The Expanse #2: Caliban's Thread - [spoilers for book only up to latest tv show episode]

[boojam]

On 3/23/2017 at 2:16 PM, Astromech said:

Anyone else think of Aliens when the Martians were dropping to Earth?

Reminds me of Robert Heinlein's 1959 Star Ship Troopers, the novel that is, the movie didn't do that stuff from the book.

[boojam]

Found the 'homeless' , under the bridges?, not exactly believable. Yeah 200 years in the future is impossible to predict, but in episode before there some some expository dialog about how the unemployed masses , apparently, were taken care of even if they had a rather bland existence. Have not read the books , so don't know if t his is explained in there.

[Corvinus85]

12 minutes ago, boojam said:

Found the 'homeless' , under the bridges?, not exactly believable. Yeah 200 years in the future is impossible to predict, but in episode before there some some expository dialog about how the unemployed masses , apparently, were taken care of even if they had a rather bland existence. Have not read the books , so don't know if t his is explained in there.

The basic, as it's called, that the unemployed receive is barely enough to keep someone going. Cortezar, the mad scientist that Dawes steals from Tycho, used to live like that on Earth with his mom. This is briefly mentioned in the show, and it comes from one of the novellas, The Vital Abyss. It is still pretty shitty living, his mom who was dying was only receiving the minimum of medication, which served to slow down the disease for awhile, no more. They lived in a tiny flat in Tel Aviv. And don't forget that Amos pretty much grew up on the streets, so there is still a percentage of the population that is not being helped by the government.

[boojam]

11 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

The basic, as it's called, that the unemployed receive is barely enough to keep someone going. Cortezar, the mad scientist that Dawes steals from Tycho, used to live like that on Earth with his mom. This is briefly mentioned in the show, and it comes from one of the novellas, The Vital Abyss. It is still pretty shitty living, his mom who was dying was only receiving the minimum of medication, which served to slow down the disease for awhile, no more. They lived in a tiny flat in Tel Aviv. And don't forget that Amos pretty much grew up on the streets, so there is still a percentage of the population that is not being helped by the government.

I see, well it's a possible future society. I don't find it a plausible one. Just from the show the implicit make up seems to be, 200 years in the future, an Earth with a smaller population , and a one-planet wide government (by the by that's an old old old science fiction prose theme ) with a big enough economy to support a high technological society both on and off planet, even if there is a welfare state one would suppose it does not look like something from the 19th century!

[Dr. Pepper]

It didn't look like the 19th century at all!  The homeless had super high tech cookware.  

Even if everyone receives a basic housing to go with their basic income, not all will want to live in those places.  Probably crime-ridden and filthy.  Of course, the only people on basic would be those registered with the government.  A population that high is guaranteed to have some sort of restrictive birth policy.  

[Consigliere]

Earth's population actually numbers approximately 30 billion. The books and novellas/short stories, specifically The Churn and The Vital Abyss, go into some detail about the socioeconomics. The massive population is also why Earth's fleet is old and not as advanced as the Martians - a significant portion of the budget has to be dedicated to waste management. The economic divide is pretty huge and only a small percentage of the population are able to get a higher education and have to jump through a lot of hoops in the process, unless the family is wealthy and/or politically connected.

[boojam]

9 hours ago, Consigliere said:

Earth's population actually numbers approximately 30 billion. The books and novellas/short stories, specifically The Churn and The Vital Abyss, go into some detail about the socioeconomics. The massive population is also why Earth's fleet is old and not as advanced as the Martians - a significant portion of the budget has to be dedicated to waste management. The economic divide is pretty huge and only a small percentage of the population are able to get a higher education and have to jump through a lot of hoops in the process, unless the family is wealthy and/or politically connected.

30 billion, hmm... not read the books, well ok, but for the implied economic set up I consider that a society way out in the tail of the distribution. At least 200 years in the future.

More realistic would be a population about 10 times smaller, one could still have a 'disadvantaged' class ... don't really buy this set up.

[Kalbear]

14 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

I'm surprised no one mentioned the rather delightful scene with Alex on the Roci getting his drink on, trying to get to the consul to listen to the message about the station basically being a no fly zone. I just found that scene enjoyable, well, apart from him doing a couple rolls to get to the second set of steps, that bit made my stomach slightly unsettled though it did remind me of a time I was drunk at the top of a snowy hill and rather than slip and slid all the way down, I opted to just throw myself down it.

This bothered the everloving fuck out of me. 

Getting drunk? Sure. Fine.

Letting a bunch of cans float around when you might have to move, unsecured?

Having actual cans on the ship at all, instead of bulbs or other things that you can drink via zero-g? (you need to have a squeezable thing to drink from, because it's not like you can pour it).

I like them playing with zero-G, but this is some seriously stupid-ass bullshit that they have on the ship. 

[Kalbear]

12 hours ago, boojam said:

Found the 'homeless' , under the bridges?, not exactly believable. Yeah 200 years in the future is impossible to predict, but in episode before there some some expository dialog about how the unemployed masses , apparently, were taken care of even if they had a rather bland existence. Have not read the books , so don't know if t his is explained in there.

In the show they specifically have someone in the background talking about signing up for basic! And getting on the rolls.

The people on the street are either there because they choose to be or because they're doing something else (like the guy off his meds). I was bugged that that was all we saw, but basically these are people that fell through the cracks or chose to go through the cracks. 

Note that our homeless situation, right now, looks pretty much like something out of the 19th century but with modern tents. 

[Dr. Pepper]

34 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

This bothered the everloving fuck out of me. 

Getting drunk? Sure. Fine.

Letting a bunch of cans float around when you might have to move, unsecured?

Having actual cans on the ship at all, instead of bulbs or other things that you can drink via zero-g? (you need to have a squeezable thing to drink from, because it's not like you can pour it).

I like them playing with zero-G, but this is some seriously stupid-ass bullshit that they have on the ship. 

Yes!  The lack of bulbs ruins so many scenes.  I wanted to enjoy this one so much.  It was just random and funny.  But I can't get passed the fact that cans and hard plastic cups make no sense.  

[HokieStone]

As for the homeless...James S.A. Corey (not sure which of the two actual authors) did a tweet thread about this today.  Here's the first tweet: 

You can go to that, and then follow the thread.  A couple people ask him some questions, which he kind of has to dance around*, but by and large it makes sense. 

*Most notably someone asked how the guy wanting the drugs was unregistered when he talked about being on the list for education for 30ish years.

[HokieStone]

1 hour ago, boojam said:

30 billion, hmm... not read the books, well ok, but for the implied economic set up I consider that a society way out in the tail of the distribution. At least 200 years in the future.

More realistic would be a population about 10 times smaller, one could still have a 'disadvantaged' class ... don't really buy this set up.

The population of Earth today is somewhere between 7 and 8 billion...not sure why you think 3 billion in the future would be more "realistic".

[boojam]

7 hours ago, HokieStone said:

The population of Earth today is somewhere between 7 and 8 billion...not sure why you think 3 billion in the future would be more "realistic".

I may be too optimistic but I foresee that in a hundred years all the nations of the Earth will have attained a high level of economic and technological existence. Right now every 'advanced' nation on the Earth has a declining birth rate , makes economic sense. I can see the population growing a little more , then it will decline.

The world population rate has been slowing , and that means everybody, for the last 75 years. Projections at the current rate are no more than 10 billion in 100 years.

In any case , on the show, there was the implication that the underclasses , while not living in luxury , at all, would not die of sickness or starve to death! That seems out of whack.  That seemed the indication in an exchange in a recent episode.

If it is really as easy to colonize the Moon and Mars , as the show has it, in 200 years, I could see a few billion if not more going off-planet. I like the time scale here , 200 years is a good number, I would make it 300 to 400 to hedge bets about the viability of the set up.

[matt b]

12 hours ago, HokieStone said:

As for the homeless...James S.A. Corey (not sure which of the two actual authors) did a tweet thread about this today.  Here's the first tweet: 

That's Ty. He's been pretty Franck () about answering questions about the series on twitter.

[boojam]

On 4/1/2017 at 10:18 AM, matt b said:

That's Ty. He's been pretty Franck () about answering questions about the series on twitter.

I suppose, but it seems so many, why would anyone die if they could go to say, a emergency room?Even if they don't take Basic? They would choose to let things get that dire? Yeah maybe some , but not that many? Seems weird.

[Spockydog]

Daniel Abraham posted a guest blog by Naren Shankar on an upcoming science snafu*. Please note it contains mild spoilers for this week's episode.

Losing Science in Drama (and Finding Drama in Science)

*The tree-man's leaves are gonna fall off when he sees this.

 

 

[Kalbear]

On 4/2/2017 at 9:45 AM, boojam said:

I suppose, but it seems so many, why would anyone die if they could go to say, a emergency room?Even if they don't take Basic? They would choose to let things get that dire? Yeah maybe some , but not that many? Seems weird.

Why do people choose to die in the US instead of going to the emergency room? 

• They're criminals.
• They're undocumented.
• They're on drugs they're not supposed to be on.
• They're mentally imbalanced.
• They don't have the ability to get to the ER in time

A lot of people who don't live on Basic are doing that because they don't trust the government. Is that really all that hard to understand from today's age?

[Corvinus85]

On 4/4/2017 at 5:34 PM, Spockydog said:

Daniel Abraham posted a guest blog by Naren Shankar on an upcoming science snafu*. Please note it contains mild spoilers for this week's episode.

Losing Science in Drama (and Finding Drama in Science)

*The tree-man's leaves are gonna fall off when he sees this.

 

 

I enjoyed the visual aspect of that scene, but I did wonder about the time lapse. And if the Roci really was going that fast, then the chemical injections should have kicked in, which clearly they didn't. But I appreciate Shankar's mea culpa, and the crew's willingness to try to portray space stuff as realistic as possible. And Alex rocked that scene.

Quote

By the time I was able to really focus on this sequence and understood the problems, it was too late. We were married to what we had physically shot on stage and the (extremely expensive) VFX already being built in our pipeline.** So I decided to let it go and wrote it off to dramatic license.

And that’s what bugs me more than anything else.

It’s far too easy in TV/film science fiction to ditch reality for (what you perceive to be or rationalize is) the sake of drama. In a fantasy space opera, this is forgivable, but for a show like The Expanse that prides itself on a realistic portrayal of space, it is not.

Indeed, it's easy for viewers, like myself or the 'tree-man', to say how easy it would be to do stuff right, but if something wasn't done right, you still have to deal with time constraints in a production schedule.

[Dr. Pepper]

I'm glad that was explained.  I'm generally fairly ignorant about space stuff so when I notice that it's ridiculously stupid, then I tend to think it's probably very stupid and wrong.  The actors wriggling around in their seats during high g maneuvers, cans and cups instead of bulbs for drinks, and being able to slingshot around some moons and get an incredibly far distance in like 20 minutes are all some really stupid things this show has done.  I mean, the visuals were really cool, but I couldn't get past the fact that the Roci crew had been on Ganymede for a really short while.  

No real opinion yet on this latest episode.  There have been some pretty big changes, especially in the personalities and behaviors of some of the characters but also in some basic plot.  I'm not a book purist by any means, but when big changes start to be made, I do worry a bit.  It can either go very well or can totally be a fuck up.  All depends on whether the team has already thought ahead and made a plan for how the story will look many seasons from now based on changes they are making in this particular part of the adaptation.  Still enjoying the show, but I'm feeling more cautious instead of in love.

[Pliskin]

Wait, did they just completely reverse things? In the books, the contractor was Earth, right?