Rough day yesterday, but today is starting better. Thanks to the food and drugs delivered by my daughter, the fever is gone and I’m functional again. Looking forward to another day watching TV and reading.

One of the things I watched yesterday was the very last episode of The Expanse, just for old time’s sake. They ended the screen version in a good place, with a focus on the two main characters just taking a break to hold on to each other. The book series ended in a very, very different place, with my favorite character Amos becoming the unlikely savior of humanity.

I woke up this morning with a weird thought fully formed, about how to describe The Expanse succinctly. Funny how the mind works while asleep. It goes something like this:

• What if humanity founded a rich interplanetary civilization across the solar system? What would that look like?
• And what if that civilization was disrupted by the sudden ability to travel to the stars via giant gateways? What would that do to the civilization?
• Answer those two questions by following a dozen compelling characters’ lives during that disruption, and you’ve got The Expanse.

It’s simple in retrospect, but it was genius to come up with those ideas and create such a rich story around them. Thank you, James SA Corey.