Mild spoilers ahead.

In his new novel The Collapsing Empire, bestselling writer John Scalzi builds a fascinating new interstellar civilization in order to destroy it. The Interdependency is a thousand-year-old interplanetary trade partnership in humanity's distant future. Its member planets were once connected to Earth by the Flow, a natural feature of space-time that allows ships to enter a kind of subspace zone. Once there, they can circumvent the unbreakable speed of light to travel between stars that are dozens of light years apart. What could go wrong?

Unfortunately, nobody is asking that question. Humanity has created an entire civilization that relies on the Flow and its "shoals," where ships can enter and exit. Planets are colonized purely based on their proximity to the shoals, not on habitability. The result is not unlike a medieval trade guild society whose populace happens to live in domed cities, buried caves, and artificial habitats, completely dependent on trade for resources.

The problem is that the Flow, like most natural features, has a tendency to change shape over time. As the novel opens, our protagonist, Cardenia, recently crowned emperox of the Interdependency, has just made a nasty discovery. She learns that her late father has secretly been funding a Flow physicist who has determined that every planet in the Interdependency will be cut off from the Flow within the next decade.

In some ways, this novel feels like a zippier version of Dune. Representatives from different royal houses fight dirty for power, even as they lose their grip on the substance that makes their interstellar empires possible. As fans of Scalzi's work like Old Man's War, Redshirts, and Lock In are already aware, Scalzi is a master of action. And as fans of his blog Whatever know, he isn't afraid to get political. Plus, he doesn't give a crap if you disagree with him; in fact, he kind of relishes it, because it gives him a chance to insult you in the most creative ways imaginable.

There's something delightful about watching Scalzi's characters, from royals and palace guards to physicists and traders, have political brawls at several removes from our real-life problems on Earth. Still, there are echoes of home. At times, the ruling groups' reactions to the Flow are reminiscent of how our present-day Earth politicians react to news about climate change by calling science nonsense or by trotting out their own scientists to disagree. But as Scalzi pointed out in an interview with The Verge, the inspiration for his thought experiment was a lot weirder. He was wondering what would happen to Earth's great powers if the ocean currents suddenly stopped and shipping trade became impossible.

Though The Collapsing Empire is firmly in the space-opera tradition, Scalzi's style sets it apart. Conversational and hilarious, the book is epic in scope but intimate in tone. Instead of a portentous narrator telling us about impending doom, it feels like we have the wise-cracking Scalzi spinning a yarn over beers in the mess hall. Yet this funny narrator has a sharp eye, calling attention to hypocrisy and injustice without ever sounding preachy. This is obvious from the very first moments of the book's prologue, where Scalzi describes a mutiny, noting that it didn't go according to standard legal procedures:

A senior crewmember, preferably the executive officer/first mate, but possibly the chief engineer, chief technician, chief physician or, in genuinely bizarre circumstances, the owner's representative, would offer the ship's Imperial adjunct a formal Bill of Grievances Pursuant to a Mutiny, consistent with guild protocol. The Imperial adjunct would confer with the ship's chief chaplain, calling for witnesses and testimony if required, and the two would, in no later than a month, either offer up with a Finding for Mutiny or issue a Denial of Mutiny... Obviously no one was going to do any of that.

Despite the light tone and entertainingly profanity-laced dialogue, this novel is ultimately about power and its abuse. Each of the main characters may be, as one puts it, "an asshole," but they are also fumbling toward having an ethical position on how to save people from impending disaster. You'll be chuckling until the moment when you realize that Scalzi isn't providing any easy answers. If you want some amusing escapism full of guts and brains, The Collapsing Empire should be on your list.

The novel is the first in a series, but it's unclear how many books will follow—Scalzi has said only that he has a sequel in the works. Warning: the book ends on a cliffhanger, but there is still plenty of satisfying closure on the conflicts we've watched unfold. Plus, this is the first book to come out of Scalzi's 13-book, 10-year deal with Tor, so there will be plenty more Scalzi for you to read in the coming decade. The Collapsing Empire is a terrific start.

Listing image by Sparth