Invisible Sun
Invisible Sun concludes Charles Stross’s Empire Games trilogy, where two versions of America are locked in a cold war. This is a chillingly resonant dystopian vision.
Two twinned worlds are waiting for war...
America is caught in a deadly arms race with the USA, its high-tech, parallel world. Yet it might just self-combust first. For its president-equivalent has died, leaving a crippling power vacuum. Without the First Man’s support, Miriam Bernstein faces a paranoid government opponent. He suspects her of scheming to resurrect the American monarchy. And Miriam is indeed helping the exiled American princess. This is only to prevent her being used against them, but her rivals will twist anything to ruin her.
However, all factions will face a disaster bigger than anything they could imagine. In their drive to explore other timelines, hi-tech America has awakened an alien threat. This force destroyed humanity on one version of earth – and if they don’t take action, it will do the same to both of their timelines.
Invisible Sun follows Empire Games and Dark State. This trilogy is set in the same vividly imagined world as Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes sequence.
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Charles Stross
Charles Stross doesn’t just write science fiction—he reverse-engineers the future. Whether unraveling the complexities of AI, economics, or cosmic horror, his stories feel less like speculative fiction and more like eerily plausible roadmaps to tomorrow. A former software developer and technical writer, Stross brings a hacker’s mindset to storytelling, dissecting the machinery of reality and exposing the glitches beneath.
Born in Leeds, England, Stross grew up surrounded by the last vestiges of the Industrial Age, a landscape that would later inform his fascination with systems—both human and technological. Before becoming a full-time author, he dabbled in everything from pharmacy to computer science, experiences that lend his work an uncanny level of authenticity. His early exposure to computing and online culture made him one of the first sci-fi writers to deeply explore the implications of a hyper-connected world, long before the tech boom turned cyberpunk into a reality.
Empire Games
Empire Games consists of three books — considered a complete series. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
Main series The Merchant Princes Universe
