I just finished reading Leviathan Wakes, the basis of the TV series The Expanse. They are both great and I have reviewed them elsewhere. Here, I want to consider their relationship to my own writing.

The indie author works alone, like the lonely long distance runner. That does not bother me. I get some of my best ideas running through the woods of the nearby park. I have no editors, cover artists, research assistants, or armies of proof and beta readers. What you read is mine, flaws and all. So far, my readers seem to appreciate the results. My goal is to become such a great writer and artist that I’ll have no need for the assistance. Leviathan Wakes and The Expanse is a fantastic production, but the work of hundreds.

I think of my writing as metaphysical sci-fi or speculative fiction. Leviathan Wakes is not hard sci-fi either, unlike The Martian. So I was happy to see Eros move on its own with Miller feeling no acceleration. Maybe the physics of that will be explained later, maybe it will remain the magic of a higher technology. I used a similar concept, our entire solar system suddenly moves onto the surface of a globular cluster, in my Perturbations Of The Reality Field. As far a religion goes, there was an interesting twist with the Mormons building their generation ship to the stars, the Nauvoo. One of them says, “As long as we’re humans, some of us believe that we shall all eventually become angels.” Unfortunately for that possible story line, the Nauvoo does not launch as expected.  The best mathematics in this story was in the TV series, not the book, and occurred with the crazy technician trying to understand the protomolecule.