The first part of tonight’s discussion of John Scalzi’s The Interdependency trilogy centers on politics in our world. The second part focuses on the books and, while I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, there will be a few, by necessity. You’re warned.
In the Afterword of the first volume, The Collapsing Empire, Scalzi writes:
I will also note that the title of this book — The Collapsing Empire — was not intended as a commentary on the current state of the United States, the UK, or of Western Civilization in general. I thought it up years ago. It just happened to look like commentary because, let’s face it, 2016 was a historically fucked-up year, and I can only hope 2017 is going to be better. Because if it’s not, it really is time to head to the bunkers with our barrels of beans and rice. (1, p. 332)
He wrote this in October, 2016, before the Presidential election. Which made me chuckle when I read it again recently, and think to myself, Oh, we were all so naive back then!
The Afterword of Volume 3, The Last Emperox, asks us all to make sure we’re registered to vote, to vote, and to be sure not to vote for, as Scalzi elegantly puts it, “a whirling amoral vortex of chaos” (3, p. 316). I’m pretty sure it was not written from a rice- and bean-filled bunker, which means that Scalzi is braver than he imagined himself, to be still living in the same world with the rest of us. After all the insanity of the past three years, we’re enduring a horrific pandemic, the onset of hurricane season and freakin’ murder hornets — that was not on my personal bingo card — not to mention continuing climate collapse, 2016 was a cakewalk, the last year we had any pretension that ignoring politics was a viable option.
As I noted last week, Scalzi doesn’t admit any direct correlations between his fictional Interdependency and our world, but does say that he lives in the world and writes for people who likewise live in the world. Therefore, it’s not out of bounds to imagine the trilogy as a parable of, oh, let’s say a world-spanning disaster that will cause mass migration, civil war, outbreaks of violence, locusts, rising seas, refugees, shrinking habitat…something that, if not a direct correlation, is at least a heavy rhyme. Part of the pleasure in reading this particular trilogy is observing the echo of fictional character actions in contemporary politics. In short, the two realities track, even down to a few of the identities. Ghreni Norhampaten is a lot like Trump, while his sister Nadashe possesses more of Dick Cheney’s ambitious evil genius. Teran Assan, in his role in The Consuming Fire, could be played by Michael Cohen in the film version, while Jamies Claremont I imagine as a blend of Michael Mann and Barack Obama, with a dash of Neil deGrasse Tyson. The protagonists, however, are reminiscent of no one but themselves.
Enough nattering. I described The Interdependency as a take on climate change and, although Scalzi might say differently — and while fiction is not reality, all fiction comments on reality — the implications and observations are entertainingly parallel. I thought about this phenomenon while reading Hunter’s excellent observation in his piece yesterday about the Washington Post’s report about the Trump Administration’s incompetence:
From climate change to tax policy, the "conservative" stance is now almost always whatever the experts are warning it should not be; no matter how many tax cuts are passed, it never leads to the economic windfalls claimed; no matter how many decades are spent pissing away time with claims that climate experts could not possibly be right in their measurements and analysis, each passing year only brings new confirmations that they are.
Magical thinking doesn’t just happen on Earth. Ghreni, who is not the sharpest knife in the Norhampaten drawer*, comes to this crashing realization and knows that he hasn’t quite thought through his plan when Count Claremont explains to him, in short simple words, just how badly he’s screwed up: inciting a civil war, making enemies of potential allies, burning resources, and following bad science. In short, Claremont tells him that, because he’s ambitious and greedy but isn’t the prime mover of the treasonous plot, there’s no glorious future on the other side of the coming disaster, but there is hope for him. His participation in his family’s intrigues:
means your ambition and greed are in service for something more than just yourself. It means that you might be something other than just a grasping sociopath. That you might actually care about the Interdependency, and the people in it, and what happens to them. (1, p. 245)
Fast forward: Ghreni is more Trump than GWB. Don’t get your hopes up. And I’m going to discuss the trilogy in context of our looming climate disaster. Even if it’s not what Scalzi intended, it works.
Some spoilers ahead
If we expect to discuss a piece of work, we have to be able to discuss at least some of its elements, or we’re left mouthing nebulous platitudes, which is a waste of your time, and mine. I promise not to be excessive with details, though. Here goes.
Volume 1, The Collapsing Empire, introduces the characters and outlines the scope of the problem. The Flow is going away. The Flow operates according to complex mathematical formulas and doesn’t respond to either human desire or magical thinking. The book begins with the death of the old Emperox and the elevation of the new one. It also starts with instability in the Flow, predicted by a few obscure scientists working in isolation, and the beginnings of which are being experienced by the ships that actually navigate it.
The dying Emperox recommends that his daughter, Cardenia, take the Imperial name Grayland II (Emperoxes take official names, like Popes here on Earth; the practice allows the Emperox to reserve a private bit of personal life instead of letting the position entirely subsume the poor individual who must wear the crown). Cardenia has been elevated to the monarchy unexpectedly, and must grow into her role if she wants to save her people.
But why Grayland II? Because Grayland I was assassinated following the collapse of the Flow streams to the system of Dalasýsla, stranding a whole world. (This is known as foreshadowing.) Remember from last week, the Interdependency is so named because no single system is self-sufficient, but provides certain essential resources to benefit the whole. It’s the empire that works, depending on trade between each of the systems. Remove one system, and the empire might continue. But pull the plug on trade, and the whole thing collapses. (If you’re thinking about global trade systems right now, you’re not alone.) So generations ago, the Flow streams to and from Dalasýsla collapsed, and on Dalasýsla what followed was
Basically, civil war, murder, violence, sabotage of life-support systems and food production, the rise of cults of personality. (1, p. 134)
Grayland I tells Grayland II (don’t ask, just trust me) that she didn’t immediately evacuate Dalasýsla when she received the warning that their Flow streams were going to collapse because of
“Politics,” Grayland said. “Evacuating the twenty million people who lived in the Dalasýsla system would have required immense planning and capital on the part of the Interdependency. There was no will for it...[The parliament] considered it a matter of someone they saw as a weak emperox trying to manufacture a crisis, as a way of shifting the balance of power away from the parliament. They also saw it as a threat to trade and the economy, since a large number of ships would need to be committed to an evacuation, at a huge cost. (1, pp. 132-133)
Now, if that doesn’t remind you of Congressional histrionics circa 2015, nothing will.
Further, Grayland I tells her, regarding the science, that the parliament
“held a commission which featured other Flow physicists poking holes in the findings, introducing enough doubt to undermine any political drive to do anything. Even the representatives from Dalasýsla voted down my recommendation to begin an evacuation. What eventually passed was a recommendation for further study. But money wasn’t appropriated in the imperial budget for that further study, so nothing came of it.” (1, p. 133)
Despite that the disaster that ended Grayland I’s reign is coming again, but this time, writ large, Grayland II’s father, Attavio VI, confirms that, essentially, conditions in the empire haven’t changed.
The parliament would still see raising the concern as a political move to marginalize them. No one wants to disrupt trade or the privileges of the guild houses. And in this case it won’t be just one system, like Dalasýsla. It will be all of them. There won’t be anywhere to run. What happened at Dalasýsla will happen everywhere. (1, p. 135)
The Collapsing Empire begins to outline the scope of the crisis, and it establishes that rational action in the face of an impending crisis has run into a quagmire of nitpicking and self-interested manufactured doubt, not to mention bureaucracy before, and it will again. Plan A is already off the table.
Next week, we’ll go into Grayland II’s Plan B. And C. And then D. I’m giving you plenty of time to get the books and catch up with the crowd.
* Scalzi seems to delight in tweaking readers. When he’s not giving ships titles like Tell Me Another One and Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby, he christens certain characters and places with utterly unpronounceable names, like Norhampaten or Fundapellonen or Xi’an or Dalasýsla, as opposed to simpler names like Wu.
References
1. Scalzi, John. The Collapsing Empire. NY: Tor, 2017.
2. Scalzi, John, The Consuming Fire. NY: Tor, 2018.
3. Scalzi, John. The Last Emperox. NY: Tor, 2020.