Connecting to A Science Fiction Future
I’m rereading The Expanse books, and finally watching the show, which I cannot recommend highly enough.
If you haven’t read them or watched the show, what The Expanse really gets right and what I and many find so compelling is that the world building reflects the present. Economic stratification in a solar system powered by corporations and commercialization, racial stratification in a new configuration between Earthers, Martians, and Belters, and politics the same dirty politics we’re dealing with now where every faction is looking for the next military leap forward, the next opportunity to line their pockets, and yes, also working to help people and preserve their lives and livliehoods.
In short, The Expanse reflects our own society back to us. It feels possible, inevitable, and encapsulates the complexity of human society. It feels like you could be dropped right into the story.
The story is fantastic too—you can’t have a bestseller without a strong story. The multiple viewpoints through which its told allow for that compelling worldbuilding, which then feeds back into the storytelling because the characters live in a complex solar system influenced by dozens of players.
Chrisjen Avasarala, Deputy Undersecretery of the UN, Earth, listening to Sgt. Bobbie Draper’s testimony about the protomolecule hybrid she fought on Ganymede. Avasarala is a politician and a badass mf and one of my favorite characters. Season 2, episode 9, The Expanse.
As a self-proclaimed advocate of optimistic science fiction and space operas that reflect the world I want to live in, you might think that I wouldn’t go for the gritty guts of humanity at its messiest. But I believe that’s exactly where we have to start, because that’s what humanity is—infinitely messy and either in the dumpster, setting fire to it, or improving that little smidge better after we crawl out of it. It’s that last one that I spend time thinking about in my stories.
In the middle of a dystopian mess, whether it’s the descent into fascism we are living through in the U.S. right now, or the plight of the Belters on Anderson Station who just want proper healthcare for their kids (sound familiar, Mr. Gov’t Shutdown), or a collapse of environmental systems through negligence and one disaster that kicks them over the edge (this one should sound familiar too, and I don’t just mean The Dementia, thank you Ms. Climate Change), my central question is this—how do people rise up to help each other, help strangers, help their communities and not get beaten down by everything that’s gone wrong and the bad actors who want to profit off the chaos?
It’s so easy to focus on the dystopia that it can be hard to remember that there are in fact millions of people willing to help others, protect their neighbors from being disappeared, believe in the work they’re doing and stay even when it doesn’t make “financial sense”. I’m hungry for those stories that show everyday people stepping up, inflatable frog costumes and all. To bring it back to The Expanse, I think that’s another thing that’s so compelling about the story. The protagonists are not chosen, they are working stiffs in the right place at at the right time to live through horrendous events and choose to do something about them. They’re flawed, human, and reflect us.
