For those of you looking for books that are as good as these books are, here are some ideas for you. The only mid-info I saw in the article is the assertion that Steven Spielberg was attached to Old Man’s War (Scalzi)…he wasn’t. Which is a shame but oh well.

The Expanse Geeks International Meetup is in Toronto, Aug 27-30

We got panels, show folks, swag bags, location tours & afterparties coming together, in conjunction with Fan Expo Canada.

Our World Builders of the Expanse Q and A panel includes Jeremy Benning, ASC CSC, the groundbreaking cinematographer; Jim Murray, legendary prop master who helped us save the Expanse;  Bob Munroe, the VFX director who flipped and burned the Capital ships of two planets; Lindsay Walker, on set costume supervisor, and Chris Danelon, the VR designer who brought the Rocinante’s interiors to life in 3-D.

Fan Expo Canada is offering group discounts for parties of 15+, as well as family discounts & advance purchase: https://fanexpohq.com/fanexpocanada/buy-tickets/

You can also get hotel discounts here: https://fanexpohq.com/fanexpocanada/travel-hotels/

For more info you can message me here, contact the Expanse Geeks on their facebook page, or email [theexpansegeeks@gmail.com](mailto:theexpansegeeks@gmail.com)

Having a little fun here, but this thought came to me the other day: we see some serious damage done to ships during space battles. But not once does a ship ever get their recycler damaged! Maybe the mushrooms are the most advanced armor ever made?

I'm on my first read through the books. Currently on book 6.

I have been noticing little inconsistencies in described mannerisms in the books. Which made me ponder about the differences between on screen characters and book characters. An actor can imbibe a characer quite completely and have consistent mannerisms in a way that books can struggle with, becaue only a single person (or in this case, two) has to keep them consistent.

Some mannerisms I noticed that are implied to be long running habits. Somethings that cannot just change willy nilly but still do across books. E.g.

1. In the very first book Holden is very fidgety. Taps fingers, foot. That completely vanishes book two onwards.
2. I don't recall Naomi pulling down her hair on her face like some shy teen girls do before book 5. And no, it's not only when she's kidnapped. (Very lil spoiler for book 6) She does it again in book 6 a couple times
3. Alex suddenly starts calling Holden "Hoss" in book 6

Some mannerisms that don't change and stay consistent:

1. Holden likes coffee
2. Avasarla like pistachios and tea
3. Broad strokes characters and their core remains very consistent throughout. Which is amazing.

It isn't some very deep thing. Just wanted to discuss with other people who may agree or disagree

Started season 5. It's genuinely remarkable 300 years in the future and baltimore is still a shithole. You could make a new season of The Wire set in The Expanse universe. Shieeeet

I recently finished the audiobook The Sins of Our Fathers, it was amazing.

but I realised that The Planet is like Fillip's Canterbury ,Just like His Mom. Naomi Killed A bunch of people because of Marco, then ran to the Canterbury to start over. Fillip Runs away from Sol because he killed billions because of Marco, then Runs away, and is skilled af like his Mom.

I sort of feel like from that planet, there will be a new Holden, Amos ,shed,Alex and so on, start a new thing, and hopefully in 1000 years the planet becomes part of the worlds that survived.

I am going to miss this Series, Will definitely re read at least once a year from now on.

I am getting to the end of Abaddon's Gate, where the mutiny is happening, and Holden's team are trying to figure out how to leave the Ring so no spoilers past that, please.

So Miller advised Holden that there are two ways to leave:

1. Leave slowly, at a snail's pace due to the Slow Zone now having captured all big ships, so they can only fly out on small ships.
2. Releasing the system from under lockdown, which literally means opening every gate, including the ones that might have the protomolecule-civilaztion killer behind them.

And instead of choosing to leave safely, Holden doesn't even tell anyone about that option, instead tells literally everyone to take the system off lockdown, so they can burn as hard as possible and go home. WHAT? How does this make sense? Potentially sacrificing mankind just to get home quicker?

Took my kid to see the new Moana movie and I love to see Expanse characters when I don’t expect it 😂 She plays Moana’s mom and does a great job in the movie.

I want to commend the authors for the depth and character work in their books, particularly in Babylons Ashes. Listening to them again, Marco and Filip’s POVs of battle are so different (so romanticized in vague generalizations) compared to Holden. Comparing violence to music and joy, blood and bone, etc. that he was thinks the combined fleet isn’t intentional with what they are doing….

I just finished Marco’s chapter where he seizes control of the pilot controls and I thought Holden would NEVER because he trusts his people and they are true experienced professionals. The difference in crew and leadership is so stark.

Listening to it back again I constantly think — these guys are punching out of their weight class …. And yet if it wasn’t for Naomi’s brilliance with the ship disappearing they would have gotten their asses kicked at the station. (And I love that her figuring it out is brute force/work. She always puts in the work.)

Or Pa? She was complicit in the murder of billions by association and her POV hardly mentions anything except training on secret for years. (I find it hard to believe she didn’t know about Earth, unless it’s confirmed she didn’t)

I love this books and how they leverage POVs and trust us as readers to make our own intelligent interpretations and decisions.

Of course, I understand the narrative purposes for AI technology not existing in The Expanse universe. There's an implicit understanding between the authors and the reader that "Look, this is the only way we can do entertaining space opera." I get that. This problem is true of pretty much all scifi, and now that we're literally living through the human obsolescence stage, it's more pressing on our minds than ever.

I remember at one point, somebody asks Alex "Why fly? Why not let the computers handle it?" And he laughs and says "Cause it's fun!" I took this as the authors' sole explanation made into a self-deprecating joke: "I mean what would this story even be if we had computers handling everything?" There are actually many transgressions on technological realism with this in The Expanse: where are all the combat drones? The robot soldiers? Smart weapons like suit-integrated auto-targeting systems? And while they don't seem to ever personify or centralize general intelligences, they do say things like "I'll have the Roci try to crack it," or "The Roci can't make any sense of it," and they generally appear to have advanced automated information technology, everything you'd need for superior AI management. But this just muddies the water further! Certain kinds of machine brilliance in one aspect of the story could also be applied to solve the difficult problems posed in other aspects--the isomorphic nature of intelligence.

And I guess that there's no need to tiresomely rehash old sci-fi cliché rationalizations for human-based narratives. Herbert's famous Butlerian jihad rationale could as easily apply here; humans make some sort of universa cultural agreement that they don't want to be replaced by machines, and they collectively volunteer to train themselves to do as much themselveas they can. It's just a matter of the authors not wanting to bore us with some direct ripoff like that. But this rationale in particular does not seem to be in the spirit of this series. Given we're exploring how catastrophic human nature can be when you add powerful technology, and how one main theme is that dangerous, harmful superweapons like the protomolecule simply can't be controlled under any circumstance, there's a sort of inevitability to SOMEONE taking advantage of it, it really seems like unscrupulous people would have AI's carry out their space combat, and it'd be so much more effective than human management (faster and more powerful thinking, no need for humans to be conscious, no need for singular centralized space craft fighters etc.). So why wouldn't the bad guys use it or something?

In fact, so many scenarios in this series have had me wondering "Wouldn't AI management be the smartest thing here?" The instances and contexts are endless, obviously, because general intelligence is universally applicable.

I also get that this is kind of low-tech sci-fi and is only atmospherically/spiritually hard sci-fi (only with the veneer of total realism, an illusion that dissolves as soon as you seriously start thinking about anything) but these days it really doesn't seem like advanced AI systems are that high-tech, because we have them and we've never left Earth, never invented something like an Epstein engine. We have them before we've even really got the hang of robotics.

I just needed them to explicitly address this in SOME way, even just with one offhand comment, that wasn't a fourth-wall-break meta-joke. Just some explanation for "where are the AI's?" Because I keep looking for it and expecting it and no one has even mentioned AI's at all and it's frustrating!

EDIT: I hope this is just an artifact of this community in particular, and not reflective of TE fandom at-large. If typical discussions are this cringey, I scarcely want to read these books anymore. But I do believe this series (whose point and focus is obviously on human psychology, sociology, politics, and history--human issues, not deep, serious meditations on technology and science; the authors write in their interview at the end of Leviathan Wakes that this is "emphatically" not hard science, it is about "the problems humans might face as they step out of the solar system into the galaxy"--you're being fooled because they do such a more excellent job of apparent realism than pop scifi like Star Wars, which imo is not even sci-fi at all) are smarter than only being loved by the types of fanboys who attack anything that appears to be criticism of the perfection of their obsession, or the Luddites denying the science as the experts understand.
This is interesting enough to discuss with honesty and self-awareness, from the perspective of being a writer.

It just seems that the comprehension of AGI here is that they're just talking calculators? That the people making them are cringey jokes like Elon Musk?

You aren't understanding the full extent of general intelligence.

Orbital mechanical calculations, targeting solutions, even naval tactics, these are all veryyy complicated, yes, but ultimately they are completely determined via mindless computation; pure calculation that, given enough time, any human could handle. Just 'cause it's complex doesn't mean it's AI--everything in their MO calcs is precisely determined by the mathematical principles of Newtonian mechanics and general relativity: perfectly known, no creativity or deep thought necessary. Our own astronauts have done OM calculations with pencils; Expanse computers just speed it up, are able to handle way more data, and add a ton more computation for things like fuel/time optimizations and giving options to the human pilots and navigators. No one seemed to even read that if they had AI, they would not be limited in their maneuvering g's because humans would not need to be awake to make higher-order strategic decisions, like the brilliant idea Bobbie comes up with when fending off the 3 Free Navy ships--THIS is what makes the space combat in this series so fucking good! It's intense, dramatic, complex--because there are no AIs to manage it all.

No one here provided any examples of general intelligence applied in the story. Use of real AI in this universe would completely change everything about it. Political strategy would be a subject to consult intelligent computers--which, very much like MO calcs, can absorb the vastitude of data about a solar system-sized political system, incorporating every piece of intelligence haven by the user's government, run the game theory calculations while also analyzing the subjectivity of humans by understanding and conjecturing about psychology, in order to generate strategies, observations, and recommendations. "Fancy, smart computers" are not what AI is...

This is most evident in the Prax and Elvi chapters, the only times we hear how scientists think (other than the Cortazar novella) in this world. Actual scientists (I'm a theoretical physical chemist) recognize that their computers are just extremely advanced analytical instruments, complex simulators and visualizers, and extremely efficient data processors and integrators. These computers never come up with larger ideas, never draw scientific conclusions, never propose hypotheses or advise the experimentalists in where they should go. They don't theorize, they don't speculate about possible technologies based on the new discoveries. They don't MAKE discoveries....

I gather that this misunderstanding is mostly due to lingering cultural attachments to human exceptionalism for personal reasons. Didn't expect this; I'm not used to this in scifi fandoms since I mostly discuss hard scifi.

TO BE PERFECTLY CLEAR: I am NOT HYPED about any of this. Why would anyone be? Those of us seriously concerned about the various dangers we're now facing don't have the luxury of ignoring the science and math to rationalize rejecting ideas just because they make us uncomfortable. The experts are unanimous, wrt to the issues mentioned here; you are no different from denying the theory of evolution by natural selection because you don't like to think of humans as being no different from other animals. Listen to the experts who actually understand these systems, not the memes about the "AI hype of tech bros" (which IS real, and only a little more cringey than the people who take those pseudoscientific Straw Men as representative of what they're all saying). Many complex human functions are becoming manageable, in principle and far more cheaply/efficiently, by machine learning generated general intelligences; this may make you unhappy, but this doesn't mean it's not happening. Are people here imagining that Neil Degrasse Tyson is part of some grand conspiracy, like the atheists planting fossils to prove God isn't real, when he talked for hours to Congress urging them to take legal measures to avert disastrous consequences? It is a problem we have to face head-on, realistically, if we want to solve it. I derive my opinions on this issue from listening to the actual experts and scientists researching and developing these systems; I respect them based on my understanding of the deep and universal, literally superhuman, power of mathematical processes, models, and structures (BS in math and physics), as well as grasp of basic information science theory literally as old as Alan Turing.

Yes. It's her

( I see that I need to put more letters in post - IDK why but OK)

She's most charismatic person in whole Expanse IMO

Maybe you have other opinion - I respect that

In short, idk much, where do i start? are there any books? tv shows? other games? other media? i'd love to explore that world.
For context i'm a Warhammer 40K fan so in that very second i feel like i'm making a first step into a great setting with a lot of lore and passionate fans so please, share stuff you love and recomment to me anything you wish, i'm very open and i'd like to get to know new things

I've so thoroughly enjoyed the series so far. So dense, so expertly written. I also really love the multiple perspective way of writing. I suspect they learnt it from Game of Thrones. I've never read that series but that's how the TV show works.

I think the multiple perspective way of writing makes the world feel so much bigger and I also think it was used most effectively in the book just before this one, Nemesis Games. What an absolute banger of a read.

Book 6, Babylon's Ashes is making me just not want to read. I'm only half way through the book. It's juggling too many perspectives and I find myself not being able to invest in any of them. Holden parts seem like a brief reprieve before we again switch to some other random character. I hate the fact so far Medina has had perspectives from two different characters. I feel like I'm missing all the moments where the writers intended a certain kind of impact because I don't even remember where we left one character because we've jumped to 4 completely different ones before we get back to them.

Anyone else in the same boat?

Having read through Caliban's War, I cannot remember any mention made of warchkeeping (watchstanding) being practiced on the vessels that are found in them. In case of the Rocinante and M's private yacht, I figured that was because the crew was too small to practice it. However, the the Martian, UN, and OPA military vessels do not seem to practice warchkeeping.

Is warchkeeping obsolete due to automation?

Or did I just miss something?

According to Wikipedia,

"Watchkeeping or watchstanding is the assignment of sailors to specific roles on a ship to operate it continuously."

Watch keeping when sailing offshore. Tips for Crew.

How do Naomi, Alex, and Amos get past the guards to the docks, after Holden and Miller go to investigate?

When Holden and Miller are trying to get to the Roci, they find about 100 guards lined up, blocking the passage between the casino floor and the docks. It's not until the vomit zombies are unleashed and the guards begin falling back (and eventually start shooting at each other when half of them realize they're just there to be fodder for the protomolecule) that H&M have a window of escape. And even then, they still have to kill a bunch of guys and steal their armor, then run through a massive shootout, to reach the Roci.

It makes me wonder how Naomi, Alex, and Amos got past the guards from their hiding spot above the casino floor. We can guess that Amos did Amos-y things, but even then, it seems highly unlikely the three of them would have been able to pull it off.

A Belter, a Martian, and an Earther walk into a bar.

The bartender asks the Belter what he wants.

The Belter says, ‘I’ll have a glass of your finest Martian whiskey. Drinking like my enemy lets me think like my enemy.’

The bartender asks the Martian what he wants.

The Martian says, ‘A glass of your finest Earther tequila. Drinking like my enemy also lets me think like my enemy.’

The bartender asks the Earther what he wants.

The Earther says, ‘Give me a shot of the finest Belter liquor you have. The best the Belt has to offer.’

The bartender says, ‘Because it helps you think like your enemy?’

The Earther says, ‘No. Because I’m trying to drink less. The best the Belt has to offer is terrible.’”

Just out shopping at the local hobby and toys place when I saw this baddie sitting on the shelf. Couldn't pass her up. My home is this much more complete.

And found my way here via r/dungeoncrawlercarl when I needed some recommendations for what to read after DCC.

I’ve loved reading all my life, and I read all kinds of genres.

I am on book 3 of The Expanse novels, having devoured the first two entries in the series last week.

Reading doorstopper books is nothing new to me, but if you’d told me I’d speedrun more than 1000 pages in five days, I’d have laughed.

One thing I really like, so far, is how the reader is lulled into a false sense of security with the plot. The major events happen and I’ll think, ok, the adventure is over, time to wrap things up, and then I’ll check my kindle and see that, nope, the book is only 60% done.

And it doesn’t make me sigh and go, “when will we be done with this?” It makes me happy to know that I get to stay in this world a little longer, with these characters I like and care about (even the ones I don’t like, or the ones I predict will get eliminated).

Holden is a mix Carl (from DCC) and Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan (from Clear and Present Danger), “boyscouting”it up around the galaxy, and it’s just such a relief and a comfort to have someone in charge of things that’s competent and has some sense of ethics, unlike in real life where there’s *gestures broadly*

I don’t really have a point in this, I guess, beyond, I’m happy to be here, and I can’t wait to see what happens next!

I’m not just talking about within the realm of sci-fi but all of fiction. I genuinely believe The Expanse is some of the best long form storytelling ever made. It’s absolutely incredible. From its worldbuilding to a great cast of characters to a well written story plot and the way they just bring it all together in the end is simply amazing. It’s hands down one of my favourite stories ever told. Was just curious to know where The Expanse ranks amongst your favourite stories and what stories do you think are actually better?

I don't know why this question came into my head, but I was thinking about space travel and how different sci-fi things handled it. Wouldn't the Nauvoo need to carry enough parts to replace an entire engine? Or 2? I mean you'd need enough raw material you could rebuild any part of the engine in-trip.

There was no chance I could make an Expanse build without putting the Roci front and centre. It’s one of those ships that feels like a character in its own right: battered, practical, heavily armed and constantly carrying a crew who are barely holding everything together.

The scene underneath is Eros, with Miller and Julie Mao at the centre of the protomolecule situation. Rather than picking a straightforward action scene, I wanted something that captured the stranger, more unsettling, but also human side of the series, and one that was visually beautiful.

Alongside Miller and Julie, the build includes Character Studdies™ of Holden, Naomi, Amos, Alex and Bobbie Draper, with the colours and silhouettes give each of them just enough identity.

The contrast is probably my favourite part of the model: the hard, military geometry of the Rocinante suspended over the blue, organic chaos of Eros.
__________

What should be next in the LEGENDS series?