American Gods

American Gods is one of my favorite books, though I think I only read it the one time, probably early in college (so 2004-2006-ish.) The juxtaposition and mixture of the magical and the mundane - in a way that wasn't just the usual half-assed Magical Realism - really grabbed me.  While I think I cite Stephen King's Dark Tower series as a huge influence on me (which I started reading in my senior year of high school and finished when the last book came out in my first year of college) American Gods also has to be up there on my list - top five at least.

It's a little crazy that this year both of these stories are getting screen adaptations, and while I don't know what to expect of the Dark Tower (the shots I'm seeing from the set are all way too urban, without enough crazy desert otherworld for my tastes) I was hugely excited to see that Bryan Fuller was the one bringing this story to the screen.

I of course loved Hannibal (a lot of posts on this blog are about that show) and I was a fan of both Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies. The surreal aesthetic Fuller developed for Hannibal, though, works absolutely perfectly for American Gods, giving me the sensation of really seeing the book as I imagined it in my head right up there on-screen.

So far, the pilot has kept pretty close to the book (as I recall it at least.) The protagonist is Shadow Moon, who is introduced in prison awaiting his release. Near the end of year three of his six year sentence, Shadow is getting out on good behavior. His wife Laura is waiting for him to come home, and his friend Robbie has set him up with a job right out prison. So everything is on track, but something doesn't feel right. Shadow confesses both to his cellmate Low-Key and Laura on the phone that he feels like there's an axe hanging over his head.

And then the axe falls - Shadow is called into the warden's office where he is informed that his wife died in a car accident, and that they are letting him go early so he can attend his wife's funeral.

Dealing with various air travel inconveniences, Shadow meets a conman with whom he shares a first class row on an airplane. The man introduces himself as Mr. Wednesday, offering Shadow a job if he wants it.

Shadow declines, but when his flight stops due to weather, he chooses to drive the rest of the way, winding up in a strange bar that looks like a giant alligator head. It's here that he meets Mr. Wednesday again, as well as a guy named Mad Sweeney, a super-tall leprechaun (or so he claims.) Sweeney provokes Shadow to fight him, and for his trouble, leaves him a golden coin.

It's at this bar that Shadow discovers that Robbie died too, and his job prospects are gone. After losing a coin flip he rigged to win, Shadow agrees to work for Mr. Wednesday.

Shadow goes to Laura's funeral, where Robbie's wife Audrey informs him that their late spouses were having an affair with one another.

When Laura is buried, Shadow tosses his coin onto the fresh dirt on her coffin, and unseen by him, it sinks into the earth.

And then Shadow is abducted by a strange being who book readers know is called the Technical Boy, who discerns that Shadow is truly loyal to the man who hired him, and attempts to have him killed. Shadow is beaten by faceless creatures that seem to be made of digital polygons and is hanged from a tree, nearly dying until some mysterious protector brutally tears the faceless "children" apart.

Of course, it's been a long time since I read the book, but I think this more or less tracks with what was in the source material. I do think that they've expanded the role of Audrey a bit (in the book we basically get the one exchange at the funeral, but I think they've talked about making her more of a character in this.) We do get the horrifying introduction to Bilquis in this episode (which seems like a direct translation of what's in the book) as well as a prologue that depicts the first arrival of Odin in America. The "Coming to America" segments from the book are likely to show up as these sorts of vignettes.

There's a lot to talk about thematically here (especially given that most of the characters in this story are almost literally walking themes) and also some questions about what constitutes a spoiler for a seventeen year old book, but I'm going to leave this post with just my general reaction: I'm super happy this show exists and I love how it looks and I'm really excited to see more.

(EDIT: Ok, one theme thing I had to mention: Shadow is haunted by hanging imagery - he and Low-Key talk about gallows humor, the (presumably white-supremacist) inmates give him lynching gestures as he walks by, and ultimately, the Technical Boy's goons hang him from a tree. Given that this is a story about an African American man dealing with the mythology and power of America's past, one can't ignore the physical threat that black people in this country have been under from the beginning. But in addition to this violent hatred, the noose and hanging imagery also ties things to Odin, who was the gallows god and who hanged himself from the World Tree as a sacrifice to himself to gain wisdom and knowledge - and who is the subject of the Coming to America prologue.)

Some Ominous Plants on The Expanse's Cascade

While searching Ganymede station for Prax's (Meng's? I'm not sure if we're referring to him by his last name or nickname) daughter and the doctor that might know something about the grand protomolecule conspiracy, the botanist notes that the oxygen-scrubbing plants have been fed distilled water, which, of course, is not what a healthy plant ought to get.

If you've never tried, distilled water tastes literally like nothing. It's an odd sensation, but given that water is basically the medium for everything our bodies ingest, when you drink distilled water, there's just no taste whatsoever to it (other than whatever is already in your mouth.)

Prax (I'm going with that one!) notes that on Earth, where there are tons of redundancies, one group of plants dying out isn't going to kill the planet. But in an artificial environment, every piece has to rely on every other piece. And once one part of the system goes, the things that rely on that part will start to go, and you get a cascade.

The Solar System of the Expanse is something of a delicate ecosystem. Sure, there's the threat of war between Mars and Earth (something that the incident on Ganymede threatens to spark,) but the main thing that has prevented the war up until now is the fact that the system requires so much cooperation to function. Mars is on its way, maybe, but it's still a far way off from being a self-sustaining planet where people can actually grow food outside. The Belt has been exploited to provide raw materials for the Inner Planets.

But even Earth, which has been cast as a paradise compared to the rest of the system, is actually struggling. We've seen Earth almost entirely from the perspective of Avasarala, but remember that she is one of the most powerful people on the planet (I don't know if we have a formal title for her, but she's third in line for the leadership of the UN.) Once Bobbie Draper escapes the Martian embassy and goes to explore New York, she comes across miserable masses, barely living off of government assistance and clearly lacking a lot of the medical help they need.

The cause of Earth's problems is not entirely clear - I think you can project your own politics onto the setting - but one thing we've known from the start is that Earth's massive population relies on the resources of the solar system to survive.

So what is the meaning of this scene with the plants?

The arrival of the protomolecule has thrown the already-tense system into chaos. And given that outside Earth, and to an extent even Earth itself, is reliant on an artificial ecosystem with very little room for redundancy, what will the ramifications of these events mean for the human race?

The Expanse is not, I think, utterly cynical. We have heroes worth rooting for, even if they're flawed and broken people. But have we already reached the beginning of a cascade? Will Holden's heroics, Avasarala's brilliance, Draper's integrity, or - fingers crossed - Miller's resurrected blue alien hive mind abilities (a man can hope, dammit!) be enough to keep humanity from collapsing in on itself?