The count sends his son Marce, also a physicist, to Hub to warn his old friend Emperox Attavio VI. Without the Flow, society on every system will likely collapse. Humans can only live on a planetary surface on End they need space stations or underground habitats in other systems. All systems will be isolated none are self-sufficient.

The state religion, with the Emperox as titular head, celebrates the Interdependency as a divinely sanctioned society.Ĭount Claremont, a physicist on End, calculates after decades of study that the Flow will soon collapse. The trading houses are incredibly wealthy from government-sanctioned monopolies and by collecting tolls at 'shoals', entrances and exits to Flow pathways. As a natural phenomenon, the Flow is poorly understood Earth disconnected from the network thousands of years ago, and civilization on another system collapsed more recently when its pathway suddenly closed.įamily-owned megacorporations control all interstellar trade in the Interdependency's mercantile economy one, House Wu, is the royal family.

There is no faster-than-light communication faster than the Flow, and interstellar trips are not instantaneous-ships carrying mail or passengers from Hub, the capital of the empire and the system with the most Flow connections, arrive at End, the most distant, nine months later-but the network permits life-sustaining intersystem trade. Each stream is one way and has an entry point and an exit point. The Interdependency is a thousand-year-old human empire of 48 star systems connected by the Flow, a network of 'streams' allowing faster-than-light travel. The second book, The Consuming Fire, was released Octo and the final book, The Last Emperox, was released on April 14, 2020. It is the first of a series that was originally intended to be two books but is now a trilogy. The book was published by Tor Books on March 21, 2017. The Collapsing Empire is a space opera novel by American writer John Scalzi.

Space opera books 2017