The Collapsing Empire

Did You Know?

• The Ars Technica reviewer summarized the story as a 'thought experiment about the fall of civilization.'
• As of 2017, the TV rights to The Collapsing Empire had been purchased by Working Title Television.
• The second book in the series, The Consuming Fire, was released on October 16, 2018.

Plot

The Interdependency is a thousand-year-old human empire spanning 48 star systems, connected by the Flow—a network of one-way streams enabling faster-than-light travel. Ships carrying mail or passengers from Hub, the capital with the most Flow connections, take nine months to reach End, the most distant system. The Flow is poorly understood; Earth disconnected from the network thousands of years ago, and another system collapsed when its pathway closed.

Family-owned megacorporations control all interstellar trade; House Wu is the royal family. The trading houses grow wealthy from government-sanctioned monopolies and tolls at Flow entrances and exits. The state religion, with the Emperox as titular head, views the Interdependency as divinely sanctioned. Count Claremont, a physicist on End, calculates after decades of study that the Flow will soon collapse, isolating all systems—none of which are self-sufficient.

He sends his son Marce to Hub to warn his old friend Emperox Attavio VI, but the Emperox has died, and his unprepared daughter Cardenia is crowned Grayland II. House Nohamapetan, believing the Flow will shift rather than collapse and that End will become the new center, covertly supports rebels on End to overthrow its duke. Thousands of imperial troops are sent to End after terrorist bombings on Hub, allegedly by End conspirators but actually by the house.