The Expanse

Our shared human heritage is science, and we are born observing and testing hypotheses about our world and our place in it. Our distant ancestors used gnomons on dials to track the sun’s progress across the sky, and oral traditions, hieroglyphs, 艺术将观察到的和经过检验的作物种植知识传递了下去, animal-keeping, and even natural disasters.

But what about our future? We know science is essential to solving big-picture problems, but how will it fit with our evolution as a species, both here on Earth and as we make our way out into the solar system and beyond?

If these are the questions that keep you up at night, 那就和我一起进入我们辉煌的蓝色大理石之外的广阔世界吧.

我是主持人杰斯·菲尼克斯，这里是《617888九五至尊娱乐》.

Jess: I am delighted to have two talented authors here today. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck wrote a series of books under the pen name of James S.A. Corey. Those books, of which there are nine complete novels plus several short stories and novellas, 构成了被称为“苍穹浩瀚”的作品主体." Fans of the book and TV series are quick to note just how good the depictions of science and technology are, and how closely the political and social issues addressed dovetail with issues facing Earth today. The Expanse won the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2020, and I'm delighted to speak with the two people who've brought so much gravitas and storytelling skill to sci-fi as of late. So, thank you so much for coming on the show, Ty and Dan.

Daniel: Thank you for having us.

Ty: 丹尼尔才是负责庄重的人.

Daniel: Yeah.

Jess: Well, good. We'll give him all the hard questions.

Ty: Yes.

Daniel: 降低你的期望值，我们就没事了.

Jess: 我们这些从事617888九五至尊娱乐研究的人已经习惯了. So, just wanna start off by mentioning to everybody who listens, 写小说本身就是一项棘手的517888九五至尊娱乐. 还写了一系列经过充分研究和构思的科幻小说, with two authors, over the course of 10 years, is on another level. What sparked your drive to see the series come to life? And how did you navigate that juggling of two creative minds to make things work?

Ty: This is not as funny an answer as you're hoping for. 答案是，丹尼尔说，“嘿，你想和我一起写一本书吗?" and I was like, "Okay." And then we did. 然后，几年后，他说，“你想再写六首?" and I was like, "Okay." And then we did.

Daniel: It's one of those things where I don't think we understood what we were doing when we started, or we might not have actually done it. It was really, it started off as this kind of awesome tabletop role-playing game that Ty was running. And I thought, "Look, he's already done all the hard part. He's done all the homework. I could just write this down. We could sell it for pizza money." There's the origin story. Pizza.

Jess: 披萨和游戏，我想这是我们很多人都能联想到的. But your pizza and gaming has clearly produced something a little bit more intricate than many of our efforts in that space go to [crosstalk 00:02:47]

Ty: We overachieved.

Daniel: We did overshoot, yeah.

Jess: 在我们深入了解《617888九五至尊娱乐》的细节之前,“我一直在想……我们有这么多的探索, and scientific research, 以及我们需要在地球上解决的问题. So, what drew you two to writing about exploration in space?

Ty: 在小说中解决现实问题, I mean, it happens, it always happens, no matter what you're writing about, the time that you live in, 即使你写的是遥远的未来. So, the things that concern us today are definitely gonna show up in the fiction, 不管小说的背景是什么时候. But, I get bored easily about... 比如，我不想写一篇10万字的关于为什么全球变暖是坏事的文章. That would... Like, it's true, but it would bore me to write that. So, for me, the things that keep me interested are the new things, the unexpected things, 我们以前从未见过或听说过的东西, and having the characters run into things that they have no frame of reference for, and have to struggle to figure out. That's what keeps me interested. And space is full of mystery. I mean, and you could make an argument that the Earth still has a lot of mystery here, too, you know, but I didn't wanna write a story about deep sea divers. So, it's either you're going to the bottom of the ocean or you're going out into space if you wanna find stuff we haven't seen before.

Daniel: 我认为泰带来的另一件事是, that was really useful, was a sense of history, and a sense of the way that the issues that we're seeing now, 我们希望在未来看到这一点, recapitulate and rhyme with the things we've seen in the past. We get a certain amount of credit for, kind of, prescience about things, because we're actually writing about stuff that happened a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago or two thousand years ago. And it just turns out there are certain evergreen issues that show up in humans.

Ty: Daniel's saying the nice version. The not-nice version is, humans do the same dumb sh-- over and over and over again, 所以如果你写一些2000年前某人做过的蠢事, I guarantee somebody's doing it today.

Jess: I'm assuming a lot of our listeners have probably been exposed to your work in some form, 因为它对617888九五至尊娱乐家非常友好. But for folks who don't know, the world of "The Expanse" is set in a future where humans have colonized the solar system. So, the UN is the governing mechanism on Earth, and it's the wealthiest and most secure region. The moon is a pretty functional outpost for shipping and transport and government function. Mars is a military power, and Mars itself is being terraformed. And the asteroid belt is basically populated with a lot of working-class people, who, 他们的身体实际上已经发生了变化, because they've had generations born in low gravity. So, 社会秩序极其分层, and it seems really logical, 当你把它放在历史背景中. 那么，当你开始做这个的时候，你是怎么想到这个设置的? I mean, was it instant, like, "Oh, this is how colonization of space would work?"

Ty: No. 实际上，它的功能比那要强大得多. So, the original pitch for "The Expanse," a friend of mine came to me and said, "Hey, my uncle is a bigwig at this Chinese internet service provider, 他们想要开发自己的MMORPG." And if you don't know what that is, 是大型多人在线rpg游戏, like World of Warcraft. They wanted to develop an in-house MMO that they could host on their internet service-providing platform, 吸引人们使用他们的服务. This was for China, in China. And she said, "You know about games, and do you have an idea? Is there something we could pitch him as an idea for a game?" So, 我把一些零散的笔记放在一起, and came up with a pitch that is what "The Expanse" is. And the reasons for all these things are very functional. 你知道，魔兽世界有两个派系. 你可以是联盟，也可以是部落，他们互相争斗. And I was like, "Well, we'll be better. We'll have three. 所以，我们将有地球，火星和腰带，将是三个派系."

And then, once I had come up with that, then I had to come up with a reason, why are they fighting each other? 所以，地球就像是一个衰败的帝国. It's like the British Empire in the last couple centuries, where, at one point, 它是地球上最庞大的帝国, and then it begins to retract, and lose its status. And that's Earth. It's the decaying empire. 然后火星就像美国. 这是一种突然取代其前身的分离力量. Suddenly, it's the most powerful military, and becoming the dominant military force. And then the third, I wanted sort of that sort of, like, messy, anarchist kind of feel. And the thing that Daniel talks about, looking at history, 有件事一直都是对的, 当你想要廉价的材料提取, 当你想在非洲挖稀土的时候, yes, 你可以用昂贵的机器来做, but 12-year-olds are cheaper. So you go and you just get a bunch of 12-year-olds to crawl down the holes and dig things up. And so, this idea that the mineral extraction from this belt would be all super-advanced robots just didn't feel true to me. What felt true to me is the minute that we can just take a bunch of poor people and ship them out there, that's what we're gonna do, 因为我们一直都是这么做的. And so, you wind up with sort of the oppressed underclass of workers, basically miners, in space, 谁被这两个超级大国滥用于矿物开采. 这就是这个想法的来源.

Jess: 我认为这才是真正与这个系列产生共鸣的地方, both the books and the TV show, were the, like, 这一切背后最基本的人性. Like, yeah, 我们在未来，我们拥有所有这些非常了不起的技术, 我们面临着地球上不存在的挑战, as well as ones that do. 但人类才是把这个系列串联起来的真正粘合剂. 所以，就像我说的，这是一部未来主义的太空歌剧. But much of the conflicts do play out like they do on Earth. So, you get conflicts between governments and what they prioritize, between the oppressed people, etc., etc. 但不像像《617888九五至尊娱乐》这样的科幻系列, the conflict, the poverty, the suffering, they're very standard. 我是说，在《617888九五至尊娱乐》里，这是自然而然发生的. But the solutions to the crises seem to be mostly solved by people talking to each other. And so, 是什么让你这么做的, of this isn't idealized, this is actually more realistic, even with some more fantastic elements sprinkled throughout?

Daniel: I think, when you're doing something like this, 它必然反映了做这件事的人的意见. And I think Ty and I both... 泰和我的背景非常不同. We came up very differently. And we came to some very similar conclusions about humans, and how they work, and how realistic it is to double down on murdering your way to a better tomorrow. And the, kind of, necessity of compassion, and of respect, 学会摆脱困境, 而不是用谋杀来摆脱麻烦. And, I mean, it wasn't something we specifically discussed. It wasn't something where we said, you know, "Well, what are the themes we're gonna try..." you know, [inaudible 00:14:58] This is the conversation that we have with ourselves and with each other, 这就是最终在书和系列中反映出来的.

Ty: And I appreciate utopian futures. I appreciate them as aspirational. 就像，你知道，你看星际迷航，每一个...there are no poor people in Star Trek, you know, at least in the Federation, you know. 每个人都是宇宙飞船船长，每个人都有一份很棒的517888九五至尊娱乐. Even as a kid, watching those shows, while I appreciated them, I was like, "Ooh. Who mops the floors on the Enterprise? Who does that job? Who mucks out the space toilet when it gets plugged?" And you never see that person. And then, in the '70s, in the late 70s, 有一部叫《617888九五至尊娱乐》的电影上映了, Ridley Scott's masterpiece. 我第一次见到了我一直想知道的人, because you had Parker and Brett, guys in coveralls, with tool belts, 他们很生气，因为他们的工资没有其他人多. 这并不是说，“我们都是高贵的，方下巴的太空英雄." It was like, "We're truckers in space, and we're getting screwed, because the people up in the bridge get paid more than us, 而且我们拿的奖金没有他们多." And they're mad about it, and they're complaining. And I was like, "This is the fiction I wanna see,“因为它对我来说是真实的，这是《617888九五至尊娱乐》从未有过的。. 我很欣赏《617888九五至尊娱乐》的抱负, but I, you know, 如果人类能找到一种方法来做到这一点，那就太棒了. 但我觉得未来会是，你知道的...when I talk about this, I always talk about, like, 第一批横渡大洋的人是, like, explorers, and adventurers, and sea captains, and all that stuff, right? The next people to cross the oceans were merchant marines. And they were just, they were, you know, using wrenches on boilers, and complaining about their paychecks, and covered in grease. And you never get to see that second wave in science fiction. You never get to see the grease-covered wrench guys. 你总能看到勇敢的太空队长. And I like that second part.

Daniel: 有一种关于超人类主义的想法, and the idea of what happens when humanity evolves…we kind of pass over what evolution actually, you know, requires, as far as killing a bunch of people before they reproduce. But the idea of transcending humanity, to something better, and I've always thought the real transhuman moment would be when we stopped judging our worth relative to the guy who lives next to us. 到那时我们就不再是人类了. That's gonna be when we've become something different.

Jess: Before we started recording, you know, you both mentioned to me, you're not scientists. So, that does beg the question, of course, at, like, how did you get the science right? Because, and I wanna just highlight this for folks who maybe haven't read or watched yet, but in the books and the TV series, it is stunning the amount of scientific detail that goes into the actual finished products, space physics, materials. And one of my favorite things is when you see the way blood or other liquids behaves in zero-gravity environments, or low-gravity environments, or, like, when you're in space, you have people working in space, doing, like, space walks, 或者在太空中发生战斗, the space is shown as a vacuum. It is shown correctly. So, without being scientists, how on Earth did you get the science right at such granular levels?

Ty: We’re not 100% aiming for accuracy. 但丹尼尔总是开玩笑说，人们把我们视为硬科幻小说, or more accurate than other sci-fi, is a little shocking because we only ever aim for what Daniel calls Wikipedia-level plausibility. 事实证明，被视为异常严谨是很容易的. All you have to do is have light speed still be the rule, 并且拥有重力的实际517888九五至尊娱乐方式. That's it. 这就是我们所做的完全不同的事情. You know, 我们的宇宙飞船没有神奇的重力镀膜, or, you know, 这些船不像远洋客轮, even though the thrust is coming from the back and everybody would be pinned to the back wall the entire time. Even just that, people go, "Oh, wow. That's so weird. That's so unusual.“事实上，如果你想给木星卫星上的朋友打电话, it's gonna take a couple hours for your call to get there. It's not instantaneous communication. And even just those little things, just little things like that, people saw that, and go, "Wow, that's so unusual," because, historically, those are inconveniences for plotting, and so people just hand-wave them away. It's, "I don't wanna have to deal with that from a plot perspective, so I'm just gonna pretend, like, we invented the, you know, XYZ hyper mega device, 现在我们有了即时通讯, and gravity wherever we want. And now I don't have to deal with that."

Daniel: There's another thing, though. We're not scientists. I have, like, a bachelor's degree in biology, but, you know, 在做这个之前，我的职业是技术支持, so enh… And, but there's a level of excitement about and interest in the way the world works, that Ty and I both kind of had before we came to this. 当你开始讨论，为什么木卫三是粮仓? 因为它有磁层. You know, 我们知道这个是因为泰在成长过程中对这个很感兴趣, and he read a bunch of stuff, and he learned about stuff just for the joy of knowing things. I was a biology major because the cute girl was taking biology, and I wanted to sit next to her, and then I did four years of that. But that informs how I move through the world ever after that. And I wound up really enjoying things like thinking about evolution and genetics. And, you know, it's not something I do professionally, except to the degree that we're making it up. But there is a joy in being educated. 了解和探索事物是一种乐趣. 实际上我们不需要做很多作业, because we built the series out of the things that we already knew and were enthusiastic about.

Ty: There were a few times that we got to the edges of what we knew, and called in a little help. I don't know if you know Phil Plait, but Phil Plait, 我向他寻求帮助, I wanted to know exactly what it would look like when a neutron star collapsed into a black hole. Exactly what would be happening physics-wise and radiation-wise, and all those sorts of things. I didn't know that. And he helped me out with that. 还有几次，我们接近了已知事物的边缘, and we'd reach out to somebody and go, "Hey, 如果发生这种事会是什么样子?" Daniel solved a very complex physics problem by calling in some scientists to help him figure it out. So, 我们确实偶尔需要一点额外的帮助, but we tended not to write about stuff that was beyond the things we already knew. 一般来说，我们倾向于呆在自己的舒适区.

Jess: I do know Phil, and he is the perfect person to ask about your neutron star questions. And if you ever need volcano help, you know who to call. So, that kind of makes me wanna know, 在这个庞大系列的所有创意中, each of you, individually, what is your favorite technology from what you wrote, 这是你在其他科幻小说中从未遇到过的?

Ty: A trivial cure for cancer.

Daniel: Yeah, trivial cure. Seriously.

Ty: It's like, "Oh, I have cancer, so I'll just take this pill, and now I don't have cancer."

Daniel: One of the things that we did when we were doing that first book was we said, "Okay, what are the problems we have to have solved in order for this to be even vaguely plausible? What do we need to be able to do for sure in order to have a viable space-faring humanity?" And yeah, solving cancer was actually, like, the thing. It was like, "Okay, we're gonna be sucking down amazing amounts of radiation. How do we not just die?" It wound up actually fitting into the plot later on. And the fun thing... I didn't know this. 所以，我们的技术适合在书中...four?

Ty: Yeah.

Daniel: One of our characters, 因为他正在接受这种抗癌疗法, 最后没有被外星寄生虫感染. And our biologist is like, "Oh, 这意味着在分子水平上存在某种趋同进化. That's amazing.“而且，你知道，我们写这个是因为它很有趣. And then, like, two years ago, somebody found evidence of there being a good move in design space on a molecular level, where things were, 这里有趋同进化, and we to the guess right. That was awesome.

Jess: 所以，当它发生时，这是一种聪明的猜测.

Ty: No, you make a thousand guesses, and one of them's right, and then you take credit for it.

Jess: So, 我想把它和我们在忧思617888九五至尊娱乐家联盟所做的联系起来, other than being concerned. I mean, we are all very concerned. 但我们解决的是现实世界的问题? Like, we have five major programs, 它们涵盖了617888九五至尊娱乐和能源等问题, food and environment, clean transportation, global security, which is a big thing. 这在很大程度上是针对核武器的. 还有，617888九五至尊娱乐与517888九五至尊娱乐中心. So, we are wrangling with things that are major topical issues in "The Expanse." And so, I'm just wondering, did you have at any point, did you have a roadmap of big issues that you needed to cover, I mean, aside from cancer, 在你让这个世界顺其自然之前?

Ty: I needed something that allowed people to travel faster than modern conventional rockets would allow them to travel, in the solar system, 因为不可能每次旅行都花上五年. 所以，你知道，你需要一个更高效，更快的引擎. So we just made one up. And then, the cancer thing. But, you know, part of what we had to come up with, or that I started out coming up with for the original design, is, what is the reason people would be in all these places? And you have to sort of accept the conceit that if humans can live someplace, they're going to. Because if you don't accept that conceit, then the world-building of "The Expanse" makes no sense. 没有理由去那些地方. So, we're just sort of accepting that people figure out a way to live on Ganymede, so they move there. Like, why would you ever do that? Nobody would ever do that. 我想他们会搬到那里一分钟, and they'd go, "This place sucks," and then they would come back. 但一旦你接受了这种自负，那么你就必须想出一个理由. What are they doing on...是什么让木卫三在太阳系中独树一帜，人们会在那里使用它? What's unique about the other moons? What's unique about the asteroid belt? What things are there, that, if people moved there, would become the thing that they do? So, there was some of that mapping we had to figure out.

Daniel: 不过，另一件事是，对于大问题，你真的不需要路线图. 如果你一开始就维持现状, which we did, and then a destabilizing influence, which we did, 所有这些都是自然产生的. Questions about, you know, identity, and resource allocation, and food, and war, and governance. It's all connected. 这在人类的经验中都是相通的，在这个世界上也是相通的. So, if you're trying to think through, you know, with whatever level of rigor we were trying to think through, those issues, present themselves along the way. You don't need a roadmap. It just happens.

Jess: When people think of space and futuristic technology, 我认为很容易让人性落在路边. 我认为这是贯穿整个演讲的主线, and is also reflected in your works, is that humanity is it. I mean, we are the thing we can count on, both good and bad.

Ty: One of my favorite lines, you know, 卡尔·萨根说了很多神奇的话, 但我最喜欢他说的一句话是, "No one's coming to save us. We have to do it ourselves.“我很喜欢这种感觉，我们必须找到解决办法. 不管我们在处理什么，没人能帮我们弄明白. And if we don't figure it out, then we'll stay broken. 我认为人们有时会忘记这一点. 我想人们都在等着父母来帮我们搞定一切, and we're kind of on our own here.

Jess: Yeah. That's an excellent observation. I did wanna ask, and this is gonna be a tiny bit spoiler-ey. So, for people who haven't read or watched yet, maybe just turn your ears off for a moment. But one of the things I actually found fascinating is, 它与全球安全事务密切相关. Right now, our big threat here on Earth is nuclear weapons. 但这部剧里最具毁灭性的武器是故意使用的, the one that sticks with me the most, is when a group, and I won't say who, is throwing asteroids at the Earth. And it's obliterating cities. 我的意思是，我认为它比核武器更具破坏性. What sparked that brainwave, that you could find weapons that aren't our nuclear mindset?

Ty: 我直接从拉里·尼文那里偷来的.

Daniel: Yeah.

Ty: Yeah, I mean, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote a book called "Footfall," where an alien species shows up to conquer the Earth. And unlike other books of that type, they don't land and fight us with hand weapons. They just stay in orbit and drop rocks on us, which is absolutely what you would do. You know, if you're in space, you have the high ground. 你为什么要到这里来打架? There's no reason to do that. You just drop rocks until we give up. 一旦我们放弃了，你就会来抢战利品. But it absolutely comes from there. 我记得读过一篇由, 不是拉里·尼文就是杰里·波内尔, 他说的一旦你有了空间, 一旦你征服了太空，可以轻松地在那里移动物质, 你不再需要核武器了. 你可以把铁砧从气闸里推出去. And that always just stuck in my head, that idea of, just something heavy, throw it at the ground. 等它到达这里，就已经是核弹了. And if you are low-tech... Well, and then, another thing, steal from everybody, William Gibson said, "When your enemy's high-tech, come at him low-tech." And so, you know, you can't compete with Earth and Mars with attack ships and high-tech weapons and all this, 所以你无法在这方面与他们竞争. They just have more money. But what you can do is you can strap a little rocket motor to a big asteroid, 把它指向正确的方向, and fire up the motor, and eventually, 它变成了一种几乎无法阻止的毁灭性武器.

Jess: So, now, we have kind of run the gamut here of some pretty interesting stuff. But because we are the Union of Concerned Scientists, and as I mentioned previously, we are very concerned, 所以我问了节目里所有的嘉宾一个非常具体的问题. So, Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, why are you concerned?

Ty: Honestly, my biggest concern right now is, it's been 50 years, 所以整个世界必须----重新开始和法西斯主义调情. And I don't get it. I don't know why every 50 to 70 years, we all have to do the fascist thing again. 但我们现在正处于这样的循环中，而且似乎是全球性的. And I just hope I live long enough to see us come out the other side of this. But yeah, fascism is my concern.

Daniel: I'm gonna go with... The thing that I'm concerned about is how little we're able, we seem able to generalize our experience from other organisms. If you look at, like, yeast, and how yeast, you put yeast in a place, 然后它膨胀，直到吃掉所有的食物, and then it just dies off horribly. And then you look at how we're doing, as monkeys on a rock. It seems like a very similar curve. 我们似乎并没有对此给予太多关注. We know that we need to stop using fossil fuels, and we just haven't done it. 我们知道我们的农业需要可持续发展. We're just not doing it.

Ty: Well, it's inconvenient.

Daniel: Yeah. And, you know, we don't want to. And I think our essential similarity to yeast will come out if [crosstalk 00:36:52]

Jess: Well, we do have a painfully non-symbiotic relationship with yeast, as anyone who has ever had to take medicine because of yeast infections can tell you.

Ty: 我有一次得了鹅口疮，那太痛苦了.

Daniel: Ooh.

Jess: Did they solve that? Did you solve that in "The Expanse?"

Ty: No, I didn't. But that is, yes. 粘膜中有酵母菌感染，不是一件令人愉快的事情.

Daniel: Yeah. Avoid that.

Jess: 在你们创造的世界里走了很长一段路. 就我而言，我将热切地等待你们未来的成果.

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