Empire

I picked this book up because I saw Orson Scott Card's name, and I read the synopsis on the back cover. The cover and the synopsis intrigued me, and I must say this book succeeded in making me think. I read many of the reviews and saw that many do not like this book, they make reference to Ender's Series and say it isn't the same. No it's not the same. This is a stand alone book and dealing with a completely different topic. This is one book where you need to read the forward, story, and afterward. Orson Scott Card is trying to make you think. This book shows us starkly how divided as a nation we have become. You can say the book is biased, but honestly, use your head. A book is usually told from one point of view and this one is no different. The Science Fiction genre exists to tell us of possible futures, warning us to be careful and that we are not infallible or invincible. This book succeeded in doing that, warning us that moderation is more of the key and not the extreme polar opposites that have attacked this country. This book is going next to my other sci-fi items that make me think long and hard about what is happening in the world today.

A lot of liberals read this book and get their feathers ruffled because Card portrays a handful of liberals as the bad guys and a handful of conservatives as the good guys. If that makes this book "Ann Coulter screed" then everything by Robert Heinlein is "Al Franken screed." Kurt Vonnegut is just Jane Fonda's puppet and Neal Stephenson copies Greenpeace pamphlets. Come on, people! Most Americans acknowledge that there is a liberal bias in newspapers and TV news broadcasts, and a conservative bias in talk radio. Why is it perfectly all right for there to be a liberal bias in the science fiction of Heinlein, Vonnegut, LeGuin, Bradbury, or Stephenson, but when Card (who is, like half the country, a conservative) allows his own political views to influence his novel, he is a mudslinger? The story itself is a work of fiction, obviously; that being said, Card's afterword makes clear his opinion on the plausibility of the story. He claims that as liberals and conservatives become more polarized, we stop seeing each other as rational people and start seeing each other as ideologues. If I say I believe in protecting our environment, conservatives immediately assume I am pro-choice, I am anti-war, I am atheist and I want to bring class-action lawsuits against every gun manufacturer in the world; clearly I am a commie left-wing extremist. On the other hand, if I claim to support the privatization of Social Security, liberals immediately assume I am fascist, I drive a Hummer, I hate gays, and I blow up abortion clinics with bombs I purchased at a gun show. How long do you think Americans can keep hating each other as ideologues and not get violent? Card observes, "A good working definition of fanaticism is that you are so convinced of your views and policies that you are sure anyone who opposes them must either be stupid and deceived, or have some ulterior motive. We are today a nation where almost everyone in the public eye displays fanaticism with every utterance." Fanaticism can only lead to hatred, and hatred can only lead to violence. This fictional story takes today's fanatical ideologies (not everyday liberal or conservative, but extremist on both sides) and carries them to the logical conclusion: war. Bias doesn't make the book bad. It doesn't make any book bad, or good. It just is. How you react to someone else's bias can be socially irresponsible, however. You can accept the differences and disagree on the beliefs, or you can choose to hate the person. Which do you think is more civilized? Which do you think is more rational?

I can see from browsing the other reviews that this is one of those love-hate SciFi stories. Readers who lean to the right will love it. Readers who lean left (and/or are hoping for another "Ender's Game") will hate it. Independents, who tend to reticence anyway, will probably skip this one. Being an independent myself, I'll see what I can do to raise the viewership of that point of view. (Oh, god, I'm gonna get hammered on this one!) First off, Card himself wrote from an independent perspective. Granted, I was a little suspicious at first. Card is after all a Mormon and hails from the South to boot, but those are only indicators, not proof of rightness. The proof of independence came in the Afterword--a must-read essay that clarifies much. Another thing that threw me was Card's too-kind treatment of Fox News and its insufferable Bill O'Reilly's highly-spun 'No-spin Zone.' I've never forgiven that fool for suggesting terrorists come to San Francisco to blow up Coit Tower. Yet another thing that threw me was that Card began his story in the POV of a somewhat right protagonist, Major Reuben Malich. (Oddly, there were three co-protagonists in this story. It took me many chapters to figure out why--you retain the option to bump off a protagonist if you have spares. That way there is someone left to finish the story! Clever--have to remember that for my next book.) Only later does Card introduce us to the liberal protagonist, Reuben's wife, Cessy. The third protagonist, Captain Cole, seems to bounce between the two in sidekick fashion asking dumb questions that give the other two openings to pontificate on the two sides of Card's political agenda. I am certain Captain Cole will get more brilliant statements and fewer dumb questions in the sequel. (There are some supporting castmembers: Torrent and Nielson, but Card never allows the reader inside their heads through internal monologue, hence they remain in their support roles.) Second, while Card made the ultra left the villains in the story, his real point was that EITHER the ultra left or the ultra right could have been the heavy, and it was only an authorial coin-toss as to which side won... or lost depending on your own political leanings. Anyway, somebody had to start the civil war, and since the ultra rights were already in office, it remained for the ultra left to stir things up. Third, this book is not really SciFi except in the technical sense. Card's 'mechanicals,' hovercraft, and anti-aircraft deathrays were mandated by the video game and also served as a plot device to give the rebels enough military clout to be a plausible threat. Otherwise the story would have been a repeat of the Branch Davidian massacre of Waco, Texas (February 1993), i.e., a political non-event. BTW--my own personal experience studying dynamically stable, legged robots (Google: Odex I six-legged robot) suggests that this is an extremely knotty problem to solve, much too difficult for the today's high-speed battle

Have you ever wondered what it might be like if Tom Clancy, Dale Brown or James Patterson didn't jump into the enemy camp/villian's mind so often to spoon feed the readers details of what the opposition is doing? True, we might feel more removed from the villain of the piece, but at the same time we'd also have more of a feeling for the protagonist's situation. That's what Orson Scott Card has given the political/military thriller genre with Empire. With a degree of courage that other authors would shy away from, Orson Scott Card puts us with the protagonists and never jumps to a "meanwhile in the enemy camp" aside. We as readers are forced to guess and spin theories, just as the main characters do. True, some military thriller fans may scratch their heads at the degree of sci-fi tech involved, but at the same time it's no more than what's already in some Ops-Center novels and much of Dale Brown's more recent post Old Dog work. Plus, as a political thriller, Card never allows either the right or the left an exclusive hold of the moral high ground. Both are presented with flaws, and strengths... And both Red Staters and Blue Staters will probably find much to disagree with if they apply the strictest form of their ideologies to this book. Which just goes to show Churchill was right when he said, "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." Also, I would be amiss if I failed to mention the masterful narration of Stefan Rudnicki. His vocal range is outstanding as he jumps from character voices and back into the narrative voice. I do wish the powers that be had sprung for more narrators so that each section would have more of a feeling of the third person narrative perspective so key to much of Card's work. An excellent example of this type of multiple narrator presentation can be heard in the unabridged audio editions of Card's Shadow Series. In summation, Empire is an excellent political/military thriller with the courage to let readers be thinkers too.

Empire is more than just a great thriller about a possible civil war in the US, it is a jumping off point for a larger discussion of the polarization in American politics between the academic, urban and secular idealists on the left and the suburban or rural, more religious thinkers on the right. The book opens up discussion about the possible threats of this polarization and how extremism from both the right and left is harmful. "Empire" opens one's eyes to the real harm this "war of ideas" can do to our culture and to our country. It is an important book and should be read by anyone who cares about the deep divide in our country caused by the media, extremists, and those who care more about political agendas and self-righteousness than about the truth.