"The Expanse" Series Trivia [1] Quiz

Answer: Knight

The five-person team from the Canterbury went to investigate the Scopuli using the Knight. While they were gone the Canterbury was destroyed. They were deciding whether to go to Jupiter or the Belt until the Pur'n'Kleen offices told them to meet up with the Martian battleship Donnager. They were stuck on the cramped shuttle for more than two weeks.

Answer: Tachi

A tachi is a Japanese sword. Fred Johnson gave James Holden a code so the ship could be renamed, and Holden chose "Rocinante," referring to the old horse from "Don Quixote." Even years after acquiring the Rocinante, the crew still had jumpsuits and mugs with "Tachi" stenciled on them.

Answer: Mars

The Rocinante was an MCRN (Martian Congressional Republic Navy) torpedo bomber corvette. The old crew of the Canterbury acquired her when they escaped the Donnager just before it was destroyed. The crew immediately fell in love with the ship, which was modern, clean, and powerful, unlike the Canterbury.

The Rocinante was designed to run with a crew of twelve, but the main characters managed with just four.

Answer: Naomi Nagata, Engineer

"The Expanse" was a space opera with three large factions: Earth, Mars, and the Belt. Of the original Rocinante crew there were two Earthers (Holden and Amos), one Martian (Alex), and one Belter (Naomi). More permanent crew would be added in "Babylon's Ashes," the sixth book, but no Belters.

Answer: James Holden, Captain

Holden's parents joined a group marriage for legal reasons so they could run a farm in Montana. Holden was the only child of the eight parents, with a genetic mixture of all of them. His mother Elise carried him to term. Holden had five fathers (Caesar, Tom, Anton, Dimitri, and Joseph) and three mothers (Elise, Tamara, Sophie).

Answer: Timmy

He was just known as "Timmy," and started working for a crime boss, Amos Burton. During "The Churn" novella, Timmy killed Burton and a large portion of his organization. Timmy's friend, Erich, created a fake ID for Timmy, appropriating the name Amos Burton, so he could leave Earth. Erich took over what was left of the organization.

Answer: Baltimore

Amos had a difficult childhood, growing up on the streets of Baltimore as an undocumented individual. This lack of ID meant he didn't have access to government programs, work, or social safety net. He worked as hired muscle for the local crime organizations.

He was able to leave Earth and get a job on the Canterbury as a mechanic. He would return to Baltimore once later in life when Lydia, his surrogate mother, died.

Answer: The Butcher of Anderson Station

The citizens of Anderson Station were protesting the increased cost of basic necessities, throwing their governor out the airlock. Fred Johnson led the marine force to restore order to the station, authorizing the use of heavy weapons near life support equipment. Fred did not learn until after the attack that the station had surrendered, but he had not been told because the UN wanted to set an example. Fred resigned and joined the Outer Planets Alliance to fight for Belter rights.

Answer: Eros

In the Expanse, the Eros asteroid had a population of 1.5 million, and was famous for its casinos (kind of like a Macau or Las Vegas in space). Protogen selected Eros for infection because it had a large amount of biomass (people) in a small, easily controlled space. They wanted to see what larger structures the protomolecule would create when it had more than a few bodies to work with.

Answer: Blue

People infected by the protomolecule were often described as having glowing blue eyes. When the ghost of Miller spoke to Holden, he was always accompanied by blue fireflies.

Answer: Phoebe, Saturn's moon

Saturn's moon Phoebe is quite different from the other moons. It orbits Saturn in the opposite direction, is relatively far away, and has a high orbital inclination. In real life, Phoebe is a captured moon from the Kuiper belt. In "The Expanse", Phoebe was a captured moon from an entirely different solar system, carrying a payload to hijack simple life on Earth to build a gate that would connect the solar system to the wider galaxy.

Answer: A botanist

Prax was working on Ganymede, the breadbasket of the Belt. His job was to create new strains of plants that could survive the harsh conditions in the Belt, or produce better food yields. When the Earth-Mars war flared up, he saved a soybean sapling from his greenhouse dome.

Answer: Pistachios

Avasarala would constantly crack pistachios during meetings and tuck the shells away in her purse. It may have been because she wanted to annoy or distract other people in the meetings, or because she just liked pistachios. Maybe both.

Answer: Skiing accident

Charanpal was fifteen years old when he died in a skiing accident on a run he had probably skied a hundred times already. Avasarala was able to sympathize with people who were struck with senseless loss or injustice, such as the citizens of the Belt.

In the television adaptation, Charanpal was a UN Marine who died on an operation in the Belt. This made Avasarala much more hostile towards Belters. In the show, Avasarala casually tortured a Belter by holding him in Earth's gravity without the assistance of a pool for buoyancy. The book version of Avasarala would not have compromised her ethics that way.

Answer: Poetry

In "Caliban's War", Arjun wrote a poem to Avasarala just before a battle. "If life transcends death / Then I will seek for you there. / If not, then there too." Avasarala was delighted by her husband's one-track mind for poetry. She requested the haiku be printed on her tombstone.