James S.A. Corey Leviathan Wakes (2011)
I got so profoundly sucked into The Expanse that I'd probably describe it as either the greatest science-fiction television serial ever made, or at least as one of the few which has ever been worth watching; so it was sort of inevitable that I should backtrack and pick up one of the books, additionally curious due to my never having heard of it prior to the adaptation turning up on some streaming thing. Leviathan Wakes is, roughly speaking, the first series of The Expanse as a novel, and while I'm not sure it entirely supports the maxim of how lousy books tend to work better on the screen, it's nevertheless oddly underwhelming.
It's not bad, and is arguably well written, or at least efficiently written, but Peter F. Hamilton and Stephen Baxter both did this sort of thing much better in terms of the printed page. The problems with Leviathan Wakes are either minor or else simply difficult to quantify, but what they lack in clarity, they make up for in sheer force of numbers. To begin at a perhaps unusually picky level, I'm inclined towards scepticism with anything which mentions the New York Times on the cover, and which garnishes the same with glowing endorsements from more financially lucrative writers, and I actively distrust novels published in the trade paperback format, same size as a seventies Marvel comic, because it somehow feels ostentatious, demonstrative, and as though those involved are trying too hard to render something special - which is more properly the job of the cunt or cunts writing the thing, I would argue. Even before I'd taken the book from the shelf, it felt like a marketing exercise, like the Game of Thrones of science-fiction, like something which was thinking about the television series even before it had hit the book stands. The endorsement of George R. R. Martin therefore rang an unfortunate note for me, never mind that James S.A. Corey doesn't actually exist, being the pen name shared by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, both of whom belong to the same writers' group as the aforementioned Georgie. Film, telly and, to an arguably lesser extent, comic books tend to be collaborative efforts and hence corporate in nature to greater or lesser degrees, so I can forgive the occasional stench of marketing in such cases providing the narrative manages to do something interesting within whatever limits may apply; but it's different with the novel, or it should be. I'm not suggesting that only anguished hermits who suffer for their art are capable of churning out a decent novel, but there's a happy medium, and I never again want to find myself in the same room as an author who talks about writing in terms of the pitch, the franchise, or the demographic. I would prefer to read the words of people who wish to write rather than to simply entertain.
Trying hard to ignore the above reservations, I got to reading, finding it initially difficult to follow without my mind's eye attempting to reconstruct what it had seen on the telly, meaning it's quite difficult to assess how much I would have got from Leviathan Wakes without already having the special effects imprinted on me. It seems to be fairly well written for what it is - essentially a detective thriller as space opera - but I felt as though something was lacking, some spark of inspiration for which narrative efficiency, maybe even something derived from a formula, was hoping to compensate. It was like reading the book of the movie when it should probably be the other way round, except somehow the TV people did it better while remaining more or less faithful to the material; except they didn't. A few details we saw on the screen are better explained here, but then the book pulls moves which seemed a lot more convincing as television, not least being the inclusion of scenes set on Earth featuring Chrisjen Avasarala which were entirely absent from this first written instalment - conspicuously absent even, and yes, I know the book came first.
Leviathan Wakes is a decent novel, above average even, but not an exceptional one, whereas The Expanse really is an exceptional television show. It's way too fucking long considering what it spends most of its time doing and how much of the dialogue reads like it wants to be on telly when it grows up. It's not lacking in poetry or even worthwhile themes - mostly concerning humanity's habit of collectively shooting itself in the foot - and it's efficiently pacey, and even where we can see it obviously wants to be telly when it's older, at least it wants to be decent telly rather than Babylon fucking 5; but, like I said, Peter F. Hamilton and Stephen Baxter have both done this sort of thing so much better; which is probably why we don't really need Netflix versions of Night's Dawn or the Xeelee Sequence.
I got so profoundly sucked into The Expanse that I'd probably describe it as either the greatest science-fiction television serial ever made, or at least as one of the few which has ever been worth watching; so it was sort of inevitable that I should backtrack and pick up one of the books, additionally curious due to my never having heard of it prior to the adaptation turning up on some streaming thing. Leviathan Wakes is, roughly speaking, the first series of The Expanse as a novel, and while I'm not sure it entirely supports the maxim of how lousy books tend to work better on the screen, it's nevertheless oddly underwhelming.
It's not bad, and is arguably well written, or at least efficiently written, but Peter F. Hamilton and Stephen Baxter both did this sort of thing much better in terms of the printed page. The problems with Leviathan Wakes are either minor or else simply difficult to quantify, but what they lack in clarity, they make up for in sheer force of numbers. To begin at a perhaps unusually picky level, I'm inclined towards scepticism with anything which mentions the New York Times on the cover, and which garnishes the same with glowing endorsements from more financially lucrative writers, and I actively distrust novels published in the trade paperback format, same size as a seventies Marvel comic, because it somehow feels ostentatious, demonstrative, and as though those involved are trying too hard to render something special - which is more properly the job of the cunt or cunts writing the thing, I would argue. Even before I'd taken the book from the shelf, it felt like a marketing exercise, like the Game of Thrones of science-fiction, like something which was thinking about the television series even before it had hit the book stands. The endorsement of George R. R. Martin therefore rang an unfortunate note for me, never mind that James S.A. Corey doesn't actually exist, being the pen name shared by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, both of whom belong to the same writers' group as the aforementioned Georgie. Film, telly and, to an arguably lesser extent, comic books tend to be collaborative efforts and hence corporate in nature to greater or lesser degrees, so I can forgive the occasional stench of marketing in such cases providing the narrative manages to do something interesting within whatever limits may apply; but it's different with the novel, or it should be. I'm not suggesting that only anguished hermits who suffer for their art are capable of churning out a decent novel, but there's a happy medium, and I never again want to find myself in the same room as an author who talks about writing in terms of the pitch, the franchise, or the demographic. I would prefer to read the words of people who wish to write rather than to simply entertain.
Trying hard to ignore the above reservations, I got to reading, finding it initially difficult to follow without my mind's eye attempting to reconstruct what it had seen on the telly, meaning it's quite difficult to assess how much I would have got from Leviathan Wakes without already having the special effects imprinted on me. It seems to be fairly well written for what it is - essentially a detective thriller as space opera - but I felt as though something was lacking, some spark of inspiration for which narrative efficiency, maybe even something derived from a formula, was hoping to compensate. It was like reading the book of the movie when it should probably be the other way round, except somehow the TV people did it better while remaining more or less faithful to the material; except they didn't. A few details we saw on the screen are better explained here, but then the book pulls moves which seemed a lot more convincing as television, not least being the inclusion of scenes set on Earth featuring Chrisjen Avasarala which were entirely absent from this first written instalment - conspicuously absent even, and yes, I know the book came first.
Leviathan Wakes is a decent novel, above average even, but not an exceptional one, whereas The Expanse really is an exceptional television show. It's way too fucking long considering what it spends most of its time doing and how much of the dialogue reads like it wants to be on telly when it grows up. It's not lacking in poetry or even worthwhile themes - mostly concerning humanity's habit of collectively shooting itself in the foot - and it's efficiently pacey, and even where we can see it obviously wants to be telly when it's older, at least it wants to be decent telly rather than Babylon fucking 5; but, like I said, Peter F. Hamilton and Stephen Baxter have both done this sort of thing so much better; which is probably why we don't really need Netflix versions of Night's Dawn or the Xeelee Sequence.
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