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Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham are the authors of the books in “The Expanse” series, under the pen name James S.A. Corey. Their newly published novel, “The Mercy of Gods,” kicks off a whole new trilogy. Franck and Abraham will be at First Place Books in Lake Forest Park, Wash., on Saturday. (Kyle Zimmerman Photo)
In nearly all alien-invasion tales, the puny humans somehow find a way to win — for example, in classic novels like “The War of the Worlds,” or in movies like “Independence Day” and “Battle: Los Angeles.” But in a new novel by the authors of “The Expanse” sci-fi series, the humans lose within the first hundred pages.
“The Mercy of Gods” is the first book in what’s destined to be a trilogy by James S.A. Corey, which is actually a pen name representing a long-running collaboration between science-fiction writers Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. “The Expanse” is their best-known work — consisting of nine novels that lay out a future history of the solar system and encounters between human settlers and alien outsiders.
Those novels inspired a TV series that ran for three seasons on the Syfy cable network — and was then picked up for three more seasons on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made a memorable splash in 2018 when he announced at a Los Angeles space conference that “‘The Expanse’ is saved” from cancellation.
In this week’s episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Abraham says the idea behind “The Expanse” came from Franck’s imagination. The idea behind “The Mercy of Gods,” which kicks off a trilogy of Captive’s War novels, came from Franck as well.
“When Ty pitched the idea, the thing that I loved about it was this very different kind of not-at-all-triumphalist vision of being a human in a wider galaxy,” Abraham says.
Franck says he was inspired by stories of oppression ranging from the ancient Babylonian captivity of Judeans to the excesses of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin.
“One of the things the Babylonians did, and the Persians after them, was when you conquered a people, you took their best and their brightest back to your capital, and you had them learn your ways, and you learned their ways,” Franck says. “There was this real mixing of culture that happened. I’ve always found that idea very interesting.”
Franck imagines that the same strategy would apply in the wake of an alien conquest. Why would an advanced alien civilization seek to conquer other planets? “This idea that they come here to steal our water, or our gold, or whatever, is pretty ridiculous,” he says. “So, the idea is, what is the one thing in the galaxy that is actually scarce, that is actually hard to get — and that is intelligence. Intelligent life is rare, and it’s scarce, and it’s unique.”
In “The Mercy of Gods,” that’s what the alien overlords are after.
“If you’re looking at a galaxy of potential life forms, every one of them is going to have something unique about them, the way their intelligence works,” Franck says. “So, going and conquering the galaxy, and taking the smartest beings from every species, and bringing them back and going, ‘Do whatever it is you do best, and we’ll just reap the fruits of that’ — that actually made sense to me.”
“The Mercy of Gods,” by James S.A. Corey. (Orbit Books)
Like those who were taken prisoner during the Nazi Holocaust, the human characters in “The Mercy of Gods” fight to survive by mollifying their captors — even as they try to figure out how to get out of their predicament. The captives also have to contend with other species that share their prison planet. Some of those species serve as enforcers or trusties for the aliens. Ethical dilemmas abound.
When it comes to the scientific underpinnings of the plot, “The Mercy of Gods” takes a lot for granted. “The ways that these various species move faster than light, really, that’s fairly mysterious,” Franck said. “We don’t know, but they figured something out.” Also, there’s no long-winded explanation for a little black box that serves as a universal translator for the aliens. The thing just works.
But Franck and Abraham paint vivid word pictures of the various species that play roles in the novel: The alien overlords are giant lobster-like creatures, served by species that are reminiscent of wolves, horses, crows or knife-legged snakes.
“If you had to pick one kind of underlying scientific idea that really drives this one for me, it’s the idea of convergent evolution,” Abraham says. “The idea that there are some things that are just good moves, given the nature of the universe.”
Abraham sees that as a metaphor for the universality of experience.
“We have these different life forms that are all in a particular set of pressures. Watching humans go through this and discover the things in there which we’re going to be doing throughout the whole series is, for me, the heart of the scientific end of the science fiction,” he says. “Living under totalitarianism, living under authoritarianism, living under power is another kind of pressure that also drives things toward similar solutions.”
That principle of convergent evolution may apply to psychological as well as biological pressures. It’s no accident that some passages of the first book echo what happened during the Holocaust.
“The survival techniques that let you survive in, say, Stalinist Soviet Union probably were very similar to the ones that let you survive in Nazi Germany, probably very similar to the ones that let you survive in ancient Assyria. When you have a top-down, militaristic, authoritarian government, the ways people survive are probably very close. It doesn’t matter what time period you’re in,” Franck says.
There’s no question that these historical themes will play out as the Captive’s War trilogy unfolds. “This series has its roots in Ursula Le Guin and Frank Herbert, and those big science-fiction universes. But it also has its roots in Viktor Frankl and Hannah Arendt,” Abraham says. “A lot of this been on my mind recently, and I think a lot of that kind of winds up in the story.”
Pearls from the podcast
We touched on a broad range of topics while recording the podcast. Here are a few of the gems worth listening for:
Franck and Abraham already know how the trilogy will end. “I can’t write a word unless I know the end of the story,” Franck says. “It’s sometimes frustrating to Daniel that we’ll start working on something, and I’ll say, ‘I need to know where this is going, or I can’t write anything.’”
Even though the Captive’s War trilogy will have historical resonances, the authors say they won’t try to turn their novels into political tracts. “I think the most important thing that you can say for the deep politics of the book is that our protagonists are at their best when they’re not on Twitter,” Abraham says with a laugh.
Abraham says he and Franck learned a lot about TV production when they got involved in the process of turning the books of “The Expanse” into a TV series. “You can’t really be a novelist in modern America without having a day job,” he says. “It just turns out that our day job is television producer. So, that’s weird.” But he’s not yet ready to talk about the behind-the-scenes projects they’re currently working on. “As soon as we can take it out in front of the curtain, we will,” Abraham says.
Any advice for science-fiction writers who want to get into the world-building business? “Find Ty,” Abraham says. “Ask him if he has any good ideas. That has worked for me 100%.”
Franck has a different answer to that question. “Honestly, the only advice I can ever give to writers is, do the thing that you love, find the idea that you love, and do that, and don’t listen to other people,” he says. “Don’t listen to the marketplace. Don’t listen to the people who tell you, ‘Well, the X kind of book sells now, so you definitely have to write X.’ If X isn’t the kind of book you love, don’t write it. Write something else.”
Abraham and Franck are on a nationwide book tour that includes a stop at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, Wash. The event takes place at 7 p.m. PT Saturday. Check out the website for Third Place Books for information about the event and to buy tickets, and check out JamesSACorey.com for the full list of novels in “The Expanse” series. You’ll also find links to “The Expanse” TV series on Amazon Prime Video and other resources.
For what it’s worth, in a 2018 interview, Abraham discussed how he and Franck have borrowed and reimagined patterns from human history for their science-fiction stories. “So much of the point of the books is that humans are humans, and the things we did before, we’re going to keep doing wherever we go,” he said back then.
Take a look at the original version of this item on Cosmic Log for a bonus reading recommendation from Abraham, and stay tuned for future episodes of the Fiction Science podcast via Apple, Spotify, Player.fm, Pocket Casts and Podchaser. If you like Fiction Science, please rate the podcast and subscribe to get alerts for future episodes.
