Ratings139
Average rating4.1
4.50/5.00
He wonders if that's what makes the promised land holy: that you can see it but you can't quite reach it. The grass is always greener on the other side of personal extinction.
A pretty decent “prologue” to the larger story at hand in The Expanse. I think it would have benefited from a little more wiggle room in terms of story length, but in what we got, it was a fair introduction to the creator behind the mysterious Epstein drive. While I wasn't looking for a purely scientific survey behind the drive and how it works, it would have been nice to dig more into Solomon's backstory as an “engine engineer.” I did enjoy the back-and-forth of his past and present, as well as the change of tenses with each section. And while it ends on a dour note, the world around it makes you want to know what life was like years before we meet Holden, Miller, and the rest of the characters in their present day.
Nice short story that accomplishes pretty much everything you could want for 35 pages. There were a few quotes I loved, but I can't believe the writers still managed to cram a primate reference into such a short story. Seriously though.
Clever, but literally nightmarish.
James SA Corey usually balances creepiness and big ideas with humour. Not in this one. Very thought provoking and terrifying.
Do not make my mistake. Do not read before sleeping.
“He could go to the Jovian system and be the first person to walk on Europa and Ganymede. He isn't going to, though. That's going to be someone else. But when they get there, they will be carried by his drive.”
Much better than the previous novella. This is the story of the Epstein drive, the end of Solomon and the beginning of Solar System colonization beyond Mars.
It was nice to get a little backstory on the technology that made their future possible and get a little glimpse into the ancient (to the rest of the stories) politics between Mars and Earth. I wished it was longer.
This is a free short story, marketed as a “prequel” to the Expanse. It is available here: http://www.syfy.com/theexpanse/drive/
As a prequel, I don't really find this very useful. It gives a bit of background on the Earth and Mars division and the creation Epstein drive. If this is meant for people unfamiliar with the series, this won't really give them much of a background.
However for fans of the series already, this offers some nice little tidbits of world building.
Overall this is well written like the rest, and is a super fast read. With it being available for free, if you're a fan of the series, no reason not to give it a quick read.
This is a short story available of Syfy's website (http://www.syfy.com/theexpanse/drive/) as part of their promotion for the new tv series. It is a brief look at the life of Solomon Epstein, the inventor of the drive that will make interplanetary travel feasible, allowing for the events preceding the start of the series. It is a quick story that does a nice job of setting up the politics of the world. It is well worth the read.
Sorry to mix technobabble, but the only way to read this short story is with inertial dampers on.