The tenth book in the Expanse is the collection of the short stories, all packed in one tome. The Orbit publishers had asked Daniel and Ty, whose pen name was James SA Corey, to come with a selection of fine additions to the main story. Probably it explains why some of the stories are an absolute luxury to read, while others seem slow and bland. On my end, I truly enjoyed four of the shorts, with favourite ones being the earliest written.

The overarching theme in the Expanse saga is about unfathomable constraints to leave Earth and to settle the Galaxy. Humanity had gotten themselves to settle Mars, and some asteroids beyond, but it got stuck in the technology to push on. How far can we go, if chemical-fuelled rockets can only get us to a limited part of the Solar system. Because they are too massive, too expensive and too slow. So, naturally, the early short story in the Expanse is about the invention of the Drive.

Spoilers below.

I guess, the Drive story is the one that can be re-read plenty of times just because it is thrilling the most. The premise that the inventor had decided to test his own product just to discover that it was too good, too reliable, too fast and too deadly, so that it becomes the first human made object accelerated to a speed of several percent of c, c – the universal speed of light. Maybe it is the success with a sheer heavy price attached to it that makes the Drive story so undeniably attractive. It is a bitter-sweet mix of the knowing that your work succeeded, and that you will not enjoy seeing it working for the second time elsewhere.

But, once the humanity invented the Drive, they could go about settling the Solar System. The new technology has not made the stars closure, since it would still take a person’s lifetime to get to the nearest star, but it allowed to cancel dependency on Earth and to set second, third and etc homes all across the Solar System. This led to new political factions and ruptures, and new violence, when the new wars for Independence were not raging between old empires and new colonies, but between new settlements and new political powers as well. This is why The Butcher of Anderson Station is so captivating as a story. Because it dives into a vivid illustration that violence will be always used to bring rebels under control. Guess, humans will stay aggressive and resorting to force even if they expand beyond Earth.

This is why The Churn story affected me so much. What would anyone of us do to escape poverty, to raise from the horrid living conditions, to try to find a ladder to climb to the next level? Virtually anything. The Churn covers the early biography of my third favourite character in the Expanse, Amos. And this story is why my respect for the authors basically doubled overnight. Yes, it may be a bit of a retcon, but providing for such a beautiful outline of a horrible background really highlighted all of the Amos’s behaviour and choices going forward. For a person, who seen the worst, is not afraid of bad any more. See death and escape it, and then one is not afraid of anything.

And finally, I believe the Strange Dogs story is probably the pinnacle of this compendium. We were trained to believe by many sci-fi epics, that alien life is likely hostile, but can be friends with humans sometimes. But that leaves out the third option, that they are neutral and they do not care much. This is the angle, that was explored in this short. Alien life and us can be of such a different biochemistry, so that we cannot use what they produce and vice versa. So, we may actually be neutrally co-existing. This has gotten me thinking a lot, that human brain paints things black and white, while reality is not only monochromatic, but has a lot of colors.

The humans will eventually settle the galaxy, but their minds will remain those of the great apes we are. Fighting for resources, resorting to violence when we cannot move forward with negotiations any longer, losing lives and sparing lives. The Expanse ends with a redemption. So even though we are not perfect at all, we are capable of love and caring for others.

Summing up. My seven-year long saga to read these books is over. I have waited for #6, #7, #8 and #9 to be published. I have seen the TV series rising up, handed over and then shut down. And this week I had my cherry on the cake. With Memory’s Legion the Expanse is truly over and I feel the same closure as I had with Asimov’s Robot series and Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem wrap up. Thanks to Daniel and Ty for the ride. It was fun.