From Book View Cafe:
Fantasy has its Game of Thrones. Science fiction has its The Expanse.
. . . .
Game of Thrones was the TV adaptation of a successful set of novels. (A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.) The Expanse was the TV adaptation of the series of equally successful novels and other works by James S. A. Corey. Both deal with cultural conflict and war. Both have “magic”—actual magic in Game of Thrones. Alien technology that defies known physics in the case of The Expanse.
They are quite different in their characters. While there are rough characters in The Expanse, nothing compares to the unnatural evil that works its will in Game of Thrones. You’ll find genocide and child endangerment in The Expanse but you get incestuous murder in Game of Thrones.
While I am an SF writer the more important thing in this discussion is that I’m an SF reader. I’m much more drawn to alien tropes than dragons. Less drawn to monarchies than autocrats. So, I’ll talk about The Expanse here rather than Game of Thrones. Besides, I haven’t read the Martin books.
The Expanse is brilliant television and a set of excellent novels but both are flawed in interesting ways. Those flaws reflect curious writing decisions.
Note: I will be discussing things that happen in the books so if you’re spoiler-sensitive, don’t read any further.
The prose Expanse consists of nine novels and a few stories and novellas. In its future, the solar system has been opened to humanity by an incredibly efficient and powerful propulsion known as the Epstein Drive. This has divided humanity into three distinct groups: those from Earth, those from Mars, and those that live in the free space and moons of the solar system known collectively as the Belt. Those that live in the Belt are called Belters.
Mars is independent and on a continuous war footing with Earth since Earth has never really given up its hold on Mars. Think Britain and the US in the eighteen-hundreds. Mars is technologically superior to Earth but cannot match Earth’s industrial base. The ships of Mars are better but Earth has more of them. Neither much values the Belt.
The third is the growth and eventual factionalization of some Belters into terrorists. It is absolutely clear that Belters are an oppressed people in The Expanse. The Outer Planets Alliance (OPA) purports to represent the Belters but is, itself, divided. Some factions of the OPA are terrorists. Others want political autonomy. Think Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army (IRA.)
Any work with such grand themes needs lots and lots of characters to carry out the work. The novels have lots of point-of-view characters—one has fifteen.
The first book brings out the characters and ends with Eros crashing into Venus. The second book plays out the war footing that happens between Mars and Earth and the unscrupulous scientists building human/protomolecule hybrids. It ends with whatever the protomolecule has built on Venus launching into space. Book three begins after the Venus structure has moved out beyond the orbit of Uranus and reshaped into a ring structure. This is the book where the Belt begins to really make its presence known as a political entity as each of the players—Earth, Mars, and the Belt—are interested in figuring out the benefits of the ring. This is when the protomolecule reveals its agenda: it is intended to build connections to all of the other ring structures built by ancient aliens. Now, the solar system is part of a vast network of planets.
Book 4 explores how this new real estate affects the political stability of the solar system. Who is in control? It also personifies the protomolecule in its search for its creators. The protomolecule is not conscious but it is intelligent. Its purpose is to serve those that created it but it can’t find them. It does not succeed.
Book 5 involves exploring what is going on with the rest of the solar system through the eyes of the main characters. This book also shows the coalescence of some Belters into a military organization—the Free Navy. The Free Navy drops large asteroids onto Earth, decimating large swaths of land and population, and ultimately encamps just outside of the protomolecule ring, preventing anyone from using the new real estate. Book 6 involves the resolution of all of the threads in the previous books. The Free Navy is defeated but the Belt is now in charge of the Ring.
Books 7-9 take place some thirty years after the end of book 6 and have little direct impact on the events of the first six books. I’m not going to directly talk about them.
This is a large work. It has many, many characters. Some characters come into prominence and then fade out. Some stay the course for most of the books. Some appear for a particular scene and then are never heard from again.
In most cases, talking about the books is the same as talking about the show since the show closely follows the book. Issues of one are replicated in the other.
One decision—perhaps a flaw—is the way these characters appear, have a major impact, and then are never heard from or thought of again. One of the main characters is Naomi Nagata, the engineer of the Rocinante. She is a through character from day one all the way to the end. About halfway through the series, we discover that she had been a member of a violent OPA faction, had a son with its leader, and then left the faction and necessarily the son. It is represented in the work that she thought of the son often.
The son, Filip, shows up in the latter books as an important opposing character. Whole sections of the work involve the conflict between Filip and Naomi. Then, at a crucial juncture, Filip leaves the conflict and is never heard from again. In later books, he is never mentioned. Naomi doesn’t think about him. He never seeks her out. He has disappeared.
This is a continuing pattern: characters or events are important at the time but their reverberation across the work is severely limited.
Link to the rest at Book View Cafe and thanks to L. for the tip.
UPDATE: PG linked to the wrong book during an earlier edition of this post. He just learned about his mistake from a visitor to TPV who sent him an email.He believes he has fixed that error now.
PG apologizes to James S.A. Corey and his many readers for his error.
The Amazon link and graphic you have for the “Expanse” book series is for a different book series and author entirely.
Or, was that intentional?
No Andy, it was not intentional. It was a mistake and I’ll fix it right now.
Cool, just thought you’d like to know. Love your website. Always interesting topics, quotes and things to say.
All the best, eh!
The writer tells me to “Think Britain and the US in the eighteen-hundreds” so I did, and this left me pretty much incapable of taking anything else they wrote seriously. I presume that Britain is supposed to be Earth (superior industrial base – but also as it happened superior military technology for most of the time) and the USA Mars, but the USA being on a “continuous war footing” is nonsense. Congress spent the greater part of the 1800s refusing to properly fund either army or navy, so the army was tiny, and the navy rarely had many or modern ships.
There were periodic quarrels between the two countries – the exchanges in the aftermath of the Creole slave ship mutiny are a typical example – these were really nothing like the Mars/Earth relationship in the Expanse.
I saw ONE episode of Game of Thrones (my son had the cable show that provided it, I did not). After forcing myself to watch the entire thing, I was left with the strong desire to soak myself in bleach.
Gratuitous sex, excessively brutal violence, dwelling on the most primitive impulses of man – what a waste of time!
Par for the course of many if not most European productions. UK shows are modest compared to some continental shows. The guideline seems to be: if the script is flagging, don’t rewrite, just throw in some gratuitous nudity and or sex.
GOT had the “saving grace” that the sex and violence came with consequencrs and mostly served a narrative purpose. What wasn’t necessary was the looong lingering of the camera the worst of that hobbsian world.
If you only saw one random episode you were likely spared the worst.
It’s a tossup between the Red Wedding and the incestuous rape.Not that the happen, but the presentation. The producers, director, and editor first, the actors for going along, second.
https://www.looper.com/731010/the-cersei-lannister-scene-in-game-of-thrones-that-went-too-far/
A little Hitchcock-ian skill was called for butnot available.
A lot of the actors and some of the locations were British but I admit that I never thought of this as a British show. I assumed that it was American (HBO/Warners) money being spent somewhere cheaper, like all those shows set in the USA but filmed in Canada. And I took the nudity to just reflect different standards for cable and broadcast TV.
As for the actors “going along” I suspect that it is hard to resist if you are an unknown actress doing your first major role.
Uh, Lena Headey is no newcomer.
She’s been active for 30 years and significant since 2006’s 300.
She had the power to put her foot down but as the linked piece pointed out she defended the scene. Now, the other actresses were newcomers but not her.
And GOT was launched by HBO but it was co-produced by Television 360 · Grok! Studio · Generator Entertainment and Bighead Littlehead as a global market product. That means “not mainstream US prudish values”.
Different standards, to the point that the term ” cable show” became something of a joke on this side of the pond as synonymous with “softcore porn”.
Now I am truly distressed. I remember lots of violence, but other than Daenerys running around in the buff… what did I miss?
If the Apple version of Foundation hadn’t called itself Foundation, and if they never mentioned Asimov, it could be pretty good. But, they had to invent individual characters that span the hundreds of years the original books covered. The magic of time capsules. Jump in and wake up in 140 years.
And make a spear carrier from what? Half a page? The central character.
So far every single Ssimov adaptation has been dreadful. It’s almost as they only licensed the title.
“This is a continuing pattern: characters or events are important at the time but their reverberation across the work is severely limited.”
This is not a flaw.
This is real life.
Maybe a scene is missing (maybe the son is dead, maybe he’s “dead to her”, maybe they’ve moved on, etc) or maybe the OP missed something. Or maybe there was nothing to miss. Divorce or big dramatic moments aren’t the only way relationships end.
Life is messy; not everything gets clean closure, so why shouldn’t its fictional representation be too?
People’s relationships aren’t eternal and across interplanetary/interstellar distances they can’t be expected to endure. Moving forward, when humans do move into space, the moves will be one way, much like the pre-jet age migrations, but more so. Leaving earth will be leaving the old world,the old life.
If anything, it is a recomendation, yet another thing the authors got right.
Tbf, this is an opening statement to an examination of how loose ends are handled in the narrative. The rest of the article expands on the point in a way that has little to do with whether relationships are messy and much more to do with how the mess is portrayed, or isn’t, in the interest of focusing more on world than character.