I have just finished season 3 of The Expanse, the near-future science fiction series based on the books by James S.A. Corey, and although some aspects of the ending of season 3 were disappointing I have been really enjoying this show. There’s a lot to like about it – the setting itself, the aesthetic, the fundamentals of the inter-system conflict, the main characters, the ideologies at the centre of the conflicts, and the plot are all excellent aspects of this show – but for me the thing that really stands out, the thing that has kept me really strongly engaged with this show is the Belters and their culture. I think it is the best example of how to build a synthetic culture that I have seen in science fiction or fantasy for a long, long time, and the Belters present a rich and detailed culture that serves to reflect ideas and ideologies from our real world, while also standing alone as a fascinating, rich and deep vision of a culture all of its own. The Belters feel simultaneously very alien, like a society raised in space 500 years in our future and yet also viscerally close to us, as if they had sprung straight from the present to taunt us with visions of our own failings. Even their invented language is simultaneously alien and yet so close you feel that you can understand it without subtitles.

The Belters are a culture defined by both the harsh environment of their upbringing, and their political struggle for rights and freedom. The broad parameters of their political struggle are very much like something we would have seen in the colonial era on earth: a people born and raised on a land they don’t own, who yearn to liberate that land from its distant owners but who have to work for those owners in harsh and unrelenting conditions. They are dependent on those distant overlords for much of their technology and supplies, just as surely as the Indians or Irish were forced into dependency on their colonial masters by a deliberate program of economic and industrial destruction. Their liberation struggle aims to free them from this yoke, but cannot act decisively out of fear of losing that essential lifeline, which in space is a much more punitive and restrictive relationship of dependency than we ever saw in the colonial era. This a really well defined model of how a colonial relationship would look in a capitalist and highly militaristic near-earth future, a brilliant depiction of the property relations that would arise in space 500 years after the Cyberpunk era.

This deeply exploitative pseudo-colonial relationship is perfectly tied to the general character traits of the Belters we meet in the series. They are fatalistic, cynical and prone to despair, but they are also full of energy, indomitable and apparently immune to fear. They are resourceful, capable of making something out of almost nothing, independent and smart, but also cramped by their physical space, the constant imposing emptiness beyond the walls of their tiny communities, and the poverty they are forced to grow up and live within. Belter society is obviously rife with crime and people trying to get one over on one another – and who could blame them? – but their society is also rich from solidarity and a shared sense of struggle, and many of the characters we meet are ferociously committed to the long-term goal of national liberation.

This Belter personality, and the political complexity of Belter life, is perfectly summarized in the character Anderson Dawes, the OPA leader on Ceres Station. Anderson Dawes is simultaneously a union leader, a gangster and a revolutionary, making sure that he is personally enriched and empowered by his central role as a union organizer on the station, while also being intensely (and often violently) committed to his people’s struggle. His public persona alternates between lazy, corrupt gangster and committed unionist, but occasionally we also see his ruthless devotion to the cause of freeing the Belters and making a Belter nation. We also see this later in season 3 in the form of Ashford, captain of the Behemoth and former pirate, but Anderson Dawes is the quintessential Belter revolutionary, simultaneously venal and ideological, selfish and selfless. These people are a really good science fiction depiction of the kind of colourful characters who arose from the national liberation movements of the 20th century, activists who were ferociously and single-mindedly committed to the liberation of their people but who were also often personally very corrupt. Anderson Dawes and the OPA are also excellent representations of the way in which national liberation movements of the 20th century overlapped with worker’s movements, and show the ease with which Marxism was able to infiltrate nationalism in developing (but not developed) nations. It makes perfect sense to viewers of the Expanse that Anderson Dawes should be simultaneously a criminal, a union leader and a revolutionary nationalist – wouldn’t you be? – and this perfect logic is exactly why so many national liberation movements in the 20th century adopted Marxism. Europe’s colonial subjects were also largely exploited workers, and their political activists saw very quickly where those two oppressions overlapped. In The Expanse we see a very believable model for how such oppression would be exported into space, and how its victims would respond in a similar vein to the Arafats and Sukarnos of the 20th Century.

Belter culture differs from 20th century colonial cultures by its existence as a colonized diaspora, rather than a simple single landmass under the control of a foreign power, and the Expanse handles this especially well in showing their relationship with the Martians. The Martians in the Expanse serve as a kind of model of New Zealand, white South Africa or Australia, the colonies that made good by dint of being built on “empty” land (which, of course, was stolen in the real world but was genuinely empty on Mars). Farmers, land owners and rich workers, they view the “skinnies” of the belt with disdain, just as Americans sneered at the Irish diaspora, and Australians looked down on the Chinese workers who provided them with essential services during the gold rush. The Martians think they’re better because they have their own land, although of course really they’re just lucky. The relationship between dusters and skinnies is thus driven by a dynamic of scorn and envy, with both depending on each other and unable to separate, and both looked down on by Earth natives, but unwilling to admit their shared interests. We see in season 3 what it takes to make them put those interests aside and fight for a shared humanity, but I think we will also see in future seasons that the new threats they face will wash away the dynamic of their struggle, and with it the most interesting parts of this excellent television series.

With all of these details, The Expanse offers a masterclass in how to make a new culture: drawing on existing social history for its key ingredients, it adds in new threats and environmental constraints, and builds the character, society and motivations of the new culture carefully on this basis. The result is a rich, believable and highly appealing society that quickly draws you into its struggle, and keeps you deeply engaged in it until the bittersweet ending. This is world building at its finest!