Midway through Leviathan Wakes, there was a scene which completely upended my impression of this story, and caused me to realize that I'd fundamentally misunderstood the basic nature of the book I had thought I was reading.
At this point in the novel, Leviathan Wakes's two main protagonists (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 named the Rocinante), the characters all contemplate an increasingly uncertain future in which Protogen's new bioweapon will likely be unleashed on the majority of humanity.
It's here that the book’s action reaches an unexpected pause. While the earlier chapters have depicted the harrowing details of Holden's and Miller's struggle to escape from Eros alive (with both characters forced to fight off those civilians unlucky enough to become infected with Protogen's mind-controlling virus in the process), it's in this moment that the story shifts tone, and instead 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 around him happens to come from a world whose government is currently bent on the other's destruction. Holden's Executive Officer on the Rocinante, 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 seek to liberate themselves from the Mars and Earth based corporations who currently rule them. 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 colonial overseers so as to found their own society. Even the Rocinante's engineer, Amos Burton, has his own uniquely distinct background--having been born on Earth just like Holden, but fled this world at such a young age that he identifies more as a belter like Naomi than anyone else.
Yet in spite of these differing origins and backgrounds, Holden watches as each of his crew find in one another's company a community that transcends the deadly conflict now unfolding outside their ship. Specifically, as Holden listens to Miller tell the group a lengthy story about an outlandish arrest he was once hired to make during his many years as a for-profit police officer, 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--a body of literature which prides itself in its rejection of traditionally heroic characters in favor of a more morally fraught 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, regardless of their stated goals or ideologies, 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 which they themselves struggle to accurately describe. Meanwhile the protagonists of this story are people who, without ever ignoring their own unique backgrounds and identities, are still able to recognize in one another a shared experience of humanity that proves more real than the ideological propaganda surrounding them.
This quality is what emerges in the above scene. As Holden watches Miller joke with his crew, he reflects on his own fears for his family back on Earth (a non-traditional many-parent household in Montana from which he was the only child). Yet it's in this moment that Holden also realizes that his fears for the safety of his parents on Earth also fuel his fears for the family of his ship's pilot, Alex. Even though both characters come from nations currently seeking the other's destruction, Holden no more wants Alex's family on Mars to die in a military strike launched from Earth than Alex wishes for Holden's to die in a similar strike launched from Mars, with it being this mutual experience of anxiety which (ironically) forms a point of unity between these characters. It's by acknowledging this shared experience of anxiety that Holden is not only able to grasp the true senselessness of the conflict unfolding outside his ship, but also the extent to which this conflict is rooted, horrifyingly, in the ideologies and propagandas of nations that are far less real than the many crimes committed in their names.
It is this awareness that Leviathan Wakes's grimly realistic setting ultimately upholds as most valid, even as the book's story also explores the disconcerting possibility that the reality that Holden discovers in this moment is one that humanity on the whole may forever be incapable of acknowledging.
These themes emerge slowly in the book's early chapters, with both of the novel's two protagonists introduced in alternate contexts that slowly come to mirror one another in unexpected ways.
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 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-run social 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. Because of this, 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 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 on board while the larger vessel moves to intercept.
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 in this way watch helplessly as the larger ship is destroyed by a fleet of previously unseen stealth ships that had been lying in wait--vessels which then immediately vanish from sight just as quickly as they appeared. Overcome with grief, the only clue which Holden can find as to the identity of the Canterbury's attackers is a remote transponder stuck to one of the Scopuli's inert terminals which he realizes lured them to the Scopuli to begin with--a device that could have been manufactured anywhere in the solar system, but which is powered by a battery stamped with what Holden initially assumes are the incriminating initials "M.C.R.N." (Martian Congressional Republic Navy)
Meanwhile, millions of kilometers away, the other half of this novel's two protagonists, Josephus Miller, is introduced in what at first seems a comparatively lower-stakes context. 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 the subterranean colony on 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 this man 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 Julie 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, this job is less a true missing person's case as it is a glorified kidnapping operation, with Jules Pierre Mao having effectively hired Star Helix to use their resources to abduct this woman in exchange for payment. Yet due to how Miller has long ago abandoned any illusions as to the moral integrity of his job, he nevertheless throws himself into the minutiae of this new case with only slight qualms about its ethical implications. In the moment when Miller accepts this assignment from Shaddid, the text reads:
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 quickly come to 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 controversy wherein their actions are aggressively misinterpreted by the powers that be. Initially overwhelmed with grief at the pointless deaths of the 50 people who he knows were aboard the Canterbury when it was attacked, 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 conspicuous 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 actual attackers) are declared to be wanted criminals, with the company which owned the Canterbury disowning Holden for his perceived accusations of piracy against the Martian government, while Mars likewise responds by issuing an arrest warrant for Holden. 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 comes to dramatize the contrasting ways in which one single person's identity and actions can be interpreted. Initially only approaching this "missing person's case" with a detached professionalism that comes from decades spent doing similarly questionable work, Miller soon uncovers evidence that Julie 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 suspiciously 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 demands that her daughter return to the family's expensive home on Earth's moon, all while making cryptic references to the Canterbury's destruction many weeks before this event had occurred.
And yet, as Miller's conviction that Julie is in some way entangled in a larger conspiracy grows, so too does the ambiguous nature of his increasingly disconcerting 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 also becomes increasingly invested not only by the story of how this woman abandoned the wealth and security of her family in favor of a life of poverty on Ceres, but also how she joined the cause of the controversial 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 leads--a corporation which Miller himself now indirectly serves.
This sets up what by far becomes Leviathan Wakes's most interesting storyline. As Holden's narrative follows the occasionally outlandish struggle of he and his 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 all as either traitors to their respective nations, or (perhaps worse) national heroes, Miller's narrative similarly embodies a story in which its protagonist seems to exist between several contrasting realities. 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, 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 Ceres, but instead a corporate-controlled status quo that even he recognizes as inherently corrupt. In one scene that seems to embody Miller's political 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 teenage girl from walking toward this dispute. Yet when this girl responds by challenging Miller's indifference toward the situation, Miller simply turns and walks away, seemingly viewing himself as permanently separate from this conflict.
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 political context that Miller becomes increasingly obsessed with Julie Mao--a woman who, as he himself once seems to have been, was so enraged by the oppressive corporate-controlled social hierarchy around her that she chose to dedicate her life to the cause of the Outer Planets Alliance. Soon, Miller is casually reading Julie's private messages during his time off, seemingly living vicariously through her experiences, and even going so far as to begin speaking aloud to his own imagined version of Julie Mao--asking questions of her as if she were a close friend, and not a person he's technically (as the novel makes very clear) been hired to stalk and then 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 so that he can continue obsessively researching Julie's whereabouts--his half of the novel comes to teeter between several contrasting interpretations of itself. Is Miller's obsession with Julie really just a result (as he claims) of his dedication to his job--a noble conviction that regardless of the morally gray context in which Shaddid assigned him to this missing person's case, whoever Julie is, she is in danger, and therefore it is now Miller's duty 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 the cause of 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 actually rooted less in his fear that this person whom he has never met is about to throw away her life, and instead in a personal realization that in siding with the interests of Star Helix Security, 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 idealized life which he always wished he could have followed, but also never had the courage to pursue?
These ambiguities build throughout the novel, with both 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 novel'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 sub-genre of science fiction, Leviathan Wakes ends by taking as the central focus of its story 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 being 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 Julie Mao, and the strange nexus of competing ideologies in which Holden finds himself trapped, the alien around which the plot of Leviathan Wakes is eventually shown to revolve isn't exactly malicious, but instead 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 world in which they think they live--the world they are constantly seeking to better react to and understand--may very well not exist.
Or alternately that world does exist, just not in a way that anyone is willing to accept.