Review of “The Collapsing Empire” by John Scalzi

I read this novel to see what kind of science fiction is being written today; it could have been written fifty years ago, except for the use of modern technology like notebook computers. The technology even included sheets of paper stapled together and handed out at a meeting. No kidding. The language, behavior, physical culture, was all from today, apparently frozen in time for at least 1000 years.

A collection of galaxy-spanning human colonies, connected by a network of cosmological features that sound like naturally occurring worm holes, has been cut off from Earth and formed an empire based on a hereditary emperor and monopolistic, hereditary corporations. The fun begins when the cosmic strands that connect these planets become unstable because they are too far apart to communicate with each other, even at light-speed.

The action focuses on two planets, one earth-like but at the far end of the network of worm holes, the other a nexus where most of the network segments lead — called End and Hub, respectively. Great names whose significance is stressed repeatedly. There are a lot of action scenes which, unfortunately, are so far removed in space (and time) that they aren’t integrated well into the story. The author is trying to write a political thriller and an action story at the same time, spanning thousands of light years. To satisfy his expectant readers (a previous novel was a NYT bestseller), he balances these opposing objectives; to be honest, it is done as well as can be hoped for. However, it is an impossible task which he acknowledges by ending the story inconclusively — a cliffhanger, season finale comes to mind.

The story of human perfidy, bad luck, and failure is plausible, especially in a story that takes place only a few thousand years from now (just look at how little we’ve changed since the earliest known empires). This book probably didn’t take long to write because the dialogue and technology (not counting the ambiguous “flow” and the spacecraft that traverse it) are unchanged from today. I mean literally. They have cars and trucks, but of course there are shuttles like in Star Trek. Because of all this familiar background, I didn’t spend much time trying to understand the story. I only had to backtrack to remember some of the strange names the characters had, although profanity (i.e. “fuck”) will apparently be favored by some people even in the distant future.

There were too many dead ends to tell the story in one novel. Because of the distances and communication delays involved in the story, there are several scenes described in detail — giving the reader a new cast of characters to become familiar with — which could have been glossed over by the narrator. This attention to detail left me expecting the reappearance of these characters, but I was disappointed.

I haven’t read any previous books by Scalzi, and I won’t read the inevitable sequel to this one. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it is a sequel itself, although the back cover made no such suggestion.

This falls in the category of “Summer Reading” — undemanding, read on the beach, stained by sun screen and salt, each chapter forgotten as quickly as it’s finished; as such, I would recommend it, but don’t plan on closure …