[ Ed. note: Extensive spoilers ahead for Leviathan Falls. ]
After decades of fighting to democratize information and connect humanity, Holden is forced to go against these values in order to save the human slipstream from succumbing to Duarte and the hoop builders ’ plans to subsume humanness into their hive mind. By injecting himself with the protomolecule, Holden is able to seize control of the ring station in order to keep the dark gods at true laurel long enough for everyone — including the Roci crew — to evacuate the call space. Naomi and Amos head for Sol, while Alex says adieu to his found family to be with his biological family in the Nieuwestad arrangement, taking the Roci with him. Once the ring distance is cleared, Holden uses the last of his strength to destroy the gates, making an executive decisiveness for all of humanness in club to save them — a bare sarcasm that is not lost on him .
The ending is peer parts heart-wrenching and hopeful, and it ’ s what Abraham and Franck have been building toward for more than a decade. The pair even knew Leviathan Falls ’ last telephone line — Naomi brooding, “ The stars are hush there. We ’ ll find our own direction back to them ” — since they were writing the moment script, Caliban ’ s War.
In conversation with Polygon, Abraham and Franck discussed the inevitability of Holden ’ randomness destiny, the koran ’ s open-ended epilogue, humanness ’ south resilience in the face of impossible odds, and — of course — aliens .
This consultation has been edited and condensed for clearness .
The end of Holden’s story feels both inevitable and ironic. What was your process for figuring out his arc and building toward this moment where he’s forced to make the kind of choice he always fought against?
Daniel Abraham: What we were trying to do was take this very righteous guy with a very firm public opinion and spiral him through more and more experiences, depth, uncertainty, and gray until we had him distillery identical a lot himself, but at a place where he could make this impossible option, this choice on behalf of everyone, when that ’ s precisely what he didn ’ t ever want to do. And we did that with a bunch together of other characters besides. If you look at Naomi, she was trying not to be a drawing card. She was trying to hide behind her haircloth in the foremost book. That ’ s not where she wound up .
Ty Franck: And Elvi absolutely goes against all of her scientific principles, all the things that she would have sworn were the most important aspects of her ethical life. She breaks all of them in an attempt to save humanness. One of the things we do over and over with characters is we show them in the spotlight where they ’ re most comfortable, and then we drag them out of it. [ … ] The only character that that never happens to is Amos, because Amos is lone one thing, and he ’ south merely always going to be one thing. And it turns out that that one thing is identical tough to kill .
In the epilogue, we learn that Amos is the one helping guide humanity through this next stage. Why was this the right place for him to land?
Abraham: We had him refer to himself as the last man standing truly early in the series. [ … ] He ’ sulfur that combination of wyrd compassion and total miss of mawkishness that it precisely felt right. What a great place to grow to .
Franck: And as a guide for a better humanity, he seems like a guy, as Daniel said, without sentimentality. So he ’ second going to say, “ Stop being such dipshits. ” And when they don ’ thymine stop being a crowd of dipshits, he ’ sulfur going to kill all the ones that are necessary to get everybody else rear on control panel. [ … ] He just seems like the perfective person to do that .
The epilogue leaves a lot open to readers’ interpretation — now that the different systems can be connected again, will history repeat itself or can people find a better way forward? What were your intentions there?
Abraham: Part of what we were doing with the whole series was making the argument that history is prophecy, that humans don ’ metric ton actually exchange much as an organism. The material we were doing in Rome, we ’ rhenium doing now. And the felicitous ending that we have is, nowadays we ’ ve got 1,300 chances to get it correct. now, possibly person will figure it out. One of the reasons I think the epilogue is short is, I ’ m not sure what that would look like .
So much of this book raises questions about the definition of selfhood and identity, from Duarte’s planned hive mind to Amos’ transformation to the way time has changed the Roci crew. How did this theme influence the characters and the story?
Franck: Daniel and I disagree greatly on the nature of consciousness, but the one thing we absolutely agree on is that humans are fair a floor we ’ rhenium constantly telling ourselves, and that narrative is very important to us. Most of the atrocious things that people do — and most of the great things that people do — are because that is the floor they want to believe about themselves. [ … ] And to most people, changing the floor about what we are is the greatest misdemeanor that can happen to us. And we will die to keep that from happening. [ … ] You take that fact of humanity and you present it with, “ Hey, everybody, we can win, but all we have to do is give up the thing that is the most significant aspect of every homo life. ” What ’ s the human reaction to that got tantalum be ? I don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate think it ’ s going to be silence acquiescence .
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Whenever there’s a mysterious threat or figure, there’s always the risk that if you reveal too much, it will lose its potency. But we did get to learn a lot more about the ring builders and their destroyers in this book. How did you find that balance between answering questions about these alien species without explaining too much?
Abraham: We knew a draw about the evolutionary history of the gate builders and how their biota affected what they did, how they saw things differently, and the strategy that we saw in koran one of hijacking other life and using that and incorporating it. So all of that was actually reasonably well thought out. It was fair finding a direction to explain it that wasn ’ triiodothyronine barely a graduate lecture. And the ring entities, they were constantly supposed to be cryptic. They were always supposed to be the night gods. I know that there are folks who in truth like having all of the answers, and that ’ s big, but I don ’ thymine think it ’ south ever satisfying .
After the past few years, people have much more of a first-hand understanding of how quickly what we know to be reality can change, and what it’s like to live through a period of universal tragedy and uncertainty. How do you think the ongoing pandemic will influence how people relate to and receive this story?
Abraham: I will be glib. Every age lives through its tragedies. Every age lives through its uncertainties. I was growing up having nightmares about nuclear war. We ’ ve been through AIDS, we ’ ve been through poliomyelitis, we ’ ve been through 1918. This is a singular moment in our lives, but it ’ s not a singular moment in history. This is something that we ’ ve done a lot over and over and over throughout centuries. This is equitable our turn, and it kind of sucks because we ’ re here for it. I hope that the thrust Ty and I put out is — I don ’ thymine know if comforting is right, but consoling, possibly. Just the idea that the churn is how history goes. The churn is how it is and it always has been. And even with that, we keep stumbling forward more often than not .
Franck: Humans, flush when we feel defeatist [ … ] we good keep trudging forward. And I think that ’ s what gets us from senesce to age. You read about horrors of history, like the Trail of Tears — they kept walking. People were dropping all in on the trail, and they kept walking anyhow. And some of them got to where they were going. [ … ] Some people good hang on. And I think that is, to me, one of the most compelling things about humans, is we fair hang on .
The upcoming anthology Memory’s Legion will include the final novella in the series. What can readers expect from The Sins of Our Fathers ?
Franck: It ’ s a morsel of a finale to the series. It ’ s credibly not what people are expecting, but that ’ s OK. In some ways, it is the conversation about what you have to do future. Daniel talked about the 1,300 chances to get it right, and it is good one little floor of one of those 1,300 chances of person trying to get it right .
Beyond this novella, do you ever anticipate revisiting this world again?
Franck: No. We told the story we wanted to tell .
Abraham: What I do hope is that folks who are athirst for more grab the role-playing game or start writing their own stuff [ … ] and keep the literary conversation going. That would be how I would want to see this. I wouldn ’ thymine want to see another Expanse book .
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23035069/leviathanfalls.jpg "The Expanse authors were always building toward Leviathan Falls’ world-altering ending 1")
Leviathan Falls
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The biggest skill fabrication series of the decade comes to an incredible stopping point in the one-ninth and final novel in James S.A. Corey ’ s Hugo-award winning space opera that inspired the television receiver series, now from Amazon Studios.
