The Expanse is the best new science fiction series in years

Enlarge / Remember the Cant. (credit: Syfy)

Warning: extremely light spoilers ahead.

There was a time-a long time-when every new science fiction TV series raised the same question: Is it as good as the first Battlestar Galactica miniseries? And always the answer was no. Until Syfy released the first four episodes of The Expanse, a rewardingly complex new series about interplanetary tensions after humans have colonized the solar system.

Based on a series of novels by James S.A. Corey (the pen name for writing team Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), The Expanse is both a mystery and a political thriller. A cold war has been heating up between Mars and planetoid Ceres in the Belt. The militant Belter separatist group OPA is staging protests because the wealthy cities of Mars get all their water from ice miners in the Belt, but those miners are living in decayed, oxygen-starved habitats. Earth's fleet could be deployed to "reduce tensions" at any moment, which would put Mars and Earth at odds too.

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