The Expanse How A Game Became A Book And Then A Show

Abraham admits that their involvement in the Syfy series which adapted their novels is deeper than that of most authors and maintains that that’s how it should be. “It’s generally speaking a genuinely terrible idea to have writers in the writers room,” he says, “because we come and say, ‘Well, but I wrote it like this; it should stay like that,’ and that’s absolutely not what the process looks like when you’re adapting something.” Their participation in The Expanse writers room isn’t the only thing that makes their novels and series unique; the story’s origins in the gaming world also gave the novels and subsequently the show greater depth because of the work Franck put into creating a solar-system-spanning culture as part of an online game. “I was trying to write enough story for a $100 million dollar MMO, which never happened,” Franck elaborates, “but you wind up creating as much content as you possibly can.” Franck had to develop details beyond just what would show up on the screen or on the page. “I needed Mars not to just be one location but many locations; I needed the outer solar system to be many locations,” he says. “So it led to me doing a lot of research on what Ganymede is like and Io and creating little pockets of civilization for all of those places so that they could be good game locations. Then when all of that went away and became a book, I still had all that stuff.” Abraham then stepped in and pulled Franck’s rich background into the setting for a longer narrative. Abraham explains, “I said, ‘You’ve done all this research; I’ve written some novels. I know how to do that. Let’s put these two together – it’s already done.’” Readers of the novels of course know that details from the later books are already appearing in The Expanse, even in season 1. “One of the things that’s been really interesting is having the back story that we kind of hid in the books come up earlier in the show,” says Abraham. “So you might end up seeing hints and parts of characters that we were a little more coy with a little more up front on the screen.” The Expanse returns for its second season on Syfy in January of 2017. Babylon’s Ashes has a release date of December 6, 2016. Adaptations like The Expanse were part of the discussion on the latest episode of Sci Fi Fidelity. Listen below or subscribe! iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud