Empire Games by Charles Stross

Empire Games by Charles Stross

Hugo Award-winning author Charlie Stross hits the ground running with Empire Games, provocative techno-thriller and fresh storyline in the Merchant Princes universe.

It's 2020. Two nuclear superpowers across timelines, one in the midst of a technological revolution and the other a hyper-police state, are set on a collision course. Each timeline's increasingly desperate paratime espionage agencies are fumbling around in the dark, trying to find a solution to the first-contact problem that doesn't result in a nuclear holocaust.

And two paratime travellers, Ministry of Intertemporal Research and Intelligence Commissioner Miriam Burgeson and newly minted spy Rita Douglas--a mother and her long-lost, adopted daughter--are about to find themselves on opposite sides of the confrontation.

CHARLES STROSS 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.