Lyn's Reviews > The Collapsing Empire

Delicious.

John Scalzi’s 2017 space opera MAGNIFICO! is delicious the same way hipster doughnuts with fruity pebbles or maple with bacon are yummy: decadent, a little on the silly side, but OH! SO GOOD!

Reminiscent of Jack Vance, Samuel Delaney, Frank Herbert and Douglas Adams (Adams?? YES! It’s funny, sometimes even hilarious) but with a modernity born of the INFORMATION AGE! Scalzi does what Scalzi does best – entertains with a cool as ice cream space saga EXTRAVAGANZA!

It’s SPACEOPERAPALOOZA!

If it were in Manchester, Tennessee it would be SPACE BONNAROO!

If it were a guitarist for KISS is would be SPACE FREHLEY!

But I digress. It’s about a far future universe where humanity has spread out and away from Earth. We’ve not discovered a faster than light form of propulsion, it’s still generation ships for interstellar travel –

BUT

There is this thing called the Flow. (not a waitress at Mel’s Diner or a hawker of discount insurance). The Flow is a kind of wormhole concept whereby a ship can enter and exit the flow at different time-space points and thus can travel light years away to other worlds inhabitable for humans (or under the surface or in artificial habitations).

Here’s the thing:

The Flow connects these vast dots capriciously, like a meandering river. Humans have no control over this NATURAL RESOURCE only use it to get around. But what if, like a mature stream, the Flow alters course and no longer visits the same solar systems? Like a gas station marooned in the desert when the interstate is built, that planet and it’s teeming millions of fat and happy colonists are going to be cut off and unable to reconnect with the rest of humanity.

So Scalzi, brilliant evil mastermind that he is, has set up his Interdependency series. The worlds connected by the Flow have become interdependent on each other. And not just for coffee from Brazil and vodka from Poland – these worlds are tied together politically and theologically by a complicated aristocratic and mercantile network (ala Frank Herbert). So what happens when this network is threatened?

A damn fine story ensues that’s what!

Fun story that it is (sometimes outrageously) Scalzi uses the themes inherent in the setting to explore allegorically scarcity policy, conservation and the needs we all have for connection.

*** COOL CHARACTER ALERT! Scalzi, ever the aficionado of dialogue and characterization, has outdone himself with Kiva Lagos. This fun-as-a-barrel-of-monkeys STRONG FEMALE LEAD is the opposite of the women described by Jack Nicholson in his 1997 film As Good as it Gets. In a famously misogynistic line Jack, a successful writer of romance novels, is asked how he writes women characters so well. His answer: “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.” Scalzi thinks of a foul mouthed and oversexed man – and then makes her a woman. I waited anxiously for her scenes, well done Scalzi; somewhere Robert A. Heinlein is leering appreciatively.

BTW – Scalzi’s names for the spaceships are BRILLIANT! Some examples include: “Tell Me Another One”, “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” and “Because I said so” which are apparently an homage to writer Iain Banks, which makes me want to read his books.

For Scalzi fans and for speculative fiction fans of all plumage.