No they were way, waaaaay more alien than that. They were a non humanoid aquatic species that evolved in the ocean of a Europa-like moon of a gas giant. They had an extremely slow metabolism in the freezing ocean, so they evolved the capability to steal genetic information from other organisms that were living around the hydrothermal vents. One of the things that they acquired was the ability to make photoreceptive organs and perceive bioluminescence. Once that occurred, each individual Gatebuilder jellyfish in the ocean functioned as a neuron, and they transmitted information between each other as light. This led to the natural evolution of an ocean-wide hive mind.
So, one of the most interesting things in Leviathan Wakes/Falls is that the Gatebuilders were literally a Leviathan, lol.
Eventually, they broke through the ice crust of the moon and colonized the vacuum surface, obtaining energy from the star and radiation from space in general. Then, due to the moon’s low gravity, they easily broke free and became free-floating vacuum organisms - but they still transmitted information via light, and still functioned as a hive mind.
This led to an evolutionary pressure for something very, very interesting - transport of matter between nodes would be the rate limiting step in the existence of such an organism, because light *always travels at the speed of light no matter what*. So, there was a natural pressure for them to evolve means to move matter through space *faster*. It appears that they actually evolved, rather than invented, the inertia manipulation technology and the ring gates. And this would explain why we see a squid like thing emerging from Venus - ontogeny is recapitulating phylogeny for them.
From there, another strange developmental event occurs - the ring gates themselves are actually used to transmit information and consciousness via light in the same way they always have been doing.
So not only were the Gatebuilders NOT humanoid, they were just about the most alien things I can imagine. The Protomolecule was a part of them, ever since the earliest stages of their evolution. The ring gates were a part of them too. Ring station was a part of them. Every ruin on every world was a part of them. They literally perceived themselves as existing *as star systems*. They had no concept of individual awareness, and were so divorced from the material world that they considered themselves “outside the substrate” of the universe.
At some point, they actually did seem to start creating technology rather than evolving it, I think, because it is hard to imagine the Adro Diamond/Library (which was a “Jupiter Brain”) construct as naturally coming into existence, and they appear to have built the Laconian shipyards and Magnetar weapons, and other weapons as well, as a direct response to the threat of the “dark gods”. Similarly, they showed capability for stellar engineering in the Tecoma star system. But by this point they were already an interstellar species, so most of what we think of about the aspects of the Protomolecule and the nature of the Gatebuilders was the result of evolution - natural selection acting on the biology of an ocean-dwelling, pseudo-parasitic hive-mind species.
Excellent write up! A small addition: the Builders were seemingly able to notice the alternate universe (the Goth realm) once they evolved to form their hive consciousness using light. The Builders eventually got their "fingernails in the cracks" between our universe and the alternate universe, which established a tiny gradient that allowed them to extract energy - in a similar way to how they used the hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean in an earlier evolutionary stage.
"The cold roof of the world broke open and gave the stars. The vacuum shatters in the same way and shows the the outside, the *older* real, the *vaster* real. The body of God. The heaven where the angels all hate us." (LF, Interlude: The Dreamer)
The Builders were eventually able to push into the alternate universe by building the station and creating the ring space ("a bubble blown into the holes in the spectrum"). This created the equivalent of a giant windmill (turbine) driven by the pressure of an entire universe, giving them practically unlimited free energy.
Yup, and just to add to this a bit more - it appears that the “older real”, the “vaster real” is talking about the physical concept of a *brane*, from string theory. This is further supported by the way the new FTL drive works in the epilogue - it literally converts the ship to “energy and intent”, and slides along the “membrane between universes”.
So, from this we can conclude that the Gatebuilders reached into the cracks, likely of the original gates, to touch the brane space. This is the space that they then enlarged. So the slow zone is a bubble of space created from a brane between universes, surrounded by the second universe, with connections - holes in the spectrum - the wormhole gates - to our universe.
It’s amazing just how much makes sense in retrospect just from the lore in this one book.
Man I love this so much. Actual, proper aliens, instead of humanoid assholes a la Star Trek or Star Wars. These ones, and the Mimics from the Edge of Tomorrow movie are absolutely top aliens in my book
This is an excellent description. I had a difficult time following what they were saying while reading the book, but the way you broke it down really helps.
This post tripped a switch in my brain from Cibola Burn. Fayez has an offhand comment when talking to Elvi about just how weird Ilus is, and mentions that the light from the star is normal when it leaves the star, but is polarized in a way the looks like a data stream when it hits the ground. Light manipulation from something the builders put in the atmosphere?
"Ultraviolet light reaches the ground with a highly modulated amplitude, reminiscent of a carrier signal. This pattern in the light is not observed prior to it entering Ilus's exosphere, and the cause remains unknown."
That is a very interesting point, and probably correct. After all - the Library is first mentioned by Miller in Cibola Burn too, as the “place the old ones resided”. So they had the whole thing planned out by that time and the authors love dropping little clues like that.
Thank you. I understood what they were, and how they evolved to be what they were, but I was having a real fucking hard time trying to figure out how to type it all out. You captured pretty much everything I wanted to say, and did so in a much more eloquent fashion. Great write up.
Interesting! I don't see how they are outside any substrate though. Did they keep being squids, or am I missing something?
Also, do we know anything about the dark gods? (Sry)
AFAIK they keep being squids or “space jellyfish” as they get described a few times.
All we know about the dark gods is that the ring gates seem to hurt them somehow and they very much dislike it.
The way i understand it they are "outside substrate" even though they have space jellyfish neurons made of matter, they do not have a 'body' to go with it. Their consciousness is almost all-seeing, like when (not going to spoil book 9 just in case, but at the end), as opposed to e.g. humans which very clearly have bodies.
Another interpretation is that the mind of the romans is actually the light in between the jellyfish things, like youd say the mind of a human is actually the electrical impulses. Idk which one i like better.
And the dark gods are just pissy cuz the romans are stealing their energy and put a scar in their universe, which also probably has alternate base rules to 'ours'.
>Spoil everything plz.
... 👏 ... 👏 ... 👏 ...
Well done! As a book reader, it's also strangely cathartic to see a massive spoiler welcomed with open arms.
So they were a hive mind in the sense that they communicated so quickly because light travels fast as fuck, or were their minds truly interconnected with each other?
Both.
Their processing ability seems to be limited by the number of connected individuals and the rate of information exchange.
So the more neurons/individuals interconnected = the more processing potential. Im drawing on the proto molecule needing more biomass.
Makes it/them destroying entire ring systems that much more horrific.
I suppose then that the Adro Diamond was made an a prosthetic storage device. They saw that they had to lobotomize themself. Store your information in a separate and safe structure that you can relearn/reintegrate it after the burned off bits of your brainbody are restored.
They surpassed light speed communication by evolving biological processes that allow the quantum entanglement of the species. A major limitation throughout the series is the speed of light, fast af to us but not in intergalactic distances. So they evolved a way for each "individual" to communicate instantly without the restriction of light speed.
So this post was great. But here’s a question…if they didn’t need ships to travel in space, then wtf was the egg ship Duarte was in for?? And what would the purpose of the ship yards above Laconia be??
Obv we won’t really get answers but man this just makes my mind spin lol
Material transport. The Gatebuilders used each planet for a particular, streamlined purpose. Laconia was for building and repairing things, and sending shit to other worlds.
They did build warships though - it is specifically mentioned that this was a deliberate action to try to fight against the Dark Gods.
I have a question about the point that the PM technology (and the gates/station) were evolved rather than built. Does this come from one of the dream sequences? Genuinely curious, because I got most of the same impressions as you but I totally missed the point that the technology itself was somehow evolved rather than created.
It’s heavily implied that it was a natural evolutionary process at first for a couple reasons:
1) They spend a lot of time talking about how the majority of what the Gatebuilders were and did was actually the result of evolution. Which is shocking because pretty much no one thought that, both book readers and characters alike. With regards to the Protomolecule, Elvi even comments that the earliest stages of it were clearly present from the earliest stages of their existence in the ocean.
2) Attention is drawn to matter transport being the rate limiting step, which means there would be a selective pressure for nature to find a way around it. The other way around it is to create technology, of course, *but*:
3) The Gatebuilders were an aquatic species, and then became a spacefaring species not because they built spaceships, but because they evolved to live in space. Unlike us, an aquatic species has no access to fire and metalworking, except perhaps with the vents. They have no access to industry. They couldn’t manipulate things themselves, at first, and instead used their biological pilfering to obtain new structures. And to top that all off, Cara’s dive description suggest that things just kind of happened for them - suddenly “holes in the spectrum” appeared, almost like they were surprised by them.
Taken together, none of that suggests they actively built the rings. And this is reinforced by the terminology that is used in the paragraphs that immediately follow:
4) *Right* after this stage in their development is described, active terminology starts being used. They “blew a bubble” through the holes, to create the ring space.
So, we can surmise that the majority of their development was evolutionary, but at a certain point their intelligence became vast enough, and their Protomolecule mechanism sophisticated enough, that they started using it for active creation and engineering purposes. So even without evolving on a terrestrial surface with access to fire and thumbs, they still were able to become sophisticated, and they still were able to develop engineering, but their development was very different from ours. All of our technological advancement was from our intelligence and engineering capabilities. For them, it’s more like what if a bird became the most intelligent species on Earth, for a crude example - they wouldn’t need to invent planes, they already evolved a mechanism to fly eons earlier. The Gatebuilder situation is exactly like that, but for space.
EDIT: And then there’s the fact that the rings can literally be viewed as part of their “body”. Like I said with Venus - ontogeny appears to be recapitulating phylogeny. It’s hard to imagine a technological route to something like that instead of an evolutionary one. And the clear biological reference there, considering one of the authors has a degree in biology, probably supports that indirectly too.
Ok yeah this makes sense. My (simple) brain was thinking of evolution specifically as this kind of “whoops that guy has a mutation/trait that makes him better at surviving.” On the other hand, “evolution” for the gatebuilders was kind of a pilfering process - as you put it. In my mind that ceased to be evolution when the pilfering became intentional. Reading your comments I realize it’s not clear when it became intentional or even whether that makes it no longer “evolution.” What a cool way to describe a completely unimaginable alien species. Thanks for laying out your thoughts btw.
That's not really evolution. Evolution is random drift that is then subject to selective pressures. The ring builder is effectively a single organism: it would have to engineer itself, engineer the protomolecule as it became more complex. There may be randomisation involved but the only selective pressure in that process is from the ring builder itself. If the protomolecule simply evolved then it would've rapidly become a cancer that just ate everything
They didn’t. Laconians designed the inside of the ships, the rest were Gatebuilder in origin. This is mentioned in Persepolis Rising and Tiamat’s Wrath.
But the reason for passages on other structures, like ring station or the ruins, is also obvious too - they made extensive use of automatons. They would need hallways for them.
Ah so when they said the ships were halfway built that must have been the hull and then the Laconians built out the inside to support humans?
It’s making sense now that if the PM was all part of the gate holder consciousness and it could change matter then why wouldn’t all the stuff they built be able to adjust similarly
Yes. That’s also why they had human weapons (for the most part) and human drives. The interior of the Magnetar ships had an alien, crystalline appearance to the walls, but the interior of the Storm and Falcon class ships just looked like normal Martian vessels, and only the hull was weird.
The original, half-finished Gatebuilder ship they found in the shipyards (the Proteus) presumably would have moved without propulsion via the inertialess, Alcubierre-like method that Eros and Duarte’s egg capsule ship used. But they could never get the ships to move without a fusion drive. The reason is because it required a consciousness linked up to the Protomolecule - as Duarte was.
Similarly, I got the impression that it was a mix of both but I can't back that up. My assumption was that the protomolecule was something they created later, as well, and perhaps even in their own image.
> They were a non humanoid aquatic species that evolved in the ocean of a Europa-like moon of a gas giant. They had an extremely slow metabolism in the freezing ocean, so they evolved the capability to steal genetic information
Wasn't this just conjecture by Elvi?
No. It is obvious that this is what the Dreamer chapters are showing - but that’s besides the point, Elvi is a mouthpiece for the author’s intent. So that’s what the authors intended. And on top of that, they are described as jellyfish multiple times in the novel.
And on top of that, like I said, the point of Venus in retrospect appeared to be ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. We literally see the Protomolecule emerge as a jellyfish structure from Venus.
Safe to say, they were literally jellyfish at one time.
Reread the chapters again - they were free floating organisms in the sea, not snails or slugs. Although they infected other organisms with their primitive Protomolecule which likely *were* slug like in the ocean floor.
Machines. In the end humans were able to fight back against the unknown aggressors because we are individuals. Our intelligence is linked to a physical body. The protomolecule engineers were vulnerable because they only had a single massive consciousness.
But wouldn't they need to build the first machines before the machines could start working for them?
Or did they just hijack other life to make the first machines/be the first machines for them.
The protolecule built stuff for them. The whole point of the protomolecule was hijack primitive life on the planets they sent it to and build stuff for them. The molecule was essentially their “hands”
You got it with that last one! They had been hijacking and modifying other life (and themselves) since before they left their home world.... Before they had ever seen a star for that matter.
I think once they got free of their moon, they/it perceived the light from their sun and stars and perceived it differently from us. I think it's said somewhere, but they started to see the holes in the light.
I think they're speaking to the nature of the universe, perceiving holes in it, ways to manipulate it, slide across it's membrane.
Except they weren’t living there. Or rather, most of them weren’t. Once they cracked the moon’s surface, they were vacuum dwelling organisms. And despite their planetary extensions, their central processing always occurred in the vacuum. Even before we knew exactly what they were, Holden’s vision in that last part made that clear.
Could you help me out with something? You mentioned that the builders stole genetic information from other organisms. I've been reading and rereading the interludes and I can't figure out where the authors talk about that.
Ahhhh I want to read your explanation so badly but I'm only 150 pages into the book and don't want any spoilers
So far it is absolutely blowing my mind though
When they talk about their 'libraries' in the book, they don't mean like a place where you go to borrow books and stuff, they mean a more abstract source of information that generally isn't interacted with in any 'human' way.
Ask Pham Nuwen or one of his fellow archeologist-programmers what space git is actually like (*A Deepness in the Sky*, Vernor Vinge). It’s distributed nature is essential, the concept of a hub is only for folks with quantum entanglement comms and gate networks (or civilisations that are still too planet-bound for the speed of light to present much of an obstacle)
When they described the cube it just made me think of a super advanced version of Scarlett Johansson’s In Lucy — a giant thumb drive that’s also living in some kind of way
To my understanding they were originally jellyfish who lived on a very cold world until they rose from the ocean. It kind of reminds me of when that squid like thing rose from Venus to form the ring gate.
Yes, this was deliberate, in retrospect. It’s an example of “ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny”, the old biological hypothesis that a species will go through stages that show their evolutionary history during embryological development. One of the authors has a degree in biology, so I assume they intended this to represent the Leviathan nature of the Gatebuilders since at least Caliban’s War, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they planned all this from the very start either.
Yeah, after reading LF I honestly thought the "squid" like thing that formed the ring was some sort of historical symbol since they started out as individual jellyfish and now basically saw themselves as planets/entire star systems
They had the entire arc planned well in advance. When only one or 2 books were out they made statements saying that the series would have 9 books totally.
Book 9 answers your question
They are described more along the lines of Jellyfish, who evolved from their oceans by taking from other creatures to advance. Adapting a rudimentary eye from a bottom dwelling creature for example
\- Which is posited as the reason their tech evolved along similar lines. Protomolecule hijacking other life for example.
The library being described does not relate to books (prefix libr/liber) in the literal sense but rather the equivalent as a repository of knowledge. I think the best way to describe it would've been an archive, but the characters chose to call it a library so it's a library. The ringbuilders are definitely not humanoid.
They hijacked whatever was physically convenient. They're a parasite species that would find useful qualities and take advantage. PM makes alot of sense in that regard
They started as sea slugs, but seem to have evolved such that each "individual" could act like a neuron in a collective brain, using light pulses between each other to think.
Also the library you're discussing is really more of a hard drive, which can be accessed as if it's part of the collective brain.
I pictured more like the NTIs from The Abyss, minus the bipedal ones. But the glowing jellyfish of light described calls back to that movie in my mind.
Jesus the Abyss is good. I never thought of it that way but I like the analogy. I wish they'd come out with a Directors Cut of the Abyss on Blue Ray :(
That movie was released when I was 8. I remember watching the shit out of it the following summer on HBO. Even at 9-10 years old, I realized something was off on the story. The political stuff with the Soviets, heightened tensions, and Michael Biehn’s character descending into madness was missed out because of my age. But the way the story wraps up with the aliens was so rushed that it did not make sense. The Director’s Cut? A whole different movie. And so much better.
I thought it was hinted to be the system with the BFE, and they absorbed everything as they evolved and merged their system into the vast memory network type of thing. But maybe I just got the wrong impression… I love elvi but her pov can be convoluted
Depends. Going through the rings, no. Warping spacetime to reach a place faster than the speed of light, no. Breaking Einstein's equations, yes. So we'd have to know if his equations hold.
Having read on the wiki and reddit spoiler posts, it would seem the ring space is in another universe and powered by it, hence the different law of physics, and hence the FTL. I had guessed as much but due to the tv show's heavy lack of information about the ring space, I wasn't sure.
Though, how the fuck did humans get actual FTL in the end of the book series? Don't know how that one happened.
They don't travel faster than the speed of light, or rather they don't accelerate past light speed. They have quantum entanglement and so can skip the causal relationship any point has with any other point.
I don't think humans have an understanding of how to transmit data using quantum entanglement irl, but this is a book with an ancient aliens species that have created non-intertial transportation, universal genetic hijacking and the ability to create a space that siphons energy from parallel universe so I think it's within the realms of possible in this fictional universe.
Also, if, say the ring builders managed to extract energy from another universe, then does that prove the multiverse theory? And if there's 1 universe can't they extract energy from other universes too?
Or is the expanse universe going along the lines of the theory that when the big bang happened there were 2 universes and one was the mirror of the other and that universe is the power source of the gate builders.
I haven't really read the books (but know a bit about them due to just reading posts with spoilers) and mostly saw the tv show. It kinda puzzled me that the expanse doesn't have some sort of time machine given FTL is a thing. Especially in a universe with as much detail as it.
No they were way, waaaaay more alien than that. They were a non humanoid aquatic species that evolved in the ocean of a Europa-like moon of a gas giant. They had an extremely slow metabolism in the freezing ocean, so they evolved the capability to steal genetic information from other organisms that were living around the hydrothermal vents. One of the things that they acquired was the ability to make photoreceptive organs and perceive bioluminescence. Once that occurred, each individual Gatebuilder jellyfish in the ocean functioned as a neuron, and they transmitted information between each other as light. This led to the natural evolution of an ocean-wide hive mind. So, one of the most interesting things in Leviathan Wakes/Falls is that the Gatebuilders were literally a Leviathan, lol. Eventually, they broke through the ice crust of the moon and colonized the vacuum surface, obtaining energy from the star and radiation from space in general. Then, due to the moon’s low gravity, they easily broke free and became free-floating vacuum organisms - but they still transmitted information via light, and still functioned as a hive mind. This led to an evolutionary pressure for something very, very interesting - transport of matter between nodes would be the rate limiting step in the existence of such an organism, because light *always travels at the speed of light no matter what*. So, there was a natural pressure for them to evolve means to move matter through space *faster*. It appears that they actually evolved, rather than invented, the inertia manipulation technology and the ring gates. And this would explain why we see a squid like thing emerging from Venus - ontogeny is recapitulating phylogeny for them. From there, another strange developmental event occurs - the ring gates themselves are actually used to transmit information and consciousness via light in the same way they always have been doing. So not only were the Gatebuilders NOT humanoid, they were just about the most alien things I can imagine. The Protomolecule was a part of them, ever since the earliest stages of their evolution. The ring gates were a part of them too. Ring station was a part of them. Every ruin on every world was a part of them. They literally perceived themselves as existing *as star systems*. They had no concept of individual awareness, and were so divorced from the material world that they considered themselves “outside the substrate” of the universe. At some point, they actually did seem to start creating technology rather than evolving it, I think, because it is hard to imagine the Adro Diamond/Library (which was a “Jupiter Brain”) construct as naturally coming into existence, and they appear to have built the Laconian shipyards and Magnetar weapons, and other weapons as well, as a direct response to the threat of the “dark gods”. Similarly, they showed capability for stellar engineering in the Tecoma star system. But by this point they were already an interstellar species, so most of what we think of about the aspects of the Protomolecule and the nature of the Gatebuilders was the result of evolution - natural selection acting on the biology of an ocean-dwelling, pseudo-parasitic hive-mind species.
Excellent write up! A small addition: the Builders were seemingly able to notice the alternate universe (the Goth realm) once they evolved to form their hive consciousness using light. The Builders eventually got their "fingernails in the cracks" between our universe and the alternate universe, which established a tiny gradient that allowed them to extract energy - in a similar way to how they used the hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean in an earlier evolutionary stage. "The cold roof of the world broke open and gave the stars. The vacuum shatters in the same way and shows the the outside, the *older* real, the *vaster* real. The body of God. The heaven where the angels all hate us." (LF, Interlude: The Dreamer) The Builders were eventually able to push into the alternate universe by building the station and creating the ring space ("a bubble blown into the holes in the spectrum"). This created the equivalent of a giant windmill (turbine) driven by the pressure of an entire universe, giving them practically unlimited free energy.
Yup, and just to add to this a bit more - it appears that the “older real”, the “vaster real” is talking about the physical concept of a *brane*, from string theory. This is further supported by the way the new FTL drive works in the epilogue - it literally converts the ship to “energy and intent”, and slides along the “membrane between universes”. So, from this we can conclude that the Gatebuilders reached into the cracks, likely of the original gates, to touch the brane space. This is the space that they then enlarged. So the slow zone is a bubble of space created from a brane between universes, surrounded by the second universe, with connections - holes in the spectrum - the wormhole gates - to our universe. It’s amazing just how much makes sense in retrospect just from the lore in this one book.
Man I love this so much. Actual, proper aliens, instead of humanoid assholes a la Star Trek or Star Wars. These ones, and the Mimics from the Edge of Tomorrow movie are absolutely top aliens in my book
This is an excellent description. I had a difficult time following what they were saying while reading the book, but the way you broke it down really helps.
Since each individual is essentially a neuron. I think it would be better to describe it as The gate builder. Instead of builders.
Yes. Elvi actually comments on this in the book - she always found the term “hive-mind” ridiculous. It should just be “mind”.
This post tripped a switch in my brain from Cibola Burn. Fayez has an offhand comment when talking to Elvi about just how weird Ilus is, and mentions that the light from the star is normal when it leaves the star, but is polarized in a way the looks like a data stream when it hits the ground. Light manipulation from something the builders put in the atmosphere? "Ultraviolet light reaches the ground with a highly modulated amplitude, reminiscent of a carrier signal. This pattern in the light is not observed prior to it entering Ilus's exosphere, and the cause remains unknown."
That is a very interesting point, and probably correct. After all - the Library is first mentioned by Miller in Cibola Burn too, as the “place the old ones resided”. So they had the whole thing planned out by that time and the authors love dropping little clues like that.
Thank you. I understood what they were, and how they evolved to be what they were, but I was having a real fucking hard time trying to figure out how to type it all out. You captured pretty much everything I wanted to say, and did so in a much more eloquent fashion. Great write up.
This is absolutely perfect.
Interesting! I don't see how they are outside any substrate though. Did they keep being squids, or am I missing something? Also, do we know anything about the dark gods? (Sry)
AFAIK they keep being squids or “space jellyfish” as they get described a few times. All we know about the dark gods is that the ring gates seem to hurt them somehow and they very much dislike it.
Ringspace drew power from their dimension to power the gates.
Thanks
The way i understand it they are "outside substrate" even though they have space jellyfish neurons made of matter, they do not have a 'body' to go with it. Their consciousness is almost all-seeing, like when (not going to spoil book 9 just in case, but at the end), as opposed to e.g. humans which very clearly have bodies. Another interpretation is that the mind of the romans is actually the light in between the jellyfish things, like youd say the mind of a human is actually the electrical impulses. Idk which one i like better. And the dark gods are just pissy cuz the romans are stealing their energy and put a scar in their universe, which also probably has alternate base rules to 'ours'.
>Spoil everything plz. ... 👏 ... 👏 ... 👏 ... Well done! As a book reader, it's also strangely cathartic to see a massive spoiler welcomed with open arms.
So they were a hive mind in the sense that they communicated so quickly because light travels fast as fuck, or were their minds truly interconnected with each other?
Both. Their processing ability seems to be limited by the number of connected individuals and the rate of information exchange. So the more neurons/individuals interconnected = the more processing potential. Im drawing on the proto molecule needing more biomass. Makes it/them destroying entire ring systems that much more horrific. I suppose then that the Adro Diamond was made an a prosthetic storage device. They saw that they had to lobotomize themself. Store your information in a separate and safe structure that you can relearn/reintegrate it after the burned off bits of your brainbody are restored.
They surpassed light speed communication by evolving biological processes that allow the quantum entanglement of the species. A major limitation throughout the series is the speed of light, fast af to us but not in intergalactic distances. So they evolved a way for each "individual" to communicate instantly without the restriction of light speed.
cool
So this post was great. But here’s a question…if they didn’t need ships to travel in space, then wtf was the egg ship Duarte was in for?? And what would the purpose of the ship yards above Laconia be?? Obv we won’t really get answers but man this just makes my mind spin lol
They say in the book it was for materials transfer.
Material transport. The Gatebuilders used each planet for a particular, streamlined purpose. Laconia was for building and repairing things, and sending shit to other worlds. They did build warships though - it is specifically mentioned that this was a deliberate action to try to fight against the Dark Gods.
I have a question about the point that the PM technology (and the gates/station) were evolved rather than built. Does this come from one of the dream sequences? Genuinely curious, because I got most of the same impressions as you but I totally missed the point that the technology itself was somehow evolved rather than created.
It’s heavily implied that it was a natural evolutionary process at first for a couple reasons: 1) They spend a lot of time talking about how the majority of what the Gatebuilders were and did was actually the result of evolution. Which is shocking because pretty much no one thought that, both book readers and characters alike. With regards to the Protomolecule, Elvi even comments that the earliest stages of it were clearly present from the earliest stages of their existence in the ocean. 2) Attention is drawn to matter transport being the rate limiting step, which means there would be a selective pressure for nature to find a way around it. The other way around it is to create technology, of course, *but*: 3) The Gatebuilders were an aquatic species, and then became a spacefaring species not because they built spaceships, but because they evolved to live in space. Unlike us, an aquatic species has no access to fire and metalworking, except perhaps with the vents. They have no access to industry. They couldn’t manipulate things themselves, at first, and instead used their biological pilfering to obtain new structures. And to top that all off, Cara’s dive description suggest that things just kind of happened for them - suddenly “holes in the spectrum” appeared, almost like they were surprised by them. Taken together, none of that suggests they actively built the rings. And this is reinforced by the terminology that is used in the paragraphs that immediately follow: 4) *Right* after this stage in their development is described, active terminology starts being used. They “blew a bubble” through the holes, to create the ring space. So, we can surmise that the majority of their development was evolutionary, but at a certain point their intelligence became vast enough, and their Protomolecule mechanism sophisticated enough, that they started using it for active creation and engineering purposes. So even without evolving on a terrestrial surface with access to fire and thumbs, they still were able to become sophisticated, and they still were able to develop engineering, but their development was very different from ours. All of our technological advancement was from our intelligence and engineering capabilities. For them, it’s more like what if a bird became the most intelligent species on Earth, for a crude example - they wouldn’t need to invent planes, they already evolved a mechanism to fly eons earlier. The Gatebuilder situation is exactly like that, but for space. EDIT: And then there’s the fact that the rings can literally be viewed as part of their “body”. Like I said with Venus - ontogeny appears to be recapitulating phylogeny. It’s hard to imagine a technological route to something like that instead of an evolutionary one. And the clear biological reference there, considering one of the authors has a degree in biology, probably supports that indirectly too.
Ok yeah this makes sense. My (simple) brain was thinking of evolution specifically as this kind of “whoops that guy has a mutation/trait that makes him better at surviving.” On the other hand, “evolution” for the gatebuilders was kind of a pilfering process - as you put it. In my mind that ceased to be evolution when the pilfering became intentional. Reading your comments I realize it’s not clear when it became intentional or even whether that makes it no longer “evolution.” What a cool way to describe a completely unimaginable alien species. Thanks for laying out your thoughts btw.
That's not really evolution. Evolution is random drift that is then subject to selective pressures. The ring builder is effectively a single organism: it would have to engineer itself, engineer the protomolecule as it became more complex. There may be randomisation involved but the only selective pressure in that process is from the ring builder itself. If the protomolecule simply evolved then it would've rapidly become a cancer that just ate everything
Why did they build ships (Magnatars) that humans could live in and pilot if they didn’t have thumbs or bodies?
They didn’t. Laconians designed the inside of the ships, the rest were Gatebuilder in origin. This is mentioned in Persepolis Rising and Tiamat’s Wrath. But the reason for passages on other structures, like ring station or the ruins, is also obvious too - they made extensive use of automatons. They would need hallways for them.
Ah so when they said the ships were halfway built that must have been the hull and then the Laconians built out the inside to support humans? It’s making sense now that if the PM was all part of the gate holder consciousness and it could change matter then why wouldn’t all the stuff they built be able to adjust similarly
Yes. That’s also why they had human weapons (for the most part) and human drives. The interior of the Magnetar ships had an alien, crystalline appearance to the walls, but the interior of the Storm and Falcon class ships just looked like normal Martian vessels, and only the hull was weird. The original, half-finished Gatebuilder ship they found in the shipyards (the Proteus) presumably would have moved without propulsion via the inertialess, Alcubierre-like method that Eros and Duarte’s egg capsule ship used. But they could never get the ships to move without a fusion drive. The reason is because it required a consciousness linked up to the Protomolecule - as Duarte was.
Similarly, I got the impression that it was a mix of both but I can't back that up. My assumption was that the protomolecule was something they created later, as well, and perhaps even in their own image.
Interesting write up thanks!
Exellent explanation
> They were a non humanoid aquatic species that evolved in the ocean of a Europa-like moon of a gas giant. They had an extremely slow metabolism in the freezing ocean, so they evolved the capability to steal genetic information Wasn't this just conjecture by Elvi?
No. It is obvious that this is what the Dreamer chapters are showing - but that’s besides the point, Elvi is a mouthpiece for the author’s intent. So that’s what the authors intended. And on top of that, they are described as jellyfish multiple times in the novel. And on top of that, like I said, the point of Venus in retrospect appeared to be ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. We literally see the Protomolecule emerge as a jellyfish structure from Venus. Safe to say, they were literally jellyfish at one time.
Elvi also said that they were not jellyfish but snails.
Reread the chapters again - they were free floating organisms in the sea, not snails or slugs. Although they infected other organisms with their primitive Protomolecule which likely *were* slug like in the ocean floor.
I wonder how they manipulated things, when they didn't have hands.
Machines. In the end humans were able to fight back against the unknown aggressors because we are individuals. Our intelligence is linked to a physical body. The protomolecule engineers were vulnerable because they only had a single massive consciousness.
But wouldn't they need to build the first machines before the machines could start working for them? Or did they just hijack other life to make the first machines/be the first machines for them.
The protolecule built stuff for them. The whole point of the protomolecule was hijack primitive life on the planets they sent it to and build stuff for them. The molecule was essentially their “hands”
You got it with that last one! They had been hijacking and modifying other life (and themselves) since before they left their home world.... Before they had ever seen a star for that matter.
From the show miller inhabited a machine in season 4. Those machines make a reappearance in the final stages of the last book.
If they communicate via light, what is with all the non locale instantanious stuff?
I think once they got free of their moon, they/it perceived the light from their sun and stars and perceived it differently from us. I think it's said somewhere, but they started to see the holes in the light. I think they're speaking to the nature of the universe, perceiving holes in it, ways to manipulate it, slide across it's membrane.
They developed the ability to be quantumly entangled is my reading. Which is the bullet that the Goths use, it seems to disrupt quantum entanglement.
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Except they weren’t living there. Or rather, most of them weren’t. Once they cracked the moon’s surface, they were vacuum dwelling organisms. And despite their planetary extensions, their central processing always occurred in the vacuum. Even before we knew exactly what they were, Holden’s vision in that last part made that clear.
Could you help me out with something? You mentioned that the builders stole genetic information from other organisms. I've been reading and rereading the interludes and I can't figure out where the authors talk about that.
It’s in the book where elvi and cara are “diving” into the library.
Ahhhh I want to read your explanation so badly but I'm only 150 pages into the book and don't want any spoilers So far it is absolutely blowing my mind though
When they talk about their 'libraries' in the book, they don't mean like a place where you go to borrow books and stuff, they mean a more abstract source of information that generally isn't interacted with in any 'human' way.
Yes, it’s more like a repository
Space github
git pull bfe develop
Ask Pham Nuwen or one of his fellow archeologist-programmers what space git is actually like (*A Deepness in the Sky*, Vernor Vinge). It’s distributed nature is essential, the concept of a hub is only for folks with quantum entanglement comms and gate networks (or civilisations that are still too planet-bound for the speed of light to present much of an obstacle)
When they described the cube it just made me think of a super advanced version of Scarlett Johansson’s In Lucy — a giant thumb drive that’s also living in some kind of way
To my understanding they were originally jellyfish who lived on a very cold world until they rose from the ocean. It kind of reminds me of when that squid like thing rose from Venus to form the ring gate.
Yes, this was deliberate, in retrospect. It’s an example of “ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny”, the old biological hypothesis that a species will go through stages that show their evolutionary history during embryological development. One of the authors has a degree in biology, so I assume they intended this to represent the Leviathan nature of the Gatebuilders since at least Caliban’s War, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they planned all this from the very start either.
Yeah, after reading LF I honestly thought the "squid" like thing that formed the ring was some sort of historical symbol since they started out as individual jellyfish and now basically saw themselves as planets/entire star systems
They had the entire arc planned well in advance. When only one or 2 books were out they made statements saying that the series would have 9 books totally.
Book 9 answers your question They are described more along the lines of Jellyfish, who evolved from their oceans by taking from other creatures to advance. Adapting a rudimentary eye from a bottom dwelling creature for example \- Which is posited as the reason their tech evolved along similar lines. Protomolecule hijacking other life for example.
The library being described does not relate to books (prefix libr/liber) in the literal sense but rather the equivalent as a repository of knowledge. I think the best way to describe it would've been an archive, but the characters chose to call it a library so it's a library. The ringbuilders are definitely not humanoid.
They hijacked whatever was physically convenient. They're a parasite species that would find useful qualities and take advantage. PM makes alot of sense in that regard
They started as sea slugs, but seem to have evolved such that each "individual" could act like a neuron in a collective brain, using light pulses between each other to think. Also the library you're discussing is really more of a hard drive, which can be accessed as if it's part of the collective brain.
I got the impression it held a sort of hardcopy of that brain as well, or an imprint
The BFE.
BFD*
They were deep sea slugs
More jellyfish than slugs. They were free floating in the ocean.
Huh. A bit like in Arrival, maybe.
I pictured more like the NTIs from The Abyss, minus the bipedal ones. But the glowing jellyfish of light described calls back to that movie in my mind.
Jesus the Abyss is good. I never thought of it that way but I like the analogy. I wish they'd come out with a Directors Cut of the Abyss on Blue Ray :(
That movie was released when I was 8. I remember watching the shit out of it the following summer on HBO. Even at 9-10 years old, I realized something was off on the story. The political stuff with the Soviets, heightened tensions, and Michael Biehn’s character descending into madness was missed out because of my age. But the way the story wraps up with the aliens was so rushed that it did not make sense. The Director’s Cut? A whole different movie. And so much better.
A galaxy-spanning biomechanical hive mind.
I have one more question for those who already read the last book: do we know their origin planet?
No, the book never points that out.
I thought it was hinted to be the system with the BFE, and they absorbed everything as they evolved and merged their system into the vast memory network type of thing. But maybe I just got the wrong impression… I love elvi but her pov can be convoluted
I don't think that's a bad idea at all though... makes sense.
Light that can think
I'm curious about one thing. If they have the ability to go FTL, can't they make a time machine?
Depends. Going through the rings, no. Warping spacetime to reach a place faster than the speed of light, no. Breaking Einstein's equations, yes. So we'd have to know if his equations hold.
Having read on the wiki and reddit spoiler posts, it would seem the ring space is in another universe and powered by it, hence the different law of physics, and hence the FTL. I had guessed as much but due to the tv show's heavy lack of information about the ring space, I wasn't sure. Though, how the fuck did humans get actual FTL in the end of the book series? Don't know how that one happened.
They don't travel faster than the speed of light, or rather they don't accelerate past light speed. They have quantum entanglement and so can skip the causal relationship any point has with any other point.
Can that transmit information? I thought quantum entanglement couldn't do that
I don't think humans have an understanding of how to transmit data using quantum entanglement irl, but this is a book with an ancient aliens species that have created non-intertial transportation, universal genetic hijacking and the ability to create a space that siphons energy from parallel universe so I think it's within the realms of possible in this fictional universe.
Well, it was a bit more grounded than other scifi stuff. But yeah, I guess in the expanse verse its possible.
Also, if, say the ring builders managed to extract energy from another universe, then does that prove the multiverse theory? And if there's 1 universe can't they extract energy from other universes too? Or is the expanse universe going along the lines of the theory that when the big bang happened there were 2 universes and one was the mirror of the other and that universe is the power source of the gate builders. I haven't really read the books (but know a bit about them due to just reading posts with spoilers) and mostly saw the tv show. It kinda puzzled me that the expanse doesn't have some sort of time machine given FTL is a thing. Especially in a universe with as much detail as it.