On Nemesis Games and SyFy’s Expanse show.
I waited a few weeks, but I finally got around to reading
Nemesis Games, this year’s entry in James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series, which
has a yearly publishing model that would make George R.R. Martin blush. There
is something nice about getting into a series where you know a new installment
is coming every year, which is something you don’t see in many major sci-fi
franchises.
As ever, when you start up an Expanse book, you wonder what
other perspectives you’ll find besides that of James Holden, the book’s Mal
Reynolds (the series is probably the best Firefly substitute I’ve read). This
time, however, it’s Holden’s supporting cast that finally have their day.
The Firefly vibe of The Expanse is present because of its
tight focus on the crew of the Rocinante, which incudes Earthers Holden and
Amos, Martian Alex and Belter Naomi. Usually the four of them act as one unit,
but in a really interesting way to keep things fresh, Corey has split them up
into the four main narratives of Nemesis Games. No new characters or
perspectives.
Well, technically Naomi, Amos and Alex are new perspectives,
but certainly not new characters. In order to give them their own point of view
however, they had to tear them away from one another. As I’ve found in my own
books, you can’t really do multiple narratives that effectively when the
parties are constantly in the same room. It gets really confusing (see the
last, incomprehensible book in the Divergent series), so the vast majority of the
time you have to split them up.
Alex goes to Mars where he meets up with my personal
favorite character, Martian Marine Bobbie and they investigate missing ships,
something Holden is also doing on his end with OPA leader Fred Johnson. Amos
goes all the way back to Earth where he finds himself dealing with old friends
and enemies. Mostly enemies. Naomi, we
discover, has a son with the charismatic leader of an OPA splinter cell, and he
has big, big plan for the entire solar system which is the main storyline of
the book.
It’s a good look at the backstories of characters we’ve
known for a long while, but don’t really know all that much about. Alex doesn’t seem to have many secrets other than
that his ex-wife still hates him and he probably has a crush on Bobbie, but we
learn a great deal about Amos and Naomi’s lives before we met them in book one.
It’s a way to keep old characters feeling fresh, and I think the four-way
narrative between the crew of the Rocinante is the best thing about the new
book.
Where does it rank in the pantheon of Expanse stories? I’m
not sure. Probably second or third behind Abaddon’s Gate (my favorite) and
Leviathan Wakes. I think last year’s Cibola Burn is still my least favorite,
but still good.
Needless to say, I’m excited and anxious for The Expanse to
hit TV in the form of December’s new show of SyFy. The trailers look…interesting,
albeit relatively non-descriptive. I’m just a little worried about how the
final product will shake out given the network.
Yes, SyFy has produced one of the greatest science fiction
shows ever in the form of Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica reboot, but since
then, even with a recent move toward more sci-fi and less Sharknado, they don’t
seem to have produced anything else that’s a true genre classic. They have many
shows that have been going on for a few seasons that are deemed pretty good,
but are there any must-watches in the pile? I haven’t heard enough about any
specific show to race out and watch it.
As such, I would feel a lot more comfortable with The
Expanse on HBO or Showtime or even Cinemax. Those channels seem like they
devote the resources they need to developing hits, and all have been painfully
lacking in the science fiction department for eons now. The Expanse seems like
the perfect space opera for HBO, with unlimited amounts of source material, but
now we have to hope SyFy gets it right. I suppose I’m just a bit biased, but I’m
uneasy The Expanse won’t get the best shot at success if it airs there. Perhaps
that’s unfounded, and I need to remember that great sci-fi can come from anywhere.
Firefly itself was on FOX, for Christ’s sake.
Anyway, you should read Nemesis Games if you haven’t, and
obviously you should read the entire Expanse series if you’ve missed it so far.
I don’t know if it’s like “best of all time” level of sci-fi up there with Card
and Asimov and all the rest, but it’s a lot of fun, and exactly the style of
book I like. I’m hoping that translates to TV this winter.