows ships to enter a kind of subspace zone. Once there, they can circumvent the unbreakable speed of light to travel between stars that are dozens of light years apart. What could go wrong?
Unfortunately, nobody is asking that question. Humanity has created an entire civilization that relies on the Flow and its "shoals," where ships can enter and exit. Planets are colonized purely based on their proximity to the shoals, not on habitability. The result is not unlike a medieval trade guild society whose populace happens to live in domed cities, buried caves, and artificial habitats, completely dependent on trade for resources.
The problem is that the Flow, like most natural features, has a tendency to change shape over time. As the novel opens, our protagonist, Cardenia, recently crowned emperox of the Interdependency, has just made a nasty discovery. She learns that her late father has secretly been funding a Flow physicist who has determined that every planet in the Interdependency will be cut off from the Flow within the next decade.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Saturday April 01 2017, @06:52AM
It may be worth mentioning the story surrounding this book launch. This book was late, but Tor already hat the "best seller" announcements prepared [blogspot.ch], which shows that the best seller lists are basically up for sale. As a result of these shenanigans, Vox Day decided that his publishing house would slap together a spoof book with a similar plot, and publish simultaneously. So out came "The Corroding Empire" by "Johan Kalzi" [amazon.com] to compete with "The Collapsing Empire" by "John Scalzi". [amazon.com]
Tor got all offended, and persuaded Amazon that this was...um...copyright infringment? trademark infringement? patent infringement? not nice? Anyhow, someone inside Amazon kept taking down the spoof book, Castalia House would talk to Amazon management, the book would go back up. This happened (iirc) four times in one day. The result has probably been more publicity that either book would have gotten on its own.
I haven't read either book yet myself, though I may well give both a try. But judging by the comments in the verified reviews (there are a lot of 1-star reviews by people offended by the spoof action), the slap-dash spoof book may be the better story. Oops...
p.s. Hunting for the links, I just noticed: Collapsing Empire was issued with a Kindle price of $12 or $13, which was crazy-expensive. I see it's now only $6, more in line with Corroding Empire. I wonder, do they refund money to the people who paid the higher price?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.