Faith Roswell is a Senior Writer on Screen Rant’s Classic TV team. Since earning her degree in Creative Writing over a decade ago, Faith has written articles on film and TV from a variety of different angles. Faith now combines her knowledge of psychology with her love of monster movies to give more insight into what makes the best ones.
You may have read her Screen Rant lists and features covering horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, or read her Amazon Top 10 book, “Movie Monsters of the Deep.”
Faith has had an extensive career as a writer, appearing on BBC live radio, researching true crime for Rotten Mango podcast, and writing for publications including Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, and The Daily Jaws before beginning here at Screen Rant.
Some genres are not easy to define, often inspiring heated debate over nuance, which is the dilemma found when discussing one of the best hard sci-fi TV shows of all time. There are fewer subgenres of sci-fi than might be expected, but this makes crossovers and overlaps even more likely. Hard sci-fi is generally defined as a genre that is grounded in real world science, with logical consistency rather than relying on overly futuristic elements. For example, movies like The Martian are considered hard sci-fi, while Black Mirror, despite being heavily based on real-world technology, is not.
This somewhat narrow definition makes true hard sci-fi relatively rare, but it is easy to understand why the revolutionary space series The Expanse would be considered a solid addition to the genre. The Expanse‘s accuracy has been praised by astrophysicists and scientists for its depiction of certain elements associated with space travel, like G-force. That said, the show’s more fantastical elements are not strictly realistic. This does not stop The Expanse‘s six seasons from making the show a 21st century sci-fi masterpiece, but it does disqualify it from the hard sci-fi genre, and its creators agree.
The Expanse’s Creators Don’t Believe The Expanse Is “Hard Sci-Fi”
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The Expanse follows the intense political struggle between three main nations, with shady factions attempting to engineer a war between the militaristic Martians, the Earthers, and the Belters, the show’s exploited underclass. Season 1 of The Expanse feels like an entirely different show, with the setup feeling like a combination of film noir, complete with its downtrodden and tormented detective, and a political drama set in space. However, The Expanse suddenly introduces an extraterrestrial element that makes the show visually stunning, but changes the game and the genre from that moment onward.
The Expanse book series was written by the duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, using the pen name James S. A. Corey.
The plot twist is a significant departure from the genre, but The Expanse is so good that some fans overlook it in order to rank the series among the few perfect hard sci-fi TV shows in existence. On the other hand, its creators have not. The Expanse is based on James S. A. Corey’s bestselling novel series, and the back of the first book, Leviathan Wakes, includes an interview with the authors addressing its genre and their response, “What you’re really asking me there is if this is hard science fiction. The answer is an emphatic ‘no.’”
The interview went on to explain the reasoning behind the story’s scientific approach, explaining, “I wanted everything in the book to be plausible enough that it doesn’t get in the way. But the rigorous how-to with the math shown? It’s not that story.” The attention to detail ensured that hard sci-fi fans were not immediately put off by plot holes and sci-fi “magic,” but The Expanse‘s creators define their story’s genre as space opera rather than hard sci-fi. This puts the adaptation in the company of TV legends like Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Farscape.
Why The Expanse Feels Like Hard Sci-Fi, Even If It Isn’t
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Most great works of hard sci-fi allow no room for science fantasy or farfetched technological advances. Compared to the best hard sci-fi books of all time, The Expanse is much less factual, but as the novel series never aimed to fit in this genre, this allowed the writers significant creative freedom, resulting in a TV adaptation that was much harder than virtually all of its contemporaries. The series drew attention for its approach to science facts, especially the effects of space travel on the human body, making it feel more like hard sci-fi than series like Battlestar Galactica.
That is not to say that The Expanse‘s status as a space opera makes it any less worthy of its immense critical acclaim, 95% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating, or influence on other sci-fi TV series. The term “space opera” might once have been coined as an insult, but this subgenre has given us sci-fi TV shows that changed the genre forever, and, in Star Trek‘s case, the world. Ranking The Expanse among space operas while other fans still group it with hard sci-fi is a testament to the show’s quality, regardless of genre.
The Expanse
The Expanse is a sci-fi series set in the distant future where humanity has spread out across the solar system, but the alliances between the three most potent governing bodies have reached a state of cold war. A mixed-up crew finds themselves at the center of a dangerous intergalactic conspiracy that threatens to bring war to the colonized worlds.
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