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| (Cover Artist: Daniel Dociu) |
Specifically, this was the fact that in addition to representing a high-stakes action-adventure sci-fi epic, Leviathan Wakes is a book that also functions as an inverted reimagining of the story of Don Quixote. Yet where as Don Quixote was the story of a character who escapes from reality by seeking refuge in a myth, Leviathan Wakes represents the alternate story of a group of characters who are effectively trapped in a myth, and who spend the narrative struggling (and for the most part failing) to reach something akin to reality.
In the scene in question, the two main protagonists of the story (the internationally wanted spaceship captain James Holden, and the disgraced former police detective Josephus Miller) have narrowly escaped a deadly alien bioweapon deliberately released on the astroid Eros by the shadowy interplanetary corporation Protogen. Now, as Miller takes refuge in Holden’s stolen space ship (a heavily armed state-of-the-art Martian corvette bearing the interestingly familiar name the Rocinante), the characters all contemplate an increasingly uncertain future in which Protogen's new bioweapon will likely be unleashed against the majority of humanity.
It's here that the book’s previously incessant action reaches an unexpected pause. While the earlier chapters had depicted the harrowing details of Holden's and Miller's struggle to escape from the Eros colony alive (with both characters forced to fight off those civilians unlucky enough to become infected with Protogen's mind-controlling virus), it's in this moment that the story presents the reader with a comparatively quieter scene in which Holden and his crew gather in the Rocinante's galley to prepare a meal together. As Holden sits at his ship's table and watches the people around him laugh and eat, he reflects on how everyone happens to come from a world whose government is currently bent on the other's destruction.
The Rocinante's Executive Officer, Naomi Nagata, is a so-called "belter"--a citizen of the loosely defined Outer Planets Alliance, and therefore a former resident of one of the many free-floating colonies in the astroid belt which are currently seeking to liberate themselves from the corrupt Mars and Earth based corporations who currently rule them. Yet because of Protogen's recent actions, the disparate leaders of the Outer Planets Alliance have now realized that one of their colonies was effectively sacrificed by a corporation working at the behest of Earth and Mars. As a result, they have begun working to obtain this new bioweapon in preparation for a retaliatory strike. Meanwhile the Rocinante's pilot, Alex Kamal, is a citizen of the Martian Congressional Republic, and therefore a descendant of colonists from Earth who settled Mars hundreds of years earlier, and promptly declared independence from their draconian Earth-based overseers so as to found their own nation (an act which has locked them in a protracted cold war with Earth ever since). Even the Rocinante's engineer, Amos Burton, has his own uniquely distinct background that defies simplicity--while Amos was born on Earth just like Holden, he fled this world at such a young age that he identifies more as a belter like Naomi. Then there is Miller--a man who despite technically being a belter by birth has nevertheless spent his life working for an Earth-based security contractor dedicated to upholding an openly corrupt puppet government on his home on the astroid Ceres--preserving a peace which Miller has only just started to realize was false.
Yet in spite of these differing origins and conflicted identities, Holden watches as each of his crew find in one another's company a community that transcends the deadly conflict unfolding outside their ship. Specifically, as Holden listens to Miller tell the group a lengthy story about an outlandish arrest the detective was once hired to make during his many years as one of Ceres's many for-profit police officers, the text reads:
The story was amusing enough, and the detective's dry delivery suited it well, but Holden only half listened. He watched his crew, saw the tension falling from their faces and shoulders. He and Amos were both from Earth, though if he had to guess, he'd say Amos had forgotten about his home world the first time he'd shipped out. Alex was from Mars and clearly still loved it. One bad mistake on either side, and both planets might be radioactive rubble by the end of dinner. But right now they were just friends, having a meal together. It was right. It was what Holden had to keep fighting for. (p.368)
Leviathan Wakes (whose author, James S.A. Corey, is the shared pen name of writers Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) is a book which I've occasionally seen cited as an example of the Grimdark sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy--a body of literature which prides itself in its rejection of traditionally heroic characters in favor of figures demonstrating a more overtly violent and (according to the genre's proponents) realistic view of human nature. However I think that this scene demonstrates how the moral grittiness for which Leviathan Wakes is famous extends deeper than the book’s grimly dystopian setting and frequently violent plot.
At its core, Leviathan Wakes is a story about the dangers of abstracting people into symbols, with the book's antagonists repeatedly shown to be individuals motivated not by any single ideology or belief system, but instead the ironically abstract notion of abstraction itself. Over and over again, the villains of Leviathan Wakes are characters who routinely choose to conceptualize their chosen enemies as symbols rather than people--in the process often arranging for the deaths of millions in the name of vast ambitions that are themselves little more than myths. Meanwhile as the above scene demonstrates, the protagonists of this story are people who by contrast are able to recognize in one another a shared experience of humanity that proves more real than the ideological propagandas that would otherwise divide them.
Much of the first half of Leviathan Wakes alternates between two narratives, each of which in their own ways foreshadow these later themes. As Holden's half of the story begins, he is introduced working as the Executive Officer of the aging ice hauler the Canterbury--a vast ship which centuries earlier was used to colonize the minor planet Ceres, but which now is used by an interplanetary shipping company based on Earth to gather water ice harvested from Saturn's rings. Content to spend the rest of his life aboard a vessel which, as his narration cheerfully notes, is so far down humanity's vast corporate hierarchy that its very nearly impossible to fall any further, Holden's peacefully boring day-to-day existence is interrupted only when the Canterbury receives a mysterious distress call.
An inert cargo ship by the name of the Scopuli has been detected on the Canterbury's scanners, with the only sign of life from this vessel being an intermittent emergency broadcast that doesn't respond to any of the standard requests for more information. As per the loosely defined code of conduct that passes for law in the outer reaches of the solar system, the Canterbury's captain makes the grudging decision to alter his own ship's course, and sends Holden ahead with a small rescue crew in a shuttle to provide aid to any survivors they happen to find. It's only after Holden and his crew have set foot on the Scopuli that they realize they've walked into a trap. Not only has this vessel clearly been abandoned for some time (its own crew mysteriously absent with clear signs of a struggle), but the instant they set foot aboard this ship they receive word that the Canterbury is under attack, and watch helplessly as the larger ship is destroyed. The only clue which Holden can find as to the identity of the Canterbury's attackers is the remote transponder which lured them to the Scopuli to begin with. This is a small device which could have been manufactured anywhere in the solar system, except for the conspicuous fact that it is powered by a battery stamped with the initials "M.C.R.N." (Martian Congressional Republic Navy).
Meanwhile, millions of kilometers away, the novel's other protagonist, Josephus Miller, is introduced via a narrative that at first seems to unfold on a much smaller scope. Having for several decades worked as a police officer for Star Helix Security (one of the many for-profit contractors who claim to maintain law on a subterranean colony built into the side of the astroid Ceres), Miller's half of this story begins when he is one day assigned an unusual missing person's case that strains even his exceedingly flexible moral compass. Julie Mao, the adult daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the solar system, Jules Pierre Mao, has recently had a falling out with her father, and for this reason the elder Mao has offered to bribe Miller's boss at Star Helix, Captain Shaddid, to have one of her detectives locate his daughter, verify her safety, and then (regardless of what she personally has to say about any of this) "escort" her to his privately run corporate station located on Earth's moon.
As Miller grimly reflects to Shaddid upon being notified of his new assignment, this job is less a true missing person's case as it is a glorified kidnapping operation, with Jules Pierre Mao having hired Star Helix to use their resources to abduct his daughter in exchange for payment. Yet due to how Miller has long ago abandoned any illusions as to the moral integrity of his job as a police officer, he soon throws himself into the minutiae of this new case with only slight qualms about its ethical implications.
A strange knot had tied itself in his guts. He'd been working on Ceres security for thirty years, and he hadn't started with many illusions in place. The joke was that Ceres didn't have laws--it had police. His hands weren't any cleaner than Captain Shaddid's. Sometimes people fell out airlocks. Sometimes evidence vanished from the lockers. It wasn't so much that it was right or wrong as that it was justified. You spent your life in a stone bubble with your food, your water, your air shipped in from places so distant you could barely find them with a telescope, and a certain moral flexibility was necessary. But he'd never had to take a kidnap job before. (p.24)
These two storylines weave in and out of one another as the novel's broader plotline emerges. In Holden's case, he and his surviving crew soon find themselves at the center of a deadly interplanetary conflict. Initially overwhelmed with rage at the pointless deaths of the 50 people who he knows were aboard the Canterbury when it was destroyed, Holden makes the brash decision to broadcast to the entire solar system the details of the transponder he found on board the Scopuli (and specifically the fact that this device was powered by a Martian battery).
This in turn results in a crisis in which Holden and his crew (rather than the Canterbury's unknown attackers) are declared wanted criminals by the powers that be, with the company which owned the Canterbury disowning Holden for his perceived accusations of piracy against the Martian government. All of this unfolds as, due to Holden's broadcast, individuals claiming to represent the Outer Planets Alliance begin championing he and his crew as heroes of their emerging nation, with some going so far as to begin actively hunting and killing anyone even so much as suspected of having Mars or Earth citizenship, all while proudly displaying Holden's face as the symbol of their movement.
Running in parallel to all of this is the story of Miller's search for Julie Mao, which in spite of its smaller scope similarly dramatizes the contrasting ways in which one single person's identity and actions can be misinterpreted when viewed through conflicting ideological paradigms. Initially only approaching this "missing person's case" with a detached professionalism, Miller soon uncovers evidence that Julie Mao may in fact be in real danger. Not only does his investigation of this woman's life on Ceres soon reveal that she has mysteriously vanished from her apartment (having last been seen boarding a small cargo ship bearing the familiar name of the Scopuli), but when Miller breaks into Julie's private files, he uncovers a message sent to her by her mother in which this woman makes cryptic references to the Canterbury's destruction many weeks before this event occurred.
And yet, as Miller's conviction that Julie is in some way entangled in a larger conspiracy grows, so too does the disconcerting nature of his obsession with this woman's life. As Miller immerses himself further and further in every piece of information he can find about Julie Mao, he becomes increasingly invested not only in the story of how she abandoned the wealth and security of her family in favor of a life of poverty on Ceres, but also how this woman from Earth joined the cause of the Outer Planets Alliance, and dedicated her life to an activist group committed to overthrowing the rule of the very same corporation which her father currently runs--a corporation which Miller himself, as an employee of Star Helix Security, now indirectly serves.
This sets up what by far becomes Leviathan Wakes's most interesting storyline. As Holden's narrative follows the occasionally outlandish struggles of he and his surviving crew as they strive to uncover the identity of the Canterbury's true attackers--all while also fleeing authorities who are more interested in labeling them as either traitors to their respective nations, or (perhaps worse) heroes--Miller's parallel narrative similarly embodies a story in which its protagonist seems to exist between several contrasting interpretations of reality. Soon, Miller's own fraught history begins regularly surfacing in his thoughts, with his investigation of Julie's life on Ceres touching on a long-repressed debate that he seems to have once wrestled with in his youth.
As Miller repeatedly acknowledges to himself, his job at Star Helix means that he is merely a pawn in a larger corporate apparatus--an individual whose duty first and foremost is to maintain not so much the safety of the many people who live on the Ceres colony, but instead a corporate-controlled status quo that even he recognizes as inherently corrupt. In one scene that seems to embody Miller's moral outlook, he witnesses the start of what he interprets to be a riot organized by the Outer Planets Alliance, and briefly attempts to stop a passing girl from becoming involved in what he knows is an already deadly standoff. Yet when this girl responds by instead challenging Miller's indifference toward the situation, Miller turns and walks away--presumably leaving her to die.
The sound of detonation came from spinward, then voices raised in anger. The kids on the commons stopped their games of touch-me touch-you and stared. Miller stood up. There was smoke, but he couldn't see flames. The breeze picked up as the station air clearers raised the flow to suck away particulates so the sensors didn't think there was a risk of fanning a fire. Three gunshots rang out in fast succession, and the voices came together in a rough chant. Miller couldn't make words out of it, but the rhythm told him all he needed to know. Not a disaster, not a fire, not a breach. Just a riot.
The kids were walking toward the commotion. Miller caught one by the elbow. She couldn't have been more than sixteen, her eyes near black, her face a perfect heart shape.
"Don't go over there," he said. "Get your friends together and walk the other way."
The girl looked at him, his hand on her arm, the distant commotion.
"You can't help," he said.
She pulled her arm free.
"Gotta try, yeah?" she said. "Podria intentar, you know." You could too.
"Just did." Miller said as he put his terminal in its case and walked away. Behind him, the sounds of the riot grew. But he figured the police could take care of it. (p.208-209)
It's in this increasingly tense climate that Miller becomes obsessed with Julie Mao--a woman who, as he himself once seems to have been many years earlier, was so enraged by the oppressive corporate-controlled social hierarchy around her that she chose to dedicate her life to the cause of an organization working to dismantle it. Soon, Miller is casually reading Julie's private messages during his time off, seemingly living vicariously through this woman's experiences, and even going so far as to begin speaking aloud to his own imagined version of Julie--asking questions of her as if she were a close friend, and not a person he has technically (as the novel makes very clear) been hired to stalk and kidnap.
As this investigation consumes more and more of Miller's life--ultimately driving him to abandon his job at Star Helix and his home on Ceres--his half of the novel comes to teeter between several contrasting interpretations of itself. Is Miller's obsession with Julie really just a result of (as he claims) his dedication to his job as a police officer--a noble conviction that regardless of the morally gray context in which Shaddid assigned him to this missing person's case, Julie is in danger, and therefore it is now Miller's duty as an officer of the law to do what he can to save her? Alternately, is Miller so fixated on Julie due to his growing awareness that regardless of her intentions in joining the Outer Planets Alliance, this woman is about to make the very same mistake that he himself seems to have narrowly avoided in his youth, and entrust herself to a violent organization which uses the idealism of its cause to conceal the true human cost of its actions?
Or, perhaps most interestingly, is the truth actually the other way around? Is Miller's obsession with Julie rooted less in his fear that this person whom he has never met is about to throw away her life, and instead in the realization that in siding with the interests of Star Helix Security many years prior, he has wasted his own? Is Miller, essentially, taking advantage of Julie, and using his investigation of her whereabouts as a vehicle by which he can vicariously live the imagined life which he always wished he could have followed, but also never had the courage to pursue?
These questions build throughout the novel, with both Miller's and Holden's halves of this story eventually reaching an ending that takes the book's themes regarding the dehumanizing nature of symbolism and abstraction to their most extreme (if not also brutal) conclusions. I won't go into too many details so as to avoid needless plot spoilers, but I will say that in this book's latter chapters the authors take their intricately constructed narrative, and reveal that the core of this sci-fi mystery novel is actually an alien first-contact story.
For this reason, just as with other iterations of this very specific sub-genre of science fiction, Leviathan Wakes ends by taking as the central focus of its narrative the question of how beings from two vastly different paradigms of existence might conceptualize one another. It's just that, unlike other first contact stories, the alien at the center of Leviathan Wakes is an entity which is apparently incapable of communicating with another sentient organism without first slicing that organism open, and plastering its still-living organs against the sides of a burning fusion reactor so as to better absorb radiation.
Much as with Miller's obsession with twisting the story of Julie Mao onto the contours of his own life, and the strange nexus of competing propagandas in which Holden finds himself trapped, the alien around which the elaborate plot of Leviathan Wakes is eventually shown to revolve isn't exactly malicious, just continually seeking to twist the universe into a shape that better conforms to its own preconceptions and biases. All the while, everyone in this story remains unaware that the mythic world in which they think they live--a world which they are continually striving to better understand and respond to--may very well not exist.
Or alternately that world does exist, just not in a context that anyone is willing to accept.