I was advised to post here by a cat sub :) I have 2 cats, both love watching the expanse.

The answer is in the comments . (Please don't spoil past season 3 and book 4 for us)

...the underground sneak Amos onto Laconia with a pocket nuke before the events of Book 8? It seems like that would have been incredibly difficult to pull off without Amos or the ship that brought him being seen and/or detected as suspicious by the Laconians.

Also, I'm wondering what would have had to happen for Amos to get the go-ahead to actually set off the nuke.

I want to know the critical flaws in Marco's entire attack Earth plan. I feel like something important is missing. I mean you can be trigger happy for an instant, but right after it sucks. What if Earth and Mars just accept the demands and immediately right after hold the Gynamede hostage and ask the surrender of Marco and Free navy?

It's not like Earth has no battle ships. And the entire earth population would be raving with irrational anger too.

So Free Navy, OPA, attacked Earth, killing billions of people. Ok. They have some ships, but not a big fleet.

Earth being one of the super powers, has the largest number of Military Space Ships, even though not as advanced as Mars, but still a great force. It can easily threaten to nuke one or two stations as a deterrent and can demand the unconditional surrender of the OPA or even demand to hand the volatile branch of the OPA, Free Navy. In the mean time it can occupy every major station of the belters and take control of it.

In the earlier books it's implied Protomolecule infested Phoebe was decimated by Mars. So Earth can easily do the same. So what is stopping Earth from doing that?

NOTE: I condemn any type of violence, much less mass murder of innocent civilians. I'm looking at a strategic perspective, not revenge.

I'm re-reading this series for the umpteenth time and one thing that is really standing out this time around is the depth of the worldbuilding. There are so many little details that make it such a believable world, like this passage from Elvi's point-of-view in Leviathan Falls:

When she was being honest with herself, it wasn't even that she loved medical genetics all that much. When she was fifteen, she'd seen Amalie ud-Daula play a medical geneticist in Handful of Rain, and she spent the next year trying to get her hair to look the same. She never really managed.

It's a throwaway line about an actor and film that only exists in-universe and is never mentioned again. And the entire series is just filled with little snippets like this.

I don't think I've read any other series with this much depth to the background world.

https://reddit.com/link/1v4bm8m/video/3uygi8t6mzeh1/player

Oye belter fans!
So I spent a lot of my holiday on improving the Belter Charts and finally got around to recording a showcase video.

This is for you and for me, the fans. It is not official thing in any way.

But I hope you will enjoy it and spread the word. Also comment here, because the awesome comments from the community are what kept me going. I love it and thank you all!

What's new since launch (whole busy month, beltalowda):

Stories:

- Seven canon story scenarios, from the Cant's last haul to the Ring flotilla: Epstein's last flight, Julie's last run, Miller's ride to Eros, the Io dash, and Eros making its move. Flight stories put you in the seat with a scripted comm log; watch stories lock the camera on the body while history plays out.

- Spoiler gate: tell the chart how far you've read (book one through six) and it hides the rest. Menus, events, and stories all respect it.

The system got crowded:

- Ambient traffic layer: procedurally generated ships flying real lanes between Earth, Mars, Ceres, Tycho, and the Belt. Faction-tinted transit arcs, hoverable ship names, deterministic (scrub the clock, same ships fly again). Toggle it from the timeline.

- Port districts on Ceres and Eros: warm dock lights and structures that spin with the rock.

- Tycho and Anderson stations with real models, spinning drums, window lights, and running beacons.

Real hulls:

- The Rocinante, the Canterbury-type hauler, the Donnager, and Epstein's yacht are now actual 3D models (community CC-BY models, credited in-app).

- Epstein-drive plumes per engine: exhaust grows with the burn, mach diamonds on the torches. The Donnager burns on all four nacelles.

Worlds worth looking at:

- Earth got a live day/night terminator that tracks the real sun, city lights, an atmosphere rim that only glows on the lit limb, and a cloud layer that drifts independently of the surface.

- Close-up focus and ship zoom.

Quality of life:

- Bring your own soundtrack: load audio files for your ride, cached also for the next time.

- Ride speed controls and a rebuilt ride HUD.

- New timeline speeds, a proper loading screen with shader pre-compile, and smoother keyboard flight.

Such a great scene ,Good character writing as well for amos, he's wanted an excuse to beat the pulp out of murtry but also wanted to listen to holden to hold back unless he was provoked, he found a loophole, provoked murtry into hitting him only for murtry to realize via his "oh shit" expression that its exactly what amos wanted, the crazy eyes and the "thankyou" was so damn satisfying haha.

Genuinely one of my favourite scenes later in the series. (Im on a rewatch after all these years and yeah this is one of the top scifi tv shows for me)

Humans and the ring builders? Let's say if the ring builders weren't at war with the goths, would they be willing to play ball with other sapient life? Hell maybe if they had more time, maybe humans and the ring builders can figure out how to fight the goths.

Just finished reading The children of time series and there's a similar hivemind parasitic organism there that humans have befriended and got me wondering about the ring builders in the expanse.

I always imagined that a parasitic hivemind was way too hostile for diplomacy but maybe with a little creativity it could work.

At the beginning of the year I started my journey to get my CDL and become an OTR trucker. From the first moments behind the wheel it immediately felt like piloting a giant spaceship. With all the gauges, buttons, sounds and of course size and weight… not to mention the industry jargon of being the captain of my own ship - I couldn’t help but think it was a space faring vessel! So needless to say once I got out of training and got into my own “spaceship” I had to name her the Rocinante! And as of this week I finally started the audiobooks.

I had never really given audiobooks as a medium a chance but I started listening to fictional podcasts like Midnight Burger on my drives a few weeks back . Listening to stories unfold really lend themselves to driving nearly 11 hours every day. Needless to say I fell in love with them and then it struck me… I need to take the plunge. I had seen everyone rave about the audiobooks, now it was time! It’s been less than a week and I’m already on Abaddon’s Gate. I thought I was obsessed with the TV shows - the books are literally heroin. At night when I’m in my bunk drifting off to sleep all I can think about is getting up in the morning, doing my pre-trip, warming up the drives, powering up the systems, and starting up my book all while I pilot my Roci across the cosmos delivering goods to the people all over galaxy!

I apologize for the sloppy photoshop, I’m on my phone out here on the road with no laptop, it was the best I could do in short notice and I was mainly excited to tell other fans about my quirky little Expanse journey!

Anyone got any ideas for fun decorations I can add to my spaceship? Further lean into it being the Roci? Maybe I can mount some PDC’s somewhere lol it could help with traffic!

I just finished the first book in The Expanse series "Leviathan Wakes". I really loved the book and it is exactly the type of book I was looking to read. It has that perfect amount of space action that I find satisfying while still remaining grounded and realistic enough to hold my interest.

I did listen to the audio book and in the series I noticed there were some short stories listed before the first book chronologically and I was wondering if I need to read those.

So my main question is how should I go about reading the rest of the series?

- Should I read it all in chronological order?

- Read the books in release order?

- Or should I skip the short stories and save them for after I complete the main book series?

I am perfectly fine with reading all the short stories and I plan on reading them all anyways but I was just curious what the best way to go about it would be.

I am also curious whether there are any stories or books that I can skip because they may have no bearing on the overarching story or events.

Thanks for the help!

—PLEASE NO SPOILERS—

About halfway through Babylons Ashes here and did anyone else find this book mind-numbingly boring? Losing count of all the different perspectives. I hope this is a setup book for the remaining novels.

You know they're done fucking around when they say that line. Whoever they just said that to has pissed them off and now they are ready blow someone up if need be.

I've just gotten into plastic models, like a good nerd, and I started the Expanse show in the backgroud. I would kill, KILL for a Roci model kit. Please please tell me there's one out there someone has found?

Just wondering if anyone loves this show but have never read any of the books. I keep recommending the show to friends who are sci fi fans but they don't seem to get into it. Wondering if reading the books are a prerequisite or something..

The balance they have together is amazing. Everything is so well written, I can’t wait to read what they will continue to write.

… that her father killed Julie? I’m rereading and watching the show, but so far I can’t remember her ever blaming out Wright her father for murdering her sister

One of my favorite passages from the series. We’re all just monkeys playing with microwaves. It’s in Abaddon’s Gate, I forget which chapter.
Another one is from Caliban’s War. It’s chapter 27 when Prax climbs out onto the hull of the Roci and the stars wrap all the way around him. That is such good writing.

When I read the books I was waiting with dread for Alex to die and then it never came! Then watching the show again I knew it was coming but was in the denial the whole time. What an emotional roller coaster.

In book 8, I just got to the part where Holden says "the rain smells the same but the wet ground doesn't". I recently learned about petrichor (essentially the smell of wet ground after rain) and it made me wonder what specifically would be different about the plant biochemistry on Laconia.

Is Laconian plant biology discussed in any amount of detail in other books?

I haven't read beyond this line yet (and haven't read 1-6, I just switched over from the show) so no spoilers please! If this exists, please just point me to the source material 🙂

And all others for that matter.

What does science fiction look like in the expanse?

Do they have novels, movies etc.

Since most of the show is literally thick with science fiction in its reality, what would the fantastic stories look like?

🤷🏽

I’m rereading leviathan wakes and I found this part a little confusing. In chapters 2 and 4, hes eating a dish consisting of real rice grown in a vat and fake beans made of fungi, which are made to mimic beans.

What I’m confused by is how come is the rice real but the beans are fake? I understand that growing crops on ceres might be hard while fungi is easy, but that begs the question for me, why is the rice also not fake?

The rice is described as being vat grown (I’m kinda curious what exactly vat grown rice is, like how do you grow rice in a vat), but then that makes me wonder, if they can grow real rice in a vat, why can’t they grow real beans in a vat?

Maybe I’m thinking too deep into this, but it’s just bugging me. I know it’s not an important detail, but it just gets me thinking about it too much.

I feel like whoever designed this set really could’ve looked up which direction a telescope is supposed to point 🤦🏻‍♂️😂

Since you all seemed to Like my large wip frigate i decided to Design a smaller ship for a Change of Pace

Finally finished the main series of novels last night, what a ride!

There’s no “answer”, and deliberately so, by the authors, but would the Gatebuilders plan for killing the “dark gods” have worked?

We get some indication that as Holden starts reaching out across minds he’s getting stronger and more able to fight the “dark gods”, but if Holden had been able to combine all of humanity into a single mind, would that had been enough to permanently defeat the dark gods?

I’m inclined to think it was always a fools errand. Ring space is only a small bubble in the “old universe”. That all the struggle a single mind of humanity could put up against the “dark gods” would be about the same as the world’s strongest ant contending with a boot.

Semi-jokingly, I like to think that the “dark gods” view all this as little more than an annoyance. That, as Dr. Okoye analogized using different treatments against an infection to the “dark gods” attacks on humanity, that it might be the “dark gods” saw all the antics from humanity and the Gatebuilders as something like a persistent upset stomach or a skin rash that they are trying to treat. A ship going Dutchman is just them doing the equivalent of popping some pepto-bismo to deal with some nausea/intestinal distress.

Perhaps more satisfying when viewing the “dark gods” this way, it makes Duarte look truly delusional. Again, imagine the idea of the world’s strongest ant thinking it can fight a boot.