Love this series it's dark, twisted, and completely goes against every enlightened humanity trope in sci-fi. Coupled with the excellent character development of the Roci's crew I'm pretty stoked.
Currently reading Cibola Burn so I'm interested to see where this goes.
Cool, I'll check it out in Dec.
Neat, I might try the books out before the show.
Hey I like io 9!
Thanks for the heads-up, I'll have to give this a watch.
sorry to zombie this thead but i just killed the entire first season of The Expanse in one sitting. If you're even remotely into sci fi and you havent seen this, you're really missing out.
Hungary Bill wrote: sorry to zombie this thead but i just killed the entire first season of The Expanse in one sitting. If you're even remotely into sci fi and you havent seen this, you're really missing out.
I agree. It's one of the best sci-fi shows going right now.
I'm working on Babylons Ashes (book 6) right now. It's easily one of the best series I've read in a few years.
Really good show. I like the attention to the science details.
I think there's a scene where they say a ship is "Braking hard" toward them. Loved that line.
Second season finished... a month ago? Have thoroughly enjoyed both seasons and am looking forward to the next. Also glad Dark Matter is back on, and Killjoys should be starting up soon (if it hasn't already, haven't checked the DVR...).
I totally missed the second season. Partly because watching the first season on SyFy's streaming system was so painful (I'm not entirely sure I managed to watch all of it). But I did enjoy the show so I'll try again over the long holiday weekend.
Also waiting on the next season. Blew through them quickly and easily, but I wasn't using SyFy's online streaming...
The first season started as a guilty pleasure then rapidly became just a pleasure. I loved it. I'm patiently waiting for the second season to come on Amazon Prime so no spoilers. My bittorrent days are behind me, for the most part.
I am 100% committed to this show. So far it has delivered with great TV and sci fi for two seasons. Sounds like some viewers decided to bail in season two as the show is evolving which is something I like about it. Mystery episode, procedural episode, comedy-action episode, different types of horror episodes, and drama episodes.
The hardest part is staying clear of the novel spoilers. I like the show as the world building was rather solid. The only issues I have had were covered once I learned more in later episodes or through science googling. I actually don't like the James Holden acting or maybe he is acting it perfectly as someone I don't really like. I hope they can keep it up.
Unfortunately some of the recaps and reviews I have read seem to miss whole parts of the show I watched. I worry that people won't watch the show due to how bad some of them are. Not simple stuff like interpretation of the meaning of things in the show but like the recap stating, ..Character X miraculously reappears on the ship without explanation.. when I remember them showing how they got back to the ship and the characters talking about it. So I am confused why the recap writer missed that whole segment.
In reply to dculberson:
Ah... right... Now that you mention it, I think I do remember finishing the first season on Prime after giving up on SyFy's glitchy streaming set-up.
In reply to spin_out:
The books go through great pains to explain flipping end for end to decelerate, gel couches, "juice" for high g maneuvers, and the effects of standing around in the ship as maneuvers are being taken (splat).
No "Inertial dampers" tropes to be found. It's fantastic.
In reply to The0retical:
I've been wanting to read the books, but unfortunately the first book is perpetually checked out from all of the local libraries. May break down and just buy them before the next longer vacation when I've actually got time to read them without interfering with other parts of my life (I tend to get VERY involved in books and not want to do much else but read them -_-;).
I don't watch much TV or movies these days but ended up re-watching season 1 episode 1 of the expanse again tonight thanks to this thread.. instantly sucked back in. This show is so good. Wish I could watch more, but I need to get what little sleep I can with both kids asleep at the moment.
I recently binge watched the Expanse, then followed that up by binge watching Battlestar Gallactica (the 2004 series). Comparing the two reinforced to me how good BSG was.
In reply to Ashyukun:
Careful with them if you binge read them. You'll come away with the impression the future sucks and we're all doomed. I said to myself a few times "god how much more could that suck?" then the author found a way.
In reply to Advan046:
Holden, despite being the main character, is pretty polarizing. He's an idealist that believes that the truth should be laid bare and people draw their own conclusions from that data. Which touches off a number of interstellar (and later intergalactic) political problems. As he develops as a character he tries to reign that in a bit and seems at odds with himself at times. I find a lot of his character to be an analog to myself at times, just give me the uncolored facts and I'll draw my own conclusions. That has a tendency to backfire on me from time to time.
Corey does an excellent job with the books examining problems which you'd think would have an standard ethical outcome (since stories often go down the trope path) but ethics are very much a subjective subject which can radically differ from societal norms. Corey sometimes goes down a seriously dark path as characters choose the opposite of what you'd think they would. I'll plug an unrelated book for the ethics subject The Ethos Effect by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. if you're into that sort of introspection with sci-fi elements.
In reply to The0retical:
In an interesting coincidence, this thread reminded me to check up on the books at the library and I found that the first few were in at the one near my office, so walked down and checked the first two out. THEEEERE goes my productivity for the next week. I now also understand why the paperback versions are not cheap even used- they're MUCH bigger than I expected- I won't be blowing through these in 3-4 hours like I can some books!
The0retical wrote: Corey does an excellent job with the books examining problems which you'd think would have an standard ethical outcome (since stories often go down the trope path) but ethics are very much a subjective subject which can radically differ from societal norms.
BTW, "James S. A. Corey" is a pen name for the two co-authors, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Apparently The Expanse universe was originally dreamed up as a setting for an MMORPG, was later turned into a pen-and-paper RPG, and then the books.
I'm a big fan of both the books and the TV series. I've been reading them all as e-books on my Kindle so I didn't realize how physically large the dead tree versions are. :)
I really like the TV portrayals of Avasarala, Amos, and Naomi, but I'm not sold on that of Bobbie. There are some fairly significant plot differences, they've kind of merged Leviathan Wakes and Caliban's War into a single arc. That works well for those two novels, Avasarala fits so well into the events of Leviathan Wakes that I'd forgotten she wasn't in the book until I went back to re-read it. I'm not sure if it'll scale to the others though, Cibola Burn in particular is really a self-contained story.
Great show. Almost has good as BSG and they actually address the lack of gravity and the physics of acceleration.
Too bad (spoiler alert) Thomas Jane isn't in it anymore.
In reply to codrus:
Interesting. I knew about the MMO part from a mention on Ars but never bothered to research the author(s). That explains a few things actually. I think it works well through the books.
I haven't watched the second season yet, shame shame, but I liked pretty much every character of the first season's show. I do like the much more crude Avasarala in the books better however, considering how shackled by the FCC The SciFi (SyFy blech) channel is, the writers did pretty well.
Did they handle the Europa incident with the molecule well enough to support Bobby's story later?
Might have to reup the VPN for a month or hope Amazon Prime gets the episodes faster.
The0retical wrote: Did they handle the Europa incident with the molecule well enough to support Bobby's story later? Might have to reup the VPN for a month or hope Amazon Prime gets the episodes faster.
Without getting into too many spoilers for other folks in the thread, yes, the incident on Ganymede (not Europa) is there. They changed the emphasis a bit, playing up the Earth-Mars tensions a bit more. The second season ends at a strange point, after they leave Ganymede but before they get to Io. That puts the end of the season about 80% of the way through Caliban's War.
SciFi was streaming the episodes off their web site for a while -- are they not doing that any more?
As far as comparisons to BSG go, IMHO the writing in The Expanse is far, far better. The first season of BSG was decent, but when they went to new Caprica it got off the rails, and I quit watching after Starbuck vanished into the gas giant. BSG didn't have a coherent plan of where it was supposed to go and ultimately wound up not making any sense, I was very disappointed with it.
Also, as far as Thomas Jane is concerned -- wait and see. :)
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