32 | New Scientist | 23 November 2019
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THE writers Daniel Abraham and
Ty Franck (better known as the
sci-fi writer James S. A. Corey),
began collaborating on their epic,
violent, yet uncommonly humane
space opera The Expanse in 2011
with the book Leviathan Wakes.
The series of novels pits the all-
too-human crew of an ice-hauler
from Ceres against the studied
realpolitik of a far-from-peaceful
solar system. The ninth and final
book is due out next year.
Meanwhile, the TV series enters
its fourth season, available on
Amazon Prime from 13 December.
New Scientist grabbed a word with
the writer-producers in the middle
of a whistle-stop tour of Europe.The Expanse began as a game,
became a series of novels and
ended up on television. Was it
intended as a multimedia project?
Ty Franck Initially it was just
a video game that didn’t work,
then it evolved into a tabletop
role-playing game.
Daniel Abraham And then books,
and then a TV show. I think
intention is a very bold word
to use for any of this. It implies
a certain level of cunning that
I don’t think we actually have.What inspired its complex plot?
TF I’m a big fan of pre-classical
history. I pull a lot of weird
Babylonian and Persian and
Assyrian history into the mix.
It’s funny how often people accuse
you of critiquing current events.
They’re like, ‘You are commenting
on this elected politician!’ And
I’m like, ‘No, that character is
Nebuchadnezzar’.How have the humans changed
in your future? Or is their lack
of change the point?
DA If you really want a post-
human future, change humans
so that they don’t use wealth toDA We would have made Ceres
less rocky. We imagined a mostly
mineral dwarf planet, and then
it turned out there’s a bunch of
ice on it. But this sort of thing is
inevitable. You start off as accurate
as possible, and a few years later
you sound like Jules Verne.
That the effort to get things right
is doomed doesn’t take away
from its essential dignity.Other things have happened,
too. Deepfake technology was
still very speculative when we
started writing this, and now
it’s ubiquitous. One of our plot
points in Book Three looks
pretty straightforward now.I don't see many robots
DA We’re in real danger of
miseducating people about the
nature of artificial intelligence.
Sci-fi tells two stories about AI:“ We bumble through
the future the way
we bumbled through
the past. What changes
is technique”we made it and it wants to kill us, or
we made it and we want it to love
us. But AI is neither of those things.
TF What people mean is: where are
the computers that talk and act like
people? Robots are everywhere in
The Expanse. But when you build
a machine to do a job, you build
it in a form that most efficiently
does that job, and make it smart
enough to do that job.Is your future dystopian?
DA When Season One of the TV
version came out in the US, we
were considered very dystopian.
Then the 2016 election brought
Donald Trump to power, and
suddenly we were this uplifting
and hopeful show. Of course
we’re neither. The argument the
show makes is that humans are
humans. We bumble through
the future the way we bumbled
through the past. What changes
is technique: what we learn to do,
and what we learn to make.
TF We don’t murder each other in
a jealous rage with pointy sticks
any more. Now we use guns. But
the jealous rage and the urge to
murder hasn’t gone away.
DA What we’ve managed to do is
expand what it means to be a tribe.
From a small group of people who
are actually physically together...
TF ...and mostly genetically
related ...
DA ...we’ve expanded to nation
states and belief systems and...
TF ...fans of a particular TV show.
DA The great success of humanity
so far isn’t in abolishing tribalism,
because we didn’t. It’s in
broadening the size of the tribe
over and over. Of course, there’s
still work to be done there. ❚Dominique Tipper
(playing Naomi Nagata) and
Wes Chatham (Amos Burton)
in a tense moment from the
new seriesmeasure status. But then they
wouldn’t be human any more.
We are mean-spirited little
monkeys, capable of moments
of great grace and kindness, and
that story is much more plausible
to me and much more beautiful
than any post-human tale.
TF I find that the books that
I remember the longest, and
the books that I’ve been most
entertained by, are the ones
where the characters are the most
human, not the least human.You’ve mentioned Alfred Bester's
1959 novel The Stars My
Destination as an influence...
TF Exactly, and there you have an
anti-hero called Gully Foyle. Gully
is everything that we fear to be
true about ourselves. He’s venal,
and weak, and cowardly, and
stupid, and mean. Watching him
survive and become something
more is the reason we’re still
talking about that book today.You began The Expanse nine years
ago. What would you have done
differently knowing what we know
now about the solar system?The humane condition
As The Expanse returns for a fourth season on Amazon Prime,
Simon Ings asks its writers how it all started