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The Collapsing Empire (should "snark-fiction" be its own subgenre)


Ser Scot A Ellison

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1 hour ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Speaking of which, should I start with this series or Old Man's War?

The Collapsing Empire is the first and only book so far in a new series, not sure when the next book will be published.    With The Old Man's War, you'll have several books set in that universe already available to follow up, if you like the first one. 

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-collapsing-empire-by-john-scalzi.html

    I admit my primary knowledge of John Scalzi comes from the Hugo award controversy last year where I only paid a little attention. Sadly, my knowledge of sci-fi fandom is spotty at best as I'm still picking up my reading on the classics as opposed to the new successes. Still, I'd heard good things about him and since Will Wheaton was narrating his books, I thought I'd give him a go. Instead of starting with Old Man's War, I decided to, instead, begin with his new series in the Interdependency. How do I describe The Interdependency? I suppose the best way to describe it is as if it's Dune with the cast replaced with the crew from Buffy.

    The premise is the human race exists dependent on a hyperspace dimension called the Flow. It has numerous shoals, throughout, which determine where and when humans can settle on planets. The majority of these planets are full of artificial habitats because Earth-like worlds are almost nonexistent and Earth, itself, was lost when the Flow's currents changed. Unfortunately, the Flow is going to collapse soon and a trader, a physicist, plus the new Empress of the universe are the only people who might be able to relocate mankind to the lone remaining habitable world humanity has access to.

    If this sounds epic, it's actually not but that's part of the appeal. Everyone is a complete smartass and doesn't take anything seriously--least of all the end of human civilization. I'm not exaggerating either as one character regularly holds business meetings while having sex and another is more upset about the fact the Interdependancy's "holy" origins are less than on the level. There's countless hilarious scenes spread throughout the book so that even if the story wasn't great science fiction, it was always entertaining from beginning to end.

    The characters are great with Cardenia being the reluctant Empress, having been raised well from court as a university professor's daughter. Lady Kiva, the near-pirate merchant queen who has the mouth of ten sailors as well as the appetites. Finally, there's Lord Marce Claremont who is a Flow physicist and Count that finds himself caught between the two's agendas. None of them would be that far out of place in a Douglas Addams novel (well, except for the fact they're all attractive and competent--so, no, they'd be completely out of place in one. Nevermind).

    The villains are also dangerous enough but never actually feel like a threat to our heroes. The Nohamapetan family is composed of one hyper-competent sisters and two significantly less so brothers who all end up digging a deeper hole for themselves than their enemies. Indeed, I actually Nadashe (the sister) isn't as competent as the book claims since she does a few things that seriously undermine her family's position. This is alright since the primary antagonist is the Flow collapse that cannot be averted no matter how much our heroes might wish it.

    Overall, I recommend this novel a great deal for a short easy read. There's a good deal of sex and swearing but nothing which would move the book beyond a very light R-rating. It's not something which works as anything resembling "serious" sci-fi but there's no reason it has to. It's just fun and that's sometimes enough.

9/10

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18 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-collapsing-empire-by-john-scalzi.html

    I admit my primary knowledge of John Scalzi comes from the Hugo award controversy last year where I only paid a little attention. Sadly, my knowledge of sci-fi fandom is spotty at best as I'm still picking up my reading on the classics as opposed to the new successes. Still, I'd heard good things about him and since Will Wheaton was narrating his books, I thought I'd give him a go. Instead of starting with Old Man's War, I decided to, instead, begin with his new series in the Interdependency. How do I describe The Interdependency? I suppose the best way to describe it is as if it's Dune with the cast replaced with the crew from Buffy.

    The premise is the human race exists dependent on a hyperspace dimension called the Flow. It has numerous shoals, throughout, which determine where and when humans can settle on planets. The majority of these planets are full of artificial habitats because Earth-like worlds are almost nonexistent and Earth, itself, was lost when the Flow's currents changed. Unfortunately, the Flow is going to collapse soon and a trader, a physicist, plus the new Empress of the universe are the only people who might be able to relocate mankind to the lone remaining habitable world humanity has access to.

    If this sounds epic, it's actually not but that's part of the appeal. Everyone is a complete smartass and doesn't take anything seriously--least of all the end of human civilization. I'm not exaggerating either as one character regularly holds business meetings while having sex and another is more upset about the fact the Interdependancy's "holy" origins are less than on the level. There's countless hilarious scenes spread throughout the book so that even if the story wasn't great science fiction, it was always entertaining from beginning to end.

    The characters are great with Cardenia being the reluctant Empress, having been raised well from court as a university professor's daughter. Lady Kiva, the near-pirate merchant queen who has the mouth of ten sailors as well as the appetites. Finally, there's Lord Marce Claremont who is a Flow physicist and Count that finds himself caught between the two's agendas. None of them would be that far out of place in a Douglas Addams novel (well, except for the fact they're all attractive and competent--so, no, they'd be completely out of place in one. Nevermind).

    The villains are also dangerous enough but never actually feel like a threat to our heroes. The Nohamapetan family is composed of one hyper-competent sisters and two significantly less so brothers who all end up digging a deeper hole for themselves than their enemies. Indeed, I actually Nadashe (the sister) isn't as competent as the book claims since she does a few things that seriously undermine her family's position. This is alright since the primary antagonist is the Flow collapse that cannot be averted no matter how much our heroes might wish it.

    Overall, I recommend this novel a great deal for a short easy read. There's a good deal of sex and swearing but nothing which would move the book beyond a very light R-rating. It's not something which works as anything resembling "serious" sci-fi but there's no reason it has to. It's just fun and that's sometimes enough.

9/10

I still think the snarky tone weakens the story.  Having no sense of awe or wonder is an almost nihilistic take on the Universe.  Nothing should be taken seriously not even the end of human civilization.

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28 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I still think the snarky tone weakens the story.  Having no sense of awe or wonder is an almost nihilistic take on the Universe.  Nothing should be taken seriously not even the end of human civilization.

Honestly, the stuff in the book is horrifying as the revelations about the origins of the Independency and the cataclysm are nightmarish. I think that it's alright to treat this book as farce rather than serious science-fiction, though.

It's more Red Dwarf than Star Trek.

And remember, "Everybody's dead, Dave."

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 5/1/2017 at 2:20 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

My favorite part of the Redshirts were the three codas.  They were quite good, he dropped the snark in them.

That was my first thought. That's where he brought in all the weight and depth. The God Engines was snark free and bleak as all hell. 

I haven't got this one read yet. I still have "Locked in" and "Human Division" to read. For some reason I tend to read Scalzi in binges but right now I'm on a Max Gladstone binge. 

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This was such a fun read. Loved every page of it. It was the kind of novel that made me jealous, because the dialogue was of the sort that I enjoy writing, and thus wish I had written. 

A few thoughts come to mind, as I work towards developing some sort of proper review. 

Ellison found fault with the text due to it "having no sense of awe or wonder is an almost nihilistic take on the universe". 

That's a bit of a loaded statement (due to nihilism having a complicated meaning that is best understood by understanding the context is appears in), but if we take two of the more common applications of meaning (ie: lack of any Great Big Meaning To Life and Lack of Care or Thought About Rule of Law and Social Codes or Mores), then there's more than enough examples that can be cited to argue against that point.

(Examples that spring to mind include - in no particular order - the new Empresses' concerns that the Church and the entire Interdependency is little more than a lie, Claremont senior's concerns about the stability (or lack thereof) of society in the wake of the collapse/change of the flow, Kiva's honest concern and regard for the plight and well-being of her crew.)

Meanwhile, the issue of 'snark' has been a regular one in this thread. And it's one I find odd. 

Every writer has a style, a manner, an approach, if you will, to how they write. Now, granted, this was my entry-point into Scalzi, and I loved every page of it. But I also like humour in my fiction, as well as a sense of verisimilitude. And I found that in spades, in terms of both how people reacted to the world around them (given their economic and social class positions and otherwise) and how they spoke. 

The book worked for me. 

That it also wasn't a door-stopper was a definite bonus. (I'm currently reading Perdido Street Station, which I started after finishing The Collapsing Empire, and my wrist is honestly already in pain, due to the thickness of the book.) As this is also the first in a ten-book series, I fully expect to see characters developed in greater depth and scale as events continue to play out around them. 

The humour, the prose, the 'snark', the lack of a sense of wonder - it all certainly gives an air of human psychological realism to me that I fully took on-board and both appreciated and enjoyed. 

But like any other artistic endeavour - it won't be for everyone. And that's fine. 

If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you. Don't beat yourself - or the author - up for it. 

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4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

IlyaP,

The human universe ending is something to be snarky about?  To just be blazee about, really?  

Look enjoy Scalzi but I enjoy him when he drops the snark.  Like the three codas in Redshirts.

Yes, when the protagonists are all selfish ******s.

Which they explicitly are.

This is not a story meant to be taken seriously but is a little less serious than Guardians of the Galaxy.

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26 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Yes, when the protagonists are all selfish ******s.

Which they explicitly are.

This is not a story meant to be taken seriously but is a little less serious than Guardians of the Galaxy.

So, everyone of note is a "selfish asshole"?  It is being sold as "An Interstellar Epic".  Does an "epic" contain nothing but snarky assholes?  That's not terribly "epic" in my opinion.

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42 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So, everyone of note is a "selfish asshole"?  It is being sold as "An Interstellar Epic".  Does an "epic" contain nothing but snarky assholes?  That's not terribly "epic" in my opinion.

I think the average reader will pick up on the fact it's not a story to be taken seriously when they read the first chapter about the community college professor's daughter who is about to become Emperor of the universe.

Also the ludicrous mutiny.

It's about as much an epic as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

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8 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I think the average reader will pick up on the fact it's not a story to be taken seriously when they read the first chapter about the community college professor's daughter who is about to become Emperor of the universe.

Also the ludicrous mutiny.

It's about as much an epic as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Then it shouldn't be advertised as "An Interstellar Epic".

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1 hour ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Yeah, Old Man's War is MUCH more serious than The Collapsing Empire and Old Man's War is often ridiculous.

I haven't read Old Man's War.  But I have read The Last Colony.  Suffice to say that this book wasn't what I anticipated.  I expected Redshirts to be tongue in cheek based on the subject matter and its description; but even there the Codas had weight and weren't all "Jokey McJokerson".  There was no epic weight or feel to The Collapsing Empire.

Some may like that.  I didn't care for it.

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Your own words identify the issue: “this books isn’t what I anticipated”.

It’s helpful – if not important – to go into a book knowing and/or understanding what the author’s project is about, to best manage one’s own expectations with regards to what the author is doing and how it coincides with (or not) genre norms.

Something I often do before reading a book is read an interview or two, or seek out an essay/blog post/etc., which lays out what the project is about – what they’re trying to do.

In the instance of The Collapsing Empire, I found it interesting to note both the books that influenced Scalzi as he wrote the book, as well as an interview he had with the Chicago Review of Books. One particular part of the interview addresses the issue you had the human universe ending as something not worth taking seriously (paraphrasing your words).

Adam Morgan:

Quote

The bureaucrats on Hub and throughout the Interdependency refuse to believe in the collapse of the Flow, even when presented scientific evidence…which of course reminded me of the real world. Why is it so hard for people in power to accept inconvenient truths?

Scalzi replied at length:

Quote

 

There’s that Upton Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” What you have in the Flow is this mercantile system that is designed to work in a very specific way, and if the Flow goes away, then everybody’s money and standing also goes away. Even the people who absolutely realize that this is true are going to go, “Well, I’m just going to ride this out as far as I possibly can before the collapse happens, because once the collapse happens, that will be somebody else’s problem”.

Everybody does this, and it’s certainly not new in literature. Henrik Ibsen wrote a play called An Enemy of the People, where there’s a town with a hot spring where tourists go to recuperate, and somebody finds out that the hot spring is polluted. Rather than everybody saying, “Oh my God, we have to do something about it,” a lot of people in town are just like, “Yeah, no. We’re going to ride this one out”.

Certainly in the real world, there are a lot of people who absolutely want to deny climate change because it fucks with their business. And they really do think, “Well, whether or not it’s true, if we can just delay it five or ten years, then I will get all the money I need , and then it’ll be somebody else’s problem”.

Humans don’t change. We’re the same animals we were 40,000 years ago. We are in many ways fundamentally selfish and tribal, and just want to get through our lives.


 

As to whether or not the book should be marketed as an “interstellar epic” – that’s an issue that should be taken up with the marketing and branding team, rather than Scalzi himself. As Neal Stephenson pointed out in an interview some time ago, he writes the words, produces a manuscript, and then sends it off to his agent, after which, the rest of it goes through its own machine on the publisher’s end, including getting the cover art, blurbs, etc.

But is it an interstellar epic? Well, it involves the cosmos, and occurs between planets and stars, thus meeting the key criteria for the word ‘interstellar’. And it certainly does involve a narrative that spans an immense or great size – entire planets, in this instance.

So, as far as I’m concerned, it certainly meets the criteria for the word ‘epic’.

So, sure, I’m happy to call it an “interstellar epic”.

That said, making categorical claims suggestive of having custodianship of something (in this case, the term “interstellar epic”) is only helpful in so much as it gives others an indication as to your expectations and their associated boundaries.

Which brings me circuitously back to my initial point: managing expectations. I certainly don’t know what you expected upon reading this, in terms of the comparisons you were producing in your mind, but knowing in advance how or why this particular novelistic project might differ from others in the field can go a long way towards tempering one’s reactions.

If the book doesn’t work for you, that’s okay. Not everything works for everyone.

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IlyaP,

Fair enough.  I agree it was not what I anticipated.

But my problem with the attitudes is that even the people who know or strongly suspect what is going to happen are basically terrible people.  There are two exceptions the new Empress isn't completely awful.  The scientist's son is also halfway decent.  Both are impacted by the news but even their reaction is Snark.  

What kind of world is this where everyone reacts to frightening news the same way every time they hear it?  Disbelief or snark.

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Scot, 

I mentioned in an earlier post the air of verisimilitude that this book contained. And that's what makes it work so well. That people respond to facts they don't like or don't want to hear or don't want to acknowledge as being real with snark or disbelief is in fact all too human.

As to whether or not anyone here is a terrible person is entirely contingent on your willingness or ability to place yourself in their position and context and understand why they think and act as they do. 

I have met - and know - and both work and worked with people who are like the characters in this book. In terms of the scope and diversity of human behaviour in this book, nothing struck me as remotely unusual, horrible, or unrealistic. The behaviours exhibited were extremely human.

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23 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Scot, 

I mentioned in an earlier post the air of verisimilitude that this book contained. And that's what makes it work so well. That people respond to facts they don't like or don't want to hear or don't want to acknowledge as being real with snark or disbelief is in fact all too human.

As to whether or not anyone here is a terrible person is entirely contingent on your willingness or ability to place yourself in their position and context and understand why they think and act as they do. 

I have met - and know - and both work and worked with people who are like the characters in this book. In terms of the scope and diversity of human behaviour in this book, nothing struck me as remotely unusual, horrible, or unrealistic. The behaviours exhibited were extremely human.

IllyaP,

That's fine.  We appear to have had very different experiences.  

The only place I've been where I find people to be constantly snarky and who deal with life's difficulties with nothing but nihilistic cynicism is online.  In my experience people, in person, tend to drop the constant cynicism and snark.  As I've said a number of times I really enjoy the premise of this book.  That's why I picked it up.  I'm sorry that it didn't meet my expectations and I'm happy I checked it out of the library instead of buying it myself (I did request that it be purchased by our local library).  I will probably try the next book, however, if it continues with the constant nihilistic cynicism I will probably not read the third.  

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I should point out, in real life, I have had numerous people chew me out for the fact my response to really trying situations and tragedies is to become extremely sarcastic and make jokes.

As Ms. Scarlet says, "It's my defense mechanism."

"Some defense, if I was the killer I would kill you next."

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7 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I should point out, in real life, I have had numerous people chew me out for the fact my response to really trying situations and tragedies is to become extremely sarcastic and make jokes.

As Ms. Scarlet says, "It's my defense mechanism."

"Some defense, if I was the killer I would kill you next."

But it's not everyone's "defense mechanism".  It is fairly lazy writing if everyone in a given story has the same sort of character and "defense mechanisms".  Isn't it?

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