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The Expanse A series of novels by James S.A. Corey, a pseudonym for the collaboration between authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. It's a fairly hard sci-fi series about the escalating crisis between the three factions of a cold war in the Sol System an undisclosed number of years into the future. It starts out as a sort of noir mystery crossed with sci-fi adventure in the first book before becoming more of an adventure/political thriller in later entries. Each book is told from the perspective of a selection of viewpoint characters who rotate in and out but the series as whole revolves around the crew of the Rocinante, a legitimately salvaged rogue Martian naval corvette. The Expanse begins in a period where relations between Earth and Mars, which have been stable although not at all friendly, are being strained by the emergence of the OPA (Outer Planets Alliance). The OPA seek political independence for "Belters" (The permanent human population of the various mining stations and research facilities established beyond Mars' orbit.) who feel that they are being unfairly exploited by the terrestrial governments. At a point when racist tensions are running particularly high the ice hauler Canterbury, a Belter ship, is nuked without warning into it's component atoms by unidentifiable stealth warships while trying to answer a faked distress call. Filled with rage James Holden, second in command and leader of the survivors who had left to investigate the ship on which the beacon was planted, releases a defiant broadcast to rest of the solar system howling for justice and revenge that threatens to turn the cold war hot. ------------------------------------------- The series currently consists of five books, three novellas and two short stories. It's very much recommended that you read them in publishing order, which is as follows. Primary novels are denoted in bold: Leviathan Wakes The Butcher of Anderson Station Caliban's War Gods of Risk Drive Abbadon's Gate The Churn Cibola Burn Nemesis Games The Vital Abyss The sixth book, Babylon's Ashes is due for release in November. -------------------------------------------------- A TV adaptation of The Expanse is currently underway. Created by the SyFy channel in an attempt to recover their image after half a dozen years of being "The Sharknado People", the show is surprisingly excellent and has both creators involved in primary writing and production roles. Superbly casted and tightly paced, although constantly overshadowed by Shohreh Aghdashloo's utterly magnificent wardrobe, the show is definitely recommended for fans of the genre. Season 2 begins airing in January 2017. The thread for it, NO BOOK SPOILERS ALLOWED can be found here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3752825 --------------------------------------------------- THIS THREAD ASSUMES EVERYTHING UP UNTIL BABYLON'S ASHES COUNTS AS FAIR GAME FOR SPOILERS. DO NOT COME IN HERE WHINING THAT YOU GOT SPOILERED ON THE OLDER BOOKS BECAUSE YOU DECIDED TO READ THE ENTIRE THREAD FIRST. ..... 
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Aug 21, 2016 02:42
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Dalmuti posted:In my brain alex is jason mantzoukas I don't really know who was in my head before but it's sure as hell Cas Anvar now. Also Antony Dresden is Jason Isaacs. EDIT: Bobbie is The Rock in a wig. Captain Fargle fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Aug 21, 2016 |
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Aug 21, 2016 02:58
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Strategic Tea posted:everyone looks like their firefly counterparts I'm pretty sure casting Summer Glau as Mei is EXTREMELY inappropriate...
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Aug 21, 2016 10:47
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Eiba posted:My biggest issue with Abbadon's Gate is... well, Clarissa. The rest was actually pretty enjoyable, but the fact that she, somehow, drove so much of the plot to start with was really aggravating. gently caress CLAIRE. I spent the whole book being pissed off at her and I guess maybe that was the point but jesus christ. Sticking her in there with Anna didn't help matters either. "Oh boo hoo! We're trapped in deep space with limited resources and THOSE ASSHOLES want to execute the self-confessed mass murderer! I'm going to emotionally blackmail you into not testifying against her now!" Just gently caress right the hell off.
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Aug 21, 2016 21:43
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Strategic Tea posted:Good news, she's out of prison and ready to kick rear end for book 6! Ahh gently caress. Babylon's Ashes better have a hell of a lot of Avasarala to make up for it.
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Aug 21, 2016 22:07
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anilEhilated posted:Ouch, 5. Nemesis Games. Somehow I thought there's one more book somewhere in there. Oh thank god. Considerably more optimistic for book six now. I thought you meant they were dragging Claire back as a viewpoint character for Babylon's Ashes.
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Aug 24, 2016 11:43
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jng2058 posted:The same thing, as far as audiobook narrators, happened in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books. James Marsters did all of the audiobooks but one where he was unavailable to do it. There was so much outcry that a few years on they got Marsters to record that book so that you could get the whole series by Marsters. People probably wouldn't even mind that much if it wasn't for the fact that Erik Davies is probably one of the worst narrators in history.
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Sep 9, 2016 04:26
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Collateral posted:I posted this in the TVIV thread where people were bitching on about Cibola Burn, but I stand by it: Cibola Burn suffers terribly from the way they just give up on any kind of moral ambiguity. It sets itself up really, REALLY well with this fascinating situation where both sides are wrong and then just kinda pisses it all away.
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Sep 16, 2016 00:36
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I've heard he is back, but
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Eiba posted:You know... that's really true isn't it. I give Cibola Burn a lot of credit because the premise was pretty drat interesting. Settlers and scientists, terrorists and authoritarians... so many groups with so many good valid perspectives, all squabbling over a tiny patch of dirt on a massive planet in a massive new galaxy of planets. The enormity of the gulf between people in a setting so petty and small was honestly a beautiful contrast to me. Even the contrast between the concept of the limitless frontier and the reality of shoveling slugs was pretty neat and satisfying to me. Hey now! Errinwright, Nguyen and Mao Sr. weren't dumb! They were great. Probably not a coincidence that they were the villains in the best book in the series. God I wish they'd give us another book of Avasarala as a viewpoint character.
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Sep 16, 2016 11:10
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Strategic Tea posted:Murty wasn't loyal to his corporation - he was loyal to his own dream of being the Big Man making Hard Choices. He was going to live that dream even if in real life he was a jumped up security guard and the hard choices weren't necessary. He's super believable to me - just think of any basement prepper who can't wait to gun down 'looters' come the apocalypse. They made it pretty drat clear that Marco really isn't as clever as he thinks he is and the only reason he and Filip got anywhere was because Duarte, who has actual power, is using him as cover. Captain Fargle fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Sep 17, 2016 |
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Sep 17, 2016 21:16
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. Either that or his path was being cleared by like twenty different intelligence agencies who may or may not have thought he would actually push the button.
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Abraham and Frank announced today on Twitter that they've started the first draft of Book 8, apparently to be titled "Persepolis Rising".
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Sep 28, 2016 22:59
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Lord Hydronium posted:8? Does 7 have a name yet? 7. Sorry. I miscounted. I keep thinking Babylon's Ashes is 7 for some reason.
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Sep 29, 2016 02:09
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Eiba posted:Reading too much into names time! Babylon's Ashes and Persepolis Rising are an interesting pair of names. Ancient cities with very different connotations. I had assumed Babylon's Ashes would be about the Earth, as the old center of culture and longest established human civilization was recently set on fire. If that were the case Persepolis Rising would be a contrasting vibrant new empire drawing from the same traditions- some sort of political resurgence of Earth. But that doesn't seem like the most natural plot arc, nor does it fit the connotations of "Persepolis" well. I made the joke on Twitter that the next book after it is gonna be called Alexander's Wrath. 
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Sep 29, 2016 05:17
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GATOS Y VATOS posted:
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Oct 5, 2016 01:25
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ZombieLenin posted:Reading BA and I'm confused about the status of the Martian navy. It's stated that 1/5th of it flew off through the gate, but why about the other 4/5th? They talk about Mars like the whole navy is gone. It's not that the entire population is leaving. They mention that it's something like nine or ten percent. The problem is that it's such a significant chunk of their tax base and working age population that the Martian economy is dropping through the loving floor.
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Dec 8, 2016 02:48
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ZombieLenin posted:They keep talking about the death of the terraforming project on Mars. I just can't imagine a real life scenario or analog where a place would lose such a large portion of the population to emigration. Even during the greatest wave of immigration from Europe to the United States--which occurred after the United States was a fully industrialized non-frontier country--there wasn't 10% of the continents population emigrating. That scenario didn't involve Europe being a place where going outdoors kills you in a very painful fashion.
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Dec 8, 2016 19:49
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Platystemon posted:I hope Marco doesn’t come back. Murty was a better antagonist. But I expect he will return in some form. That’s generally how mysterious disappearances work in fiction. Marco is such an absolute oval office I'd be happy with the entirety of Belter civilization and identity being destroyed just to spite him.
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Dec 12, 2016 20:46
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Platystemon posted:The overload gimmick is dumb. For one thing, why are the gates so gorram big if one overclocked ice freighter represents enough mass/energy to redline them? Given the poo poo Eros was able to do when it was infected and the insane durability of protomolecule manufactured materials and stuff I wouldn't be surprised at all if their ships were just a magnetically contained ball of gas suspended around an engine.
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Dec 14, 2016 10:48
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Folks saying we never saw Earth have a split like the other factions did: we did. Nguyen, Errinwright and Mao were Earth's big factional infighting split. It's just that who they were trying to coup was Chrisjen motherfucking Avasarala.
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Dec 26, 2016 12:41
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404notfound posted:Double posting because speaking of the loving devil: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/5lu9ag/jefferson_mays_to_rerecord_cibola_burn_audiobook/ Well drat if this isn't some fantastic news! It'll be nice to have the whole series properly done.
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Jan 4, 2017 03:53
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Hey folks, I suddenly remembered that "Oh gently caress! I'm actually the OP of this thread I should probably say something in it!". I've been getting pretty cold on the series tbh, a shitload of the stuff in the later books has been leaving me very emotionally unsatisfied. Persepolis Rising was especially egregious with this, I didn't like the direction it took at all and it's not getting my hopes up much for the last two books. (For reference, my favourite is BY FAR Caliban's War.) I'll still get them because I want to see how everything ends and even though I'm very lukewarm on half of the books as a whole like gently caress am I going to miss out on more Avasarala time.
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May 25, 2018 03:41
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