![]() But it’s not a Laconian Empire origin story but that of young (and eventually perpetually young) Cara and Xan, who figure in Leviathan Falls, and also features the alien-technology ‘‘dogs’’ that have an important supporting role in Tiamat’s Wrath. ‘‘Strange Dogs’’ is set at the beginning of the Laconian Empire’s absorption of all human-settled worlds, on Laconia itself. If you’re more loyal to who you ought to be or who you really are. ![]() You have to decide whether you care more about being your best self or your real one. There’s this thing when you get older where you have to make a choice. There’s a welcome strangeness in having a canny old crime boss be the spokesman for, if not a moral norm, at least a less pathological way of being authentic, even if flawed. But the squirming world evades the unforgiving rigidity of the Laconian way. The new Laconian planetary governor is not a bad man – in fact, by Laconian standards he is a very good one. ![]() ‘‘Auberon’’ shows ruthless organizations in conflict: what happens when the totalizing, pathologically disciplined Laconian Empire confronts an equally organized and much more flexible criminal enterprise that works with rather than against the unlovely side of human nature as-it-is, serving rather than suppressing our weakness and corruption. But even without that challenge, it’s as gritty a picture of street life as any in these gritty books. (Another example of a ruthless organization, though in this case the Causes are greed and what it takes to survive in an urban jungle.) As the authors point out, there’s a ‘‘big reveal’’ in the story that will test a reader’s recall of the series’ details. The Baltimore of ‘‘The Churn’’ is all underbelly, and the future of the young man at its center may be severely truncated when he is faced with conflicting loyalties and ugly jobs. ‘‘Gods of Risk’’ shows the underbelly of Martian society, as Marine Sergeant Bobbie Draper’s nephew, well on his way to a respectable career, gets himself tangled up with adolescent hormones and some very dangerous characters. The authors admit their fondness for crime stories (obvious since the noirish Leviathan Wakes), and three of them make especially good use of that genre space. The primary setting – a black-site panopticon prison – is an environment as hellish as any alien planet – and the backstory of the narrator’s progress from desperately ambitious scientist to conscienceless ‘‘moral zombie’’ is more unsettling than anything in the crime stories described below. The most chilling and extreme example of such ruthlessness is ‘‘The Vital Abyss’’, seen from the viewpoint of a researcher for the monstrous Protogen corporation, whose brain has been rewired so he can proceed with protomolecule work that should have sickened him. Like several other entries, it recognizes the ruthlessness with which organizations grind up individuals for some notion of a greater good or a Cause. ‘‘The Butcher of Anderson Station’’ shows how Fred Johnson got that reputation and what set him on the path taken through the main body of the Expanse story line. In between lie snapshots and back-stories. Interestingly, both stories are about the benefits and costs of being an outlier in one’s social environment. The last (previously unpublished) entry, ‘‘The Sins of Our Fathers’’, is a coda, set on a planet isolated by the collapse of the gates that enabled interstellar travel, throwing the settlers onto their own limited, local resources. ![]() ‘‘Drive’’ is a pre-Expanse story of the invention of the Epstein Drive that opens the entire solar system to human settlement and the asteroid belt to industrial development, and also offers a glimpse of a Mars thoroughly settled but not yet politically independent. The stories are laid out in roughly chronological order. Now these stories, plus a new one, are collected in Memory’s Legion, along with Author’s Notes commenting on the genesis of the stories and their places in the series. At various points along the way, though, Corey (AKA Daniel Abraham & Ty Franke) produced shorter pieces that did not extend the main narrative but filled in some gaps before, between, and after its episodes. Corey’s Expanse series – nine volumes released over a decade – wrapped up with last year’s Leviathan Falls. Memory’s Legion: The Complete Expanse Story Collection, James S.A. ![]()
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