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Empire (Tor Science Fiction) | 
 enlarge | Author: Orson Scott Card
Publisher: Tor Books
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Rating:  186 reviews
Sales Rank: 170786
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Edition: 1st
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0765355221
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780765355225
ASIN: 0765355221
Publication Date: November 27, 2007
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 181 more reviews...
 Ok book weak for OS Card.. November 19, 2008
sacox (ohio)
TItle to my reveiw says it all! This book had a good premise but i would expect it at a crappy movie theater. It's no enders game!! Still an ok read by any standards. COnsidering what today's standards are!
 Great fiction, this is one fantasy I hope stays that way November 18, 2008
A. Jones
I have read several OSC books but I do not consider myself a huge fan. Going into this book I was looking for something apocalyptic, instead I got a well defined alternate reality demonstrating how divided our country has become and, like any good science fiction this was just "real" enough it was believable. He writes realistic stories of fanatics in our government and society, something we can see if we just turn on the TV right now. He makes a great argument for how tolerance is one-sided, and we have become so intolerant of opposing views that it won't take much to bring it to violence, quoting OSC on the insanity of our fringe idealogues, he says, "What inevitably arises from such division is the attempt by one group, utterly convinced of its rectitude, to use all coercive forces available to stamp out the opposing views". We've seen this in our most recent elections, people willing to send hate letters to peaceful religious organizations, boycotts, book burnings, and marches.
This reads like a good spy novel with great characters you love and enough fantasy(keep that in mind since there are some things that require your imagination be open) that you aren't stuck in your daily world. In 10 years the contemporary nature of it will probably date the book badly but I don't think he's trying to pull a 1984 and project what the future will be like, all the more reason to stick to real stuff, ipods, google earth, contemporary political idiots. Enjoy
 Terrible November 3, 2008
tay2079 (USA)
I bought this book remembering that I liked Ender's Game when I was a kid. This book was terrible. Do no buy this awful book. The author does not have complete sentences in the book. My wife read some pages to me on a road trip and she also stated it was terrible writing. Also the description on military terms in the book are not well researched.
Doesn't deliver October 30, 2008
Chris Parmly (Washington, DC)
Read it a year ago. Sorry, but I found it tremendously unbalanced, getting worse and worse with each page.
Am I a liberal? Yes, unapologetically so. I'm also capable of handling literature that disagrees with me. I first got interested in politics by reading Tom Clancy, who was my favorite author for a long time before he was superseded by Stephen Coonts (even more conservative, but a better writer). I don't demand that a book embrace my ideology or play by my rules, but I do demand that it play by its own. Orson Scott Card laid out these rules in the back of the book and throughout the entire novel by presenting himself as a voice for reason and open-mindedness in a country divided between far-right and far-left. But his entire book was nothing but ragging on the far-left, which, upon closer examination, was nothing but the left proper.
Yes, there was one bad conservative - General Alton (whom we later find out was manipulated by the leftists all along). But Alton's extremism is entirely redeemed by the glorious service of Malich, Cole, Nielsen and all the others, who prove to the reader that Alton and his ilk are nothing but "a parody of the right's values," which, correctly interpreted, are wonderful. There's no such complexity and no such redeeming characters on the left.
Yes, there was one good liberal - Cessy. But she was frankly nothing but a wet dream of what a liberal should be - the loyal, unquestioning opposition which holds essentially the same views but just happens to be in the other party. The mirror image of Alan Alda on the West Wing, but again, the West Wing is clearly liberal and makes no pretense at a fair and balanced approach. Cessy works with and for Republicans exclusively throughout the entire book - we're not shown any liberal politicians, media figures, businessmen, soldiers or others joining Nielsen to save the republic. She doesn't once get to articulate her own views, and therefore we never get to see what Card considers a "reasonable" left-wing belief (the closest she comes is when she reassures her husband that most liberals really do love America and really are upset about the attacks, something that would never have crossed his mind before she said it). Card carefully draws the distinction between "good" conservatives and lunatics, but he makes no such effort with the left, and every real-life liberal or liberal institution he mentions is treated with the utmost contempt (Al Gore, George Soros, CNN, the Washington Post, New York City, the state of Maryland, etc). A good liberal should be like Cessy; stay at home, watch the babies, and when the country's in trouble, shut up and take your orders from Republicans.
The premise of the book was wonderful, and so were the principles Card pretended to espouse. The application was atrocious. I'd much rather read someone who honestly expresses opinions I disagree with (Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders" remains the best example in my mind) than someone who spends three hundred pages trashing my beliefs, my patriotism and my intelligence, then has the arrogance to end his book with a call for tolerance and "moderating ourselves." Card fails to deliver what he promises and, IMO, should take a dose of his own medecine.
 Average Card book (which is very good) October 29, 2008
Christopher H. Ferguson (San Antonio, TX United States)
Almost harkens back to Heinlen, in both good and bad ways. If you liked Card's "Folk of the Fringe" books, you'll like this one; it has a similar feel. This book has even more of an an action-novel appeal than the 'shadow' series; nice, but my favorite part of Card's writing is where he deals with more interpersonal/societal issues.
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