The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency, #1)

by John Scalzi

2017. Bought for $8.47 (too many holds at CLP) on 12/3/24 to read for Geeks Read on March 4, 2025. I’ve become fond of Scalzi, hope this one lives up to my prior experience. A review by Dan Ruffalo: https://strangecurrencies.org/2020/03/27/review-of-the-collapsing-empire-by-john-scalzi/ Prologue is thrilling. Then it settles into Scalzi-fun: running gags, evocative and amusing names for people and for ships, Everyone “smiles thinly” The ship names are really funny. “collapsing” 17 times; collapse(d) 48 times “An open planet is no place for humans.” p. 183. Because they’ll just ruin it. Bedroom farce pp. 210-212 ch. 12 (The sex is a running gag passim) It’s a treat to watch Ghreni Nohamapetan, the antagonist sociopath asshole, get his nuts handed to him early (ch. 8) and repeatedly (interlude pp. 213-220) Opulence & vomitous that “looks like a museum exploded inside of it.” p. 280 The antagonist is formidable indeed: Same problem today, both politically and environmentally: “the majority of the parliament still thinks it’s nonsense even though we have proof…. I’m continually confronted with the human tendency to ignore or deny facts until the last possible instant. And then for several days after that, too.” p. 327 Vocabulary: bolt thrower, dart pusher (hand guns) push, push field, push field power bubble jabong beanstalk fivers and tenners Flow, Flow shoal skimmer data crypt (thumb-sized of course) squicked cockwomble assonant

the collapse of the Flow.

the ship’s imperial adjunct

spacing privileges,

Haha

Haha

Tell Me Another One,

Captain Arullos Gineos

Executive Officer Ollie Inverr,

Grussgott

Informal greeting in southern Germany, shortened form of “May God greet you”

Eva Fanochi

Piter Bremman,

Lup Egerti

She was dead, the officers loyal to her would be dead if they weren’t already, and because the Tell Me was in the Flow and would be for another month,

bolt throwers

We’re carrying a large shipment of weapons meant for the military of End

House of Tois

Yanner Tois’s son-in-law.”

Tois would not be entirely put out to make his favorite son a widower.

Haha

Tell Me Another One dropped out of the Flow,

Now, some context, here.

There is no faster-than-light travel. But there is the Flow.

the Holy Empire of the Interdependent States and Mercantile Guilds,

The Flow, which ensured the survival of humanity after it had lost the Earth,

human outpost

Are there non-human outposts? Question

Haha

it was nearly impossible—and almost never heard of, over the centuries of the Interdependency—for a ship to exit the Flow unexpectedly.

There is only the Flow. And if you’re randomly dumped out of it, somewhere between the stars, you’re dead.

Lika Dunn

Bernus

“Chief Hybern,”

push field power

“He’s your minion, Ollie. You handle him.”

Haha

Haha

“We’re about twenty-three light-years out from End, sixty-one out from Shirak.” “Any local gravity wells?” “No, ma’am. Closest star is a red dwarf about three light-years away.

“Eva Fanochi

For a shoal to move and shrink was literally a new thing in their experience.

“Yes. If Hybern gives us the engines in the next couple of minutes, we’ll make it with margin to spare.”

“Are we still going to make it?” Gineos asked. “Probably. Some of the ship, anyway.” “What does that mean?”

Haha

“We welded Piter into his,”

Haha ouch

whatever his deficiencies as an XO, he was possibly the best navigator that Gineos had ever seen.

Bernus

It was one of the great acts of space travel, possibly in the history of humanity. Despite everything Gineos felt privileged to be there for it.

Haha

Cardenia Wu-Patrick

Batrin Wu,

Attavio VI, Emperox of the Holy Empire of the Interdependent States and Mercantile Guilds, King of Hub and Associated Nations, Head of the Interdependent Church, Successor to Earth and Father of All, Eighty-seventh Emperox of the House of Wu,

Haha

Xi’an,

team.

Haha

“You’re more popular than your mother was.” Cardenia had never met her grandmother, Emperox Zetian III, but the tales from history were toe-curling.

Naffa Dolg,