After 10 years and nine novels, James SA Corey’s The Expanse series ended in November with the publication of Leviathan Falls. Readers will take one final journey into the world of The Expanse when the upcoming novella The sins of our father will be released in March 2022, and fans of the TV adaptation will also get a sixth and final season, which premieres on December 10th on Amazon Prime Video. Co-authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who jointly write under the pen name Corey, Tell Polygon that the TV show offers “good resolution” for the screen story, but it’s only in Leviathan Falls that fans can watch the whole story of James Holden and his Roci family draw artfully to an end.
[Ed. note: Extensive spoilers ahead for Leviathan Falls.]
After decades of struggling to democratize information and unite humanity, Holden is forced to violate these values in order to save humanity from succumbing to Duarte and the Ringbauer’s plans to integrate humanity into their crush. By injecting himself with the protomolecule, Holden is able to take control of the ring station to keep the dark gods at bay long enough for everyone – including the Roci crew – to evacuate the ring room. Naomi and Amos make their way to Sol, while Alex says goodbye to his found family to be with his biological family in the Nieuwestad system and takes the Roci with him. Once the annulus is cleared, Holden uses the last of his strength to destroy the gates and makes an executive decision for all of humanity to save it – a bleak irony he does not miss.
The ending is equally heartbreaking and hopeful, and this is what Abraham and Franck have built on for more than a decade. The couple even knew it Leviathan Falls‘last line – Naomi ponders, “The stars are still there. We find our own way back to them “- since they wrote the second book, Caliban’s War.
Speaking to Polygon, Abraham and Franck discussed the inevitability of Holden’s fate, the book’s open epilogue, mankind’s resilience in the face of impossible adversity, and – of course – aliens.
This interview has been edited and shortened for the sake of clarity.
The ending of Holden’s story feels both inevitable and ironic. How did you find his bow and prepare for that moment when he is forced to make the kind of decision he has always fought?
Daniel Abraham: What we were trying to do was take this very righteous guy with a very strong opinion and swirl him through more and more experience, depth, uncertainty and gray until we still had him very much to ourselves but in a place where he does could be an impossible choice, this choice on behalf of everyone, although that is exactly what he never wanted to do. And we did that with a lot of other characters as well. If you look at Naomi, she tried not to be a leader. In the first book she tried to hide behind her hair. It didn’t land there.
Ty Franck: And Elvi utterly contradicts all of her scientific principles, all she would have sworn were the most important aspects of her ethical life. She breaks them all to save humanity. One of the things we keep doing with characters is that we show them where they’re most comfortable and then pull them out. […] The only character this never happens to is Amos, because Amos is only one thing and he will only ever be one thing. And it turns out that one thing is very difficult to kill.
In the epilogue we learn that Amos is the one who is leading humanity through this next stage. Why was this the right landing site for him?
Abraham: We had him refer to himself as the last man very early on on the show. […] It’s that combination of strange compassion and a complete lack of sentimentality that just felt right. What a great place to grow.
Frank: And as a guide for a broken humanity, he acts like a guy, as Daniel said, without sentimentality. So he’s going to say, “Stop being such fools.” And if they don’t stop being a bunch of fools, he’ll kill anyone it takes to get everyone else back on board. […] He just seems like the perfect person for it.
The epilogue leaves a lot of room for interpretation by the reader – will the story repeat itself now that the different systems can be reconnected or can people find a better way? What were your intentions there?
Abraham: Part of what we did with the whole series was the argument that history is prophecy, that humans as an organism don’t really change. What we did in Rome, we do now. And the happy ending that we have is that we now have 1,300 chances of getting it right. Maybe someone will find out now. One of the reasons I think the epilogue is short is because I’m not sure what that would look like.
Much of this book raises questions about the definition of self-being and identity, from Duarte’s planned crush consciousness to Amos’ transformation to the way time controls Roci. has changed Crew. How did this theme affect the characters and the story?
Frank: Daniel and I disagree on the nature of consciousness, but we absolutely agree that humans are just a story that we keep telling each other, and that story is very important to us. Most of the terrible things that people do – and most of the great things that people do – are because that is the story they want to believe about themselves. […] And for most people, changing the story of who we are is the greatest hurt that can happen to us. And we’re going to die to prevent that from happening. […] They take that fact of humanity and present it with: “Hey everyone, we can win, but we just have to give up what is the most important aspect of any human life.” What is the human reaction to that? I don’t think it will be a silent toleration.
Whenever there is a mysterious threat or character, there is always the risk that it will be lost if you reveal too much. But we learned a lot more about the ring builders and their destroyers in this book. How did you strike that balance between answering questions about these alien species without explaining too much?
Abraham: We knew a lot about the evolutionary history of gate builders and how their biology influenced their actions, how they saw things differently and the strategy that we saw in book one of hijacking other life and using and integrating it. So that was all pretty well thought out. It was just about finding a way to explain it, and it wasn’t just a graduation lecture. And the ring creatures should always be mysterious. You should always be the dark gods. I know there are people out there who really like to have all the answers, and that’s great, but I don’t think it’s ever satisfactory.
After the last few years, people have understood much more firsthand how quickly what we know as reality can change and what it is like to live through a time of universal tragedy and uncertainty. How do you think the ongoing pandemic will affect the way people deal with and receive this story?
Abraham: I will be smooth. Each age has its tragedies. Every age lives through its insecurities. I grew up having nightmares about nuclear war. We went through AIDS, we went through polio, we went through 1918. This is a unique moment in our life, but not a unique moment in history. This is something we have done over and over again for centuries. Now it’s our turn, and it kind of sucks because that’s what we’re here for. I hope the stuff Ty and I bring out is – I don’t know if it’s right to comfort, but maybe comfort. Just the idea that churn is the course of history. Exodus is what it is and always has been. And yet we stumble forward more and more often.
Frank: People, even if we feel defeatist […] we just keep trudging forward. And I think that’s what keeps us going from age to age. They read about horrors of history like the Trail of Tears – they went on. People fell dead on the way, and they went on anyway. And some of them got where they wanted to go. […] Some people just hang in there. And I think one of the most convincing things about people for me is that we just hold on.
The upcoming anthology Legion of Memory will take up the last novella in the series. What can readers expect? The sins of our fathers?
Frank: It’s kind of a coda for the series. It’s probably not what people expect, but that’s fine. In a way, it’s talking about what to do next. Daniel talked about the 1,300 chances of getting it right, and it’s only a little story about one of those 1,300 chances of someone trying to get it right.
Apart from this novella, do you expect to visit this world again?
Frank: No. We told the story we wanted to tell.
Abraham: What I hope is that people who are hungry for more grab this role playing game or start writing your own stuff […] and keep the literary conversation going. I would like to see it that way. I wouldn’t want to see another Expanse book.
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Prices at the time of publication.
The greatest science fiction series of the decade comes to an incredible conclusion in the ninth and final novel in James SA Corey’s Hugo-winning space opera that inspired the TV series, now from Amazon Studios.
