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Empire Games: Empire Games Series, Book 1
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Series:
Empire Games volume 1.
Published:
Tor Publishing Group 2017
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description

Charles Stross builds a new series with Empire Games, expanding on the world he created in the Family Trade series, a new generation of paratime travellers walk between parallel universes.
The year is 2020. It's seventeen years since the Revolution overthrew the last king of the New British Empire, and the newly-reconstituted North American Commonwealth is developing rapidly, on course to defeat the French and bring democracy to a troubled world. But Miriam Burgeson, commissioner in charge of the shadowy Ministry of Intertemporal Research and Intelligence—the paratime espionage agency tasked with catalyzing the Commonwealth's great leap forward—has a problem. For years, she's warned everyone: "The Americans are coming." Now their drones arrive in the middle of a succession crisis.
In another timeline, the U.S. has recruited Miriam's own estranged daughter to spy across timelines in order to bring down any remaining world-walkers who might threaten national security.
Two nuclear superpowers are set on a collision course. Two increasingly desperate paratime espionage agencies try to find a solution to the first contact problem that doesn't result in a nuclear holocaust. And two women—a mother and her long-lost daughter—are about to find themselves on opposite sides of the confrontation.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read, Open EPUB eBook
Street Date:
01/17/2017
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781466835160
ASIN:
B01HMMYSOW
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Charles Stross. (2017). Empire Games: Empire Games Series, Book 1. Tor Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Charles Stross. 2017. Empire Games: Empire Games Series, Book 1. Tor Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Charles Stross, Empire Games: Empire Games Series, Book 1. Tor Publishing Group, 2017.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Charles Stross. Empire Games: Empire Games Series, Book 1. Tor Publishing Group, 2017.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Date Added:
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Date Updated:
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        CHARLES STROSS (he/him) is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has won three Hugo Awards for Best Novella, including for the Laundry Files tale "Equoid." His work has been translated into over twelve languages. His novels include the bestselling Merchant Princes series, the Laundry series (including Locus Award finalist The Dilirium Brief), and several stand-alones including Glasshouse, Accelerando, and Saturn's Children.
        Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped catastrophes, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stakeout) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing, he tried to change employers just as the bubble burst) to technical writer and prolific journalist covering the IT industry. Along the way he collected degrees in pharmacy and computer science, making him the world's first officially qualified cyberpunk writer.

      • name: Charles Stross
imprint
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title
Empire Games
fullDescription

Charles Stross builds a new series with Empire Games, expanding on the world he created in the Family Trade series, a new generation of paratime travellers walk between parallel universes.
The year is 2020. It's seventeen years since the Revolution overthrew the last king of the New British Empire, and the newly-reconstituted North American Commonwealth is developing rapidly, on course to defeat the French and bring democracy to a troubled world. But Miriam Burgeson, commissioner in charge of the shadowy Ministry of Intertemporal Research and Intelligence—the paratime espionage agency tasked with catalyzing the Commonwealth's great leap forward—has a problem. For years, she's warned everyone: "The Americans are coming." Now their drones arrive in the middle of a succession crisis.
In another timeline, the U.S. has recruited Miriam's own estranged daughter to spy across timelines in order to bring down any remaining world-walkers who might threaten national security.
Two nuclear superpowers are set on a collision course. Two increasingly desperate paratime espionage agencies try to find a solution to the first contact problem that doesn't result in a nuclear holocaust. And two women—a mother and her long-lost daughter—are about to find themselves on opposite sides of the confrontation.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

seriesId
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reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: David Brin, author of Existence
      • content:

        Praise for Empire Games

        "The keen eye and what-if imagination of Charles Stross fuel a fresh look at alternate worlds."

      • premium: False
      • source: Michael Flynn
      • content: "A well-written book, full of mystery and intrigue, with entire worlds at stake."
      • premium: False
      • source: SFFWorld.com
      • content: "If you like the spy novels of Ian Fleming, or Len Deighton, as I do, but also appreciate a genre twist, then you'll love Empire Games. It is intelligent, entertaining and yet also a little scary."
      • premium: False
      • source: Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author
      • content:
        Praise for The Merchant Princes Series

        "Economic science fiction worth reading."
      • premium: False
      • source: The Wall Street Journal
      • content: "Stross is not a writer who aims to leave his readers reassured: One can't tell which way he's going to go, nor whose side he's on. No one beats him at hypertech either."
      • premium: False
      • source: Kirkus Reviews
      • content: "Absorbing."
      • premium: False
      • source: The Times (London) on Charles Stross

      • content: "If imagination is the key to success for a writer, Charles Stross has it in spades."
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        November 14, 2016
        The multiverse teeters on the edge of a new cold war in this overly long and complicated novel, a continuation of Stross’s popular Merchant Princes series. In 2020, Rita Douglas, an aimless 20-something, is pulled into a plot by the Department of Homeland Security. Her mother—who placed her for adoption when she was a baby—is Miriam Beckstein, a world-walker who can pass into other timelines. Newly developed tech can awaken Rita’s world-walking abilities, and DHS recruits her as a spy. Meanwhile, in a different timeline, Miriam and other world-walkers are embedded in the government of the Commonwealth, emancipated from the British Empire in 2003. Both Rita and Miriam are forced to navigate the apparatuses of their governments: the bloated bureaucracy of the American panopticon, and the scheming intrigues of post-revolution power players. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Miriam and Rita must try to negotiate peace or prepare for an interdimensional war. Readers new to Stross’s saga might have unanswered questions, but this novel stands on its own. Stross roots his alternate histories and futures in discussions of privacy, democracy, and technology. These big themes (fun as they are) tend to overpower the small details, and the characters and relationships feel underdeveloped.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        November 15, 2016
        Espionage and Cold War paranoia prevail as near-future governments in alternate timelines test one another's defenses and capabilities in this opening installment of a science-fiction trilogy and sequel to the six-volume Merchant Princes series (The Trade of Queens, 2010, etc.)The previous series focused on trade, smuggling, and the power politics of godfather-style families across alternate timelines. Here the USA (not ours, but close) of timeline No. 2 has become a hypertrophied military-police/surveillance/espionage state ("President Rumsfeld" tells you all you need to know). In the less technologically advanced timeline No. 3, the revolutionary North American Commonwealth is locked in a nuclear standoff with the vast French empire. Because of a nuclear attack that destroyed Washington (and for other, even more alarming, reasons), the USA desperately wants to learn what's happening there. A committee headed by generic cold warrior Col. Smith recruits people, called world-walkers, who possess the ability to cross between timelines in latent form, intending to awaken their abilities and send them into timeline No. 3 as spies. The guinea pig is Rita Douglas, estranged daughter (though it's hugely more involved than that) of Miriam Beckstein, the prime mover of the prior series who, fearing the USA's power, now guides the rapid technological development of the Commonwealth. This novel and its prequels are, for Stross, almost defiantly orthodox in structure (see the narrative pyrotechnics of Rule 34, for instance) and stately in development. Still, his writing is as complex and subtle as ever, so series newcomers may well need to absorb the first 200 pages before the sociological and political implications fully emerge. Which viewpoint readers identify with, and there's plenty of scope for ambiguity, will depend mostly on what they themselves bring along. An absorbing but ultimately underwhelming yarn that patiently builds on existing foundations without venturing a conclusion or even a cliffhanger.

        COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        December 1, 2016

        In 2003, the Revolution overthrew the last king of the New British Empire. Now, 17 years later, the North American Commonwealth seeks to spread democracy throughout the world. The Ministry of Intertemporal Research and Intelligence is an espionage agency that has helped the Commonwealth spearhead its development and power in this time line. That's right: it's a time-traveling agency. Ministry head Miriam Burgeson knows that eventually their dimension will be crossed (as she and her crew did in the past), and the Americans will arrive. In another parallel universe, Miriam's daughter, Rita--abandoned at birth by her on-the-run parent--has been recruited by the United States to look for these "world walkers" and stop them from threatening its national security. Yet, from the beginning, it is obvious that Rita is not getting the entire truth from her handlers. With two paratime agencies trying to avoid confrontation, the stage is being set for a battle between a pair of nuclear powers--and an estranged mother and daughter are caught in the middle. VERDICT With this series launch, Stross draws on the world of his "Merchant Princes" series and its paratime travelers. Contemporary power plays mixed with historical notes make for an entertaining, action-filled start to this trilogy.--KC

        Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        Starred review from December 15, 2016
        Stross returns to the world of his Merchant Princes series, his homage to the Amber series by Roger Zelazny. Reading more like a high-tech thriller than a fantasy about walking between worlds in a multiverse, this first of three alternate histories focuses on Miriam's estranged daughter, Rita. Rita's been left behind in the United States most similar to our own world but having been galvanized by a nuclear attack on Washington, D.C., into a place where cameras see almost everything going on. The Department of Homeland Security targets Rita as a carrier of the gene that allows one to jaunt from one world to anotherin fact, they train her to become an agent to spy on the Clan faction responsible for the nuclear attack. Stross handles the story well enough that you don't need to have read the previous six books. Of course, those who have will be overjoyed to renew their acquaintance with Miriam and her associates, who are desperately trying to avert a political disaster in their own world while preparing for the inevitable collision about to take place with Rita's world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

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shortDescription

Charles Stross builds a new series with Empire Games, expanding on the world he created in the Family Trade series, a new generation of paratime travellers walk between parallel universes.
The year is 2020. It's seventeen years since the Revolution overthrew the last king of the New British Empire, and the newly-reconstituted North American Commonwealth is developing rapidly, on course to defeat the French and bring democracy to a troubled world. But Miriam Burgeson, commissioner in charge of the shadowy Ministry of Intertemporal Research and Intelligence—the paratime espionage agency tasked with catalyzing the Commonwealth's great leap forward—has a problem. For years, she's warned everyone: "The Americans are coming." Now their drones arrive in the middle of a succession crisis.
In another timeline, the U.S. has recruited Miriam's own estranged daughter to spy across timelines in order to bring down any remaining world-walkers who might threaten...

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