After the fall

February 11, 2017 11:19 AM

Famously, Asimov's Foundation stores was inspired by Gibbon'sDecline and Fall. Less famously, Turtledove's Darkness series had as plot point and background the destruction of an ancient empire. What other works of SF have in their history a fallen or greatly diminished imperial power?
posted by the man of twists and turns to Media & Arts (10 answers total)

If you think of the current USA as an imperial power (I don't, but some people do, or claim to) S.M. Stirling's Emberverse series qualifies.
posted by Bruce H. at 11:23 AM on February 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: TV Tropes: Vestigial Empire.
posted by zamboni at 12:15 PM on February 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

The Scalzi Old Man's War books show the disintegration of the Earth Empire and rise of a multi world Republic. This, however, is the plot of the books, not the books' background history.
posted by Malla at 12:16 PM on February 11, 2017

Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Sun" is almost entirely about this, though figuring out the specifics is a large part of the fun.
posted by eugenen at 12:18 PM on February 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

The Handmaid's Tale is explicitly about a near-future America that has been overthrown by a religiously-inspired military coup.
posted by saucysault at 12:24 PM on February 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Across a Billion Years by Robert Silverberg.
posted by meronym at 1:26 PM on February 11, 2017

Stargate and Stargate: Atlantis, if you consider them SF.
posted by praemunire at 2:38 PM on February 11, 2017

H. Beam Pipper's Terro-Human Future History, very old school with all that, that is implied. Mostly the former glorious British Empire in space, but a lot of the plots are lifted from history.
posted by ridgerunner at 3:59 PM on February 11, 2017

David Drake's The General Series.
posted by dttocs at 10:12 PM on February 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Lois Bujold's Sharing Knife series is set in the aftermath of "a grand collapse of a prior high magical culture [that] has brought population and technology back to roughly the state of the early 19th-century American frontier—minus gunpowder."
posted by Bruce H. at 6:08 AM on February 12, 2017