Empire (Tor Science Fiction) [Mass Market Paperback]

Orson Scott Card (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 27, 2007 | Series: Tor Science Fiction

The American Empire has grown too fast, and the fault lines at home are stressed to the breaking point. The war of words between Right and Left has collapsed into a shooting war, though most people just want to be left alone.

The battle rages between the high-technology weapons on one side, and militia foot-soldiers on the other, devastating the cities, and overrunning the countryside. But the vast majority, who only want the killing to stop, and the nation to return to more peaceful days, have technology, weapons and strategic geniuses of their own.

When the American dream shatters into violence, who can hold the people and the government together? And which side will you be on?

Orson Scott Card is a master storyteller, who has earned millions of fans and reams of praise for his previous science fiction and fantasy novels. Now he steps a little closer to the present day with this chilling look at a near future scenario of a new American Civil War.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Right-wing rhetoric trumps the logic of story and character in this near-future political thriller about a red-state vs. blue-state American civil war, an implausibly plotted departure from Card's bestselling science fiction (Ender's Game, etc.). When the president and vice-president are killed by domestic terrorists (of unknown political identity), a radical leftist army calling itself the Progressive Restoration takes over New York City and declares itself the rightful government of the United States. Other blue states officially recognize the legitimacy of the group, thus starting a second civil war. Card's heroic red-state protagonists, Maj. Reuben "Rube" Malek and Capt. Bartholomew "Cole" Coleman, draw on their Special Ops training to take down the extremist leftists and restore peace to the nation. The action is overshadowed by the novel's polemical message, which Card tops off with an afterword decrying his own politically-motivated exclusion from various conventions and campuses, the "national media elite" and the divisive excesses of both the right and the left.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Some video-game developers asked Card to write a scenario for "an entertainment franchise . . . about a near-future American civil war." They came to the right man and held off on releasing the game until he completed this relentless thriller, which couldn't be timelier and is, for all its hyperactivity and flip, Hollywoodish one-liners, heartfelt and sobering. Its heroes are two special-ops army officers who keep their oaths to defend the U.S. against all enemies when far too many of their ostensible colleagues have decided to abandon theirs. A rocket hits the west wing of the White House, killing the president, vice-president, and secretary of defense. While those directly responsible are Arabs, the next day, 14-foot-tall, bulletproof, armed globes on mechanical legs, backed by shooters on individual hovercraft, seize New York City by killing anyone in uniform. None of the new attackers looks anything other than American. A "Progressive Restoration" administration is established in the city, and it encourages other cities and states to join it to restore government as it should have been but for the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004. Intriguing plot wrinkles come fore and aft of those basic developments, there are many deftly shaped supporting players, and major shocks explode in a split second (no Stephen King slo-mo for Card!). Moreover, all the action doesn't obscure the author's message about the dangers of extreme political polarization and the need to reassert moderation and mutual citizenship; indeed, it drives it home. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (November 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765355221
• ISBN-13: 978-0765355225
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (272 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #302,622 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Orson Scott Card is the bestselling author best known for the classic Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow and other novels in the Ender universe. Most recently, he was awarded the 2008 Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in Young Adult literature, from the American Library Association. Card has written sixty-one books, assorted plays, comics, and essays and newspaper columns. His work has won multiple awards, including back-to-back wins of the Hugo and the Nebula Awards-the only author to have done so in consecutive years. His titles have also landed on 'best of' lists and been adopted by cities, universities and libraries for reading programs. The Ender novels have inspired a Marvel Comics series, a forthcoming video game from Chair Entertainment, and pre-production on a film version. A highly anticipated The Authorized Ender Companion, written by Jake Black, is also forthcoming.Card offers writing workshops from time to time and occasionally teaches writing and literature at universities.Orson Scott Card currently lives with his family in Greensboro, NC.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#17 Overall (See top 100 authors)

#2 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

#2 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Science Fiction

#4 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy

#17 in Books

#21 in Books > Literature & Fiction

#2 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

#2 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Science Fiction

#4 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy

#17 in Books

#21 in Books > Literature & Fiction

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Almost good, but certainly not in OSC's top form. December 22, 2010

By Stanislav Fritz

Format:Mass Market Paperback

I will keep my review "fairly" brief, after scanning a number of the positive and negative reviews. I have no problem with the main characters having a conservative point of view. I do have a problem with the execution of the writing. As I pursue my own masters in creative writing, I am stunned by how Card violates some of his own advice from his two good books on writing (Character and Viewpoint; How to write science fiction). Whether you call this science fiction, or an espionage/thriller, it still has to be believable within the confines of the world he is building. It doesn't.

Card choses to build a world that is essentially "right now" and post 9-11. He populates it with people that actually exist (O'Reilly on FOX). If you do that, in broad brush strokes you are setting expectations that this is the world we live in right now and people would react as you have seen them recently react. They don't.
Card does a number of things that make this hard to swallow: 1) Major attack in and on New York City, where the entire nation still empathizes with the police and fire department (left or right politically) and has the revolutionary forces kill all uniformed people and the city then rolls over and embraces that group? This world? Today? Really? Embrace the killers of anyone in uniform? Then he basically ignores the entire situation for several months (elapsed novel time) and focuses strictly on the remaining protagonists? Card, what happened to "world building" as you discuss in your craft books? Yes, you wanted to keep it fast paced, but that much time elapses and we get close to zero feel for what is happening in the nation. A few blurbs about city council votes does not cut it!

The premise at its core could have worked. I have had two similar ideas boiling in my head for years...but if I ever approach the idea, I will look to this book as a list of things to avoid, not to emulate.

My concern (for Card's future) is that this book seems to have not been fully edited by a good set of critical editors. As authors become popular, this seems to occur frequently. Good and great authors still need to be told when something doesn't work and they need to not let their past success go to their head. I recently read a collection of Card's short stories, which included some LDS oriented stories. Despite the obvious political and religious leanings, those stories were quite good and the short essays that went with each story were insightful. But, most of those were written long ago.
Finally, as mentioned by a few, this also feels "video game-ish." I will probably not spend the time on the sequel to this, "Hidden Empire," as I suspect it will be in the same world and follow the same style. I don't begrudge Card the opportunity to get preachy, I just would like him to do a better job at it. Sometimes, when an author is too passionate about something s/he loses objectivity and the ability to self-edit. I think this may be the case for this book (and its sequel).

95 of 128 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Barely recognizable as OSC. September 28, 2007

By Hawk Season

Format:Hardcover

I don't mean to scathe an author I have for so long respected, but given my reaction to this book I don't see how I can do otherwise. On one hand, plot mechanics and the language of the book are blatantly recycled from his Ender series. The obsession with the word "jeesh" and certain actions with .22 pistols are laughable distractions for anyone who's read any other OSC.

The other hand, the more important hand to me, is that Card's language throughout is blatantly offensive to my value system. Card and I have opposite sociopolitical views, which I have known for a long time. That said, I have respected him for years because he always argued his value system in a way that I respect. From reading Card's work in the past, I was able to understand and sympathize with Conservative viewpoints. That said, he abandoned his intellectual approach in this book in favor of cheap shots barely worthy of best seller of the week pulp novels. I had to check the cover every few minutes to make sure it was still an Orson Scott Card book.

The only entertaining parts of the book, which ends in a total fizzle, are the action sequences... which are practically written to go straight to a movie. It's strange, the moment the book goes to an action sequence bizarre sci-fi machines come out of the woodwork. Nothing believable ever happens in the entire book, and the action sequences only serve to drop the credibility of the story.

I don't recognize this author as the man who wrote Ender's Game or Xenocide, two of my favorite books. He spends too much time taking cheap shots at modern pop culture, giving responsibility for a bloody and amoral civil war on absurdly single-minded "progressives" (the word "Progressive" is used in a derogatory fashion the whole book) who are bitter about Gore's loss in 2000, and championing the military much in the style of the Transformers movie to make this anything but a cartoonish joke of a novel. The occasional efforts to lighten this radical right wing blitzkrieg with assertions of right wing wrongdoing are pitiful and forced, quite patronizing.

I have nothing against people of different political persuasions, nothing that would cause me to wish extreme violence upon them, and I know no one who does... on either side of the aisle. This is not about my views as a left leaning American, this is about my views as a human. I'm ashamed of Card right now.

Really, I could go on and on, but I'd rather not. Mr. Card, I expected so much better from you. I'm actually a good bit sad right now.

45 of 60 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars John E January 24, 2007

By J. Mattingly

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Even being as conservative as I am I has a hard time reading this book. What could have been a action packed military thriller quickly became boring talk fest. One converstaion after another about nothing,that had to do with everything. While the begining of the story is and the initial plot(If there is a plot)are a good basis for a book that quickly goes no where.

I was hoping for a look into what a second American civil war would look like. I have read many books by Harry Turtledove and other writers who have taken on the subject and done wonderful jobs with it. This was not case with this book.

What realy killed the book for me was the ultra right wing angle of the book. As a Republican I can stand a lot of left wing bashing. But comparing Al Gore to the Unabomber was just a little more than I could take.