Gotta say, the early Empowered stories do imply a rather more freewheeling and, well, “wacky” universe than seems to be the case in later chapters. The sheer goofiness inherent to the image of UFOs disgorging alien pimpbots is quite a contrast with the relatively staid and stable (and sane) world of future volumes. Sometimes I really do miss the “anything goes” atmosphere of these earliest stories—but, in the end, not all that much, given the richer and more complex shape that the Empverse has come to assume. (Okay, so maybe that last sentence does sound just a tad pretentious.)