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: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @08:04PM (1 child)
Scalzi hasn't been good since Old Man's War.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @10:30PM
This is literally the plot of the series, only the flow is not a natural phenomenon, but a series of jumpgates (same basic principle as the other games from that era, notably Terminus and Tachyon: The Fringe, all possibly inspired by Babylon 5 given the timing.)
Basically Humanity discovers this network of jump nodes. They send sentient robots through to colonize it. Robots go out of control. Attempts to contain them lead to one of their developers turning them rogue. Human Colonies already outside of the solar system get cut off after the destruction of the original far-side gate to Terra, leading to hundreds of years without knowledge of Earth. X:BtF to X3TC are worth it. Albion Prelude might be fun as well but it was the first electronic only version, which I stopped playing. Rebirth ruined all the game mechanics people enjoyed, although there is now a patch as they prepare for their next game that supposedly brings it back to similiar mechanics from earlier games.)
Anyways, this just sounds like a novellization of the concept, and shifts in the 'Flow'/'Jumpgate Network' come to play an important part in the X series, as well as discovery of non-jumpgate forms of travel (which aren't nearly as safe, but offer otherwise impossible travel opportunities... if you don't die in the process.)
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @08:29PM (6 children)
that grinning gremlin at the bottom of the ars article?
To think, even just 20 years ago, shit that looked like that didn't survive high school.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @08:39PM (1 child)
Mod parent -1 Deplorable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @08:54PM
Only if you utter the Deplorable Word [wikia.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @09:00PM
Hey grandma, times change. Hate to break it to you.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @10:47PM (1 child)
Well, fuck anyone who doesn't conform to your standards of "normality", eh"?
What a cunt you are. I'm surprised you can even manage to work a computer.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 01 2017, @12:50AM
I don't consider the author abnormal-looking, and personally I rather like colored hair.
What the author is, though, is the typical rude and angry short-haired Jew dyke; a pretty common sub-demographic, especially in the tech industry. People like her are the ones who slithered their way into big game studios and give interviews about diversity and inclusion and all of the romance in their games is Black man/White woman couples. They wear star of David necklaces you can identify only at close range, stink of body odor and other than their hair coloring are nastily low-maintenance, and are the reason why pretty every media outlet and gaming studio sucks now. They're basically the Amy Schumers of the tech and journalism industries, nobodies rocketed to stardom overnight because they know (and quite possibly blew) the Levi Hirsches and other directors of advertising within their agencies.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 01 2017, @12:42AM
Probably one of the many reasons why Arstechnica, like every other formerly-respected media outlet, is churning out garbage and inserting leftist bullshit and Trump hit-pieces into every goddamn article.
And like all obnoxious loudmouth dyke Jews, she likely has latent anger from daddy issues and landed that gig only because she knows another Jew higher-up in the food chain -- though calling her "she" is generous, it's impossible to even guess what she has between her legs without having been there yourself.
Wanna volunteer?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @08:52PM
"It was a dark and stormy night, in the President's mind."
(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.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 01 2017, @01:47PM
Who got BITCHSLAPPED & BANNED from the whitehouse by our good President Trump? YOU DID (CNN = Arstechnica = THE VERY FAKE NEWS) hahahahahahaha (you losers).