Currently in its final season, with only one episode left to release (I'm two episodes behind, though,) The Expanse is my favorite sci-fi show currently on "the air," whatever that means in a sort of post-television broadcast world.
This was actually a show I stumbled on without any word of mouth or recommendation - I had not heard of the books. I just saw a promo for it at some point, decided to check it out, and it turned out to be really, really good.
One of the things that the show, and the books it's based on, is praised for, is the "hardness" of its science fiction.
There's a general sense that there's a spectrum of hardness and softness within the science fiction genre. But how do we really define this spectrum?
Generally, the idea behind "hard" sci fi is that it speculates on technologies and phenomena that would be in-keeping with our modern understanding of science. Of course, inherently, there's still a bit of a bend. Future technologies naturally have to bridge some gap in our modern understanding of the universe in order to function.
In that sense, I think that sci-fi gets harder the fewer conceits it requires.
As an example: Star Trek is not terribly hard sci-fi. There are several things here that require fairly big leaps from our modern notions of the universe. In Star Trek, for instance, there's faster-than-light travel. Now, the Warp Drive does function using some speculative, theoretical ideas that could potentially be achieved thanks to some breakthrough in technology, but it would require some really huge advances. The Warp Drive acts by bending space in front and behind the starship, getting around the universal speed limit not by really going faster than light, but compressing space itself toward the front of the ship and expanding it out behind it, making it so that the distance the ship actually needs to cross is far, far smaller than the interstellar distances it would need to cross without this space-warping ability.
Now, actually achieving this on a practical level is something we're not sure we can do, and also we're not sure we could do it without destroying the spacecraft. We're not sure we could do it and have a way to stop. We're not sure that we'd be able to do it without a mind-bogglingly huge amount of energy.
There are other aspects of Star Trek that are addressed less directly, but arguably are even bigger head-scratchers. For example, when all the systems are failing on a starship, why is it that the artificial gravity (another technology we don't really know how we'd even start to build) never seems to fail? And, perhaps the biggest issue of all: how is that so many people across the galaxy look more or less like humans?
Admittedly, there's an episode of Next Generation that addresses the latter, introducing some progenitor species that seeded many worlds with the organic components that would eventually develop humanoid life. But that, in itself, flies in the face of theories about natural selection and the trial-and-error nature of evolution.
What I find interesting in the discourse of about the Expanse is that, for all of its "realistic" portrayal of life in space, there is plenty of unexplained phenomena.
The conceit, though, is that the unexplained stuff is alien.
The Expanse has some elements of cosmic horror - alien creatures (at least for the first five seasons) are truly alien - we don't even really seem to encounter any of the aliens themselves, but their technology functions in a totally unfamiliar way. Much of the plot revolves around a substance known as the "protomolecule," which seems to be some kind of artificially intelligent nanotechnology that repurposes material it finds (including organic matter, like, you know, people) to construct things it was designed to build.
And this stuff can do crazy things: we see it infecting people like a disease, and then taking over an asteroid while seemingly merging the minds of the people it has infected and killed, which then allows it to propel said asteroid in seemingly physics-defying ways, including a kind of reaction-less drive. That material then, eventually creates a circular gateway that leads to some kind of interdimensional space that then opens up gates to many other Earth-like worlds.
So, you know, not what you think of when you think of hard sci fi.
But that being said, where the hardness comes in is the depiction of human technology. Perhaps the primary conceit in the series is that nuclear reactor engines for space ships have become far more efficient, which allows ships to accelerate at a constant rate when crossing the solar system. Basically, a ship shoots toward its destination, accelerating at about 1g until it gets halfway there, then flips around with maneuvering thrusters and uses its engine to decelerate as they approach. As a result, artificial gravity is just generated through thrust and acceleration.
And when ships have to accelerate at higher speeds, the show depicts this as being a grueling and dangerous thing to do - space combat, which requires high speeds and tight maneuvering, often pushes the crews of the ships to the limit, and even if you avoid the bullets and torpedos fired at your ship, you might die from the internal stress of such intense g-forces.
Ironically, one of the most praised scenes in terms of realism both involves that alien, unexplained technology and also has a logical flaw in it that I don't seem to see addressed.
The aforementioned gateway created by the protomolecule leads into an interdimensional space that humanity is hesitant to explore. However, one thrill- and fame-seeking Belter (Belters being denizens of the Asteroid Belt and outer planets) decides to cruise into it and become the first person inside. However, in a moment of extremely graphic gore, the moment his ship enters the ring gate, it slows down nearly to a stop. But the pilot does not, and so his body is torn apart, splattered across the cabin of his ship. The ring gate and the interdimensional space within it has an unexplained way of placing a maximum speed on anything within it, so when his ship enters it, compared to its high previous speeds, it practically stops dead in its tracks, hence the splat.
I've seen a lot of people praise this scene for showing just how dangerous sudden deceleration can be. But I think there's a flaw: the Belter's ship appears to be entirely intact, about half of it sticking into the ring gate. The thing is, if the ring gate slows down the ship very suddenly, shouldn't the ship react as if it has just crashed into the surface of a planet? In other words, the moment the nose of the ship hits the slow-zone, it should crumble into the rest of the ship, and the whole thing should be a pancake, pilot included.
Instead, it looks like the ship is caught gently. And indeed, all the stuff in the interior of the ship other than the pilot seems to slow down along with the exterior of the ship, without any damage.
And that would sort of make sense, because if every atom on the ship is slowed down at the exact same time, even very suddenly, they're all still the same distance from each other and arranged the same way.
So, unless the slow-zone specifically chose not to slow down the biological organism within the ship, in theory he should have slowed down at the exact same rate, and thus should have been fine.
Consider this: when you're in the international space station, you're still experiencing gravity at about 90% of its normal effect. But because you and the space station are all basically falling (just also moving laterally at the same rate you're falling so you stay the same distance from the surface of the earth,) you can't really feel that gravity weighing down on you. We only feel weight because the surface of the earth is preventing us from free-falling.
I believe that if some highly massive object were to suddenly appear a few thousand miles from you when you were out in space, the gravitational pull would affect every part of you and your spacecraft equally, so unless you looked out a window or otherwise had the object's presence demonstrated to you, you wouldn't even notice - even if you and your ship were now falling toward the surface of that object.
So, again, unless the slow-zone only affect inorganic materials or something, the pilot should have been stopped suddenly and been basically fine.
And again, to specify - it wouldn't be like he was stopped by coming up against some hard surface. Every molecule that made him up should be slowed down at the same rate, and thus they should have remained arranged in the same way.
So yes, even hard sci fi can get nitpicked!
EDIT: Rewatching the 3rd season, well, I guess they do specify that the slow-zone only affects the exterior or the structure of the ship, and not its contents. It's more like a big catcher's mitt rather than a uniform force. So never mind.
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