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What does “creatures of light and information” even mean?
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Jan 31, 2022 15:44
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Boris Galerkin posted:What does “creatures of light and information” even mean? IIRC the jellyfish are each individually intelligent but also form a super-intelligence/hive mind by interconnecting through light emitters and receptors on their bodies(instead of nerve fibers like humans). Light is how the hive mind thinks.
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Jan 31, 2022 16:37
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Yeah basically each individual creature is a neuron in a moon-wide hive mind. They send signals between each other with bioluminescence.
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Jan 31, 2022 19:16
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So they didn’t have physical bodies? And the entirety of their civilization/species was connected this way? Why would they need shipyards and ships and planets and stuff? E: “it’s not explained in the books” is an acceptable answer too I’m just trying to wrap my head around something that makes no sense to me
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Jan 31, 2022 21:10
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didn't they start as actual physical creatures and then get "uploaded" or whatever. Miller says something along the lines of how it's a privilege to actually have a corporeal body and that not everyone is important enough to get assigned one.
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Jan 31, 2022 21:13
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Boris Galerkin posted:So they didn’t have physical bodies? And the entirety of their civilization/species was connected this way? Why would they need shipyards and ships and planets and stuff? They started as physical jellyfish things on a Europa-style ice ocean moon. It's not explained fully but it seems like at some point they basically evolved into an AI and existed distributed across their physical selves as well as in their technology. They still needed materials to build things and shape the physical world to their needs. The Alt Shift X interview goes into that a bit, they still had things to do that required resources, they didn't just exist in a computer with no connection to reality. Having warships is an interesting question. I'm not sure if we know if the ships had weapons when the builders made them or that was Laconian retrofitting, though the magnetic projector was their tech so it seems like they were armed. It implies either they were trying to use ships to fight the extradimensional aliens, or there were other aliens in this galaxy that they were fighting or at least having defenses ready for.
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Jan 31, 2022 21:53
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I don’t think I see an interview on their YouTube. Got a direct link?
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Jan 31, 2022 22:18
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdFuzR6byXc This is the new one. There's another one from earlier in the year too.
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Jan 31, 2022 22:21
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Boris Galerkin posted:So they didn’t have physical bodies? And the entirety of their civilization/species was connected this way? Why would they need shipyards and ships and planets and stuff? From what I've been able to glean, the idea is sort of like: They started as vaguely jellyfish-like creatures in the frozen seas of a moon of a gas giant. They were very cold, moving and evolving very slowly. They had some sort of proto-protomolecule (heh) that they could send down into the cracks in the crust of their seas that led to where there was a bunch of fast-moving and fast-evolving life living off of the internal heat of the core. This version of the protomolecule could grab useful bits of genetics and make it a part of them. Eventually, they learned or acquired the genetic material to be able to see light - not just visible (which was coming from their own bioluminescence, which they learned to control) but from the entire EM spectrum. They used this to signal/communicate with each other, and they sort of melded into one giant organism, with each jellyfish-like thing being kinda-sorta like a neuron communicating with the neurons around it with light, and the whole sea turning into one giant brain. They learned enough to break out from beneath their ocean and suddenly were experiencing light from all over - all sorts of radiation from everywhere and these very intense localized stars as well, which they at first basically worshipped as if they were other parts of themselves. And over time they separated from their original brain-sea, leaving it behind, and explored and found ways to make 'holes' in the light, and this was their first encounter with the goths and their reality/universe/whatever. Once they found the ways to make the holes, they could expand their uni-mind almost indefinitely because they were no longer bound by the speed of light when signaling the different parts of themselves. The power from the goth's universe gave them the ability to grow and become of a far greater extent than they ever could with just the laws of our reality at their disposal. ashpanash fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Feb 1, 2022 |
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Feb 1, 2022 02:23
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They also described breaking into the goth's greater plane of existence the same way as breaking out of the ice shell surrounding their planet, which implied to me that they would inevitably try to colonize that as well.Grand Fromage posted:Having warships is an interesting question. I'm not sure if we know if the ships had weapons when the builders made them or that was Laconian retrofitting, though the magnetic projector was their tech so it seems like they were armed. Holden has a cool bit in one of the books where he likens humans using the protomolecule as a bioweapon to monkeys loving around with a microwave. It's good for bashing other monkeys, so they think it's a weapon, then one of them turns on the light and they think it's a lamp, etc. I don't think the magnetic projector was necessarily a weapon. The GB seemed to use magnetism to disassemble things for inspection. It makes sense that they'd put that device on a harmless exploration probe and it would be a paradigm shifting superweapon for humanity. I think the two examples we saw of them actually fighting was the ring station and the supernova booby trap, so it seems like blowing up stars was their go-to for throwing a punch.
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Feb 1, 2022 16:38
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Avasculous posted:I don't think the magnetic projector was necessarily a weapon. The GB seemed to use magnetism to disassemble things for inspection. It makes sense that they'd put that device on a harmless exploration probe and it would be a paradigm shifting superweapon for humanity. The Gatebuilders were actually M-Tron: 
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Feb 1, 2022 17:52
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Hed posted:The Gatebuilders were actually M-Tron: Oh my god I had this poo poo when I was a kid
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Feb 1, 2022 18:09
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CLAM DOWN posted:Oh my god I had this poo poo when I was a kid The great Blacktron-M-Tron war never ends.
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Feb 1, 2022 19:46
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Are the goths ever explained?
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Feb 1, 2022 19:55
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Boris Galerkin posted:Are the goths ever explained? Depends on how much you really want. We only know that if the gate system is in use, they'll eat ships in transit at certain predictable mass / energy thresholds. And if you put a giant bomb in there, they start looking for ways to gently caress with physics to stop the activity. But they're not really ascribed any motive, culture, or identity. They seem to occupy a different or parallel universe, which is also the same space that the ringspace exists in. It's unclear if they're able to influence our universe via the ring gates or their own methods.
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Feb 1, 2022 20:05
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Avasculous posted:They also described breaking into the goth's greater plane of existence the same way as breaking out of the ice shell surrounding their planet, which implied to me that they would inevitably try to colonize that as well. Miller describing the magnetic field projector as functioning like a mini gate makes me think that the GBs were working on a way to colonize systems without flinging a protomolecule probe at them when they got wiped out, and we assumed it was a weapon.
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Feb 1, 2022 21:48
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Boris Galerkin posted:Are the goths ever explained? They are creatures behind a curtain who we never see. Every so often the lash out from behind the curtain- sometimes with a kick, sometimes with a sword.
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Feb 2, 2022 02:20
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I appreciate when Sci fi does aliens that aren't just Trek style humans with bumpy heads but at the same time my brain is like "what? How is a space jelly fish launching itself into orbit or making any of this poo poo on Ilus?"
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Feb 2, 2022 02:35
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Hell, I've skimmed through the posts on this page and have no idea what's going on. And I just watched the whole season over last week. What's the deal with the boy who got ressurected by the dogs? Was that set up somehow last season and I just forgot? Is he "the one" now?
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Feb 2, 2022 09:24
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banned from Starbucks posted:I appreciate when Sci fi does aliens that aren't just Trek style humans with bumpy heads but at the same time my brain is like "what? How is a space jelly fish launching itself into orbit or making any of this poo poo on Ilus?" The stuff on Ilus was build using the protomolecule, after the GB already had an interstellar empire and had left their physical bodies behind a long time ago. As to how a jellyfish hive mind could develop space travel, lol, that's a good question. Their history would probably look very different from our own. One thing they have going for themselves is that they can integrate generic material from other life forms at will and they have no competition or violence among themselves. So I guess the first step is to start making yourself/the hive nodes smarter and smarter by loving around with your genes. Then make more and more intricate and complex body parts to manipulate the physical world. Then specialize your nodes and create better and better tools and machines. The rest is obvious. In some sense a human society is kinda like a hive mind lite(although we mostly used sound in the beginning to communicate, instead of light). Government, culture and science are more than the sum of their parts and do have some independent dynamics of their own that are not just the will of the individual members. Basically, everytime some right wing freak on Fox News spews his opinions to millions of other people at national TV, that's the hive mind thinking a thought at light speed 
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Feb 2, 2022 10:01
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In retrospect it's insanely good world building that we never learned formal names of either species and that humanity hadn't settled on designations up to and beyond the point that they were almost obliterated.
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Feb 2, 2022 12:01
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if the protomeme aliens can store their consciousness in a giant space diamond like they're bros charging the galaxy's largest j/o crystal then why would they bother with anything else like a planet of lithium mines
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Feb 2, 2022 12:53
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Horizon Burning posted:if the protomeme aliens can store their consciousness in a giant space diamond like they're bros charging the galaxy's largest j/o crystal then why would they bother with anything else like a planet of lithium mines Presumably the construction of computers the size of Jupiter that can FTL send consciousness through out the universe by transmitting it via a lovercraftian horror universe takes much more lithium than can be found in a single solar system.
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Feb 2, 2022 13:02
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GABA ghoul posted:Presumably the construction of computers the size of Jupiter that can FTL send consciousness through out the universe by transmitting it via a lovercraftian horror universe takes much more lithium than can be found in a single solar system. okay but i checked the wiki and they colonized ilus after they had built the diamond
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Feb 2, 2022 13:30
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Horizon Burning posted:okay but i checked the wiki and they colonized ilus after they had built the diamond The motto of the species is always be reaching out 
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Feb 2, 2022 13:39
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They still need physical objects to do things and interact with their world. They obviously had ships, and factories, and giant orbital 3D printers. Just because the jellyfish themselves weren't hammering away on the line (instead using entire subspecies of biomechanical creatures), doesn't mean the factories are unnecessary.
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Feb 2, 2022 15:40
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Horizon Burning posted:okay but i checked the wiki and they colonized ilus after they had built the diamond I don't know the answer. All we have to understand their society are just a few remains that managed to survive for 2 billion years. Presumably the hive mind had all kinds of needs and projects that we will never know about. Maybe art? Or entertainment? A war with other civilizations? Or science? CERN and ITER need massive amounts of resources. Imagine what kind of equipment wormhole research needs. Also, as far as I understood it the BFE is just a backup and one of multiple. It can't "execute" consciousness(that's why the protomolecule needs the ape hive mind to resurrect the GBs) and it's not the hive mind itself. The book never actually explains how the hive worked, except that it was distributed across the empire and used the gates for communication. Like, after the Goths manage to wipe out an entire star system, the hive is not very bothered by it because all parts of it are redundant, distributed and backed up.
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Feb 2, 2022 16:26
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There's also an implication from their evolution that the protomolecule aliens are just parasitic by nature and expand because it's what they do.
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Feb 2, 2022 19:22
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Interesting season, wish we returned to the Laconia story though.
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Feb 12, 2022 22:30
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So if I wanted to just jump into the books at book 7 after watching the show, would I find much trouble with them?
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Feb 17, 2022 08:34
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no. there're some slight changes and one big one (alex is alive) but the series is a faithful adaptation of the books and i don't think there should be anything that'll leave you lost
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Feb 17, 2022 09:33
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Also show Drummer is an amalgam of several different characters whereas book Drummer only starts to show up around book 7 (if I’m remembering right.) On the more minor details travel takes weeks/months instead of the implied days in the show, and they still call the ring hub the “slow zone” even though it hasn’t had that effect since book 3. And the slow zone doesn’t have a bluish glow as a “shell”, it’s completely black (with no stars). All things that make sense for television to change slightly from the books. Otherwise yeah you won’t be lost at all, certainly everything major that happened in the books also happened very much like it in the show.
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Feb 17, 2022 20:11
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Book belter language is much much more inscrutable imo.
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Feb 17, 2022 20:52
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Apologies for the necromancy but people who used to post here might be interested in this kickstarter I just found out about, it's a comic series that fills in the gap years. It's sanctioned by the James SA Corey team, and if they hit their last stretch goal, the 3 main crew from the show will be doing a cast reading of the whole thing. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/boom-studios/the-expanse-dragon-tooth-reveals-the-missing-years/posts
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Mar 9, 2023 00:42
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lol @ doing a kickstarter for a property like the expanse, companies are shameless lol @ it being a stupid interquel about the untold history (that no one talks about in the later books) and a ~mysterious pirate faction~ (the stakes have never been more tepid!) lol @ that they're almost certainly going to make an alex 2.0 to try and adapt the next books without that headache lol @ no one posting about it until today
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Mar 9, 2023 08:27
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Horizon Burning posted:lol @ doing a kickstarter for a property like the expanse, companies are shameless ok thx Nail Rat fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Mar 9, 2023 |
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Mar 9, 2023 08:36
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IMHO it's only a matter of time before we get books 7-9 adapted. I'm hoping they'll be seasons instead of movies though. From what I've gathered from reddit, the producers and Ty don't want fans to launch another "save the expanse" campaign because they're waiting for the contract with Amazon to expire, and they don't want to piss them off or anything since they've worked together so well. Once the TV rights owned by Amazon expire, Alcon can shop it around and negotiate to finish the series somewhere else (and the rights to stream it all from whatever platform it is). The feeling I get is that this is more likely to happen than not at this point.
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Mar 29, 2023 09:07
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I really wouldn't count on it. Season 6 wasn't exactly stellar, killing Alex is a real pain in the butt for the next few books, and rumor is that Dominique Tipper isn't interested in coming back.
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Mar 29, 2023 10:32
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I mean it'd be fun but I think the streaming arms race has cooled for the moment.
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Mar 29, 2023 12:22
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mobby_6kl posted:Hell, I've skimmed through the posts on this page and have no idea what's going on. And I just watched the whole season over last week. It's all set up for the future, The "dogs" are repair-creatures that treat humans like any other machine, and freezes them at the point they died physically and *sort of* mentally, so when Xan (and later his sister Cara) are captured they spend 20+ years being experimented on by Laconian scientists. The resurrected people are able to communicate directly with the big Diamond, making them very important to the overall plot.
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Mar 29, 2023 12:54
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