The Expanse (novel series)

The Expanse is a science fiction series of nine novels and nine novellas (collected in *Memory's Legion*), plus additional short stories, written under the joint pen name James S. A. Corey by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. The first book, *Leviathan Wakes*, received a Hugo Award nomination for Best Novel in 2012. The series as a whole was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2017, and won that award upon its second nomination in 2020. A television adaptation, also titled *The Expanse*, originally aired on Syfy for three seasons before being canceled; Amazon Prime Video then acquired the show and produced three more seasons.

The story begins in a future where the Epstein Drive—a fusion engine providing constant acceleration—has allowed humanity to colonize much of the Solar System, though interstellar travel remains out of reach. Key locations include Ceres and Eros in the asteroid belt, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and outposts as far as Titania near Uranus, along with domed and underground settlements on Mars and Luna. At the start, Earth (led by the United Nations) and Mars maintain an uneasy military alliance, but tensions run high. Residents of the outer planets—called Belters—live in stations on asteroids and moons, developing elongated bodies from low gravity and a creole language influenced by German, Chinese, and especially Spanish. Belters perform much of the system’s labor, mining resources for the inner planets, which control access to biological necessities. This fuels conflict, embodied by the Outer Planets Alliance, a fractured government and militant group fighting for Belter independence, branded a terrorist organization by Earth and Mars.

As the series advances, humanity discovers the rings—an artificially sustained wormhole network created by a long-dead alien civilization. The ring in the Sol system is a thousand-mile-wide structure located two astronomical units beyond Uranus’s orbit. Passing through it leads to a hub of starless space about one million kilometers across, containing over 1,300 other rings, each opening to a different star system. At the hub’s center, an alien space station (called the “slow zone” after the third novel) controls the gates and can impose instantaneous speed limits on objects inside as a defense mechanism.

The narrative unfolds through multiple point-of-view characters.