Imaginary Worlds - Politics of The Expanse

Episode Date: December 14, 2017

The Expanse novels by James S.A. Corey (the pseudonym for writers Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham) imagine how human beings would colonize our solar system, with settlements on Mars, the asteroid belt and the moons beyond. But Earth looses control of its vast empire, and the colonies break into warring factions. The books are international best-sellers and the TV adaptation on the Syfy network has been critically acclaimed. Ty Franck, Daniel Abraham and one of the show's producers Mark Fergus discuss how The Expanse was developed, and why its underlying message feels more urgent than ever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. One of the most requested topics I get for this podcast is The Expanse. Now, in case you don't know, The Expanse is a series of seven novels. The seventh book just actually came out this month. It is also a show on the SyFy network, and the third season should be out in early 2018. And one of the reasons why it's taking me this long to get to The Expanse is because that was a lot of catching up to do, and I'm still not done with the books yet. They're very long books, but they're really good.

Now, The Expanse is set around 200 years in the future, roughly the same time as the original Star Trek. hundred years in the future, roughly the same time as the original Star Trek. But I always think of it as like the anti-Star Trek, because Star Trek is all about how human beings will evolve beyond their primal instincts. And that is not how the guys that wrote the Expanse novels imagine the future. The thing that always sort of threw me out of the world building in Star Trek is I don't understand why anyone does anything, because they sort of say, well, there's no money anymore. Everybody has everything that they need. Everything we do, we do just to better ourselves. That's fantastic as an idea, but it doesn't match any humans that I know.

That is Ty Frank. His writing partner in the books is Daniel Abraham. is Daniel Abraham. But I would say, in Star Trek's defense, I think when Star Trek is at its best, it's a different kind of fiction than what we're doing. They also try to avoid sci-fi concepts you can't explain very well, like warp drive or the jump to light speed.

The Expanse has gotten a lot of praise for having really accurate physics, as you would imagine physics two centuries from now. Even the effect of gravity plays a big part in the books and the show. But what I love about the Expanse is that they've tapped into these classic archetypes, not the sort of mythical archetypes like the hero, the mentor, the monster, although they're in there too. They're more interested in working with political archetypes, like political archetypes that you can find in any country, in any conflict throughout history.

And because the story is set in the future, they can infuse these characters with as many flaws as they want without worrying that they're going to offend any Martians in the audience or anyone on the moons of Jupiter. But I was really curious how they created this world and whether they think it has anything to say about the world right now. We will blast off just after the break. So the whole thing started back in the early 2000s. Ty Frank got an offer to pitch an MMO,

a massive multiplayer online video game to a Chinese internet service provider. In other words, he had to come up with a game like EVE Online or World of Warcraft. So Ty pitched this idea to the Chinese company that he'd been playing with for a while. What if our history of exploration, exploitation, and colonization was projected into the far future, into space. And it didn't wind up going anywhere. Once the ISP realized that it would cost $100 million to make an MMO, they sort of backed away quietly. But now I had all this material,

so I started using it for other things. Now, Tai did not have a lot of experience writing fiction at this point, and he still felt like gaming was the best way to develop this world. But how do you create a game without money? Role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons, where all you need are pencils, paper, and dice. And that is how Daniel Abraham, his future co-author, came into the picture. Daniel was one of the players in this game, and he helped develop a character called Miller, who was a detective on a city built into an asteroid called Ceres.

That's C-E-R-E-S. Ceres, by the way, is a real asteroid. It's so big, it's technically a dwarf planet. He was my entry into the universe. He was my entry into the story. entry into the story. But the character of Miller, who does make it to the books and to the TV show, is always something of an outlier because the core group of characters is the crew of a ship called the Rocinante. And the small tight group of friends basically take jobs for hire, but they find themselves in the middle of every major space battle, which turns them into these

legendary figures. Daniel was transfixed by the whole thing. There was this one session of the game that we were playing where I was up at like three in the morning trying to figure out how to build a new series specific currency based on the accrued uncollected debt for the earth banks and then use that to legitimize the government. And I realize I'm kind of into this now. There might be something here. I'm writing to Ty at like the small hours of the morning

about how to monetize debt into a new currency. This is interesting. That's when they decided to work together and turn this thing into a novel. And then we'd sell it for pizza money, and that would have been fun. Now, Daniel had already made a name for himself as a sci-fi writer. Ty had not. So they decided to write under a pseudonym, James S.A. Corey. And they still write under that name. I mean, I actually wonder if there are any fans out there of the expanse that don't know James S.A. Corey is two different people. And the amazing thing about their first novel, Leviathan Wakes, is how much they were able to

draw from those gaming sessions. For example, one of the guys who was playing early on had to bail. And so Ty Frank killed off his character in a really horrible way, which is kind of what you do in a role-playing game. But that scene makes it into the books and the show, and I won't give away who the character is, but his death is really shocking because we're led to believe he's going to be one of the main guys. I asked Daniel, why not just get rid of that character entirely?

Why build him up and kill him off like that? Well, it was awesome. It is a pretty awesome scene. Now, the books got universal praise. A lot of TV producers wanted to option the rights. And eventually, they decided to go with a team of Mark Fergus and Hock Ostby, who wrote the scripts for Children of Men and Iron Man. Children of Men is a fantastic adaptation of a book. But at the same time, they were able to write Iron Man, which is also sci-fi, but had a real heart and a real sense of humor to it. And there's a reason why all of the Marvel movies since then have used the tone and style that was created in that first Iron Man, because it just works. Now, at the time, the screenwriter and TV producer Mark Fergus didn't know that he had so

much competition to buy the rights to The Expanse. He thought he was just inviting Ty and Daniel over to talk, although he wasn't sure how it was going to go. They were expecting, you know, Hollywood jerks and we were expecting territorial book authors. And it turned out none of us. We were just like, hey, how do we tell the best version of this story? And it was just very much like, let's just do this. All right. So to give you a sense of what the story of the Expanse is about, I need to zoom out to show you kind of the big picture of this whole universe. There are three centers of power. First, the Earth. In this future timeline, they imagine the Earth is under control of the United Nations, which may seem weird because the UN is pretty weak now,

and, I mean, has been for most of its history. But when they first started writing the books, Ty Frank and Daniel Abraham had an idea about why that could change. The only way that Earth would ever form sort of a unified central government is at the risk of extinction. And Daniel and I are neither of us are climate change deniers. We believe that humanity really is at a tipping point where we're going to have to make some choices about whether we want to continue existing on this planet. So if you look at the show, you know, there's the seawall around New York to keep

the city from being flooded. When you go to Alaska, it's the Anchorage Archipelago. So that's where, you know, the UN really starts to gain some power. But the thing we always point out is even in the books, it doesn't work well. And as I said in my last episode, Ty and Daniel imagine automation will lead to mass unemployment and overpopulation. Millions of people on Earth who want jobs and careers can't get them. So a lot of them head off to Mars to live a more rugged life.

And when writing the books, Ty Frank says he always imagined the Martian colonies as being like the American colonies. And so Earth, in this analogy, would be the British Empire. And the problem of controlling an empire that is so spread out is the same problem that Earth and Mars have at the sort of in the backstory of the expanse. And that, yes, Mars is much less powerful than Earth, has far fewer troops, has fewer ships, but they're just really far away. far fewer troops, has fewer ships, but they're just really far away. And sending troops on a three-month voyage is a logistical problem that is difficult to overcome.

Now, interestingly, Mark Fergus, one of the producers in the TV show, sees a totally different dynamic at play. He flipped it around. He sees Earth as America, but America now, sort of fading superpower. And Mars is the new rival, which is getting stronger and stronger. The dying empire and the rising empire feels very much like China and the U.S. now. You know, we find these metaphors very helpful because they suggest that history is just one big cycle of the same frickin' mistakes. I want every Martian weapons facility under a microscope. Heaven help your enemies, Christian.

The character at the center of this Cold War is Christian Avasarala. She's the deputy undersecretary at the UN, and she will do anything to protect the Earth. and she will do anything to protect the earth. On the show, the actress Shoray Aghdashloo completely owns this role. I will freeze their assets, cancel their contracts, cripple their business, and I have the power to do it because I am the fucking hero who helped save Mother Earth from the cataclysm that Jules Pierre Mao unleashed.

Now, in the novels, her character curses like a sailor, which they've tried to do on TV, but it is on basic cable, so there's only so far they can go. But she's also much more prominent on the show than she is in the books. Now, Mark Fergus and the other showrunners were unanimous that they wanted Avasarela there right from the start because they need a character who can see the big picture and remind the audience what's at stake. Plus, he's just a great character. Why wait, you know? I asked Daniel and Ty when they were writing the novels if they based Avasarala off of any

real-life politician. We were trying to have it clear that this was a future in which women were in positions of power. And we were writing this in the era in which Rahm Emanuel was working in the Obama White House and was kind of famously potty mouthed. And so we just borrowed him. We said, OK, well, what if Rahm Emanuel was a little East Indian grandma? And then that was Avasarela. I never would have made that connection. But it makes sense if you know Rahm Emanuel, currently the mayor of Chicago. Now, there's an old question in politics as to whether you get more results with a carrot or a stick.

And interestingly, the character of Avasarela in the books and in the show goes in two different directions. The character in the novel is pretty much all stick, no carrot. But on the show, she really goes for the carrot approach and wields a big stick only when she needs to. In fact, my favorite scene with her on the show is during this superpower summit between Mars and Earth. during this superpower summit between Mars and Earth, a Martian Marine named Bobby Draper is testifying because she got into a battle with a strange creature that may be a biotech weapon gone rogue. Avasarela can tell that Bobby's superiors in the Martian military

have coached her to hide what she knows. And Avasarela is trying to draw it out from her. Sergeant Draper, my family has a long tradition of military service. I'm sure yours does too. And Avasarela is trying to make Mars a new Earth. An entire nation dedicated to a common goal, to turn a lifeless rock into a garden. Did you know that the majority of people on Earth don't have jobs? They don't work at all. They live on basic assistance, which the government provides.

I did know that. You call them takers, I believe. Yes, ma'am. It's not that they're lazy, you know. It's just that we can't give them enough opportunities. In this building, it's easy to forget. With all due respect, madam, where are you going with this? Wherever I goddamn like. What Avasarella is doing here is winning Bobby's trust. And this is a bit of a spoiler. But on the show, she does it to the point where Bobby defects to the earth. And that scene plays out like the crossing of the Berlin Wall.

Martian! You are on U.N. soil! I am gunnery sergeant with the Martian Marine Corps. I am requesting political asylum on Earth. I asked Mark Fergus why they made Bobby's choice so dramatic in the show, because in the novels, she can work with Avasarela without renouncing her Martian citizenship. What we said was Bobby's choice to join Avasarela has to hurt as much as possible. It has to be betrayal. It has to be her giving up everything of the life she's built.

She has to throw it all away and cross that border. And it has to hurt a lot for her to do that. And it can't just be an intellectual choice. It has to be a decision from which there's really no coming back. It's true, that scene really helps heighten the theme of the books. Because both these characters, Bobby Draper and Christian Avasarela, start out as being staunchly tribalistic. Their philosophies are Mars first and Earth first. And one of the reasons why they learn to trust each other is because they've each discovered dangerous warmongers among their own ranks. And that dynamic also plays out in the asteroid belt,

which is the third major political power in the solar system. Now, as I mentioned before, Tai and Daniel put a lot of scientific thought into writing the novels, and they imagined that humans that are born in the asteroid belt would become elongated because of gravity. Belters, as they're called, have literally evolved into a different kind of human. But they don't reap the benefits of all the ice and minerals in the asteroid belt. All that stuff is stripped away by Mars, Earth, and these massive corporations, which in many ways are more powerful than any government.

You know, I mean, that's today. That's right now. Again, here's Ty Frank. The countries in Africa that have the rare earth metals that are incredibly valuable for technology, those countries are not rich countries. The people who climb into caves to dig that stuff out don't benefit from it. And so the idea of a working class out in the belt that was mining the enormous wealth that we believe is out in the belt, they're not the ones who get to enjoy that wealth. That wealth always goes to someone else.

Now, initially, Mark Fergus was frustrated because while the special effects in the show are really good, they really didn't have the budget to create all these elongated human beings. But then he decided that restraint could be used to their advantage. You don't know what's in someone's heart just by looking at them, because they may be a belter who's pretending to be an earther or vice versa. We found that it gave us way more latitude to tell the story and find the best actors and tell the story of how it's hard to sort out, you know, where you want to be. Now, the Belters have formed a kind of de facto government called the Outer Planets Alliance,

or OPA. And they want to be recognized as a legitimate government by Earth and Mars. And the big question is whether the OPA gets what they want through violence or negotiation. And the de facto leader of the group is the character that fascinates me the most, Fred Johnson. Fred is African-American. He's a former colonel of the United Nations who defected to the asteroid belt. And on the show, he's played by Chad L. Coleman, who you might know as Cuddy on The Wire and Tyrese on The Walking Dead. You two were the only witnesses to a series of catastrophic events. You could be the key to stopping all our war.

We're not the only witnesses. You were watching. I've been out of the war business a long time, son. I broke a peace treaty these days. That's not exactly what you're known for. Now, early on, when they were brainstorming the novels, Ty Frank says the inspiration for this character came from a personal place. The character of him is based on somebody that I knew

who had been a fighter for racial equality back in the 60s. He's a friend of my parents who, in the 60s, he was a Black Panther and had grown out of that and sort of become a much more measured person and saw the value in fighting for things that are important, but grew out of the sort of fighting means setting buildings on fire into fighting means working to create the social change that you want within the system. He's also an interesting character because he's advocating for a group of which he is not a member. Yeah.

There's a real moral authority that comes from arguing against your own immediate tribal interests. And there's also an estrangement from the people who you're advocating for when you take their story and their situation and make yourself central to it. Now, in adapting the books to a series, Mark Fergus and the other showrunners felt like Fred Johnson needed a rival, a more radical member of the OPA to spar with. So they brought in a character from much later in the books, named Anderson Dawes. Fred Johnson. And he's played by Jared Harris,

who speaks in the accent of a working-class belter, which, of course, is an accent that they completely made up. And we have taken to you as a brother, but this, this is the utter in you still. We do not want to live under anyone's boot, Fred Johnson. It's amazing how much the expanse is like a Rorschach test. Because when I look at the power struggle between Fred Johnson and Anderson Dawes, I thought it was a clear metaphor for the Palestinians, with Fatah appealing to international law and Hamas saying that violence is the only option. But that wasn't the analogy Ty and Daniel were thinking of when they wrote the books.

And Mark Fergus, the showrunner, had a totally different part of the world in mind. I have a lot of family in Ireland still who believes the IRA sold out for, you know, a seat in the halls of power, but sold out their real ideals. And other people are like, we're sick of the fighting. We're sick of the destruction. We just want, everybody wants to move on. Let's find a way to join, you know, the game as it's played and learn the game from within. You know, do we become just like them in order to get power and to be accepted?

Do we have to become just like them? And how much of your soul do you have to give up to be allowed entry into that world? So those are the three political power bases in this universe, Earth, Mars, and the asteroid belt. And then the writers threw in a curveball, a glowing blue biotechnology called the protomolecule, which may have come from an alien species. But the question isn't, who are these aliens and where did the stuff come from? The big question is, who's got access to the stuff? And how effectively can they weaponize it?

I think even without the alien civilization, we would be perfectly capable of generating our own apocalypse. Again, Daniel and Ty. The way we used to talk about it was when we go out to space, the most dangerous stuff is going to be all the stuff we packed with us. Yeah, physically and psychologically.

Yeah, I mean, the introduction in the first book of the protomolecule and all of the stuff that it brings, it's just a way to give humans a new thing to fight over. And that's really what The Expanse is about. Because whenever there's going to be a conflict between different political factions, you can always find moderates that recognize the other side has a valid point and wants to negotiate. In fact, the main core group of characters, remember the ones that date back from the days when The Expanse was just a role-playing game? Those characters, which fly around in the ship called the Rocinante, are a mixture of a belter, a Martian, and two earthers. And they're all like

great friends. I mean, they're practically family with each other. The problem in this universe, and the real one, is whether the moderates can negotiate with the extremists on their own side. You know, so many times in history, moderates have backed away from negotiations if they're worried their own side could break down into a civil war. And moderates aren't always right. I mean, it depends on what values

they're willing to compromise. But the big question that the expanse is asking is how powerful is tribalism? Mark Fergus, one of the showrunners, says that he thinks about this every time he reads an article about climate change, how bad it's going to get and how little we're doing to even slow it down. We can solve every one of our environmental issues. We can solve those right now if we could break out of our myopic view of what human life is. We could change everything right now. We have the ability.

And why the hell won't we do it? Because we're locked in our programming as humans to consume, consume, consume, fight, fight, fight, kill, kill, kill, all of it. And we can't break out of the cycle. That's the other question these guys are asking. I mean, what happens when all of humanity is under threat? Do we have the political will to work together to solve our problems, knowing that if we can't, it's going to be a disaster? Even the two novelists that write under the single name of James S.A. Corey

don't agree with each other on this. Like, here's Daniel. say, Corey, don't agree with each other on this. Like, here's Daniel. I try very hard to build an optimism I can believe in. And what that looks like is, yes, we're all just a bunch of terrible, terrible, evil little monkeys. But we are also capable of moments of tremendous grace. And the kindness and the compassion and the trust that underlies society is unremarked because we all think it's normal. We all believe that that's how things just are. And so I think on that level, I'm an optimist. I believe that the thing we are all expecting is a pretty gentle, trusting world.

And the reason we're all disappointed. And here's Ty. I'm a cynic. I think we will continue to squabble over shiny rocks as the world burns around us. But we've been squabbling over the shiny rocks forever and we've done amazing shit in the meantime. And I think we can continue to bumble along including setting our planet on fire including which we are in the

process of doing well we've done other terrible shit before and we'll continue doing terrible shit but we have bumbled our way through up till now and i i have a certain amount of faith in our ability to bumble forward we're not the same guy. No. I have that debate going on in my head all the time. That's why I'm always suspicious of the sort of Silicon Valley utopian vision of the future, where if we just apply this technology they're developing or this particular solution to our problems, everything will be great. It's going to be a golden age. And I'm like, have you met

the human race before? But the dystopian visions of the future are just too dark for me. I mean, I feel bad because people often recommend these post-apocalyptic novels that are supposed to be great, but I can't get more than a few pages in. It's just too depressing. What I like about the expanse is that they find the middle ground. They imagine a future which looks a lot like the present and the past. The cycle just keeps going on and on. The hope that we'll finally get our act together and solve our big problems. That hope still feels like it's just out of reach. But human civilization, still around. And my feeling is, all right, I'll take it.

That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Ty Frank, Daniel Abraham, Mark Fergus, and the journalist Andrew Liptack, whose research into the Expanse was really valuable. Imaginary Worlds is part of the Panoply Network. You can like the show on Facebook, tweet at E. Malinsky, and if you'd like to support the show, just click the donate button on my site, imaginaryworldspodcast.org.

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