Capitol

Orson Scott Card's Capitol is an early, uneven short story collection that has several interesting pieces. Many of the stories were later reprinted (some with adjustments) in The Worthing Saga.

It's a future history of a space empire whose most important feature is suspended animation. A drug called Somec allows people to be suspended agelessly for any length of time. This enables space flight, but its real function is social: important people can sleep for one year out of two, or three out of five, or nine out of ten, based on their status. This creates a society where the rich and powerful seem ageless; even though their experienced life is no longer than anyone else's, they can watch lesser people age and die while they're still young.

This illusionary immortality (and one of the nice touches is the way that its enthusiasts uncritically think of it as "immortality," when obviously it's not) becomes all-consuming: people are either on Somec, or desperate to get on it, which gives the system an unbreakable hold on society.

The stories don't necessarily fit together well. The first two are set on Earth, and feel strangely off-topic. We don't need to know how Somec was invented, and the Soviet invasion of the US seems too large a topic to just introduce and then forget.

Most of the remainder are set on the planet Crove, later renamed Capitol, and these flow better. (Well, most of them. "Burning" is interesting in terms of its later place in The Worthing Chronicle, but in this context it makes no sense. Where did these telepaths come from, what part do they play, why are they never mentioned again?)

The two best stories are "Skipping Stones," which sets up the dilemma of Somec and its effects; and "Breaking the Game," about a celebrity video game player. The latter is effective because Card, with minimal detail, succeeds at making the game interesting! You can actually believe that people would spectate, and pay to play in it.

(It also reminds me of the political message boards in Ender's Game- another detail of the internet that Card predicted, accurately if not completely.)

The Worthing Chronicle is a better, neater collection of most of this material, which I suppose is why they republished it that way. But it was interesting to see this alternative framing. And Worthing gives only a brief and unsatisfying summary of "Breaking the Game," which deserves a fuller treatment.