Welcome to Thunderdome

On Magicians I've seen episodes that air after... say... 9pm get bleeped. But if you catch a repeat a week later at 5pm, there is bleeping.

Second episode of the third season may be the best episode of this show yet. Space combat(which I'm known to have a hard-on for), hard science fiction, interplanetary political intrigue.

This show is fucking amazing. How the hell does Scy-Fy manage to pay for special effects budget on this?!

Expanse has been cancelled.

So sad.

Though hopefully it will get picked up by one of the digital networks.

Reported to be in talks with Amazon!!

This website's headline says it's already a done deal. Which is misleading, but hopeful.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live- ... on-1113803

According to the report, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos is a huge fan of The Expanse books and was “livid” when rival Syfy got the rights to make the show. Amazon later secured the streaming rights to the show.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/holy-crap-amazo ... 1826209413

They just got done shooting season 4.

Is this a show worth watching?

I watched 2 or 3 eps, and it was super political, and that turns me off.

I heard it's great, though.

I finally got around to reading the 8th book that came out earlier this year. It had been sitting neglected on my to-read stack.

I had thought The Expanse started to lose a little steam and wasn’t going to transition well as the time line started to lengthen and the the original characters started to age, or worse. Some new characters I didn’t care about were given POVs in the “middle” books and I had lost interest.

But the reviews on book 8 were good. Like, really good. So I dove in. And my initial reaction is that Tiamat’s Wrath is one of the best, if not THE best book in the series. There’s only one book left now, and I’m not entirely sure humanity has many options left.

I’m still mulling over passages the way I still think about the final battle in Ender’s Game, or MorningLightMountain’s origin story in Pandora’s Star.

I’m pretty sure 8 has the most powerful weapon in the history of sci fi being used against humans. I really can’t think of anything I’ve read that is more potent. And it wasn’t even calibrated right.

Bezos better pull this off right.

Also the two guys that write these cite GRRM as a huge influence (they were his ex assistants) but clearly not in terms of book output, they are fucking machines. Tiamat’s Wrath was incredible good writing, very readable, and didnt repeat a lot of the same descriptions over and over like you see in other sagas.

Troy wrote: I’m still mulling over passages the way I still think about the final battle in Ender’s Game, or MorningLightMountain’s origin story in Pandora’s Star.

Hey I read the Pandora's Star books. Hamilton makes amazing universes.

GORDON wrote:

Troy wrote: I’m still mulling over passages the way I still think about the final battle in Ender’s Game, or MorningLightMountain’s origin story in Pandora’s Star.

Hey I read the Pandora's Star books. Hamilton makes amazing universes.

I like him and think some of his concepts are great but I feel like he writes or keeps in way to much. For every amazing short passage you get a really long bad one with no ties to the main story. I thought the opening Mars wormhole, Primes, and all of the zero-sum war for the species was outstanding. Maddeningly you also get randomn 4 page POV of a rich lady space hang gliding off a volcano and an uncessary and verbose journey through a magic elf forest space kingdom.


e: enzyme bonded concrete

This is all correct.

Read the Night's Dawn series, too.

I'm in season 2.

I'd heard a lot of scuttlebutt that this was "hard, realistic sci-fi," so I gave it a shot.

It's pretty good, but in the episode where they're chasing Eros they talk about how it is seemingly breaking the laws of thermodynamics, and get earth missiles are.flying out to Mars orbit in like a day.

It seems they really underestimate distances, I don't care how much they act like 20G of acceleration would be enough to close those distances in hours.

Eros is supposed to be third law of Arthur C. Clark like.

Similar to how we’re just supposed to accept the “Epstein drive” as a thing.

Ageeed about the way they showed the earth/mars missile shoot. I think that’s easier to show accurately in the books. Those theoretical advanced satellites Mars used would have been far far away.

Elon’s Starship is supposed to take 2 months for the Mars trip.

I mean... actual, hard sci fi would have Eros taking months to get to Earth orbit, minimum. But I guess that's not very dramatic for TV. Looked like days, at most.

Consider this a spoiler thread from here on out.







Mid season 3, open war, shots fired, mutinies galore, hybrids now on the board. This shit is getting intense and I'm experiencing anxiety.

Was there a long, season 3 break between episodes 6 and 7? Yeah, the show itself jumped six months, but the tone of production is different, too.

Sitting here with XMen 3 on as background noise, and suddenly the Indian UN chick's voice is on the TV. She's running the mutant cure facility.

GORDON wrote: Sitting here with XMen 3 on as background noise, and suddenly the Indian UN chick's voice is on the TV. She's running the mutant cure facility.

Loved her. Nailed the character. Some book-to-shows it takes me a while for the show character to be believable compared to what I read in the book in my heads. Miller and Tom Jane for example.

Not her. Instant she was on screen I was like damn it’s Avasarala for real.

Ok, finished up season 3,m ready for December.

1. At least they tried to end the show on a note of "end of chapter," thinking they were cancelled.

2. I bet a doller the art/ship designer was a fan of the video game Homeworld. The Racinante is pretty much a pure Higaaran frigate/gunship. The other ships fit the aesthetic. I like that.

3. I think Amos is my favorite character. I can't decide if he's completely without morals, or just pragmatic to the point they override his morals... and yet he seems to always be trying to better himself. It's a very interesting character.

I think Amos is the most fascinating character, for me. I can't decide if he has zero morals, or more morals than any of them coupled with an overdeveloped sense of pragmatism.

This is a scene from S3. Spoilers probably.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=105&v=pzuu8U-ge7I