[HN Gopher] The Expanse UI Design
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The Expanse UI Design
Author : cryo
Score : 469 points
Date : 2021-05-26 08:42 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hudsandguis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hudsandguis.com)
| baybal2 wrote:
| Transparency, and animation in UIs is terrible. Bad for
| visibility, bad for usability.
| coldtea wrote:
| Not in 2050 A.D., where humans have developed medical
| technologies in the eyes that optimize for transparent UIs...
| chrisin2d wrote:
| I want to add a comment I haven't seen anyone has touched on yet.
|
| There is a lot of storytelling done through computer interfaces
| in the show: revealing secrets, showing in-universe propaganda,
| showing ships and missiles move through the vastness of space,
| and so on.
|
| The show also makes a point in juxtaposing shots of UIs against
| shots of the realities those UIs represent. It paints a stark
| contrast the cleanliness and sterility of computer interfaces
| against the grittiness and horror of the Expanse world. We get to
| see the decision makers seeing missiles as dots traveling along
| holographic arc lines, but then we also get to see civilians and
| military personnel being blown up and shredded.
| Grumbledour wrote:
| I have to say I was much more taken with the description of
| computers in the books. Maybe it was more me projecting than what
| was actually there, but what I took away from it were computer
| systems that worked without networking most of the time, were
| fault tolerant and had most of their power through
| programmability, which ordinary people were able to access. This
| reminded me so much of the ideas and visions of early computing
| environments and even though the books don't dwell much on
| computers, I found it really fascinating to see these echos
| there.
|
| In comparison, the visual design of the show is just ... nice?
| But seems honestly pretty impracticable most of the time and I
| felt doesn't really set itself apart from other contemporary Sci-
| fi Shows.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Near the end of _Cibola Burn_ , there was this part that gave
| some extra details about the hand terminals they use. I almost
| cried when reading it.
|
| A computer that's designed to work off-line just as well as on-
| line, that can form mesh networks with other hand terminals on
| the fly when needed, not tied to any specific vendor in any
| particular way. It's how smartphones should _obviously_ work,
| except they don 't, because real humanity is shitty in so many
| subtle ways in which even most dystopian sci-fi humanity isn't.
| sprkwd wrote:
| Well, that's something wonderful to aim for.
| obelos wrote:
| Several times while watching the show I've had my suspension
| of disbelief interrupted by thinking "There's no way all
| these computers would interoperate so seamlessly, without
| vendor walled gardens and layers of security constraints." It
| is a nice vision of an impossible future!
| nynx wrote:
| Yeah, I felt the same way. I think, however, that smartphones
| will change as humanity spreads out a bit. On mars, a
| smartphone will need to deal with only local servers. On deep
| space, it'll need to mesh network with surrounding devices.
|
| Needs drive innovation.
| salawat wrote:
| Welcome to what happens when the common network and routing
| infrastructure is privately owned. Proprietary standards.
| Subscriber ident, discriminatory "I will/won't service you
| today" sets the tone for how things work. Mesh interop is
| more than doable. It just ain't profitable, nor is it
| desirable from the centralized controllability perspective.
| meowster wrote:
| That's how the computers work in Neal Stephenson's
| _Seveneves_ too. It serves a purpose in the story.
| rgovostes wrote:
| There is a scene in S02E03 where Miller chides a Belter about the
| music he's listening to, so the Belter picks up his mobile device
| to turn it off. When he picks it up it must be in the wrong
| orientation, because he flips it over in his hand. You're telling
| me there's no autorotate in 2300? Worst. Episode. Ever.
| evandrofisico wrote:
| It may be a case of apologetics, but autorotate only makes
| sense when there is a discernible gravational field, and as
| belters are often in low/simulated gravity, i would make sense.
| mannerheim wrote:
| Maybe he turned it off. I usually disable autorotate because it
| annoys me.
| etxm wrote:
| If I flip my iPhone over 180deg today it doesn't autorotate. I
| wouldn't expect it to in the show given the terminals are
| asymmetrical with the electronics at the bottom.
|
| Plus it's a cheap belter phone. Poor bastards aren't getting
| the expensive feature rich terminals.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Belters turn off autorotate because it doesn't work in zero G.
| Duh. :)
| [deleted]
| firefoxd wrote:
| One thing highly underrated in the show is the AI interactions.
| You ask the computer for something, and it provides the answer.
| No voice, no conversation, no sass, and most importantly, no
| anthropomorphism.
|
| Imagine every single time you write a CLI command or perform a
| mouse click, the computer says "great! Let me do that for you".
| That's how Siri, Alexa interact. In the Expanse, giving the AI a
| command is like double clicking on a file. Fast, consise, no
| fuss.
| dfinninger wrote:
| I'd always thought that it was just a "nice" way to hide
| processing/network latency.
|
| I'd certainly prefer some small chirp of acknowledgement, but I
| think we need to reduce latency first.
| RootReducer wrote:
| I love this. When I use Google assistant to start a timer, it
| always says "Sure, 5 minutes. And we're starting now."
|
| This takes about 5 seconds, and the timer doesn't start until
| it's done. It's a minor annoyance, but I'd prefer a simple
| chime.
| biztos wrote:
| "Put down your weapon. You have four minutes fifty-five
| seconds to comply."
|
| https://youtu.be/A9l9wxGFl4k
| chrisweekly wrote:
| I loved the books, and am giving the tv show another chance after
| being turned off by the casting (Naomi in particular was
| jarringly, distractingly different from the character in my
| mind). Glad I revisited it and got past that, bc overall it's
| really well done.
|
| Tangent: can anyone explain the inscrutable titles?
| Qahlel wrote:
| I genuinely hate the impracticable UI design being pushed on
| TV-&-Movies in the last decade. Normies expect similar interface
| from everything but don't even understand that it's bad.
|
| It's like putting yogurt on Pizza dough instead of mozzarella and
| calling it New York Pizza. Please stop...
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| When I was watching the show, I took special notice of gestures,
| and it was fun how same swipe up was either sending video to
| everyone around, or putting video feed on a big screen, or
| sending stuff to one specific person standing nearby. I wondered
| how those devices understood the context of the action.
|
| Also, those devices privacy sucks! Everyone around can see what
| happens on you glowing screen that is transparent from both
| sides!! Under no circumstances could such devices be sold to real
| users.
| Jemaclus wrote:
| Adam Savage did an interview with one of the prop masters of
| the show, and he brought up the "privacy" issue and agreed that
| it sucks. But if they used "realistic" pads, he said 1) they
| would have to move the camera around in awkward ways so that we
| could see what the characters were seeing on their screens, and
| 2) most of what we (the audience) would see would be the
| black/gray backs of these pads with nothing interesting on
| them.
|
| So it was an intentional choice for convenience and visual
| effect, rather than an attempt at "realism". Sounds like they
| totally agree with your statement, though.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Since when do people care about privacy?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I like the Expanse as a story and ideas and for the few
| characters that are worth it (most are flat drones), but its
| aesthetic is not very original , most of this stuff has been
| redone countless times in game design . Still great to look at
| but i think they could have done better artistically.
| itronitron wrote:
| It's funny how some of the interior decor items look like their
| right off Zillow.
| lxe wrote:
| My favorite is Belter video call app called "Showxating" -- it
| shows a thing!
| tootie wrote:
| If you close up on the UIs of any Belter ship all the screens
| are translated into Belter. When the Roci gets a ship directly
| in it's sights, the targeting system will signal "Hammer Lock".
| The Belter ships say "Hamma Lok".
| etxm wrote:
| Imaginary Worlds[1] had a great episode on the origin of the
| books and politics in the Expanse
|
| 1. https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/politics-
| of-...
| oaiey wrote:
| If you have not seen The Expanse yet, start now! This is the best
| sci-fi show since Battlestar Galactica.
|
| The first three episodes are slow but later the show is so fast
| you wish back to it.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The show is well named. Season 1's story scope expands
| incredibly out from the initial mystery.
| oaiey wrote:
| As a book reader i enjoyed the show a lot. But when I now see
| YouTube reactors I enjoy so much how clueless they are at any
| stage of the show. Every week an expanded view of the story
| reveals to them but the result: They know nothing :)
| marvin wrote:
| I found that they completely butchered my favorite characters
| from the book series. Holden is way over the top macho and gets
| in "check out my ego" screaming matches with folks all the
| time, Bobby is at least emotionally a weak-willed little girl
| who lets herself get bossed around by everyone, and especially
| male authority figues. Etc. Their interpretation of the
| character gallery was really disappointing. The books' authors
| have made some really cool non-heteronormative and super
| competent characters, which is one of the many aspects of the
| series that I really enjoyed.
|
| Does this get better in the latter seasons that were produced
| by Amazon?
| JonathanFly wrote:
| Overall they improved characters. Ashford is a cartoon in the
| books but is absolutely delightful and interesting on the
| show. Drummer barely exists in the books and might be my
| favorite show character.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Bobbie taking over the luxury ship with her power armour is
| in my top 10 book moments.
|
| > You use a welding rig to weld things. You use a gun to
| shoot things. You use a Bobbie Draper to fuck a bunch of bad
| guys permanently up. (Babylon's Ashes)
|
| In the series though. Meh.
| sveme wrote:
| Indeed, Holden was crap in the first season; much improved
| later, so definitely can recommend continuing to watch it.
| bumbada wrote:
| Why there is no light on space Sci Fi series or movies?.
|
| I find it extremely hard to believe that people that master ships
| at the speed of light, that have nuclear and possible antimatter
| engines just can't effort proper lighting, like they don't know
| LED lights, fluorescent lights everywhere.
|
| All films just look like submerged nuclear submarines on red
| alert,but all the time. On nuclear submarines you have way more
| light most of the time.
|
| We know that we need strong light exposure in order not the
| develop illnesses like myopia. Mood is affected badly by lack of
| light.
|
| I can understand it in games,it was the first trick for hiding a
| bad 3D engine, make everything dark, but it is not necessary
| anymore.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's an artistic choice, it's not meant to say anything about
| technology. To the extent that it does say anything about
| technology, it's the HDR video of the present day that makes a
| difference.
|
| Heavily chiaroscuro lighting is a trend, like the orange-and-
| blue colour grading that preceded it. It looks like the Expanse
| has gone for "just blue" with occasional red highlights. A side
| effect of this is unfortunately unnatural-looking skin tones.
| Absolute peak example: https://images.squarespace-
| cdn.com/content/v1/5438bd1be4b044...
|
| Look at what's highlighted in red there. If it helps, run it
| through an aggressive blur filter and look at what shapes
| remain. Face of the woman on the left, details of her uniform,
| the ship on the display in the middle, and balanced out with
| the guy at the back right in a red zone.
|
| (Also this is why SF directors _love_ transparent or
| "holographic" displays, because you can film the person looking
| at the screen and the thing being displayed at the same time)
|
| It may also be a deliberate contrast with the dated future of
| _2001_ and subsequent works where interiors were often
| extremely white and clean.
| destructionator wrote:
| > (Also this is why SF directors love transparent or
| "holographic" displays, because you can film the person
| looking at the screen and the thing being displayed at the
| same time)
|
| I caught an episode of NCIS a few weeks ago and noticed they
| had a plexiglass screen up in the interrogation room cuz of
| covid.
|
| But I also realized it let them get both characters' faces in
| the shot at the same time thanks to the reflection, despite
| sitting across the table from each other (and they of course
| framed everything to take advantage of this).
|
| Same thing just 2020 version.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| This is also to tell the viewer _who_ the people on screen
| are, because you start to subconsciously associate the color
| palette with different factions. Hence the blue lighting on
| UN ships and the red on Mars '.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Why there is no light on space Sci Fi series or movies?._
|
| Besides artistic choices, for the same reason many devs prefer
| to work in near darkness with dark mode UIs.
|
| I for one wouldn't be letting bright light anywhere near my
| spaceship's interior...
|
| That said, many sci-fi movies/series have plenty of light
| internally: Star Trek and Star Wars for two big ones...
|
| > _We know that we need strong light exposure in order not the
| develop illnesses like myopia. Mood is affected badly by lack
| of light._
|
| Not a problem in 2520 A.D.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Not a problem in 2520 A.D._
|
| FWIW, Klingon ships were famously dark in the Star Trek's
| golden era, and also full of vapor/smoke obstructing vision.
| Obviously, this was done to make them seem more menacing.
| However, some fans - myself included - adopted an in-universe
| explanation: Klingon eyes respond to a slightly different
| slice of the EM spectrum than human ones; their ships are
| well-lit, just on the wavelengths imperceptible to us
| (probably infrared, and the dark reddish illumination we see
| is just what bleeds over to human-perceptible wavelengths),
| and the vapors are transparent on those wavelengths too.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I don't think it's just artistic choice. Well lit things are
| also more expensive.
|
| Imagining and depicting s society as advanced as ST is no
| small task
| evan_ wrote:
| Something I noticed when reading the books is that the authors
| describe the specific type of LED lighting in every scene they
| introduce:
|
| > The tunnel outside was white where it wasn't grimy. Ten
| meters wide, and gently sloping up in both directions. The
| white LED lights didn't pretend to mimic sunlight.
|
| > The lights--recessed white LEDs--gave the gray walls a
| sterile cast.
|
| > They drank it without talking [...] in the artificial morning
| of the room's LEDs.
|
| > The lights were cheap LEDs tinted a false pink that was
| supposed to flatter the complexion but instead made everyone
| look like undercooked beef.
| 7sigma wrote:
| Literally in the first episode, one character has a nervous
| breakdown and I quote: "We can so far into the darkness. Why
| couldn't we have brought more light?"
| antihero wrote:
| It looks way cooler.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Not limited to Sci-Fi shows. I recall watching the first shows
| of CSI back in 2000 and thinking how dumb it was for the techs
| to work in those horribly dark labs.
|
| I actually pondered this recently, as I watched an indie film
| where all the shots where lit quite realistically, meaning
| people had nice bright offices etc.
|
| And it struck me that even though this lighting looked more
| proper, in terms of that's how an office would look if someone
| worked in it, it just didn't look as good or interesting as
| those with more contrast ala CSI.
|
| I'm sure it can be done, but it's probably easier to get an
| interesting look with more shadows rather than less.
| lucideer wrote:
| Not sure if you've seen the Expanse, but two comments:
|
| 1. The stills here look edited, possible to focus the UIs for
| the article. I may be misremembering but I don't remember being
| unable to make out characters on screen!
|
| 2. The protagonists in the show comandeer a Mars ship and most
| shots take place inside it. For narrative reasons, UN ships are
| bright, Mars ships are black/dark red (and Belter ships are
| broken, Star Wars rebels style), so the in-space look changes a
| lot (though the main set is that one Mars ship).
| bserge wrote:
| UN ships were very well lit from what I remember.
|
| Martian and Belter ships less so (still, the Rocinante's crew
| quarters were fine and we've not really seen many ships
| outside of battle/emergencies) because they were adapted to
| lower light conditions on their homeworlds, I think that was
| said once if I'm not mistaken. The Martian delegation to
| Earth had to wear sunglasses all the time, for example.
| adeelk93 wrote:
| More than just narrative reasons, I think it makes sense that
| the planet that receives half the sunlight would be building
| less brightly lit ships
| manmal wrote:
| A lot of the settings in the Expanse are located in remote
| areas (often far away from the sun), where spare parts are rare
| and energy is expensive - at least more expensive than on
| Earth.
|
| Additionally, people work in shifts on all stations and ships,
| and you can't constantly mess up people's circadian rhythm by
| simulating daylight 24/7.
| wetmore wrote:
| Ironically, in the first book they talk about how a station
| is always lit to simulate daylight 24/7 :P Something about
| how they used to simulate a day/night cycle but stopped.
| manmal wrote:
| Huh I guess I'll need to read that again, too bad :)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _I can understand it in games,it was the first trick for
| hiding a bad 3D engine, make everything dark, but it is not
| necessary anymore._
|
| It's become necessary in movies and series as well, because
| stuff is mostly CGI now.
|
| Look at Star Trek in the golden era (TNG-ENT) vs. what it is
| now. Despite aging props, the former _looks_ real (if cheesy;
| color choices in early TNG didn 't age well). Federation ships
| are solid, clean, and brightly lit. That's because they were
| real, physical sets. Discovery/Picard? It's all dark, and while
| it may also be a stylistic choice, the fact is that if they
| lightened it up, all the CGI sets and blinkies would stand out
| like sore thumbs.
|
| On a related note: I can close my eyes and imagine myself
| walking around the bridge of Enterprise-D, touching the panels,
| sitting in the captain's chair. I can almost _feel_ the texture
| of the chairs, the friction of the carpet, the glassiness of
| the panels. Can 't do that with Discovery. When I close my
| eyes, I just see non-solid holograms. I can't imagine what
| would it be like to touch them.
|
| Physically based rendering, as awesome as it is, still seems to
| subtly fail in reproducing various kinds of materials. Between
| various games (including AAA productions) and movies I've seen
| over the years, I haven't encountered one where a CGI piece of
| metal actually looked like a piece of metal upon closer
| inspection. Everything looks like make-believe plastic.
| leephillips wrote:
| The "golden era" would consist of....TOS.
| gmueckl wrote:
| I'd advise you to look at some behind the scenes or blooper
| reel footage of Discovery. There's a lot more practical
| effects going on on the bridge than what I'd have thought.
| These see-through displays are actually practical and not
| post effects.
|
| I'm wondering if the darker look is because they film Picard
| and Discovery with multiple cameras and there's more crew and
| equipment on set that might show up in stray reflections.
| dekhn wrote:
| I spent an inordinate amount of time while watching the show just
| thinking about how you manage the computer systems on a
| spaceship, especially if you're a scrappy crew without a large
| corp's support.
|
| Presumably, every space ship needs bulletproof software routines
| for calculating trajectories, making burns at the right time,
| etc- a combination of real time hardware control and
| sophisticated math.
|
| But presumably, ships need to get updated in-flight, and upgraded
| routinely, and presumably, it doesn't make sense for your own
| ship to drift too far from the common development tree. This is
| starting to become a major software engineering problem- how do
| you manage a fleet of ship firmwares across a solar system?
| domano wrote:
| Why would ships need regular upgrades if they work fine? I
| imagine maintenance would include software updates when docking
| to a space station
| CleaveIt2Beaver wrote:
| Imagine a pirate vessel drifting through space, compromising
| ships' OSes with a LADAR- or comms-based zero-day.
| shakezula wrote:
| There will absolutely be space hackers taking advantage of
| this type of vulnerability, and I think that's the coolest
| shit my 12 year old brain could've come up with.
| dekhn wrote:
| A ship on the sea (or in space) is independent and things
| always come up. Pretty much the whole history of ships has
| shown that you need to make updates and modifications and get
| tech upgrades as/when possible.
| domano wrote:
| Well hardware maybe, but i think that software does not
| degrade the way hardware does. There is a lot of firmware
| which never gets updated and devices just keep working as
| long as the hardware is still ok.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And then even without these updates ships are fine running
| legacy software controlling obsolete hardware. As long as
| spares are available. Would a major navy, like the Martian
| one, keep their fleet up to date? Sure. Would it be done in
| flight? I don't think so. As today, this stuff is done
| during major maintenance in shipyards. Same goes for
| today's planes.
| NotEvil wrote:
| It can be an opensource program or a library that everybody
| uses. And corps can have there own proprietary program
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Why would it need to be upgraded? Does the math of calculating
| trajectories and timing change that often?
| dekhn wrote:
| No, those don't really change (there might be data updates to
| include newly discovered celestial objects). But any ship
| that operates in space will eventually need some custom work
| and some of that would need to be merged back into mainline
| or maintained as a patch.
|
| It would be necessary to upgrade if, for example, new devices
| were installed in the ship, which were developed after the
| original ship firmware was installed.
|
| All of this is already a problem, for example for the US
| Navy, https://news.usni.org/2021/04/12/navy-software-factory-
| the-f...
| hrishi wrote:
| I imagine some futuristic version of git where... basically git
| but they've got better merge algorithms after they've solve NP
| and P.
|
| You can sync to the trees of ships near you and catch up, and
| once in a while one of them gets to a station and updates to
| the tip of wherever development is at.
| shakezula wrote:
| In the show, they have tight beams for communication. In the
| Expanse universe, seems like that's how they'd run their
| updates.
| gmueckl wrote:
| I remember a comment by Adam Savge on one of his YouTube videos
| where he visited the sets. He also had a brief cameo in one
| episode (as a ceew member of the Arboghast, I believe), sitting
| at a terminal. He remarks that the terminal screen wasn't just
| showing a random animation, but had a fledged out menu system
| that changed screens on touch input. So he could actually "use"
| the station while acting instead of just making stuff up.
|
| As far as I know, a lot of films had only blank screens on set
| and the computer display was added in post, trying to match
| whatever "interaction" the actors came up with on the set.
| nirui wrote:
| You must mean this video series:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONBWBj9LnXQ
|
| I was wondering why the view-line of those actors was so on-
| point. Well, I got my answers.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| I think programming simple UI has become remarkably easier in
| the last 6-7 years thanks to programs like Unity3D that a
| single programmer can probably handle all the UI for the entire
| show with ease.
| hulitu wrote:
| Tell that to Google and Microsoft. MS was forced to abandon
| Win32 because it was so resource hungry. (bangs head)
| criddell wrote:
| Win32 hasn't been abandoned. It's the foundation that
| everything is built on.
|
| And in what way is the API resource hungry? You can write a
| Win32 hello world that is on the order of 1 KB.
| jordache wrote:
| This shop also does tremendous sci-fi UI design.
|
| https://territorystudio.com/project/the-martian/
| billynomates111 wrote:
| How would having a transparent device improve usability?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPOhKULOL4o
| girvo wrote:
| Spitballing: a large screen in the middle of a space ship being
| transparent would allow someone to see the entire bridge while
| still seeing what's on the screen, maybe?
|
| Personal hand held decided though? Not at all
| jeether wrote:
| All that transparent displays look good, but it's an awful design
| choice nonetheless.
| molbioguy wrote:
| Love the show and the UI displays on it are no exception. And the
| post was interesting to read, but was anyone else annoyed by the
| way images were displayed on the site? You have to click on each
| image to see it and then use the browser back button to get back
| to the post! There must be better ways to arrange viewing of
| groups of images.
| nathanasmith wrote:
| I haven't viewed the site on a desktop but on the iPad at least
| you tap on an image and then swipe to see the next ones. Also
| there's a close button in the top right to get back to the
| article.
| wruza wrote:
| _Viewing maps of space is perfectly suited to holographic
| displays. A 2D map is simply not adequate. Having a map of space
| projected in a hologram or even VR allows you to grasp the
| position of objects accurately in three dimensions._
|
| On the other hand, you have to rely on moving your head around to
| get a perspective. 3d is probably better, but these [1,2]
| animated images allow to see it in static as well. Can't find
| better examples quickly, but I hope one can get the idea.
|
| [1]
| https://www.google.ru/search?q=animated+parallax&tbm=isch&hl...
|
| [2]
| https://www.google.ru/search?q=animated+parallax&tbm=isch&hl...
| xbar wrote:
| Well done.
| d_burfoot wrote:
| One of the most unrealistic things about depictions of futuristic
| computer systems and UI design is that they almost always do
| exactly what the character wants with a minimum of hassle. No,
| technology in the future is going to cause as many problems and
| as much frustration as it does today. And those problems will be
| more keenly felt, because in space, your life depends on the
| technology working properly. There should be episodes where, for
| example, the main challenge and risk doesn't come from aliens or
| hostile humans, but from the fact that the OS running the ship's
| engines crashes and needs to be restarted every 5 minutes.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Of all the technology featured in The Expanse, I want the
| holographic displays that perfectly interpret your hand
| gestures the most.
| block_dagger wrote:
| Excellent point. Note that Solomon "Sol" Epstein dies as a
| direct result of his engine working too well and pressing him
| against his seat such that he couldn't turn it off.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Many of the Millenium Falcon scenes capture frustrating,
| malfunctioning technology in space very well.
|
| > will be more keenly felt, because in space, your life depends
| on the technology working properly.
|
| The look on Han's face when he goes to gun it into Hyperspace
| and there's that failing engine sound effect, as the Empire
| bears down on them.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I doubt they'll be running Windows 98. Now, I could see some
| poor interfaces that allow you to delete safety precautions by
| mistake...
| groby_b wrote:
| Modern aviation disagrees with you. Yes, systems fail, but they
| fail very rarely, and usually disasters are long chains of
| failures, not "need to restart the engine every 5 minutes".
|
| It's likely to assume the same will true for space travel,
| should it ever happen. Even in our current "duct tape and
| baling wire" stage of space flight, computer problems occur,
| but they're not regularly and frustrating, they are unique and
| pretty catastrophic.
|
| Your inflight entertainment system still won't work with your
| headphones because you have the wrong plugs, though ;)
| gknoy wrote:
| What gets me is not the interfaces to control things -- that
| seems believable -- but rather the ease/speed with which they
| answer questions about reams of data. Like, I work on a
| system with a database and to answer any complicated question
| I am like, "OK let me use the shell and write a query and
| check some stuff ... and then make sure that I'm asking the
| right question, and verify that this data looks right...",
| and here they are in a dozen (or 30) seconds finding all the
| craft that could have a telemetry that would intercept with
| some orbit, or cross-referencing passenger/crew manifests
| with other data.
|
| It bugs me but not enough not to enjoy the show. ;)
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> but from the fact that the OS running the ship 's engines
| crashes and needs to be restarted every 5 minutes._
|
| I would hope by the 23rd century that they've figured out that
| formally verified micro-kernel OSs are the way to go for
| mission-critical use cases like that.
| liaukovv wrote:
| Of course they figured it out, unfortunately aint nobody got
| time to rewrite all the software
| rtkwe wrote:
| True but if I ever wanted to watch people fumble with software
| I'd do some pair programming or do a demo.
|
| Also we know pretty well how to build stable rocket control
| software.
| slver wrote:
| That's not specific to technology. Applies also to dialog and
| action. I don't mind this, but I'm getting tired of the
| transparent screens and random graphics.
| tootie wrote:
| That was more or less the plot of 2001
| imhoguy wrote:
| Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
|
| HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
| pushrax wrote:
| There's one scene where a guy dies because his voice control
| malfunctioned and he couldn't use the manual controls because
| he was under too many Gs of acceleration.
| akiselev wrote:
| It's a flashback to the invention of the fusion drive that
| allowed humanity to colonize the belts and outer planets, no
| less. It took place over a century before the events of the
| series, which itself is estimated to be around 2350 AD [1].
| Clearly they've had plenty of time to not only work out the
| kinks but integrate the technology into society at a level
| far beyond what we see today with kids and their smartphones.
| The rock hoppers likely start developing the muscle memory
| needed to survive in space by grade school.
|
| [1] https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_and_chronology
| Steltek wrote:
| Unless you're more of a city belter...
| akiselev wrote:
| Which is probably why they show Detective Miller dropping
| critical gear first time he's on a space walk (he had
| never left the Ceres station before the events in the
| series).
| golergka wrote:
| If the character is a professional software operator, someone
| like a programmer who spent years on his Emacs setup, then it
| actually might be realistic.
| eric4smith wrote:
| Very good to watch a "Hard Sci-Fi" show like the expanse. Not
| many of these out there.
|
| Not just the UI, but The tech is realistic and possible and
| usually backed up by basic scientific principles.
|
| The social scenarios are also quite likely in the future.
|
| Even the language makes sense - a kind of hodge-Podge universal
| accent.
|
| And it tangentially originates from Larry Niven's belter stories
| just before mankind sent the ram robots to distant stars.
|
| The Expanse is everything to like.
| manmal wrote:
| I'm so looking forward to the last book. Reportedly it will be
| released on November 18.
| hnzix wrote:
| I love the fact that they goofed the physics involving a wrench
| in one of the earlier episodes, so they got help fact checking
| the physics for future shows and the wrench has been included
| as an easter egg / running joke to remind them to strive for
| realism.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyV3GZ9xnGM&t=3140s (NSFW
| language)
| mavhc wrote:
| They also talked about having to teach the VFX people
| physics, and they got much better after the first season.
| shakezula wrote:
| There is a scene in one of the later seasons where a
| character pours whiskey into glasses on the moon, and it's
| very much obscured and in the background, and they _still_
| made sure that the liquid pours out more slowly and
| splashes up much higher than it would normally. Honestly
| some of the best attention to detail in sci-fi I've ever
| seen.
| block_dagger wrote:
| This is relatively true. _spoiler alert_ Does not hold for the
| alien technology, which isn 't explained well at all (proto
| molecule, gates, slow zone, etc)
| gregmac wrote:
| The characters don't understand how it works, which is a key
| part of the main storyline.
|
| _spoiler alert_
|
| The books are a couple seasons ahead of the show, and this
| becomes and even more prominent plot point.
|
| It's internally consistent so far, which is more important
| IMHO. What I mean by this is there's definitely things that
| are effectively "magic" to us, but not in the way lazy story
| writers use it (think ST:TNG where they just invent some
| technobabble that solves the problem in the last 5 mins of
| the episode).
|
| I particularly liked where Detective Miller explains to
| Holden why he can see him, effectively saying something like
| "there's a few billion neurons in the human brain, like a
| massive keyboard - we just have to push the right combination
| of buttons"
| hef19898 wrote:
| Usually I consider internal inconsistencies and the
| resulting deus-ex machina moments as lazy writing, at best.
| What Star Trek achieved, especially TNG and VOY, was
| creating a completely consistent universe by using techno
| babble just this side of "realistic" that allowed them to
| get away with their other stories. Some of which are really
| great. Still, since the Expense came out I think it shows
| how un scientific Star Trek is.
| goatlover wrote:
| The Q in star trek just snap their fingers. No
| technobabble needed.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I love Q. He has some Loki-esque characteristics.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| With a romantic noir space detective and dastardly space
| pirates! What more could you ask for?
| alex_anglin wrote:
| Vomit zombies, of course.
| gbrown_ wrote:
| A good cup of coffee seems hard to come by.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Chrisjen Avasarala cursing like a trucker!
| stefanfisk wrote:
| She's certainly the character that I think they got the
| most wrong. Besides the general mannerisms, the fact that
| she's all for torture and misc other shitty behavior
| feels completely off to me.
| bityard wrote:
| What do you mean by "most wrong?" Compared to her
| character in the book, or the character you'd like her to
| be instead?
|
| I think Avasarala is actually one of the better written
| characters. As far as character development goes, she has
| one of the best arcs in the whole series. In the
| beginning, she is a politician and power broker who takes
| zero shit from anybody, especially the men who are
| supposed to be her superiors. Various tragedies like the
| Earth nearly getting wiped out nearly turn her into a
| bloodthirsty Belter-killing monster. She eventually
| softens substantially and only wants to do what's best
| for the human race as a whole. (But still taking shit
| from no one.) That she is an older Indian woman whose
| language would make a lumberjack blush is just an
| interesting twist.
|
| One of the central themes of the Expanse (the books and
| the show) is that unlike most plots in books or movies,
| there are no good guys here. There are only people who
| are driven by some greater purpose (greed, power, loyalty
| to government, justice, etc). They do good things, they
| do bad things, they do stupid things. They are
| complicated, just like real people.
|
| As an example, the characters that we might try to think
| of as the "good guys" are the crew of the Roci. Holden is
| a navel-gazing military wash-out who nearly starts an
| interplanetary war between Earth and Mars via pure
| speculation. And NEVER apologizes for it. Amos'
| background isn't explored in much detail in the show, but
| in the books he worked for a brutal crime boss on Earth
| and more or less just kills whoever gets in his way or
| because he thought they might. Alex was an absentee
| father and husband. Naomi abandoned her young child. And
| ALL of them stole their ship from the people of Mars.
| (They use the euphemism "Legitimate Salvage" in sorry-
| but-not-sorry kind of way.)
|
| Finally, context is important. In the future of The
| Expanse, human civilization is pretty much A Fucking
| Mess. The Earth is overcrowded, half the population is on
| welfare, and crime is rampant. Mars is effectively a
| military state. In the Belt, you are as likely to die
| from a random equipment malfunction as saying the wrong
| thing in a bar. So a lot of parallels with countries in
| present-day Earth, just amplified.
|
| Anywho, I don't agree with torture either, but it's
| hardly a surprise that it happens in that universe.
| gknoy wrote:
| I love how you point out that the characters are all
| believable, flawed people. I love Avasarala's character
| (and the actress' voice on top of that is like icing on a
| cake), and the way she plays the Power game so well. I
| really dislike that her character would torture, but at
| the same time she's like a well-written villain. She
| doesn't quite fit on an alignment chart.
|
| > ALL of them stole their ship from the people of Mars
|
| I'm not sure how it is in the book, but in the TV show, a
| ranking officer of the Martian navy explicitly tells the
| ship that they are in control. As legitimate salvage
| goes, it seems pretty defensible. The only reason they
| don't go deeper into it seems, to me, to be because
| explaining that (and proving it) would be Very Hard, and
| they'd rather avoid the risk.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| > a ranking officer of the Martian navy explicitly tells
| the ship that they are in control.
|
| Yes, that's how they got possession of it and managed to
| make use of it. It is not at all the same thing as
| relinquishing ownership, which that Martian officer would
| not be able to do in any case because he didn't own the
| ship. The reasonable expectation is that they use the
| ship to do the job they needed it for, and then return it
| to it's proper owners.
|
| This is, of course, only the second worst case of piracy
| thinly disguised as salvage in the Expanse. The title for
| the worst case of course goes for Behemoth.
| xenophonf wrote:
| Truckers WISH they could curse like Avasarala!
| f00zz wrote:
| I liked the hard sci-fi elements in The Expanse, but the idea
| of people mining asteroids in poor third world-like conditions
| makes absolutely no sense to me. Or an evil megacorp that
| murders millions of people with no adequate explanation.
| Couldn't get past the first book.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| What do you think the first Mars colonies will be like? I bet
| living on an Siberian oil rig will be like a vacation
| compared to Mars, except you can't return to civilization if
| you've had enough.
| passerby1 wrote:
| Interesting comparison. How in your mind is a Siberian oil
| rig different from others?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| ...or any oil rig north of the polar circle... hostile
| environmental conditions combined with too many people
| crammed into too little living space and nowhere to go.
| Basically a prison camp, but with (I assume) higher than
| average wages (but nothing to do with the money except
| sending it home to the family on Earth).
|
| (PS: this of course assumes that's there's anything to do
| on Mars, it's not clear to me what the Mars colonists
| would actually do there all day, except constructing the
| actual colony - but what then?).
| FredPret wrote:
| Wages on rigs are not just higher than average, they are
| in fact eye-wateringly high
| Arrath wrote:
| As well they should be considering the isolation, usually
| severe conditions, back-breaking work, and all the
| potential danger.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_Alpha
| hef19898 wrote:
| Only on the European ones. The UAE ones use cheap labor
| for everything not needing engineering masters.
| chewbacha wrote:
| Well, compared to the Santa Barbara oil rigs, I bet it's
| a bit colder in the winter.
| viraptor wrote:
| Like almost every Mars colony in sci-fi works. So think an
| Australian mining town, but you only fly-in, not fly-out.
| erellsworth wrote:
| We have people right here on earth mining in actual third-
| world countries. It's not hard to imagine that phenomenon
| being exported to asteroid mining. In fact, it seems quite
| likely.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Both of those things happen on Earth today. Haven't seen the
| show or read the book or whatever, but those both seem
| totally believable to me.
|
| Earth mining is often done in horrendous and poor conditions.
| Megacorps and industry do kill millions of people on earth
| today with little explanation or repercussions.
| dagw wrote:
| Earth mining (and truck driving) is moving more and more
| towards robots and automation. In a 100 years time there
| probably won't be many traditional miners or truck drivers
| left on earth. So why does it make financial sense to send
| humans (and all the infrastructure they need) out to the
| asteroid belts to work as truckers and miners, when you
| could just send robots.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 1. People want to go into the solar system. They need
| something to do.
|
| 2. We're nowhere near the level of smart, self-repairing
| automation. Given the distances involved, there's value
| in having a community of smart, agile, self-replicating
| flesh-and-blood humans to tackle unknown engineering
| challenges as they appear.
|
| 3. People keep expanding, and settle for good. Years
| pass. An interplanetary economy forms. People on the
| further edges focus on resource extraction and building
| up infrastructure for long-term settlement - but they
| still need things only Earth can provide, like _food_
| (and organics in general). So they trade.
|
| 4. Decades pass. On the outer edges of humanity, people
| are born who've never seen Earth. They start to develop
| their own culture and identity. Mars is being colonized.
| The trade arrangements is stable - Earth sells organics
| and R&D, they buy lots of resources to use for in-orbit
| manufacturing.
|
| 5. Many more decades pass. Mars is full of people who
| were born there, and never seen Earth in the first place.
| They trade with Earth and the space dwellers - the
| Belters, in Expanse - for resources. They develop their
| own culture too. Over generations, the Belters become
| adapted to low-gravity conditions, and can no longer
| survive Earth's gravity - cementing the cultural divide.
|
| 6. More decades pass, you arrive at the world of The
| Expanse. Mars and the Belt both declared independence, as
| they're their own separate cultures and nations. Trade
| dependencies, however, remain. Earth and Mars both have
| the advantage of infrastructure density and crucial
| resources abundance - they're developing their planets
| and surrounding orbital space. Stuck in an arms race,
| they develop superior military. Meanwhile, the Belters
| are stuck in a disadvantaged position. They own most
| resources in the Solar System, but can't effectively
| control them with inferior technology. And none of the
| resources are actually _missing_ on Earth and Mars - they
| 're just more expensive to get. The Belt has all the
| riches, but no leverage to turn them into wealth and
| power.
|
| That's how you _arrive_ at "mining asteroids in poor
| third world-like conditions".
| bserge wrote:
| In 100 years we may just as well have run out of
| resources for robots while (poor and desperate) people
| are aplenty.
|
| They'd probably be volunteering to go, no one would need
| to force them.
|
| Just a "fun" fact I discovered recently: it's cheaper to
| buy new powerbanks and salvage the battery cells than buy
| the battery cells themselves. It is also cheaper to buy a
| whole new laptop than replace a laptop processor. That is
| insane levels of wastefulness.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Sometimes human livestock is cheaper than automation,
| especially when the value of life is cheapened.
|
| As an example, slave societies don't have industrial
| revolutions because there's never a need to invest in
| labour-saving devices. Indeed, the Romans knew of water
| wheels and windmills but never used them much because you
| could just buy a few slaves. If slavery hadn't been
| introduced to Rome, who knows what alt-history would've
| emerged from the Roman engineering prowess.
| dagw wrote:
| The huge difference is that keeping humans alive on earth
| is really cheap and easy. Air and water is basically
| free, and with some tiny scraps of land you can basically
| make your slaves feed themselves via subsistence farming.
| They don't have to generate much value to be profitable.
|
| Keeping humans alive in space on the other hand is
| stupidly expensive.
| usrusr wrote:
| That's the key to that belter setting in The Expanse:
| their continued survival _is_ expensive. They are refused
| access to all the places where their sustenance could be
| cheaper and this makes them infinitely exploitable.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Keeping humans alive in space on the other hand is
| stupidly expensive._
|
| It is now. But the most expensive part of that is
| shuttling people and infrastructure up the Earth's
| gravity well.
|
| Imagine that our society retains some level of sanity for
| the next couple decades. In that scenario, we'll continue
| on the path of expanding to space, starting with a
| rudimentary cislunar economy. This means near-Earth
| asteroid mining and in-space construction, which lets us
| drastically reduce the amount of mass needed to be
| launched into orbit. That economy would not be
| independent - it would sell resources mined in space (to
| be shipped to the surface) and manufacturing services,
| hopefully moving most heavy industry upwell. In exchange,
| they'd buy food, organics and specialized components from
| Earth.
|
| Imagine couple decades of iterative improvement on this.
| Eventually, humans will be able to survive long-term in
| space with minimum input of terrestrial resources. E.g.
| almost-closed-cycle greenhouses that can supply a ship
| with food for a decade until they need restocking with
| substances that can't yet be created in space. Such
| capacity allows people to expand further, access more
| resources and ship them back.
|
| What's the value for Earth in this? Continuing the
| exponential growth past the carrying capacity of the
| planet. The more industry is moved upwell, the more space
| there is downwell for habitation, consumption and service
| economy.
|
| Why not robots? Light lag. To me, the challenges we need
| to overcome to send humans into interplanetary space are
| _easier_ than those required for fully autonomic, AI-
| powered robots. If that 's true, then we'll _have_ to
| make interplanetary expansion a mixed human /robot
| endeavor. The time it takes for a signal from Earth to
| reach Mars is between 5 to 20 minutes - so 10-40 minutes
| RTT. This is unacceptable for any kind of serious remote
| operation, so even if robots do most of the work, you
| still want human controllers to be on the work site.
|
| Once you start sending mixed human/robot on long-duration
| missions far from Earth, dumber robots operated more
| directly by humans - and, importantly, _serviceable on-
| site_ , will be the cheapest option.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| In Space Truckers, they hauled square pigs in space,
| because they could pack them more tightly into shipping
| containers.
|
| Also like The Expanse: shadowy mega-corps, and space
| pirates!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Truckers
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgdeaHr5LT0&ab_channel=Mo
| vie...
|
| Square pigs:
|
| http://cinephilecrocodile.blogspot.com/2018/06/space-
| trucker...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVH9o7OMAkU&ab_channel=Th
| eMo...
| HeckFeck wrote:
| > http://cinephilecrocodile.blogspot.com/2018/06/space-
| trucker...
|
| Both the film and that blog's stylesheet are the
| embodiment of 'so bad it has to be good'.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Related, if you want to discover a new class of horror,
| read up on how shipping industry operates.
| f00zz wrote:
| Asteroid mining, if it ever happens, won't be done by poor
| exploited people toiling under the sun with pickaxes. It
| will be very expensive, and most likely fully automated.
| Even today Rio Tinto operations are becoming increasingly
| more automated. And a civilization that can mine asteroids
| should be unimaginably rich by our standards.
|
| Sure, there were horrible industrial disasters like Bhopal,
| but in the book the aforementioned megacorp kills millions
| seemingly out of sheer evil. It felt too videogamey for my
| taste.
| dstick wrote:
| Sheer evil? It wasn't personal or aimed at one specific
| group of people. It's just the cost of doing business.
| Like other siblings said: that's happening today all over
| the world. From Amazon warehouse workers to miners.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I think a civilization can be unimaginably rich and still
| have imaginably poor people toiling away at lower levels.
|
| With a laissez-faire system, the economic factors would
| decide whether machine or man labor is the most cost
| effective resource. When the mechanized means of
| production become more intelligent, faster, and accurate,
| what can the man or woman without any machines of their
| own do for money? They could work for less than the
| machines in dangerous conditions, doing the type of work
| that machines are too valuable for.
|
| The optimist can also imagine a utopia where the need to
| labor vanishes and we collectively benefit from advances
| in science and technology, but that's not a given.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Our history, and a lot of countries right now, proof you
| right.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Not sheer evil, profit, right? That seems about right.
|
| My favorite line from Sorry To Bother You.
|
| > So, you making half-human half-horse fucking things so
| you can make more money?
|
| > Yeah, basically. I just didn't want you to think I was
| crazy. That I was doing this for no reason. Because this
| isn't irrational.
| reader_mode wrote:
| Sci-fi is full of thinly veiled social commentary. The
| sci-fi aspect distracts you from the fact that messages
| and themes are shallow and don't really stand on their
| own. I loved Star Trek as a kid, it inspired my
| imagination and I didn't really pick up on the social
| messages, watching it now it's sort of comical or just
| boring. But I do get a nostalgic feeling from it and it's
| entertaining enough to be second screen distraction
| material when doing boring tasks.
| inopinatus wrote:
| It is not thinly veiled: sci-fi is social commentary.
| Even Greg Egan dialling up the quantum mechanics is
| ultimately doing so to explore the societal consequences.
| As you point out, only children think it is actually
| about the damn robots and spaceships.
| goatlover wrote:
| Data and Voyager's holographic doctor being central
| characters where their personhood is called into question
| sort of makes it about robots. There's a lot of science
| fiction scenarios with the holodeck, transporter, and
| various space anomalies for it to only be social
| commentary. Sometimes Star Trek does very much deal with
| science fiction scenarios.
| reader_mode wrote:
| Yeah but the need to place it in sci-fi setting feels
| like adding fluff to mask the fact that the commentary is
| weak/trivial/boring or detached from reality/wrong.
|
| I wish they made more sci-fi about robots and spaceships,
| I find that stuff entertaining and inspiring. If I want
| social commentary I have better sources than sci-fi
| writers.
|
| And there is Sci-Fi that's not social commentary.
| bullfightonmars wrote:
| > I loved Star Trek as a kid
|
| > And there is Sci-Fi that's not social commentary.
|
| I'm not sure that this is true. I think you might be
| confusing the Action and Adventure genres with Sci-Fi.
| Star Trek, for example, is almost 100% social commentary.
| reader_mode wrote:
| The Martian is the first thing that comes to mind as good
| Sci-Fi with very little social commentary, there is some
| politics/drama but it's mostly about the Sci-Fi.
| sveme wrote:
| It isn't sheer evil in the novels, the corp wants to
| assess what's happening to people on a large scale if
| they become infected by the protomolecule. It's a study
| in a contained space.
|
| Not unlikely, I'd say.
| p_l wrote:
| Not that much different from unwilling participants in
| USA biological experiments in 20th century, like giving
| radioactive injections to pregnant mothers to observe
| damage to foetus...
| goatlover wrote:
| The corporate scientists have also figured out that the
| protomolecule needs biomass. And the head scientist has
| transhumanist aspirations, with a justification that
| humanity needs to evolve quickly to deal with the god-
| like aliens that sent it. Not that it's a good
| justification, but in the first book, it's actually
| presented as a big temptation, even for some of the good
| characters.
| bserge wrote:
| The minimum wage in some countries is 10+ times higher
| than in others, yet the poorest citizens still spend
| everything on rented rooms (not even flats), food and
| transportation, no savings.
|
| From what I've seen, cost of living will increase to the
| maximum level the poorest can afford it (which is why I
| don't see how UBI can work without massive changes in
| other areas).
| sbarre wrote:
| Is it hard to believe that an expansion to the rest of
| the solar system will be anything other than yet another
| gold rush, in the same way it has been for every "new
| frontier"?
|
| And I don't just mean literal gold or mining.. The
| Internet in the late 90s and early 2000s, cryptocurrency
| today, etc... there will always be early adopters and
| entrepreneurial risk-takers (of varying levels of
| competency) who precede, and sometimes outlast, the
| corporations where there's money to be made..
|
| In the Expanse lore, this happened because of the Epstein
| drive, a relatively cheap type of fusion drive that
| allowed humanity to go further faster, even in small
| scrappy ships.
|
| So it would make sense that early pioneers would rush out
| to the belt and beyond to stake their claims..
|
| Look at mining in the third world today. Not so
| automated, right? Why would it be any different out in
| the belt?
|
| Hundreds of years and millions of people trying to eke
| out a living, particularly when you also consider the
| state of planet Earth in the Expanse (essentially a giant
| welfare state).. that creates an third-world equivalent
| out there, and I think it's pretty plausible..
|
| Anyways, I respect your take on things regardless.. this
| is just mine.. the story gets so much better beyond book
| 1, if you're ever thinking about reconsidering. :-)
| f00zz wrote:
| Hey, thanks for the comment. I totally respect the
| authors for writing hard sci-fi space opera. It's just
| that... the bleak hopeless future theme is getting a bit
| long in the tooth, you know? If I want to feel depressed
| I can just turn on the daily news.
|
| Incidentally, can anyone recommend some _hopeful_ science
| fiction? "Schismatrix" is probably my favorite.
| girvo wrote:
| Ian M Banks' "Culture" series can be kind of hopeful in a
| way, in that the entire existence of the Culture itself
| is a neat space utopia. The stories themselves aren't
| always hopeful in the small, though, but it's that
| contrast that makes it so good!
| webmaven wrote:
| _> Ian M Banks' "Culture" series can be kind of hopeful
| in a way, in that the entire existence of the Culture
| itself is a neat space utopia._
|
| Worth noting that Earth isn't part of the Culture, it has
| been left in ignorance to stare out at an apparently
| silent universe.
| f00zz wrote:
| That's one of the themes in "Schismatrix": part of
| mankind turn their back on technology (blamed for
| disasters like the melting of the ice caps) and stay on
| Earth, remaining stagnant for centuries. The remainder,
| not allowed to go back to Earth, colonize the solar
| system and evolve into new species.
| f00zz wrote:
| Thanks! I've been meaning to read those for a while. I'll
| start with "Consider Phlebas".
| Symmetry wrote:
| Constellation Games, The Martian, Too Like the Lightning,
| Moving Mars, Nexus, Blue Remembered Earth,and The
| Caryatids are some hopeful SF that's come out recently
| that I recommend.
| f00zz wrote:
| Great list, thank you so much! Constellation Games looks
| fun.
| lenkite wrote:
| If a third-world worker is cheaper than a fully automated
| system, then you can bet corporations will use them. The
| craft delivering the miners to the asteroid might be
| automated though. The back-to-base craft will be made
| operational only after video verification that the quota
| has been met.
| m4rtink wrote:
| So Hard Rock Galactic but without hard core space
| dwarves? ;-)
| emteycz wrote:
| Yeah... but how would it be cheaper? Caring for humans is
| hard. Human societies are complex. All of that is a huge
| risk.
| lenkite wrote:
| Easy - the caring part is outsourced to a [Contract
| Agency] registered in a nation with lax human rights
| regulations.
|
| If mental and long-term health is not a concern, minimal-
| subsistence living conditions can be made for pennies. If
| someone snaps or drops-out, they can be replaced from
| thousands of others on the long application list.
| emteycz wrote:
| We're talking about space here. Minimal living conditions
| absolutely can't be made for pennies, and introduce
| enormous risks of destruction even without any human
| inside. And the energy requirements...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Fusion reactors and a bubble holding something just shy
| of one bar pressurized breathable air. Cheap enough when
| we talk about industrial scale asteroid mining. You just
| have to care a lot less about the people in these bubbles
| in space than we do now.
| pnutjam wrote:
| Not sheer evil. They don't see people, just assets. If
| you have poor performing assets, you get rid of them. If
| you find a use for assets that is potentially more
| productive, why wouldn't you use them that way even if it
| destroys the asset in the process. It's all about
| profit/loss.
|
| Read more history and you'll see this is pretty much SOP
| for humans.
| usrusr wrote:
| The thing is, they don't mine asteroids with pickaxes.
| They aren't up there brecause mining requires it, they
| are mining because existing up there requires the trade
| from mining and they aren't allowed to exists anywhere
| else. Perhaps the numbers are a little exaggerated, but
| you don't need many to make a space habitat appear
| hopelessly crowded. Take the inhabitants of Wyoming, coop
| them up on the existing fleet of cruise ships and see how
| crowded it will get. (a quick glance at Wikipedia numbers
| suggests that they will fit, but it won't be nice)
| krapp wrote:
| >but the idea of people mining asteroids in poor third world-
| like conditions makes absolutely no sense to me. Or an evil
| megacorp that murders millions of people with no adequate
| explanation.
|
| I haven't read the books but this just seems like the
| "British imperial colonialism but in space" trope typical of
| space opera.
| ilogik wrote:
| I really hope you're being sarcastic
| lucideer wrote:
| I assumed it was but noone else replying here seems to
| agree...
|
| "/s" really is needed I guess
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I dunno, Musk has already indicated he'd put people in feudal
| serfdom to pay off a loan if they want a trip to Mars. And
| he'd get people volunteering for it.
| ben_w wrote:
| I've seen people claim that, but the closest I've actually
| seen from Musk is this tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/el
| onmusk/status/12179918536156774...
|
| Do you have a better citation? Because loans are not
| feudalism -- and if you want to insist they are, only
| Islamic Law jurisdictions (which bans interest rather than
| loans but eh) are non-feudal.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _loans are not feudalism_
|
| Loans in themselves are not 100% "feudal", though I don't
| think it's a binary "is feudal" -vs- "is not feudal";
| more of a "how feudal". The implication above was that
| loan _repayment_ via mandatory labour is feudal (or at
| least "more feudal").
|
| > _if you want to insist they are, only Islamic Law
| jurisdictions (which bans interest rather than loans but
| eh) are non-feudal_
|
| That's a pretty big "eh" tbh; I don't many people think
| interest is the problematic part of loans. Don't think
| Islamic Law can be excluded here.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| No entity based on Earth has juristiction on Mars. Over
| there, SpaceX will be the law. I don't see them forgiving
| loans and shuttling "contract-breakers" back to Earth for
| free.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| That's false. The Outer Space Treaty means anything
| launched from Earth remains the responsibility of the
| nation who launched it. SpaceX most certainly is under
| the jurisdiction of the US and will remain so for the
| foreseeable future.
| dkersten wrote:
| Will it make a difference? If it's a one way trip, what's
| earth going to do about it if some guy decides to play
| warlord on mars and commits atrocities to do so?
| ben_w wrote:
| If that person owns the rocket company which got everyone
| there in the first place? The response will probably
| include seizure of all Earth based assets including the
| rockets, use of those rockets to fly to Mars, and by way
| of this give the idiot who thought it was a good idea to
| be obviously dangerous while in charge of interplanetary
| ballistic missiles a personal introduction to dangerous
| end of the first real human space marine.
|
| Needless to say, the likely-Earth-based shareholders are
| likely to be unimpressed by such a colonial government.
|
| If they don't own the rocket company and don't threaten
| the main colony? That might end up like Jonestown.
| dkersten wrote:
| > If they don't own the rocket company and don't threaten
| the main colony?
|
| And if they do threaten the main colony or even take it
| over entirely?
|
| My point with my comment was that because mars is far
| away, any earth response on mars would be rather slow.
| Mars would have plenty of time to react if earth ships
| soldiers over or whatever and they wouldn't care about
| seizure of earth assets. As for ballistic missiles, to
| what end? Kill all the innocent colonists to get rid of
| the warlord?
|
| Even if it was the person that owns the rockets, if
| they're on mars, they may no longer care about the earth
| assets. I mean, if its a one way trip, they wouldn't be
| able to do anything with them other than send supplies. I
| assume if they were to play warlord, its at a point where
| they no longer care about the supplies. If earth used
| those rockets to invade mars, mars would still have
| plenty of time to come up with a plan to shoot them down
| or whatever.
|
| > Needless to say, the likely-Earth-based shareholders
| are likely to be unimpressed by such a colonial
| government.
|
| If mars is a one-way trip away, why would they care about
| Earth-based shareholders?
|
| Not saying such a takeover would end well for mars, just
| that the isolation leaves it wide open for some maniac to
| play warlord. I also think its more likely that its not
| the person who owns the rockets, if someone does decide
| to do that.
| ben_w wrote:
| Bit of a shift, given that before your earlier comment we
| were discussing "is Musk and SpaceX being a bit feudal",
| but sure.
|
| Military action between the main colony and outliers is
| going to involve not-yet-invented doctrine and tactics
| because we don't yet have enough experience of building
| such settlements to properly consider what warfare in or
| between them will look like.
|
| One thing we can say is: anyone who looks like a
| dictator, and is based on Mars, and who has
| interplanetary rockets, is a threat _to Earth_ , because
| while stealth in space can always be beaten by having
| more sensor coverage, it's really hard to action that
| information. Likewise, Mars will see the Terran space
| marines coming and, depending on industrialisation level,
| either have a _really_ hard time doing anything about it,
| or find they're being preemptively RFG'd to stop them
| doing that to Earth.
|
| (Hello MAD my old friend / how about a nice game of
| chess?)
| dkersten wrote:
| > Bit of a shift, given that before your earlier comment
| we were discussing "is Musk and SpaceX being a bit
| feudal", but sure.
|
| Well, I was responding to:
|
| > The Outer Space Treaty means anything launched from
| Earth remains the responsibility of the nation who
| launched it. SpaceX most certainly is under the
| jurisdiction of the US and will remain so for the
| foreseeable future.
|
| My response being that jurisdiction may not mean
| anything, simply because of the distance involved. That
| was my point. If mars is a one way trip, then earths
| influence may turn out to be quite minimal, simply
| because its hard and slow to move between earth and mars.
| If earths influence is minimal, then jurisdiction is a
| rather moot point.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| Oh, that's good to know. I believed the OST meant that no
| signatories are allowed to claim extra-terrestrial land.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| ...until the inevitable Mars colony rebellion...
| ben_w wrote:
| If I was a gambler, I'd think in terms of _at best_ 2:1
| odds of SpaceX going bankrupt before any Mars colony is
| capable of rebelling.
| viraptor wrote:
| It's all speculation of course, but "with loans
| available" sounds like it's SpaceX that will offer the
| loans. And how can you repay them after arrival, apart
| from working on a colony designed and controlled by
| SpaceX? This basically smells of "we'll offer you cheap
| food and tools at the company store".
| ben_w wrote:
| Does the colony itself have to be owned by the transport
| company?
|
| At Musk's target price for Mars flights, someone as rich
| as Bezos could pay for half a million people to go to
| Mars. (That said, if I had Bezos' money, I'd buy flights
| from SpaceX to build a factory on the Moon to research
| space-based mining and manufacturing, and launch loops,
| with a view to expanding that into a full-blown colony
| over time).
| sangnoir wrote:
| > At Musk's target price for Mars flights, someone as
| rich as Bezos could pay for half a million people to go
| to Mars.
|
| That won't matter if SpaceX has a monopoly on the air
| they breath, the food they eat and the water they drink.
| One of the first legal questions they will grapple with
| is "Does earth law apply on Mars/to Martian citizens? Or
| is Bezos' contract moot"
|
| Look at the history of colonization if you want to see
| the dynamic of human nature/greed/fiefdoms away from the
| mother country that is several-month's journey away. The
| Dutch East India company or the British South Africa
| Company may be decent case-studies, the only difference
| being that they could "live off the land" and exploit the
| natives. There are no natives on Mars, but I can't rule
| out exploitation.
| ben_w wrote:
| > That won't matter if SpaceX has a monopoly on the air
| they breath, the food they eat and the water they drink.
|
| Does the colony itself have to be owned by the transport
| company?
|
| _Any_ of the colony?
|
| _Including_ the life support, the factories which make
| the life support, the mining equipment which digs up the
| resources these factories use, or anything else?
|
| I'm not expecting great things from human nature, but I
| expect Terran governments to _forcefully insist_ on non-
| Monopolistic behaviour very quickly, even in the absence
| of abuse of power, as they'll be lobbied by both
| potential investors and military hawks with "isolationism
| bad" rhetoric.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > [...]I expect Terran governments to forcefully insist
| on non-Monopolistic behaviour very quickly
|
| _All_ of the Terran governments? I think it would be
| trivial to play different governments with launch
| capability against each other, especially if you can mine
| asteroids (or have technology that 's almost there and
| can promise to supply cooperative governments raw
| materials in exchange of access to a launch complex and
| their domestic food market). The promises of riches in
| the colonies drove competition among colonizing
| countries, I don't see how it would be any different, it
| would be trivial to set up subsidiaries in the
| US/Russia/China/France and see who bites first.
| emteycz wrote:
| By working for the other companies there, investing on
| the Martian stock market, playing poker, marrying a rich
| partner...
|
| A repayable loan is not feudalism.
| meowster wrote:
| What happens when those people have kids? Do the kids owe
| their soul to the company store?
| hef19898 wrote:
| US history answers that question for you. For the first
| colonists becoming rich as sell as for their imported
| cheap labor force.
| ronnier wrote:
| I really like the vocabulary and use of words, such as "tight
| beam", "space him" and others. I think it's a very creative
| show and one of my favorites at this point. I enjoy the sound
| track too.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Not to burst your bubble, but "tightbeam" and "space" (as a
| verb meaning "to kill by exposure to the vacuum of space")
| are both quite common and old usages in science fiction --
| they aren't unique to _The Expanse_.
|
| "Tightbeam" was in use as early as the 1930s, by E. E. Smith.
| Interestingly, this means the term was coined before lasers
| were even invented! https://sfdictionary.com/view/1943/tight-
| beam
|
| Meanwhile, Robert Heinlein was writing about "spacing" people
| in 1952: https://sfdictionary.com/view/400/space
| shoto_io wrote:
| I agree with you on almost all points. The realism of the
| series was what I really liked about it.
|
| I stopped watching it though once the "protomolecule" stuff
| started. What is backed by science about it?
| bityard wrote:
| The whole point of the entire series is that the
| protomolecule is an unknown quantity. They don't know
| (exactly) where it came from, how it works, what it's for.
| Only that it is extremely dangerous. And then plots are built
| around that. If they knew (and explained) how it worked, then
| all their problems would be solved and the show would end.
| Beltiras wrote:
| In my opinion they get one "pass". Science fiction is best
| when you have one thing changed in the world and ask the
| question "How does this world behave?". OK, so the Expanse
| changes 2 things. Constant acceleration is possible,
| protomolecule is a thing.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| TVTropes calls this the One Big Lie, on their scales of
| Sci-Fi hardness. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Mai
| n/MohsScaleOfScien...
| Symmetry wrote:
| Atomic rockets did some math on the Epstein drive and it's
| theoretically possible, though well outside known
| engineering. It's supposed to have an exhaust velocity of
| .036 c and the theoretical max for fusion drives is well
| above that.
|
| http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/engines.php#id
| -...
| DennisP wrote:
| Besides that I think most of the plot wouldn't be all
| that different with slower drives, there'd just be longer
| stretches of nothing happening and more spinning stuff.
| splatcollision wrote:
| One of Philip K Dick's essays about Sci-fi mentions this as
| well, as a way to make a world that 'doesn't fall apart'...
|
| Search found me this: https://web.archive.org/web/200801250
| 30037/http://deoxy.org/...
|
| and previous discussion!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23500469
| gbrown_ wrote:
| That'll be the "fiction" part of the science fiction.
| api wrote:
| AFAIK nothing there violates known laws of physics or
| mathematics. Very far fetched? Yes. Impossible? Maybe, maybe
| not. Keep in mind that the protomolecule is apparently the
| work of alien intelligences considerably beyond our
| intellectual capacity and far older.
|
| That kind of thing doesn't bother me. I don't think a dog
| could even comprehend a wheel. Even within the same species,
| major advances can look like magic to earlier generations. A
| top-tier scientist from the 19th century may well have
| pronounced just about all of today's digital devices
| impossible science fiction. " _Billions_ of calculations per
| _second_ in something in your _pocket_ that runs on a
| _battery_ you can _recharge_? " Lots of stretches there for a
| scientist from 1820. There are still people (who are not
| stupid) who don't believe we went to the moon.
|
| Hard sci-fi just means a story that doesn't instantly fail
| undergrad physics and whose speculative physics are credible
| enough that a typical physicist won't roll their eyes.
|
| Wormholes and warp drive, for example, have not been
| conclusively ruled out. Most physicists _doubt_ you could
| build them in the foreseeable future (or maybe ever), but
| nobody 's shown a reason they would "break physics."
|
| Faster than light motion or reactionless drives that generate
| conventional momentum are however believed to be impossible.
|
| It leads to some counterintuitive stuff. Giant massive ships
| that silently hover in the sky without blowtorching whatever
| is beneath them are strongly believed to be _less plausible_
| than something superficially more far fetched like the
| Alcubierre Drive. That 's because reactionless drives that
| create conventional momentum "break physics," while so far we
| have not been able to rule out altering space-time curvature.
| If I were writing a hard sci-fi story with an Alcubierre
| Drive in it, I'd still have the astronauts going up to their
| warp ship in chemical rockets. I'd also have my warp ship
| using chemical or ion propulsion to move around when not
| using its warp drive, and the thing would have to have
| massive heat sinks that would glow red hot when warp is
| powering up to discharge all the power plant's waste heat
| (second law of thermodynamics).
|
| Credible speculation in physics usually means that there
| exist mathematical solutions or models that suggest the
| possibility of something, but where we do not yet currently
| know if that math is "real" let alone "engineerable." There
| may also be things that are technically possible but that are
| so hard to do that they recede behind a kind of "probability
| horizon," becoming effectively impossible. An example might
| be a warp drive that requires so much energy and is so hard
| to build and control that the probability of someone doing it
| anywhere in the universe between now and heat death is near
| zero even if you assume that intelligent life is common.
| hef19898 wrote:
| One fictional world that got that right is the Classic
| Battletech universe.
|
| The two things out our world are a FTL jump drive (the
| Kearny-Fuchida drive only working at gravitational balance
| points) and the hyper pulse generators (sending FTL
| messages using the same physics). Everything else is well
| within established physics. Fusion engines? Check. Laser
| and direct energy weapons? Check. 12m high walking robots?
| Sure, why not. All beyond current engineering, but not
| beyond physics.
|
| Even space travel is using reaction drives (fusion powered
| ones, but everything space born needs fuel to move) with
| acceleration well below 10g. And even the space-based
| tabletop uses acceleration and vectors instead of speed. A
| bitch to track on paper so.
| shoto_io wrote:
| Fair enough. Thanks for your perspective. I should give it
| another chance I guess
| api wrote:
| The absolute _hardest_ sci-fi I 've ever seen is probably
| near-term cyberpunk or stuff like The Martian. That stuff
| is pretty rare. Even most "hard" sci-fi requires some
| suspension of disbelief. The difference between hard and
| soft is whether one must go entirely into the realm of
| fantasy to suspend that disbelief, or whether it just
| requires the assumption of non-linear advances in
| technology or superhuman intellect.
| dendriti wrote:
| The Martian's take on potatoes is not very hard at all.
| Not only is Martian soil loaded with percholrates, it
| would have taken far longer than shown to prime the soil
| with enough microbes to support the growth of so many
| potatoes.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> A top-tier scientist from the 19th century may well have
| pronounced just about all of today 's digital devices
| impossible science fiction. "Billions of calculations per
| second in something in your pocket that runs on a
| battery?"_
|
| Heck, actual science fiction authors in the mid-20th
| century got that wrong. Asimov, for example, while he had
| autonomous robots walking around, limited mobile computing
| devices (installed in anything smaller than a spaceship) to
| calculators and dumb terminals. Output was often limited to
| ALL CAPS printed on a slip or strip of paper (again,
| despite robots able to communicate verbally).
| radley wrote:
| I'm rereading Asimov's Foundation series on a Kindle and
| writing this on a wireless keyboard to a website.
|
| In his 70 year old series, everyone still uses film :)
| evan_ wrote:
| > I stopped watching it though once the "protomolecule" stuff
| started.
|
| So, the first scene in the first episode? Before the opening
| credits?
|
| It would be one thing if they added the crazy alien magic
| plot device midway through a later season to get out of some
| writing hole they'd gotten themselves into, but they
| intentionally opened the first episode of the show (and the
| prologue of the first book) with a fleeting glimpse of what
| the protomolecule is capable of to set the stakes for the
| rest of the series.
| 7sigma wrote:
| The protomolecule is pretty much super advanced tech from a
| civilisation that had a billion year or so headstart. For me,
| a big part of the show is about how technology changes us and
| the protomolecule is an extreme example of that.
|
| Its not backed up by science and thats not the point. The
| point is how humans react to it and how the story progresses
| after that is really great, one of the best series overall
| i've ever watched.
| rakoo wrote:
| > a big part of the show is about how technology changes us
|
| I've always thought that movie/series genre are just a
| facade for the real genre:
|
| - Slasher movies are supposedly about the boogey
| man/monster killing protagonist, but it's really about how
| humans interact when put under stress and show their true
| color
|
| - (Heroic) Fantasy movies are supposedly about wizards and
| knights and witches, but it's really just a huge politics
| playground
|
| - Science fiction movies are supposedly about new
| technology/aliens/space stuff, but it's really about how
| something outside of our knowledge changes us, challenges
| our values, and reveals who we are. That's usually
| technology but can be anything.
|
| It's of course not just that, there are always exceptions,
| and I'm probably not the first one to have this view. But I
| think this is the reason I like almost anything sci-fi but
| can barely stand watching fantasy movies: I can't find
| myself to care about people fighting each other for a
| little bit more power.
| XorNot wrote:
| It's a Banks-style Outside Context Problem.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| I miss Culture novels :(
| ctoth wrote:
| I do too! One of the great things though is they're very
| re-readable!
| rkachowski wrote:
| I had a similar feeling, I love the show but I still felt a
| grating annoyance anytime I heard the phrase "protomolecule".
|
| It makes it easier if you think of it as "proto" being short
| for Protogen - the corporation that discovered it.
| radley wrote:
| Proto is latin for primitive and/or precursor.
| Protomolecule also sounds like something a scientist would
| come up with if they were trying to expand their research
| funding and had a fickle investor (i.e. Mao).
|
| So while protomolecule sound like something out of the
| Power Rangers, it's an oddly plausible term.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| The human stuff is hard sci-fi. The alien protomolecule is
| thoroughly in the realm of sufficiently advanced to be
| indistinguishable from magic.
|
| And I'm fine with that because of how its handled. The
| protomolecule is less of a technology itself and more or a
| narrative tool. How it works isn't important. What is
| important is that it is a disruptive force that changes the
| direction of humanity.
| Zimahl wrote:
| It is 'magic' but a really interesting concept. It's
| essentially a self-replicating terraforming device. An
| ancient civilization sends out probes with the molecule -
| in this case a small planetoid - that will hopefully crash
| into a planet with biological material and then collect and
| convert said material into a ring that connects to an
| interstellar network. The problem is that the one in The
| Expanse got caught up in Jovian system, like gets done with
| a lot of interstellar objects.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| It's a variation on the Von Neumann probe. A self
| replicating spacecraft. Instead of being for exploration
| or production of a specific widget its purpose is
| building ftl gates as part of a presumably galactic
| network.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I was also put off by it, but it does end up going in a nice
| pseudo-hard scifi direction once you get to the end of season
| 3. It respects the physical limitations of human technology
| while providing a pretty neat what-if.
|
| I was also ok with the Epstein drive. It's a nice little plot
| enabler. "Yeah, space colonization is laughably implausible,
| but what if we had just this one piece of magic technology?"
| mLuby wrote:
| "The Juice" is also magic, but totally worth it to see
| high-G maneuvers.
| DennisP wrote:
| Here's an argument that a drive with Epstein performance is
| actually doable: https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-
| expanses-epstein-dr...
| fsloth wrote:
| The hard sci-fi background makes the protomolecule stuff
| quite good actually IMHO.
|
| Since they are not goofing off in basic things and they've
| done their homework, having space magic happen is much more
| entertaining than in e.g. Star Trek where basically
| everything is driven by plot-based technobabble so you really
| have no distinction between "standard technology" and
| "unfathomable space phenomena of the week".
|
| Some of the space magic driven by protomolecule later on is
| fairly thoughtfull IMO and meshes nicely with rest of the
| show. I would advice you to continue watching - the series
| gets constantly better and better.
| goatlover wrote:
| The protomolecule stuff drives the plot of the entire story.
| It's why the conflict happens, and how the characters end up
| in the middle of it, from the very first episode. And it
| keeps building on that all the way through the show and the
| books. The focus remains on humanity, but the alien stuff
| provides the motivation for the ongoing human response.
|
| Also, advanced alien tech in pretty much all science fiction
| follows Arthur C. Clarke's dictum about magic. Of course
| they're going to be able to do things humans don't
| understand. Do you really think we would be able to explain
| everything a billion+ year old civilization could do?
| Symmetry wrote:
| When I tried reading the novels I had a problem there because
| I thought the books were putting forth explanations for it
| that didn't make sense. But the TV show didn't try to explain
| beyond something like "magic future technology" and I don't
| have any problem suspending disbelief for that.
| nirav72 wrote:
| Is The Expanse really Hard Sci-Fi? I get that the space flight
| physics and tech involved could be considered hard Sci-fi. But
| in later books and show season - the whole gate network is
| quite a bit handwavy.
| egypturnash wrote:
| IMHO "hard" SF is more about feeling "accurate" than actually
| being accurate - more lip service is paid to something
| resembling physics as we currently understand it. And the #1
| thing for someone to say "fuck it, I'm cutting a hole in
| existing physics in the interest of telling a compelling
| story" for is probably "moving shit between planets/stars
| faster than orbital mechanics and the speed of light allows".
| silvanocerza wrote:
| > Even the language makes sense - a kind of hodge-Podge
| universal accent.
|
| It's interesting see the differences from the books on this
| topic.
|
| The books focus more on the use of belter's sign language, just
| some small and most common word is written and the rest is just
| defined as patois.
|
| The series instead almost never shows sign language and it uses
| and evolves the spoken language much more than the books.
| camillomiller wrote:
| I love the Expanse. Yet I think that transparent displays only
| work in movies. What do we need the transparency for? I can't
| find any UX reason that would make such a screen better than a
| regular superthin opaque display with maybe holographic features.
| Discuss :)
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| Agreed. I get why they are used in media (cool factor), but in
| real world the loss of contrast for actual material on screen
| would be disaster enough to make it a nonstarter. And that is
| not even going into privacy implications...
| getpost wrote:
| I was inspired by the transparent 3D displays. It looked like
| exactly what I'd want.
|
| I can't think which episodes, but there's are a couple scenes
| where detective Miller is looking at his phone in 2D mode, and
| he says, "Go 3D." In one scene, he interacts with the 3D
| projection, reorienting it. In another scene, invoking the 3D
| display makes it possible for everyone in the room to discuss
| the projection.
|
| I'd love to know how these effects were done. And, when can I
| have one of those phones?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Augmented reality use? Hold the terminal over some wiring and
| get an overlaid schematic?
| kingosticks wrote:
| That spy guy (I don't remember his name) in series 1 has this
| ability when he's re-wiring the airlock door interface panel
| in order to escape. He uses his AR ability a few times but I
| like how it's not overdone.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| We don't need them. They're popular because they allow to film
| the actor and the screen simultaneously.
|
| My personal take: transparent displays are a lazy trick of film
| makers who overestimate the importance of characters in science
| fiction, and underestimate the importance of setting.
|
| A proper real-world use of transparency would be Augmented
| Reality - i.e. overlaying contextual UIs on top of the real
| world the user sees through the glass/hologram.
| gpderetta wrote:
| > A proper real-world use of transparency would be Augmented
| Reality - i.e. overlaying contextual UIs on top of the real
| world the user sees through the glass/hologram.
|
| Ghost In The Shell does this very well, especially the
| series.
| krapp wrote:
| >transparent displays are a lazy trick of film makers who
| overestimate the importance of characters in science fiction,
| and underestimate the importance of setting.
|
| Characters are always more important than setting. You can
| tell a compelling story with a character alone in a room, but
| without any characters even an interesting setting has
| nothing to say.
| dagw wrote:
| _Characters are always more important than setting._
|
| Not among sci-fi fans. There are lots of classic and
| beloved scifi books that are all about the world and
| setting and technology where the characters are 2d
| cardboard cut outs that only exist as an excuse to move the
| story from set piece to set piece.
| watwut wrote:
| Yeah, but at least to me, they became unreadable as I
| grew to be able to recognize how much the 2d carboard is
| not unrealistic and empty. I like sci-fi, but when I
| encounter these, they annoy me.
|
| Good sci-fi writers dont go lazy on characters and
| actually develop them.
| goatlover wrote:
| Would you consider the characters of The Three Body
| Problem to be all that interesting? Yet it's widely
| considered to be a great novel. Not sure whether The Dark
| Forest or the third book do a better job with characters,
| but the plot and the ideas make the story.
| watwut wrote:
| I haven't read it, so I don't guess. It is unfair to
| judge quality of characters in book one did not read.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's the mainstream view, yes. But honestly, in case of
| sci-fi, I mostly disagree.
|
| Most literary genres are defined by the flavor of character
| exploration you do. Any character-focused story you want,
| you can find a genre for it. Science fiction is defined as
| speculative exploration of interactions between people and
| hypothetical advancements of science and technology. If you
| laser-focus on the characters, you lose what makes the
| genre interesting and distinct from all others.
|
| That's not to say that characters aren't important. But, in
| the kind of sci-fi I like, technologies and societies and
| institutions become "characters" themselves, and need to be
| treated with equal importance.
| watwut wrote:
| Science fiction is full of character focused books,
| movies and what not. All solidly within science fiction
| category.
| bserge wrote:
| Sadly, "AR" looks rather cheap, even Star Trek Discovery
| (good budget, I think) tried it and it's a bit laughable.
| watwut wrote:
| > My personal take: transparent displays are a lazy trick of
| film makers who overestimate the importance of characters in
| science fiction, and underestimate the importance of setting.
|
| Given that we are talking about extremely popular show, maybe
| they do actually know what they are doing.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Well, of course :). That's why studios generally don't
| listen to sci-fi fans like me. I want them to optimize for
| the genre fans, to maximize work depth and quality. They
| want to optimize for the widest possible audience, to
| maximize profits.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| My biggest issue with the visual aspects of The Expanse is one
| that I don't think can be fixed.
|
| The story is set approximately 3-400 years in the future. All of
| the technology, however, looks, if not immediately familiar, then
| more or less "around the corner from now".
|
| Go back to 1621, and imagining projecting a future 2021 based on
| "minor tweaks to what we're using now". Clearly, it would be
| absolutely nothing remotely like the actual 2021 that we live in.
|
| I enjoy the Expanse a lot, but if there are humans around in 2400
| or so who get a chance to see it again, I'm fairly sure they will
| be besides themselves with laughter at its "vision" for their
| time.
| manmal wrote:
| They do have the Epstein drive, holographic displays, anti-
| cancer-cell ,,dialysis", a solar-system-wide internet,
| miniaturized electron microscopes, and insanely long-lasting
| batteries.
|
| But, I must admit that eg the terminals look like phones from
| 2050. And I'm sorely missing AI, humanoid robots, and way more
| bionic implants a la Cyberpunk. However I think those were left
| out deliberately to allow the story to be mainly about the
| human experience. AIs like the one in ,,Her" might be realistic
| on a 400 year time scale, but I find stories like that rather
| awe-inspiring than relatable.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Yes, the tech developments have happened, no question.
|
| But the _look_ of the vessels, the homes, the offices, the
| computing devices ... these are all circa 2030 (or maybe even
| 2024).
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Sailing technology today is similar to technology from the
| 1600s, just more convenient.
|
| Same thing with books, paper, pens, etc.
|
| It seems likely that the idea of "screen,
| mouse/touchscreen/keyboard" will be around forever (like books
| have).
|
| However we might have NEW technology (like an epstein drive).
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| books haven't been around forever, and in particular printed
| books are only about 600 years old.the basic concept of a
| bound set of pages is about 1500 years old.
|
| pen technology in 2021 looks absolutely nothing like pen
| technology in 1621. I don't think a person from that time
| would visually recognize a modern pen, even if they could
| understand its _purpose_ once it was explained or they got to
| use it.
|
| paper is only about 1200 years old.
|
| None of these technologies has "been around for ever",
| although one could clearly make a case that barring total
| civilizational collapse, they might truly be here to stay.
|
| I don't think that the same could be said for any current
| computing technology.
|
| Sailing technology is similar, except that very few people
| ever sail, travel in sailboats, receive goods shipped in
| sailboats, or even see a sailboat. The things that have
| largely replaced sailing would look very foreign to someone
| from 1621. I suspect the same will be true in 2400. There
| will still be some people (perhaps) using technology that
| we're familiar with today, but most people will use something
| else.
| biztos wrote:
| Or maybe they'll be sad their present isn't as cool as we
| thought our future would be?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I think that the Expanse (books & show) do a fairly good job
| at explicitly _not_ making the future look that cool. Despite
| the specific new technologies that are around, people 's live
| contain about the same amount of misery, tech breakdowns and
| general impossibility as we do today.
| monkeydust wrote:
| Nice site in general. Reminded me of this
| https://github.com/arwes/arwes
| qwertox wrote:
| How are these UIs generated? Is there a software which runs these
| UIs so that they look like they have a purpose?
| imglorp wrote:
| It would be so nice if they open sourced the code.
|
| Fans could generate spinoff UIs for more terrestrial purposes,
| and perhaps even contribute back new UIs for future episodes.
| jancsika wrote:
| Important off-topic The Expanse conundrum:
|
| In the very first episodes a tall, stretched-out skinny space-
| born dude is getting tortured simply by making him stand and be
| subject to Earth's gravity.
|
| Then the rest of the series-- few to no tall, stretched-out
| skinny space-born peeps anywhere.
|
| What gives? I imagine the director realizing how expense it would
| be to continue seeking out a bunch of tall, skinny extras...
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| I remember an interview with the showrunners that basically
| said that. There weren't enough tall and skinny people to
| perform all the roles adequately, not to mention background
| extras. And it limited them from casting the actors they really
| wanted to cast, like Jared Harris as Dawes.
|
| They do still deal with the disorientation non-natives deal
| with in Earth conditions, though. There was an episode that
| spent a significant amount of its story showing Bobby dealing
| with being on Earth for the first time and seeing unfiltered
| sunlight and the extra gravity. There's been a few other
| instances of it, but it has definitely taken a backseat since
| that torture scene you mentioned.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Also in the books. In the beginning, belters were hardly able
| to live on Earth let alone move around. Later, they colonize
| planets. So I get why that was dropped as a plot device. And
| since it was only one scene, it didn't have much of an impact
| anyway.
| kfajdsl wrote:
| It was because in the beginning they wanted to put the idea
| that belters were different in people's head, but to do it the
| entire series would be too expensive. They got rid of the issue
| in-universe with the bone-growth meds (?) that Miller and
| probably others took (in the books this didn't exist, and all
| belters are tall).
| getpost wrote:
| > how expense it would be
|
| Apparently the insider moniker for the show is, "The Expense."
| jancsika wrote:
| Hee hee.
|
| I can imagine an alternate universe failed version of The
| Expanse where they spent all their money up front on CGI to
| create stretched-out skinny extras.
| gopherbro wrote:
| look cool.
| sen wrote:
| The designers (not just UI but all of them) on The Expanse did
| such an incredible job. It's probably my favourite looking Sci Fi
| series or movie of all time. The attention to detail is
| incredible too, I'm on my third watch-through of the series and
| notice new things all the time.
| patja wrote:
| They use an incredible number of off the shelf shower grab bars
| I recognize from Home Depot in the interior of pretty much
| every ship. I find things like that a bit distracting.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| This is true of every show, though. You just happen to know
| what those specific shower bars look like.
| kayfox wrote:
| I like that they thought about that, in a lot of shows and
| movies you see ships in space where gravity may not exist at
| times with no visible way for people to move themselves
| around under zero-g, so its refreshing when a show puts in
| the work to create a set that looks usable in space.
| bityard wrote:
| The grab bars on the Zarya also look like something you'd
| easily find in Walmart: https://www.nasa.gov/images/content/1
| 14306main_iss010e25228_...
|
| Maybe when it comes to something as simple as a grab bar it's
| hard to get too imaginative in the first place?
|
| Once you start _really_ looking for them, you can pretty
| easily pick out items on a set and go, "oh yeah, that looks
| like a repurposed so-and-so."
| duskwuff wrote:
| _The Expanse_ uses a lot of repurposed props in general. One
| of the cryogenic pods in S2 is a roof storage rack for a car.
| The flight controls in the Rocinante are 3DConnexion mice. I
| recall seeing one maintenance tunnel with walls covered in
| laptop cooling pads. And so on. :)
| fenk85 wrote:
| You will love the book series then, goes into much more details
| and is hard to put down, i binge read the lot
| alexgmcm wrote:
| I think some stuff is improved in the series though.
|
| For example, the story from Cibola Burn seemed a lot better
| on the show than the book in my opinion and some of the
| characters are better.
|
| In particular, Ashford's character is massively improved (it
| helps that David Strathairn plays the role incredibly well).
|
| The books are very good though and I can't wait for Leviathan
| Falls. Also, it seems the series will stop at the end of
| Babylon's Ashes.
| tspiteri wrote:
| Some things work differently on TV and on books, and they
| changed things to make the storytelling better suited to
| TV. For example Camina Drummer was introduced much earlier
| in the TV series so that Fred Johnson had someone to talk
| to on screen, which wasn't needed in the novels. And then
| the character worked so well that they expanded it to cover
| more stuff.
|
| I really like that they prefer a good story over sticking
| to the exact "canon" of the novels. And in "they" I include
| the novel authors, who are very involved in the TV series.
| bityard wrote:
| After having watched all of the show released so far, I
| just finished Leviathan Wakes.
|
| Maybe it's my fault for having mostly read Terry
| Pratchett and Douglas Adams for the last few years, but I
| found the writing to be extremely bland. It does the job
| of narrating the plot but the lack of all flavor would
| have turned me off immediately if I wasn't able to
| visualize the characters and scenes from the show.
|
| That said, I'm pretty happy with the changes they made
| for the show. And a bit annoyed that most of the things I
| didn't really like about the characters were details
| carried over from the books.
| alexgmcm wrote:
| Yeah, I think having the novel authors involved has
| helped make the series as good as it is.
|
| We still have the final season though - let's hope it
| doesn't do a "Game of Thrones".
| ddxxdd wrote:
| >let's hope it doesn't do a "Game of Thrones".
|
| Don't get your hopes up too high; "The Expanse" is often
| nicknamed "The Expense" due to its high special effects
| budget. Amazon Prime may decide that later seasons need
| to have their budgets cut.
| tspiteri wrote:
| _Game of Thrones_ did not have a budget problem for the
| last season; it had a writing problem. While other
| seasons used the novels for the build-up and for the
| story to make sense, the last season did not. And while
| the author does know where he wants to land, he hasn 't
| worked out, or hasn't shared, how to get there completely
| yet. The tv show went there with no proper buildup, which
| is what makes that season poor. To me, the final
| situation, or who wins/dies, is not the problem, nor are
| the effects.
|
| As for _The Expanse_ , it's season not seasons; the next
| season will be the final season. I cannot see the tv
| series ending in the same end point as the final novel,
| that is I cannot see them cramming four novels with one
| huge time gap in between into one season. But I do
| believe it will come to a satisfactory conclusion at some
| alternative end point.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| If the show runs into any problems it wont be because
| they ran out of source material and winged it like what
| happened with Game of Thrones. I doubt budget will be an
| issue since they've already wrapped filming the final
| season. The expense of The Expanse may be why its
| stopping where it is. But I have no reason to think the
| show wont end strong at this time.
| rkachowski wrote:
| I absolutely love how they changed "Ashford" in the books
| from an elitist obstructive middle manager into "Klaes
| Ashford" - legendary OPA member, space pirate and "The
| Ghost Knife of Callisto".
|
| The show really gives the opportunity to explore the
| individual motivations of the characters; the books are
| also great and they complement each other, but I feel that
| the books are almost too fast paced to really savour the
| environment and setting.
| 7sigma wrote:
| That scene in the behemoth in s3e11 between camina and
| ashford is one my favourite. Their discussion of what it
| is that makes belters what they are in that situation,
| such great writing
| alexgmcm wrote:
| Yeah, he's probably my favourite character in the series.
|
| The way his character develops and changes is incredible
| and the acting is really well done.
| goatlover wrote:
| The Cibola Burn book did a much better job of explaining
| things on Illus, particularly the alien stuff. And the
| Investigator POV chapters were wild. You don't get as much
| of that on the show.
| manmal wrote:
| I agree. I read the books after watching the first four
| seasons, and I felt disappointed how Ashford is described
| and handled in the books.
|
| Also, the books set a very high bar for Naomi's "solo
| adventure" (let's call it that to prevent spoilers), and
| the series did such a great job, and stayed very true to
| the source. It was satisfying seeing this unravel almost
| exactly as I had imagined it.
| sen wrote:
| Halfway through my third reading and still not sick of it.
| It's without a doubt my favourite Sci Fi of all time.
| kingosticks wrote:
| I really like how they transition between different screens so
| seemlessly with guestures (and also voice commands). I'd like to
| be able to do something similar on my phone so rather than
| clicking the chromecast icon and selecting which device, I'd like
| to swipe/flick towards the device I want to use. And ideally I'd
| like to expand (sorry) this to non-chromecast stuff like Spotify
| Connect (or MPD etc). Is there anything out there like that for
| Android? Some kind of location/orientation aware "casting"
| helper?
|
| Relatedly I wish there was less of a delay when trying to cast to
| the TV. Perhaps it's that, rather than the extra button clicks,
| that disrupts the flow so much. It's not like my smart TV hasn't
| got a powerful processor and a super-fast internet connection -
| why am I still seeing loading screens?!
| majoe wrote:
| Speaking about transition of graphical applications from one
| device to another, I think this is a rather difficult problem
| in itself. The only project I'm aware of, which tries to enable
| that in a seamless way, is the Arcan display server. I remember
| a short clip from the development blog [1], where a window with
| a running retro game is pulled to the edge of the screen and
| appears immediately on another device nearby [2]. Unfortunately
| Arcan is pretty niche and I doubt that will change in the
| foreseeable future. Using voice commands to control, where your
| applications is running, would then be relatively easy. Swiping
| in that direction, while pretty cool, is much harder, as you
| would need to locate both involved devices.
|
| [1] https://arcan-fe.com/2020/12/03/arcan-versus-xorg-feature-
| pa...
|
| [2]
| https://video.wordpress.com/embed/G3vQbGS0?preloadContent=me...
| dmitriid wrote:
| > I really like how they transition between different screens
| so seemlessly with guestures (and also voice commands).
|
| The greatest part of this is that they make it look seamless
| and unselfconscious. In most shows (even sci-fi ones) this is
| always exaggerated as in "look at how we move our hands on this
| futuristic surface". In Expanse? It's just an integrated part
| of what they do. They flick, and swipe, and hold stuff
| sideways, they drop phones, phones are cracked, and it's never
| "oh, look carefully at what I'm doing".
| systemvoltage wrote:
| IMO pinnacle of UI/IX is the F-15 cockpit:
| https://youtu.be/zikI2fazPLo
|
| Completely opposite of what the Expanse UX/UI is. No
| touchscreens, no transparency, no sexy decoration, zero
| ambiguity, no distractions. Everything is functional first,
| ergonomic, clear and straightforward.
|
| I kind of wish Sci-fi authors would propel analog UIs.
| Touchscreens and manipulating things at an arms length - try it
| for 10 mins and see how tired your arm gets.
|
| I'd like to see a future that's totally opposite of what everyone
| is praising in this thread.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Even reality is moving in the "glass cockpit" direction. For
| example, the SpaceX Crew Dragon doesn't appear to have much of
| any "steam" controls or displays. Most of the control is
| preplanned however, so there isn't as much pilot input than a
| F-15C would use..
|
| https://twitter.com/alteredq/status/1266853705632145409/phot...
| m4rtink wrote:
| Technicaly the HUD on modern fighter planes is a transparent
| LCD. ;-)
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| I liked during the early seasons how Detective Miller's phone
| screen was cracked. Don't recall seeing that in any other show.
| It lends credibility to the narrative that these are real people
| who break their phone screens sometimes and can't be bothered to
| get it fixed.
| nharada wrote:
| I love the title sequence (even though that was a different
| design shop): https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/the-expanse/
|
| They clearly drew from some other highly technical areas in their
| design: for example incorporating Reseau plates or drawing on the
| visual layout of air traffic control screens.
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