The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency, Vol. 1) March 2017
The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency, Vol. 2) October 2018
The Last Emperox (The Interdependency, Vol. 3) April 2020
John Scalzi.
“Science fiction has the capacity to inspire by setting the vision of a radically better future, and by making it clear that the future won’t happen unless we put in the work.” --James Pethokouis
The Interdependency does not open with a vision of a radically better future. What it offers is mostly a cautionary tale extrapolating contemporary trends into a distant future.
Early on we’re exposed to truly brutal politics around the succession to the throne of the future human civilization for which the series is named. Old norms are shredded in the zero-sum pursuit of power. From day one, the newly-elevated outsider “Emperox” is fighting for her literal and political life against truly ruthless foes.
On top of that, the civilization is facing the imminent collapse of the “flow” -- space-time tunnels that connect far-flung human settlements. This promises disaster because by design none of the human settlements flung throughout space are self-supporting. They are, literally, an inter-dependency.
The designers of the polity created an impossibly finely-balanced set of political, economic and physical arrangements for their society. And it worked well, until suddenly it didn’t.
The organizational geek within me liked this touch. Scalzi has served up a nice illustration of how yesterday’s solutions can (and often do) become today’s problems. The political backstabbing and drama is just a symptom of a larger problem of how quickly, and in what direction, the society is going to adapt as circumstances change.
So no surprise that at a slightly deeper level, these are books for our times.
The collapse of the “flow” linking settled words--predictable far enough in advance and likely deadly enough that it clearly need responding to--seems like a tailor-made parallel to a globalized economy facing climate change. In both cases, voices are crying both for radical action and radical selfishness. We should hope that we are, in real life, as lucky as the fiction-dwelling humanity in the trilogy may just turn out to be.
Another aspect that jumps from Kindle screen straight to the real world is the terrible behavior of Scalzi’s ruling elites. As often happens to people who have a good thing and know it, the prospect of the cosmic applecart being upended inspires a variety of short-sighted bad behaviors in the Interdependency’s elites. They show themselves as largely venal, violent, and corrupted by their own wealth.
While they’re all-around terrible custodians of both the polity that makes their power and riches possible and of the “other 99%” beneath them in the political and economic pecking order, all is not bleak. In Scalzi’s capable hands, it’s atrocious behavior that is alternately entertaining, suspenseful and often darkly funny.
One book I thought about while reading was Mike Duncan’s The Storm Before The Storm. Duncan describes how the elites of the Roman Republic flouted enough small rules in pursuit of political power that eventually they were unable to prevent the flouting of larger and important ones which keep the Roman Republic in rough equilibrium. The Republic eventually fails. The difference is that Scalzi leaves us just enough people behaving well to offer hope for the future.
These twin aspects impart urgency to the books, and makes them relatable to today. Scalzi does this deftly, though -- the parallels are there, yes, but the reader isn’t beaten over the head with them. And it’s refreshingly free of the shrillness and lack of nuance that are too common in our non-fictional world. The cues are there. What the reader makes of them is left to the reader.
But not all is lost. I thought this was fundamentally optimistic SF, although sometimes that optimism can be hard to see under the layers of bad behavior. James Pethokoukis, writing recently on his Substack, made an observation that perfectly sums up why I liked The Interdependency:
My thesis, then and now, is that science fiction can play a critical role in pushing our culture in a more pro-progress direction. We need a society willing to take risks to achieve aspirational goals and accept the disruptive downsides that come with progress. And science fiction helps provide an image of a future worth striving for.
In the end, the embattled Emperox manages to find—although just barely—enough people who are willing to behave decently enough to give a fighting chance for those aspirational goals to maybe come to pass.
And that’s probably good enough.
So far, so heavy. But how are they to read?
Very, very good.
Scalzi’s treatment of how the various interlinked crises unfold, and how the Emperox deals with them, is polished and laced with acerbic humor. The plot breaks little new ground, but has enough wrinkles in it to keep the books fresh. The protagonists’ personalities get deeper and more interesting as the story goes on. Ultimately, Scalzi is simply a good writer, and the trilogy was a real pleasure to read.
Smirk factor: All-clear -- 2.0pts (Very polished word use.)
Immersion factor: Chest-high -- 1.5 pts
Writing quality: High 2 pts (Sophisticated, amusing writing)
Character/plot development: Above average 1.5 pts.
Innovative/interesting: Above average -- 1.5 pts
Total: 8.5/10