There are things the Old Woman can do, say, and think that the Woman cannot do, say, or think. (Le Guin, Space Crone).
On the day Naomi Nagata planned to retire with her partner James Holden, a new authoritarian dictatorship rolled into the ring space. With one firing of a single devastating weapon, they claimed control of the vast sweep of space colonised by humanity. Her reaction, and that of her former shipmates still onboard the Rocinante, was to form a resistance effort along with inhabitants of Medina Station, existing in a shadow world of conduits and storerooms as they planned to overthrow a violent force that wears a mask of calm authority. The final three novels of the nine-book The Expanse series focus on this fight, on the struggle against oppression, and against another, even more terrifying force from outside the universe itself.
These were the books I began re-reading from 20 January this year, looking for comfort and familiarity as each new wave of disastrous news hit from the USA, and the academic world I was struggling to maintain a toehold in was battered by authoritarianism. It felt appropriate, on many levels, as I adjusted to HRT to manage the symptoms of menopause and my own ageing, as well as the difficulties of researching and teaching in an increasingly strained and oppressive environment. Ursula Le Guin—with whose words this essay begins—might have been pleased, though, to see that this struggle, from its military actions to its underground communications system, is run and managed by old women. The grannies haven't just got onto the spaceship. They are the captains.
Age and ageing have long had a place in science fiction, particularly owing to the genre's concern with time, longevity, and immortality. Oró-Piqueras and Falcus's introduction to Age and Ageing in Contemporary Speculative and Science Fiction notes the significance of narratives of “decline,” or “successful ageing” found in recent studies of literary depictions of ageing, or the search for an “agelessness,” or even immortality aided by technological progress to defeat death itself (Oró-Piqueras and Falcus 2023: 2). Here, though, my concern is not with broader depictions of ageing, “successful” or otherwise (although that will come up), but with the ways that with ageing, older generations become significant during periods of massive societal upheaval.
It is not that older people are absent from this sub-genre of science fiction. Indeed, they can be found everywhere—from Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda in A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back and General Leia and Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, to Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam in Dune, to name just a few. But these elders are largely archetypes of the wise elder, the mentor guiding the young to fulfil their destiny. What makes The Expanse stand out, especially the final three novels, is that the old not only advise the young but lead them in both military and civilian roles. This is achieved without evading the everyday issues of ageing that bother anyone else at a comparable stage of life today. While Bobbie Draper and Aliana Tanaka make ample use of advanced armour, they, as well as all the other older characters, are facing a tyrannical regime while also negotiating the loss of the youthful vigour they previously relied upon.
The Expanse universe makes this especially difficult, given that the scientific accuracy of interstellar travel is particularly hard on older bodies. The resulting portrayal of old age in space is both affecting and honest. Naomi Nagata, Bobbie Draper, and the others are needed to lead this resistance effort because of their age and experience; only they can do what they do. Their approaches to resistance diverge, dependent upon those experiences, but are equally valid. The Expanse has already tackled issues of resistance to powerful regimes in earlier books; up until the creation of the Transport Union at the end of Babylon’s Ashes, the Belters had borne the historical brunt of oppression from the forces of Earth and Mars (Simpson 2022; McGee Husmann and Kusko 2022). It is their basic practical and emotional knowledge of grassroots action that forms the basis of the underground of the final three books, as expressed in characters who must be old enough to remember it and be able to apply it the moment it is called upon again when the Laconians arrive in Persepolis Rising.
At the core of this is the way that previous generations and their experience of resistance to oppression is communicated to and valuable for those who must take up the fight, something that is becoming increasingly critical. This is especially true of Black, PoC, and Indigenous populations who have a long familiarity with these battles, which is now being communicated to newcomers via social media. Transmission of knowledge is vital and learning is urgent, as Maria Ressa argued in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech (Ressa 2022). Here, I examine the roles of the crones of the Expanse space in Persepolis Rising, Tiamat’s Wrath, and Leviathan Falls as leaders and combatants in a fight for freedom that is always to some extent mediated by their reduced physical and mental capacity as older people. I consider how The Expanse foregrounds the value of their long lives and experience as they configure the resistance for their own and future generations’ freedom, as well as their mentorship of younger generations whose inexperience often puts the whole mission in danger.
The Young and the Old
Depictions of resistance to oppressive regimes are everywhere in science fiction, but rarely do they foreground the role of older generations. In Dune, the most active participants in rebellion to Harkonnen authority are young: Paul and Chani, who are both teenagers when the former joins the Fremen as a fighter. Paul's mother, Jessica, becomes the Fremen's Reverend Mother while pregnant; she and her unborn daughter become conduits for knowledge and wisdom vital to the Fremen's fight against the Harkonnen occupiers and later the Emperor himself. This is a magical echo of the need for essential information to be transmitted not only between mother and son, but also down through successive generations of Reverend Mothers. Jessica is as much an outsider to the Fremen as Paul, though, and this transmission of knowledge is tainted by the Bene Gesserit's complicity as arch-manipulators of the Fremen and the Emperor's own power. The early Star Wars films take a similar hero's journey approach, centring the experience of a young white man whose struggle against the Empire is framed in terms of a traditional battle where each side lines up and fights.
This is perpetuated in the sequels, which simply replace a young Rey for Luke, but maintain the sense that the elders of the Rebellion are advisors and trainers. They do provide a conduit for the skills necessary to battle the Empire, but the focus on grand, pitched battles ignores the realities of resistance against authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, which are usually conducted in the shadows and rely upon small-scale, discrete actions with long-term goals in mind, and that recognise the huge military and bureaucratic power imbalance between the two.
Sam, the figurehead of resistance in Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light does age but can evade it through reincarnation in a new, younger body. And while The Forever War's William Mandella is “old” when he returns to Earth after four years as a soldier, this is due to time dilation effects of the extreme distances of space and not the natural progression of physical ageing. This is what makes the three last Expanse novels distinctive: Old age, while it can be somewhat ameliorated by technology, cannot be fully defeated and death remains inevitable. Characters age realistically, their lives only prolonged by a matter of one to two decades, and descriptions are now littered with offhand references to sore backs, aching knees, thin skin, and spreading midriffs. And, beyond that, rather than being sidelined once the Laconians take over, they become central to the resistance and efforts to fight back.
In comparison, Star Wars' most successful depiction of both an Empire on this scale and the likely requirements of resisting it appears in Andor. Cassian Andor is older, although his age is never specified, but the small group he joins as he begins his radicalisation is also composed of younger Rebel members. His radicalisation proceeds via reading, however, recognising the vital importance of books as a medium for message and knowledge transmission. Banning books and access to knowledge and accurate learning are essential to the survival of these regimes, as Ressa rightly notes (and it is no surprise that pitched battles have been waged in community halls across the USA as parents fight to ensure that access to books is maintained). Andor has, until this point, resisted the influence of his adoptive mother, Maarve, who has the kind of relationship to the Rebellion that is common—not quite in and not quite out, operating in such a small way that they are able to remain invisible to authority and therefore able to survive.
The Expanse explicitly critiques resistance leadership by a single charismatic individual in Nemesis Games, the fifth Expanse novel (McGee Husmann and Kusko 2022: 109; c.f. Simpson 2021: 99–101). Individuals who justify the deaths of billions in the name of a cause are dangerous—blowing up a Death Star to defeat the Empire likely killed millions of people simply trying to survive in an oppressive regime where they had no other choice. By engaging with arguments around the complex nature of complicity, The Expanse reveals one of the crucial problems for the later resistance movement as it faces up to Laconian power: how to resist and end their power with the minimum of collateral damage and human suffering. Naomi Nagata is explicit in her defence of all those who must comply because they do not have the power to resist. Her method of attempting to undo the power of the Laconians is to insert her own people into their power structure. This includes, via James Holden, Dr. Elvi Okoye, whose work is vital to understanding and thwarting the threat posed by the beings who destroyed the original gate-builders. Elvi, coded as a Black female scientist, is ostensibly working for the Laconians, and simultaneously feeding her findings to the resistance via Naomi's underground communication system. Throughout Leviathan Falls, her work with the eternal child Cara has echoes of both Those Who Walk Away from Omelas (Le Guin 1973) and Spock’s sacrifice in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) in that it parallels the sense that one individual must be sacrificed for the sake of the many billions whose very survival depends on the research that is progressively damaging Cara psychologically. Amos Burton intervenes to prevent further experimentation, but it is Elvi’s wisdom in her final interaction with Cara that finally soothes her (LF: 400).
The resistance, as it emerges in Persepolis Rising and then Tiamat’s Wrath, is one built based on those with decades of experience. The Belters have spent thirty years as masters of the void, controlling the 1,300 worlds of The Expanse via the Transport Union, which manages trade among the colonised planets. Yet the moment the Heart of the Tempest arrives and the Laconians seize power, the elder Belters are thrown back into their old ways. Resistance activity has always been shown in The Expanse as made up of small groups who often have very different ideas about how to achieve their goals. Collectively known as the Outer Planets Alliance, they comprise those who prefer bombings, others who favour negotiation, and still others with even more complex methods. The organisation formed from the new alliance against the Laconians is organised by Naomi, Saba, and Bobbie Draper. Retirement is indefinitely suspended as their skills and prior knowledge are essential and must be taught to a new generation of saboteurs and resistance operatives.
While youth appears as something that leaves an individual prone to mistakes that are largely framed in terms of inexperience, ageing is presented as a process of continual learning from past errors. Jillian Houston, the young and brash second-in-command to Bobbie Draper in Tiamat’s Wrath, and then captain of the Gathering Storm in Leviathan Falls, exhibits bravado, but has a tendency toward poor decision-making that, in the context of critical interactions between the Laconians and the resistance, proves devastating. Houston is dismissive of the complicated semi-win of capturing the antimatter bombs in Tiamat's Wrath, framing the failure to capture a critical asset as a “moral victory” that is essentially a defeat.
Tensions between generations are a standout theme throughout The Expanse, starting with Julie Mao's rejection of her father's neoliberal capitalism, and finally re-enacted in Teresa Duarte's escape from her father Winston, who has made himself god-emperor of the 1,300 worlds. The courage to reject parental understanding of the world is a vital part of being young, and the pushback essential; both Teresa's and Julie's challenge to patriarchal control are vital to the narrative of resistance and must be effectively harnessed.
Recaptured in the relationship between Bobbie and Jillian, inexperience is exposed as being even more dangerous in Leviathan Falls. Admiral Trejo broadcasts an offer of exchange between the resistance and Laconians: If the resistance hand back Teresa Duarte, the emperor's daughter, then the Laconians will work with the resistance to eliminate the ultimate threat to humanity, the dark beings that are attempting to destroy them. Naomi Nagata does not trust the admiral. Naomi, now the central figure of the resistance, considers her position: “[I]f this isn't the opening I'm looking for, I'm not sure what our goal is with them” (LF: 188). In typical form, a group discussion ensues, but Naomi draws her own conclusions:
“You know what this is?” she said. “This is him making me responsible for what he does. Teresa's right. She's got exactly the frame I'm supposed to use. One person for a multitude. But I'm not looking to kill a multitude. That's him. If I do what he says, I'll be saving all the people he would kill to punish me if I didn't.” (LF: 190)
Again, the youngest person in the room, Teresa, is given a moment to provide her perspective, but she is not the leader, and although her view provides Naomi with the framing for her conclusion, she has missed the more nuanced picture Naomi can see because of long years as a resistance fighter. “If he'd led by pulling the Derecho back from Freehold, it would be a different thing. He didn't. He chose this, and I don't trust him” (LF: 190).
These are the often-terrible decisions that must be made by resistance leaders. Too young to see this and pressured by the threat to her father, Jillian Houston locks the Rocinante crew and Teresa in the room so that she can accept Trejo’s offer. Once Houston accepts, Colonel Tanaka is sent to the resistance base to retrieve Teresa, resulting in a bloodbath as Tanaka, dressed in the latest in Laconian battle armour, tears the station apart. Tanaka herself is of comparable age to Naomi; she has at least forty years’ military field experience by this point. The technology of the suit is what gives her the power to overwhelm the station alone. Her brief assessment of Houston when they first meet is brutal: “Jillian’s expression hardened. She might be green, but she didn’t like being corrected. Even standing face-to-face with Tanaka’s battle suit, she wasn’t backing down at all. Only the elevation in her heart rate betrayed her nervousness” (LF: 217). Technology enables Tanaka's violence, but it is Tanaka's experience and her ability to learn quickly from earlier mistakes that gives her the upper hand.
Naomi Nagata has long experience of resistance, having grown up in the Belt and been radicalised by a childhood of poverty into an adolescence of nascent rebellion. Her backstory is fully explored in Nemesis Games, which also points a finger at the dangers of radical resistance movements that rely on charismatic individuals, especially men who are driven by ego and follow the line that there are no innocent parties in such conflict. To Inaros and leaders like him, even those who have no power in a regime like the Earth-Mars Coalition are equally responsible for the oppression of Belters; thus billions can be killed without regret or thought. On the other hand, Naomi’s character arc is framed as one of consistently learning from the mistakes of her youth, which casts youth and being young itself as being a period for the kind of bravado and brashness from which a person should learn as they get older, rather than leading rebellious hosts into feverish battle (Cerqueira Lazier 2022). James Holden's early experiences—for example, his insistence on telling what he sees at that time as the truth in the first book, triggering a war between Earth and Mars—has a similar sense of wariness about it.
By the final novels, however, it is Naomi who is transcendent in her old age. Her role, especially in Tiamat's Wrath, is to act as a communication node, hidden away in a container but constantly receiving and sending out vital messages and intelligence to the resistance. Her emergence as the resistance leader is tempered by a long series of lessons. She has become a general as formidable as Trejo or Duarte, her leadership not clouded by ego or a desire for power. As Elvi Okoye sees it: “Naomi looked very different from the last time Elvi had seen her in person ... she remembered Naomi as a soft, almost retiring presence who had the habit of hiding behind the spill of her hair. The woman in the airlock had a much harder face, hair the white of snowfall, and nothing reticent about her” (LF: 284).
Version 1.0.0
The Ultimate Sacrifice: A Meaningful End
Ageing and old age force a reckoning onto us, including questions around how we live out our remaining years, and an increasing awareness of one's own mortality. In Tiamat's Wrath, Bobbie Draper thinks about death a lot. She is especially motivated by memories of her father's ageing and eventual death, after a long career as a Martian Marine Corps and trainer of young recruits: “[A]n entire generation had learned what it meant to be a Martian Marine under Sergeant Major Draper at Hecate Base ... He had always seemed invincible. An immutable fact of nature, like the avatar of Olympus Mons, come to life and walking among the mortals” (TM: 73). Bobbie's final memories of her father, however, have left a deep impression on her: “When he'd died, he'd been a tiny, shrivelled husk. Lying in his bed, hooked to the tubes and monitors that only prolonged the inevitable, he'd held her hand and said, 'I'm ready. I've done this a dozen times before'” (TM: 73). Bobbie is keen not to experience that indignity, as her identity is embedded in her physical strength and capacity as a soldier, as a Martian Marine like her father was.
Bobbie's death serves a second purpose in terms of providing a compelling example of self-sacrifice for the greater benefit of others. Her other fixation in Tiamat's Wrath is the struggle to engage with a younger generation that must be prepared to fight, to show that the Laconian Empire is not invulnerable: It can be defeated even if this is a long and bitter struggle that must play out over the long haul. This is key to stories of resistance, especially among older members when engaging with younger members who are unfamiliar with the requirement for long, drawn-out struggle without the chance for much success in the short term, something with which older Belters were already very familiar (Simpson 2022; McGee Husman and Kusko 2022).
The ability of the old and the long-dead to speak to and convey vital wisdom to energise survivors is another crux of resistance efforts, as many Indigenous efforts to protect land encroached on by corporations in the US and globally, has shown (see, for example, the protection of the Sacramento River in California). So too is Elvi Okoye's quest to understand the lives of the gate-builders, named as “the grandmothers,” whose experience of fighting back against their own enemies must guide humans, the younger inheritors of the gate network and their technology. Bobbie’s sacrifice is an attempt to make her death deeply meaningful, a conscious effort to become an ancestor of resistance by dying in the most dramatic and visible way. In the climactic midpoint of Tiamat’s Wrath, she carries the antimatter bomb into the Heart of the Tempest by herself, out alone in space. It operates on both a personal and a generational level, both as an attempt to avoid the withering of her father’s old age and to send a message to younger generations more powerful than words could ever be that tyrannical forces can be defeated.
If Bobbie were the only older character, it might seem trite, as though the only way to face gradual physical and psychological decline is to avoid it altogether. However, in typical fashion, The Expanse does not lack for alternatives. It is not the only way to age with significance. Chrisjen Avasarala, The Expanse's early avatar of older women wielding their power and anger across the solar system, is depicted in the earlier Persepolis Rising experiencing the long, slow decline that Bobbie fears. Her first appearance is fleeting, an unnamed “dark-skinned woman in a bright-blue sari” Drummer must take a photo with in the opening chapter. This could even be somebody else entirely, but given the authors' clear and consistent description of Avasarala and her fashion sense—as well as her political nous—in the earlier novels, it is likely her. The lack of a name, the half-clause description of her as one among many, reflects similar constructions of extreme old age as Bobbie fears: Avasarala is reduced, her agency and power diminished to simply another figure at a press conference where the younger generation now wields the greater influence and does not even recognise her when they see her.
Avasarala is crucial to the frontline battle for Sol system in Persepolis Rising. She has lost none of her flare and ferocity: “Her hair was blindingly white, thinning, and pulled back in a bun at the base of her skull. Her skin was slack and papery, but there was an intelligence in her eyes that the years hadn't dimmed. She looked up at Drummer and smiled with the warmth of a grandmother” (PR: 141). The contrast between the use of terms more usually deployed to describe the weakness of extreme ageing and the undimmed intellect and force of Avasarala's personality could not be sharper. Throughout the remainder of Persepolis Rising, Avasarala is a source of information and advice to Drummer, whose relationship with her is tense and prone to fragility because of Avasarala's commitment to protect Earth at the expense of the Belt and Belters from the earliest books. Avasarala's appearances throughout Persepolis Rising underscore the variability of extreme old age as an experience: She can walk with a cane, but often uses a wheelchair, a subtle reference to the unpredictability of gradual decline. Her eventual death is off-page, between the end of Persepolis Rising and the start of Tiamat's Wrath. Avasarala's influence on the series is so powerful and enduring both in terms of the books and the world of the Expanse that the report of her death as the first sentence of the final book is appropriately shocking. She is so influential that she embodies Sol system, and Winston Duarte's decision to bury her on Laconia is a demonstration of not only Laconia's power but also Avasarala's own significance, even in death.
Conclusions: What do we do now?
Ageing is hard work, even without a rising fascist threat in the world. I am held together by artificial hormones and would probably not cope well with life on an Expanse ship. But resistance does not need to be grand or dramatic, and we do not all have to be leaders. Waiting for a Paul Atreides or a Luke Skywalker to command an epic, cinematically appealing victory is not the answer. Science fiction, especially recently, has shown a capacity to shift away from narratives of a charismatic leader providing all the answers; such leaders, like Winston Duarte or Emperor Palpatine, are too convinced of their own rightness and unwilling to acknowledge the contributions or even humanity of others.
Instead, there has been a shift toward the collaborative effort of generations, especially a nuanced understanding of the benefit of working together and the transmission of knowledge between the old and the young. Resistance movements are built on the engagement of small actions and small actors: the engineer who conceals Naomi's identity on the Bhikaji Cama in Tiamat's Wrath, Chava who gives her a temporary home, the doctor who hides Alex Kamal's grandson's medical notes, allowing them to slip “behind my desk” to avoid Laconian oversight, the crew of the Falcon, who carefully ignore the presence of resistance leaders on one of Laconia's most critical ships. Meanwhile, Teresa's struggle with her father, whose rash belief in his own superiority takes humanity to the brink of extinction, mirrors the disruption caused by so many parents believing misinformation online, or their prejudices exposed by the results of the November 2024 US election and everything since.
As a teenager, I wondered what I would do if I was faced with the realities I studied in history classes. I am not Naomi Nagata, and must acknowledge that I have, overall, benefitted from the systems now collapsing before our eyes. I stepped up to teach this semester with a commitment not to comply in advance and find any way I could to learn from those who do have experience: the Black and Indigenous individuals and communities sharing their wisdom via the networks they have available. While James S.A. Corey are two white, male-presenting American authors, these are often among the privileged, able to assist by using their relative position to imagine better ways of being human and a more diverse future that includes not just gender and race but age as well. In The Expanse as a whole, but especially the final three novels, they offer a compelling critique of traditional science fiction narratives of what should comprise a resistance and who might best lead it. While James Holden eventually sacrifices himself for the sake of humanity to avoid Duarte sublimating all minds into his own, it is Naomi Nagata and Elvi Okoye, old and wise, who will provide the way forward for the next stage of “the churn.” I give the final word, though, to Maria Ressa, whose journalistic fight against Duterte, the former President of the Philippines, may give us both inspiration and practical tools for tackling this moment. Like Naomi and the other grannies of science fiction, she calls upon us to imagine a world of “peace, trust, and empathy, bringing out the best we can be,” however old we are. And then go, make it so.
Isabel Black
Bibliography
Cerqueira Lazier, Tiago (2022) “How to Be a Hero: Hannah Arendt and Naomi Nagata on Making and Doing Politics” in The Expanse and Philosophy, pp. 163-170.
Corey, James S A (2011) Leviathan Wakes, Orbit: London.
Corey, James S A (2015) Nemesis Games, Orbit: London.
Corey, James S A (2016) Babylon’s Ashes, Orbit: London.
Corey, James S A (2017) Persepolis Rising, Orbit: London (PR).
Corey, James S A (2019) Tiamat’s Wrath, Orbit: London (TW).
Corey, James S A (2021) Leviathan Falls, Orbit: London (LF).
Falcus, Sarah and Maricel Oró-Piqueras (eds.) (2023) Age and Ageing in Contemporary Speculative and Science Fiction, Bloomsbury Academic: London.
Le Guin, Ursula K (2023 [1973]) Space Crone, Silver Press: London.
McGee Husmann, Caleb and Elizabeth Kusko (2022) “Being Beltalowda: Patriotism and Nationalism in The Expanse” in The Expanse and Philosophy, pp. 102–110.
Nicholas, Jeffery L (ed) (2022) The Expanse and Philosophy: So far out into the Darkness, Wiley and Blackwell: London.
Oró-Piqueras, Marcus and Sarah Falcus (2023) “Introduction: Intersections Between Age Studies and Science and Speculative Fiction” in Age and Ageing in Contemporary Speculative and Science Fiction, pp. 1–8.
Ressa, Maria (2022) How to Stand Up to a Dictator, Penguin: London.
Simpson, Sid (2022) “The Inners Must Die: Marco Inaros and the Righteousness of Anti-Colonial Violence” in The Expanse and Philosophy, pp. 93–101.
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