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I’m barreling ahead with the Expanse book series, absent the television episodes to keep in sync. You may recall that, for a while, I was alternating – reading a book and then watching the Amazon interpretation of that same book – to help me maintain a continuity. I’m finding the story too interesting to hold off for another season of TV production.
The growing gap between written and screen versions is going to be an interesting problem and I’m eager to see how the Amazon people will deal with it. Several of the main characters in Persepolis Rising have already been killed off on TV. There is also a difference in the way the passage of time is dealt with. In the book, you can turn a page and it can casually hint at a passing of months (taken, for example, to execute an inner-to-outer orbit transfer largely conducted “on the float”*). On TV, the implication is much shorter time durations. In fact, looking at the entire series as a whole, the TV version must be assumed to take place in something close to “real time.” That is, it won’t be more than, say, double or triple the roughly five years that the show itself has been around. Contrast that with the near-generational arc that plays out on paper.
Speaking of issues with time, there is a new “twist” introduced in this book, having to do with distortions (and perhaps more) of the time-space continuum, caused by alien technology. This was particularly exciting for me because I have just, a few weeks back, come across a YouTube series which delves into these issues. I find the explanation in this video immensely satisfying, despite the fact that the presenter specifically says that it is not. Until I watched this, I had not considered the importance of simultaneity in terms of the perception of time flow and the apparent inconsistencies caused by relativity. Not to get into the details but I would not have fully appreciated the “incident” in Persepolis Rising had I not already watched the video.
I’ve previous talked about how a big part of my attraction to The Expanse is their attention to scientific detail. At the same time, and I’m not sure I have talked about this before, the authors are clear that they are not trying to write rigorously-accurate science into their fiction. Is this new incident actually speculatively-informative about the possible nature of time and space, or is just a plot-line addition couched in the wording of advanced scientific concepts? I’m not sure I’m qualified to even know the difference.
Possibly even more interesting is the connection between the story and the politics of the day. Persepolis Rising is, of course, loaded with classical references. The book shares its title with the name of the Persian ceremonial capital. Persepolis was palace complex that was built (probably) by Darius I and then conquered and burned down by Alexander. The Expanse story focuses on the self-called Laconians, who have taken their name after the region of Greece which contains Sparta. What this implies by analogy (as Sparta is to Greece, Laconia is to Mars?) is not made explicit. Consider also casual references to Homer which leave both some of the characters and, assuredly, some of the readers a little confused. Are we meant to take some deeper meaning from the allegory, or is this no more than a indication that some people have had a classical education and some people haven’t?
I will keep reading.
Other themes in the story seem particularly relevant to today’s political climate, with violent clashes in the news coming in from around the world. Mass violence in Myranmar, Uyghur genocide in China, while less deadly protests are happening in Haiti, throughout Europe, and across the globe. Here in the United States, the trial of Derek Chauvin is keeping the BLM and Antifa protests going strong, nearly a year after they began. It seems that either we’re seeing a world deteriorating into broad resistance – open conflict between the elites and the masses – or a crackdown on political thought that will eventually bring about a new, less free society.
Does Persepolis Rising have a message for us about today’s world? Well, it was published in 2016, so in some ways it couldn’t possibility be anticipating the big political shift post-2020 election. Maybe, instead, it was written in anticipation of a Trump victory and feared the possible tyranny that could have been forthcoming. For anyone not virulently anti-Trump, however, it is the newly-ascendant left that seems more aligned with Laconia and its vision of utopia – peacefully adopted or violently imposed, as we ourselves are allowed to choose.
Depending who we are, we’ll blame Donald Trump, or Joe Biden, or systemic racism, or stay-at-home-to-flatten-the-curve lock-downs for whatever gets us riled up and what causes us to resist. It does seem strange that present rioting seems to be a reaction to some of all of this – as if the “cause” is irrelevant. As if the whatever it is that we’re all resisting transcends the issues and the politics of today.
In that respect, Persepolis Rising is offering a non-standard take on these questions. Hopefully not to spoil it for anyone, but the tyranny imposed by Laconia is hardly all that oppressive in the great scheme of things. In fact, it is quite possible that their authoritarian solutions will actually improve the lives of the vast majority of belters and colonists. Maybe like the face masks of the real world, even those who find the use of masks to be pointless theater – it all seems to be a small price to pay if we could just follow the rules so as to keep everyone happy.
Yet the desire to object is in our bones. Even when it is easier to go along to get along, we recognize that nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind. Furthermore, that need to fight back against oppression is not conditioned upon the likelihood of victory. Even when we are doomed, we’ll vow to go down fighting.
I’ve not bought Tiamat’s Wrath, at least not yet. That chapter also was written before the corona/crackdowns, so we should not be looking for enlightenment about our present situation. The next book in the series (and it may be the last, I don’t know) is due out during 2021 and it will have the benefit of seeing our present. I appear to be making assumptions about the authors and their politics. The co-author of this series have emerged from the orbit of George R.R. Martin, whose left-leaning politics are well documented. It only stands to reason that a writers’ group based in Santa Fe would be towards the liberal end of the spectrum. Nonetheless, and a few jabs at survivalists aside, the tone of The Expanse is not particularly political. If anything, I detect a slight libertarian bent.
I’ll need to keep reading to see how the story weaves with the rapidly-changing events in our own time. It probably says something about “the message” when something written under Donald Trump’s shadow comes off as equally or even more appropriate under his successor and opponent. It also might be a reminder to us of a not-so-long-ago time when we expected and even demanded that great writing transcend the mundane concerns of things like real life, politics, and reality. Why shouldn’t a great novel (and I’m convinced that this is one, despite any mistrust you might have of pop culture) transcend into the realm of universal human truths? What we face is so much more than politics and vaccines and masks. We’ve realized that since the time of Homer.
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*A little quick math soon exceeded my abilities and attention span. A minimum-energy orbit transfer between, for example, Mars and Jupiter could take years or more. A Martian-orbit-initiated orbit injection would mean a Jupiter orbit, with a matching period. Gravity-assisted “slingshot” transfers would potentially take even longer. On the other hand, optimizing for time should be able to, at least, beat the transit time of Pioneer 10, which was under a year earth-to-Jupiter. Having a high-efficiency engine easily capable of sustained greater-than-1-g thrust could easily get you talking weeks or even less, under conditions of favorable planetary alignment. What seemed like it could be a (literally) back-of-the-envelope estimation turned out to be way more trouble than it’s worth.