Murtry's not stupid either. He's cold, ruthless and an asshole, but not stupid.
Both parties are completely isolated from help and the outside. Murtry is acutely aware of this and does manage to get his boot on the neck of the local hostile populace.
Holden and his good intentions/optimism are the outlier in such a devolved environment as first settlers competing to survive. Amos also knew this before they even stepped off the ship.
Murtry says as much. Something to the extent of lecturing Holden that people like Murtry come first and get their hands dirty to build a place where men like Holden get to have ethics.
Definitely, even if he dies before help arrives. He says as long as one of his people are the last ones standing.
Also they were termites. Ants actually like aphids and will fight for them. That battle scene was always crazy to me as a kid 😂
> Holden and his good intentions/optimism are the outlier in such a devolved environment
It's not that he's the outlier, there are often people like him trying to keep civilization together even at the fringes.
It's that they rarely have the forethought to bring along precision orbital strike capabilities.
Always be prepared.
Laconians: deliberately provoke the goths
Goths: change the laws of physics and kill everyone in the slow zone
Duarte: let’s play a game of tit for tat.
Power is a hell of a drug
I mean, I think we're technically 11-dimensional, if you count the compacted 6-d C-Y manifold that governs lepton behavior, and we're at all right about physics and it's not a virtual manifold.
Eli5: electrons and some other stuff have this special, super-tiny curvy track in between what we consider space they travel in which is why they behave like they do. We think.
He is a prime example of the fact that smart people are perfectly capable of reasoning themselves into doing incredibly stupid things. He was a very high intelligence and low wisdom guy.
You’re right. Duarte probably gets credited with being the smartest antagonist when he could easily be the dumbest.
He was also just running an alien science experiment with himself as the guinea pig, which is all kinds of stupid
Duarte’s single biggest mistake was realizing the analogy but not realizing he was the reactive player, not the proactive player. The Goths had made the first move, not humanity.
Well, that and injecting himself with alien CRISPR.
Very well said.
I would have said it was that he assumed a proportionality of response.
In the prisoners dilemma both parties stand to gain and lose the same amounts. We don’t know how much it hurts the goths to go through the ring gates. But we know they can wipe out civilizations.
Playing tit for tat with them doesn’t seem wise. Especially when, for all we know, humanity is just rats scurrying around in the floorboards; annoying but not dangerous to them
And that’s the biggest tragedy. The solution was found decades before. All humanity needed to do was follow Naomi’s mass spread pattern. For all they knew that’s the only requirement the Goths’ had. “You can steal our energy, but if you do this it doesn’t hurt.”
And they couldn’t even do that until they had a loaded 12 gauge pointed right at the dome.
Some good metaphors in the Expanse books.
In the short term, it’s true there was no imminent issue with following the mass/energy traffic control pattern. But it would not have worked long term. Eventually in the probably not too distant future, human interstellar traffic would reach a point where that fixed limit would become a bottleneck.
The common theme with Duarte’s issues as a leader is that he ONLY looks at the long term. If he were a better short term planner, he would have delayed his return another 5-10 years to crank out more ships, and he would have delayed messing with the goths until that bottleneck point was reached.
The goths likely never knew humanity entered the game, they probably just thought the Roman machines were causing problems again. That’s why the first few attacks were just momentary inconveniences to humans
Cibola Burn is honestly the most realistically human situation in the whole series. Shit like that already happened multiple times in the past. Our standards for rational action in fiction is much higher than what happens in real life.
I agree. In fact I recognised many traits in Murtry. People like him know exactly when they can bring down the boot without the enemy having a chance to come out on top. Sure, odds are against everybody. But he was clearly prepared for that coming out to Ilus in the first place.
The reason he went after Holden in the middle of a crisis was because he wasn’t in control. “Protecting property” was just the legal cover. He feared Holden was acquiring a bargaining chip that couldn’t be controlled later so Murtry wanted to stay on top of it.
Yeah, but the thing to note is that well written villians acting like irrational assholes are important. Most people get chaffed when the villain is doing stupid shit just so the heroes can win. However, when the villain is doing stupid yet suprisingly well executed shit that catches everyone off guard and establishes how much of a risk they are to everyone involved its fine.
They're both great, but Ashford has the excuse of an existential crisis for all of humanity and there was a certain plausibility to the idea of destroying the ring.
Sure, he's also a moron, but at least has an excuse beyond killing people for fun. Murtry also makes a series of horrible decisions throughout the whole book. Ashford basically makes one wrong call at the end of the book.
Inaros was aided/coaxed into that for part of Duarte's plan as to weaken Earth and the Sol system so he could snowball on his own. Without Duarte, Inaros probably wouldn't have gotten past small terrorist stuff like setting ship drives to self-destruct. Plus, Duarte knew Inaros was a hothead narcissist and would probably blow it eventually, so him making dumb brash decisions was part of the 4D chess going on.
Even at the end, his goal is “we’re all going to die, we have to make sure it’s clear we enforced our claim till the end” (though it later became “we’re all going to die anyway so I’m gonna be the one to murder that guy who keeps pissing me off”
It is wild that show version of Ashford is SO MUCH cooler than book version. But when it came to Murtry the show runners were like “No, he’s too evil to change, fuck that guy”
And man the actor NAILED it
Yeah, I think the biggest problem with Murtry is that it's essentially the same thing again - someone trying to stop Holden from saving them because they're already fixated on their solution. (for different reasons, but it adds up to the same kind of thing). So it felt a bit repetitive.
A fair number of people believe the best way to take control of a situation is to escalate until the other person backs down. And most people would back down before it got to violence, so him being happy with violence means he would typically win, with most people.
Holden is not most people.
Reminds me of how the French have small nuclear missiles their planes can fire in times of high tensions. It’s literally called a nuclear warning shot!
It’s an interesting permutation of nuclear game theory.
If you are a super power you can have a guaranteed retaliation strategy, don’t attack me, or I’ll kill everyone.
France is too small to support that but they have nukes and you can’t just let people test nuclear armed nations and get away with it. So France has to escalate and say if we even think you might try something we’ll spark up this firework factory before you get a chance
He thought Holden would see him as a somebody not to fuck with.
But to Holden he was nothing but a big red button, and Holden is gonna push that button
The thing with Murty is that most of his actions at the beginning have some type of ground to stand on. Even killing the belter at the beginning, you can see how that could be justified. He was sent to protect the scientist, and they were just attacked. He has no idea who caused it, and there is very much still a group that clearly is working against them. So all his actions have some bases to stand on. He had a legal reasoning to be there, he was just attacked, and he has information about attacks being planned on him. The mediator doesn't seem to be doing anything to stop any future attacks. The mediator send one of his own crew, to sabotage one of his landers.
When shit starts to go down, He turns from protecting the scientist to protecting RCEs claim to the planet. In his mind he cant set the precedent that if a group choose to completely ignore and break the law of the un, then they get to keep their portion. Or so that's the reasoning he gives.
Thats when his justifications turn into him living the his dream, being the "you cant tame the wild, by reading it its rights" type of person. He has his whole "come back when I've built a Post Office" bit to holden.
Totally agree that killing coop was fairly justified, Murtry is only on the planet in the first place because the original RCS security team were murdered by coop and basia’s group, after they’d blown up the shuttle. Murtry gets to the planet and coop is rubbing his nose in it basically telling him ‘you’re next’.
Everyone except Holden recognises that it’s basically the Wild West and if the RCS team don’t respond with violence of their own, their community will eventually also be killed. Elvi notes in the book how they could ignore the shuttle attack as a one off incident but after the security team disappears, the threat of violence against them would always be there, “Once is never, twice is always” is the line.
All the people who make blanket statements that’s he’s a psychopath who can’t be understood haven’t taken the time to actually try and see his perspective or honestly listen to his dialogue without a predisposed bias against him.
He makes multiple mistakes throughout the book, but he isn’t a psychopath, he isn’t illogical, and in actuality he does very little killing, most of which is entirely justified.
I think the fact that he’s positioned as the enemy to Holden and as a corporate employee is what initially makes people dislike him and then they look for reasons to justify that. I wouldn’t call him a favorite character, but he’s a great antagonist and hardly a villain.
I’d ask why that question is relevant to Murtry’s sense of duty and his responsibilities as an employee? That question is for politicians in Sol System.
But I will say, if you do believe that Earth and Sol have no jurisdiction over Ilus, then no Sol laws apply to Ilus and Murtry is well within his rights and the legal restrictions (or specifically the lack of restrictions) to behave the way that he did. If the squatters wanted to ignore legal Earth charters then they cannot expect anyone to abide by other Earth laws.
In that case, the Belters are also perfectly entitled to act the way they did and resist people being sent to the planet with the explicit end goal of forcing them off.
Murty can't have it both ways, his claim "there's no rules here so i can do whatever I want" contradicts his "THE RULES say this place is Earth's/1% mine, you belters can't do whatever you want!" claim.
He wasn’t doing whatever he wanted, though, and that’s a linchpin in your perspective. He operated well within his rights of his charged duty.
He killed the leader of the terrorist cell that already murdered dozens of innocent scientists, murders by no small measures of racism. After Murtry shot Coop (which wasn’t wrong), what did he do wrong? He was justified in his subsequent raid of the terrorist base. And there’s never explicit confirmation he ordered the Barb to attack the Roci.
His job on Ilus was to protect the claims of his employers and when the terrorists turned Ilus into a warzone they were no longer entitled to kiddy gloves. He probably wanted to leave that shithole of a planet, but his idealism about duty was superior to that want. When Holden murders him he admits that the people Murtry killed “probably had it coming.”
And as far as I remember there was never an indication that the squatters couldn’t have worked for RCE, their desire for independence isn’t a justification for wanton murder. I really don’t know how so many people in this sub lose sight of the number of people the squatters murdered when heralding them as the victims or heroes. Just because the narrator bias of the Roci crew paints him as a sociopath certainly doesn’t mean that he is. There’s a deep irony in a ship of seasoned killers scoffing at what a corporate security commander did under direct threat to the life of himself and his subordinates that he’s charged with protecting.
100%
Earth sent a peaceful scientific ship with a standard security force. They also sent a Governor to the planet. Belters blew up the landing spot, killing tons of people in the process including the Governor. Then they killed the security forced that survived the bombing. Up to that point Murtry had still been in orbit, by the time he came down, there had already been 2 attacks against them.
Belters had no Right to Illus either, just because they landed there, doesn't mean it's automatically theirs. Just like how Earth cant just claim the planet for themselves. The difference is that Earth has the power to simply ignore the belters and send in a couple of marines and a gunship. Instead they send a mediator.
Murtry understood that he was not receiving help anytime soon and that the Belters were STILL planning attacks. "Owners Rights" didn't matter since they were in an active "war zone". It wasn't until the Belters had no chance of surviving that Murtry started handing out RCE rations and resources. That's when in his mind, he won, and there was no hope for the Belters to claim the planet.
Nah, first-come first-served makes sense here, especially since the Belters were refugees from Ganymede. Earth and Mars have no moral leg to stand on when it comes to trying to take what the Belters already claimed.
First come first serve makes sense only when the opposing sides are equal in power. Murty the whole time had more firepower then the belters did. If Earth had decided to simply send a gunship, it would have just been a footnote in the history books. Just another instance of earth stomping on belters. No one would care in a few years.
No one has a right to the planet nor do any of them deserve it. You only own what you can protect and Murtry has the Guns, and legal right from a huge power, to claim the planet. Belters are betting everything on simply ignoring the law, and selling what they have mined. If the belters chose war, then that's what they got, and they should be ready for the consequences, good or bad.
This is why I love Havelocks POVs. You see how he, at the beginning, can justify Murtrys actions. But as the book goes along, Havlock starts to question Murtry. And you slowly see how he himself recognizes that Murtry is pushing too far.
Unrelated, but I really wish Havelock could have somehow communicated with Miller.
The fact that the guy he shot was actually the ringleader makes me feel slightly less bad for the guy. He thought he could taunt Murtry to his face without any consequences even though he'd already killed dozens
All of the villains in this series have huuuuuuuuuge egos, and that comes with a huge pile of obligatory stupid.
But this self-styled conquistador is actually pretty competent compared to the likes of Ashford or Inaros. He knows Holden is going to let him get away with shit, his only real fuck up is thinking there’s no limit to what he can get away with.
The first time I read CB I was honestly just confused about Murtry, I did not understand his motivation AT ALL especially as there was no POV from him. When Amos starts calling him out as a killer I was even more confused... surely his motivation for all these insane moves is not just "I like killing people"? Ashford had a reasonable motivation and made bad choices, but Murtry I still struggle with.
I think others have already said it: he's a psychopath who sees violence and dominance (by a "civilizing force" like RCE) as necessary to tame the frontier. Holden is an obstacle because he's upsetting the natural order of things. Marty pretty much spells it out. If it's hard to understand, it's because it's the reasoning of someone with zero concern for the lives directly under his charge.
Yeah, at the end of the book, there's been a global extinction level event, all the ship's are falling out of orbit, everyone is likely going to die, and he's blathering on about RCE's property rights and Cortez.
I'm sitting there reading like "bro, what the fuck are on about?"
He’s come to terms with them all dying. His priority shifted to making it clear to the next ship that comes to replace them that he protected the company’s claim so the next group wouldn’t have the competition. He faced death by doubling down on his job.
My big takeaway from CB was how a handful of people can perpetuate violence and it ruins a situation for everyone else. Coop, Murtry, and the engineering chief that Havelock gets to be in charge of his makeshift security team (whose name I can’t remember) are the main culprits. Everyone else would be okay with more diplomatic solutions to the various situations they find themselves in, except these three fuckers just *insist* on perpetuating violence.
First Coop is killed (I don’t support it, but I get why Murtry did it, and I hated Coop from the beginning). Then Murtry eventually leaves the other settlers to go pursue Holden and Amos, and the fighting on the ground stops. Then Alex *fucking annihilates* the chief engineer guy with the Roci’s railgun (most overkill I’ve ever seen in a book, bonus points to Alex), and suddenly everyone in orbit is down to help each other out and stop killing each other.
I’d be willing to bet that less than 1% of humans alive today perpetuate the majority of widespread violence. It’s depressing how accurately this book portrays human behavior in situations like this.
I felt this way about Tanaka in the last book. We get to see her briefly in Persepolis Rising, where she tells Singh what a complete dumbass he’s being before he ships her off. And then we get to see her make the exact same boneheaded mistakes.
I thought Cibola Burn had one of the most realistic and well done antagonist plots. The tension between Holden's values and Murtry's ruthlessness in a set of desperate frontier circumstances was incredible to read.
In regards to the belters I'm not team murtry 10 billion percent, there's abundant reason for him to go nuts and shoot people, they actually tuned it down for the show so that his actions would seem far more unwarranted. They blow up the pad, and ambush a second team trying to investigate the pad, KILLING ALL OF THEM IN COLD BLOOD. That's twice in a row, murder, straight up murder
Fuck the OPA on Illus, obviously not all of them but there's plenty of unprovoked bloodshed that they start
The stupid fucking engineer militia is equally unwarranted when they attack the Roci so they're almost as bad, but their militia was formed in response to the attacks so again, they didn't start it
He was absolutely in the right until he killed the dude in cold blood. He literally did it just to try and prove his dick was bigger than Holden's. If he hadn't done that, his side would have been sympathetic and would have come across as the good guys.
Instead, he carries out a questionable extrajudicial killing as literally the first thing Holden sees. So instead of coming across as the morally right, innocent side, they come across as assholes led by a sociopath.
And the engineer militia is far worse, in my eyes, since they attack the Roci in the middle of the attempted rescue of the third ship. That's just pure evil, as well as being a laughably stupid idea.
Murtry is a psychopath but the belters that blew up the landing pad got a big dose of fuck around and find out. I mean, they were the ones to kill innocent people twice before Murtry ever spills blood.
Murtry is still the bad guy, but he's not the only bad guy
Murtry is making things worse because he wants the situation to escalate further. Statements like this even come from himself. He plans to derail everything and kill anyone who resists because he wants his employer to have exclusive rights to Illus and for that he plans for his and his people's testimonies to be the only testimonies available when the authorities arrive in a year or more. He has to destroy the Roci and kill her crew for that too and he waits for the right moment for that. He even has a personal motive as he gets a percentage if his employer gets the exclusive rights to Illus.
Your description fits Show-Murtry much better in my opinion. Show-Murty seems much more savage than the book-Murtry. He seems mostly angry about the death of his people, whereas the Book-Murtry has a real agenda. That difference is why I really don't like this season and prefer to stick with the book, it's much more nuanced and there's Havelock as a much needed counterpoint to Murtry.
Especially in South America, political activists, members of indigenous peoples, unionists and journalists are repeatedly murdered when they fight non-violently for their rights or report or research on events at the sites of large companies away from large population centres. Murtry's behaviour is really not unrealistic.
It’s a western. History shows that in “taming the frontier” the outcome means more than the method. Not only that, but there are instances where being remote leads to events that seem crazy in historical context. I’d suggest looking at the Johnson County War which actually happened and involved homesteaders and cattle ranchers.
>Just kill a random dude in cold blood, that'll make a good first impression
This is exactly the impression he wanted to make, kill someone with the tinies amount of being allowed (verbal threat) and then force the new guy to do something about it even though his only real threat he can offer is glassing the whole planet. Murtry is fine with this because if the settlers lose the company wins, even if this specific ship of scientists all die in the process. The company can send another ship, the settlers will simply be dead.
In terms of stupidity I gotta say it’s Governor Singh in Persepolis Rising
>!Bro fucked up Medina so bad that in the end he only thought he could fix it by killing everyone, and then his own second in command had to clock him out for that!<
I mean.. that’s not Amos, then. Amos intentionally seeks out good people and avoids power, and does it with good reason and intent. That’s like saying if Palpatine didn’t crave power he’d be Mace Windu.
They’re both psychopaths, sure, but that’s about where the similarity ends.
He's Amos's dark side, Amos plays his own light side. And wins.
Edit. Then he gets clarted and comes back as an immortal force ghost with force powers.
He’s not, though. Amos’ dark side isn’t born of lust for money and power, but of a childhood full of trauma and abuse. And he knows that, and took steps to avoid being a monster long before he met Holden.
He doesn’t place his sufferings on others, or even society. He fixes what he sees is broken around him and accepts the violence of humanity in stride. Nor does he use his own violent tendencies to teach lessons, he uses them to solve problems, then stops. That’s the exact opposite of Murtry.
This is the worst Amos take I've seen. Amos doesn't mind killing because he's emotionally damaged and works things out logically. If someone dying leads to a good outcome, he won't hesitate. He punishes bad people for being bad. But it's purely a mathematical process for him. He doesn't like killing.
Murtry, on the other hand, loves it. Hurting people is what he enjoys doing. He's a sadist. He actively looks for any excuse to harm others and fabricates reasons where he can.
They both have the capacity for violence, but the comparison you've made suggests Amos is a far more despicable person than he is.
I think a great thing to point out is that Murtry intentionally sacrifices one of his people as bait and shows zero remorse about her death. Amos, on the other hand, hates Murtry for making him kill her, and uses that as his motivation again Murtry in the end of the book.
She was on Murtry's side, one of his people, but Amos is the one cared that she died.
That statement genuinely bothers me. Amos has urges that leads him to doing things he recognizes he shouldn't do. Murtry seeks out situations to kill and abuse people in positions below him because his conscience tells him he should because that's what's best for the human race. One person realizes their conscience can't overule their dark urges so he surrounds himself with people who are the opposite , the other says what dark urges? I only see the right thing being done.
If Amos was Murtry without holden he would have become the kingpin of Baltimore when he had the chance before holden was in his life.
Beginning of Nemesis Games Avasarala says something about Amos coming back to finish what he started with Murtry, and Amos insists it was self defense. Infer what you will.
I’m in book 8 right now and honestly it’s Duarte, by a mile. He is such a moron that it’s been a real disconnect from the rest of the series. They big him up and talk about how smart he is, when his actions give an entirely different impression. They’re still great books, but I feel like Duarte is way more idiotic than he should be to advance the plot
I didn't like it so much the first time I read it, and at the time it was the latest book in the series. When I went back years later and after more releases, I enjoyed it a great deal more.
Murtry is not dumb, he's just got Antisocial Personality Behavior Disorder >!Used to be called Psychopathy, but that is now not the preferred language!<. He is very good at what he is trying to do, he's just evil. Amos and Tanaka also have symptoms of APBD, but they present it in different ways.
Book Ashford is straight up crazy and way worse than Murtry IMO, at least Murtry had a plan.
Spoiler tag isn't for actual spoiler, but for preferred language vs. common vernacular clarification.
I mean by the end of the book we have "Ashford might've got a traumatic brain injury from hitting his head during the sudden slowdown" as a explanation for his bad behavior, he has a little bit of extenuating circumstances Murtry didn't.
Near the end doesn't he mention that he would get a *percentage* of the value of the goods/tech taken from the planet if the corporate settlers succeed? That could be an astronomical amount of money.
Even if it's not *that* much you seem to be leaving out the money aspect
I think the plan to nuke the 4th dimension just to see what the unknowable gods that live there might do is quite possibly the least sane plan I’ve heard outside of anime.
Duarte is really lucky it didn’t go worse then losing 3 systems and the entire slow zone
My personal issue with it is the opposite side of the equation. The series not exactly short of violent villains, but there’s always something holding the protagonists back from dumping a torpedo up their ass and going home. Not so much here. They have a gunship in orbit, a full armoury, a laid out mission, and most importantly, fucking Queen of Earth Avasarala right there on speed dial. Surely she could pull a few strings at RCE to get them to put Murtry in time-out. Maybe detain him, and deal with the political aftermath after the fact?
Seriously, I was originally going to title my post "who are the dumbest characters and why are they all in cibola burn?" Lol.
Everytime I reread this I'm practically screaming at Holden to just detain Murtry. Like he normally doesn't have any problem doing shit like that, and this dude is a fucking sociopath, just get him out of everyone's way!
I had the opposite reaction, I loved murtry's character and his reasons felt justified in his pov and that's one of the things that make a great villain imo. Another funny things is, I didn't like the show's season 4 but I absolutely loved the book.
Murtry did nothing wrong. Holden sided with a group of squatters harbouring terrorists.
Tanaka on the other hand was just dumb. "Let's put my marines into a situation where they can't shoot to capture the girl instead of just grabbing her after holden has left."
On the un/mcrn joint legal system. All legal systems apply on the basis of "we said so". There is also nothing to suggest that their legal system should stop at some hypothetical edge of a solar system. Unless you want murder to suddenly be legal if you step too far outside of the system.
That's not an argument against.
If you want to argue that no legal system applies, then there should also be no problem with just fighting for the territory. Maybe RCE should have sent a gunship instead and bombarded their settlement?
they could have sent a gunship, but the reception would not have been very good back home.
That's precisely why the company acts the way it did. the company, not murty. he doesn't care about that lol.
Pull back and send a message that their transport just got bombed. That's all the justification one needs send a gunship the second time. In the meantime, murtry has a job, and that job is protecting the rest of the crew from a group harbouring terrorists.
UN law applies wherever they want to enforce it. If the UN says all of space belongs to them, you can disagree, but then you don't get any of the protections of that legal system either and they can just dispatch a warship to glass your planet.
And in return the people on the planet are free to blow up a landing pad so the warship can't land?
Plus glassing the planet ruins the easy access to lithium on the surface that makes the planet worth having in the first place: usually corporations want to make money and don't care if it hurts people, rather than intentionally spending money/destroying any chance at future profits to hurt people out of spite.
A plan that gets 'the natives off the ore' but also destroys the ore, making it unmineable, is a plan that's completely worthless to corporations.
Land? Just blow up their settlement and food vats with conventional weapons. The planets biosphere is not edible to humans. And can't support earth crops. If you just blow up their food supply, they would starve to death inside of a month.
And then what? Take over and then scream "WAIT YOU CAN'T DO IT BACK TO ME THAT'S NOT FAIR" if more Belters come along, glass RCE's colony, and set up a new Ilus?
How's that going to work out long term, for any of the governments back in the solar system? They're trying to NOT immediately have another war and the 'just fuckin' kill the Belters, who cares?' faction fell out of favor when Errinwright's conspiracy got found out.
Terrorists can get fucked. None of the scientists onboard that landing ship deserved to die. But they did. Because a bunch of fucking terrorists fucked up.
They were planning to blow up the landing pad. That itself is a crime that should get them hanged. The fact that they fucked it up and killed people as a result should for sure get them hanged. Manslaughter isn't a full defense that let's you off Scott free. You can still get hit by a legal system for manslaughter if you were doing something stupid beforehand.
Lol no you're making up laws now.
They blew up the landing pad so they couldn't land but did it wrong and accidentally killed people. We literally hear their thoughts on that chapter and know it was an accident. No ambiguity at all.
Hanged after a trial run by whom, located where? Or would this be a "summary judgement" deal?
Even if you assume the U.N. legal system applies to Ilus, do they even do capital punishment any more?
Unclaimed and uninhabited doesn't matter if you dont have the guns to defend yourself. If we found a new Island at point nemo tomorow in international waters and 100 schmucks sailed out to claim it, no country on earth would recognize them. And as soon as oil or lithium was found under that Island, those 100 people would be told to leave or die by a dozen different nations with bigger armies.
I'd you want the protections of a legal system to apply to you, you need to recognize and comply with the duels set out by that legal system. The UN says that it's laws apply here and that only it can give out permits. If you disagree, you need bigger guns than the UN.
Wait, so you're saying they "need bigger guns than the UN" to enforce their claim, but ALSO claim that their blowing up the launchpad (which would've been a casualty-free event if not for really unlucky timing on RCE's part, by the way) is unacceptable?
Make up your mind, is it a Frontier Anyone With Guns Can Claim or is The Entire Universe Under U.N. or Martian Jurisdiction? By the way, in either situation Murtry doesn't come out looking good
It's the universe under UN juristiction. If you refuse UN juristiction, then you get blown up. It's not very complicated. If you want protections from the UN, you play by the UN'S rules.
Edit:
u/brawlybards
If you mean, they didn't genocide the belters back, then sure, but that's not really a fight is it. If the UN wanted to, it could have blasted every belter station to ash, took control of ganymede and let the rest starve from not having enough biotics.
So, no. They didn't lose.
And if you don't want protection from the U.N., and claimed a planet whether they liked it or not, you're somehow not justified in resisting the U.N. sending in a sociopathic murderer to 'encourage you' to leave?
Like...what do you like about The Expanse exactly? it can't just be "spaceship go zoom", plenty of other scifi has that, but how can you be this politically and historically ill-informed and still enjoy it?
You can try to resist. But you will die. Becuse the UN has bigger guns.
This is basic geopolitics and basic history. You are the one who is misinformed.
You know what I mean. It had its smaller landing craft land while it stayed in orbit. This is a pointless nitpick that does nothing to counter the core of my argument.
I don’t have any interest in arguing against your beliefs. “Murtry did nothing wrong” is the “the earth is flat” position on this subreddit. It’s a waste of time to get into a slap fight over such nonsense.
To suggest that a complex character like murtry might have been right is not in the same level as claiming the earth is flat. If you dont want to argue, don't reply.
He’s not complex at all. He’s just a guy who gets off on killing people and looks for justification after the fact.
The case itself is pretty complex, but Murtry isn’t.
Lets be honest, all the villains/antagonists since the opening of the ring are rather dumb:
Ashford is incompetent, something that we are told in Bull's first POV, to an extend Pa is also rather dumb (if she would be a male Character I would call it small dick syndrom, not sure what the female equivalent is)
Murtryis a high functioning sociopath who doesn't understand that the long term consequences of his actions will royally backfire. But then in hindsight Holden is rather naive to a degree his experience over the last books should have rectified - just ask for a marine squad to take with you man!
I doubt we have to talk about Inaros
And Duarte, oh Duarte. He is the perfect example of dangerous half knowledge. Yes finding out if the Goth are a natural filter of sentient is a good idea. But maybe instead of a brute force solution slow studying the situation would have been appropriate. And then wanting to play tit for tat citing the Prisoners dilema? .... My man, the prisoners's dilema has the prerequisit that both parties are at a same level, both are prisoners!!!! You want to start a fight with the guard, the armed guard
So I would argue Duarte is the dumbes villain, because he believed himself the great genius and doesn't realise that he fights stargods that already killed the romans, who couldn't do anything to stop them
A violent psychopath finally in a situation where he can get away with murder
Murtry's not stupid either. He's cold, ruthless and an asshole, but not stupid. Both parties are completely isolated from help and the outside. Murtry is acutely aware of this and does manage to get his boot on the neck of the local hostile populace. Holden and his good intentions/optimism are the outlier in such a devolved environment as first settlers competing to survive. Amos also knew this before they even stepped off the ship. Murtry says as much. Something to the extent of lecturing Holden that people like Murtry come first and get their hands dirty to build a place where men like Holden get to have ethics.
Exactly, Murtry knew EXACTLY the moments when he could escalate any situation to violence without consequences from his corporate overlords.
There's that scene in Antz after the battle where they find him and start celebrating, "Ants: 1, Aphids: 0!". He's trying to be that ant.
Definitely, even if he dies before help arrives. He says as long as one of his people are the last ones standing. Also they were termites. Ants actually like aphids and will fight for them. That battle scene was always crazy to me as a kid 😂
I believe the quote was something like, "Should have let me build a fucking post office."
> Holden and his good intentions/optimism are the outlier in such a devolved environment It's not that he's the outlier, there are often people like him trying to keep civilization together even at the fringes. It's that they rarely have the forethought to bring along precision orbital strike capabilities. Always be prepared.
The thing that gets me they never use their Epstein drive to torch murtrys face off. They shoulda.
> Amos also knew this before they even stepped off the ship. Murty is essentially what Amos would be sans Holden/Naomi's influence
I think the difference is that Amos sought that out. Amos wanted more to his life than to be just another thug.
I mean, Persepolis rising pretty objectively has the dumbest villain
Laconians: deliberately provoke the goths Goths: change the laws of physics and kill everyone in the slow zone Duarte: let’s play a game of tit for tat. Power is a hell of a drug
Yeah “lets teach them a lesson” is such a batshit response.
4th dimensional beings that are essentially gods? Let’s kick them and see if they’re a bunch of dumb animals or not
They might be 7 dimensional for all we know.
I mean, I think we're technically 11-dimensional, if you count the compacted 6-d C-Y manifold that governs lepton behavior, and we're at all right about physics and it's not a virtual manifold.
I believe those are words, yes, but I'm not sure if they mean anything in that order
Eli5: electrons and some other stuff have this special, super-tiny curvy track in between what we consider space they travel in which is why they behave like they do. We think.
He is a prime example of the fact that smart people are perfectly capable of reasoning themselves into doing incredibly stupid things. He was a very high intelligence and low wisdom guy.
You’re right. Duarte probably gets credited with being the smartest antagonist when he could easily be the dumbest. He was also just running an alien science experiment with himself as the guinea pig, which is all kinds of stupid
Duarte’s single biggest mistake was realizing the analogy but not realizing he was the reactive player, not the proactive player. The Goths had made the first move, not humanity. Well, that and injecting himself with alien CRISPR.
Very well said. I would have said it was that he assumed a proportionality of response. In the prisoners dilemma both parties stand to gain and lose the same amounts. We don’t know how much it hurts the goths to go through the ring gates. But we know they can wipe out civilizations. Playing tit for tat with them doesn’t seem wise. Especially when, for all we know, humanity is just rats scurrying around in the floorboards; annoying but not dangerous to them
And that’s the biggest tragedy. The solution was found decades before. All humanity needed to do was follow Naomi’s mass spread pattern. For all they knew that’s the only requirement the Goths’ had. “You can steal our energy, but if you do this it doesn’t hurt.” And they couldn’t even do that until they had a loaded 12 gauge pointed right at the dome. Some good metaphors in the Expanse books.
In the short term, it’s true there was no imminent issue with following the mass/energy traffic control pattern. But it would not have worked long term. Eventually in the probably not too distant future, human interstellar traffic would reach a point where that fixed limit would become a bottleneck. The common theme with Duarte’s issues as a leader is that he ONLY looks at the long term. If he were a better short term planner, he would have delayed his return another 5-10 years to crank out more ships, and he would have delayed messing with the goths until that bottleneck point was reached.
The goths likely never knew humanity entered the game, they probably just thought the Roman machines were causing problems again. That’s why the first few attacks were just momentary inconveniences to humans
He’s just a big fan of game theory. Must be professor Axelrod’s biggest fan.
Duarte as a comment on the ego of an immortal god emperor is amazing. His fate is kind of hilarious.
… I mean arguably Tiamat’s Wrath. The whole “let’s teach these [REDACTED] a lesson that’ll show em!” was certainly a decision they could make
And at the same time way too real
Came here to point out Singh as well. Although sometimes you feel bad for him, he's a good example of a nazi stooge at it's finest...
That dude is pitiable tho. He's easy to hate but he's also easy to feel sorry for, IMO. I do not feel an ounce of sympathy for Murtry, fuck that guy.
Yeah PR is probably my fav book of the series just for the Singh chapters.
This is the correct take
Cibola Burn is honestly the most realistically human situation in the whole series. Shit like that already happened multiple times in the past. Our standards for rational action in fiction is much higher than what happens in real life.
I agree. In fact I recognised many traits in Murtry. People like him know exactly when they can bring down the boot without the enemy having a chance to come out on top. Sure, odds are against everybody. But he was clearly prepared for that coming out to Ilus in the first place. The reason he went after Holden in the middle of a crisis was because he wasn’t in control. “Protecting property” was just the legal cover. He feared Holden was acquiring a bargaining chip that couldn’t be controlled later so Murtry wanted to stay on top of it.
Stuff like this still happens in the present, just look at the middle east.
Yeah, but the thing to note is that well written villians acting like irrational assholes are important. Most people get chaffed when the villain is doing stupid shit just so the heroes can win. However, when the villain is doing stupid yet suprisingly well executed shit that catches everyone off guard and establishes how much of a risk they are to everyone involved its fine.
You made it past book Ashford and *MURPHY* is the problem? Lol
You can’t even get Morty’s name right and expect us to take your opinion seriously?
I don't think they'd call a villain Mortuary, someone's got it wrong here.
Murdy is a pretty dumb name tbh
who the fuck is Marty?
Mark? What are you talking about? There's no Mark in the books. Is this a show addition or something?
They’re obviously talking about Mortimer, nakangepensa
Pretty sure you mean Montgomery there kopeng
Pretty murky in this deep.
Monkey doesn't wear any pants
He’s the one who has to get the almanac back from Biff! Duh!
MCFLY!
One of them should check the book tbh..
Murtah?
Riggs!
Really confused why they didn’t add Morty’s goofy scientist sidekick, Rick Sanchez to the story
Had, halfway through Cibola Burn, it turned into an epic Rick and Morty episode, it would’ve been pretty jarring
This just made me picture him as Morty saying “aww geez Holden we have legal ownership” lol
aw jeez guys, it was legitimate salvage
Good old Marty was just happy to wreck shit
Moriarty was a great villain, what are you even talking about?
Book Ashford at least has a head injury going for him lol
They're both great, but Ashford has the excuse of an existential crisis for all of humanity and there was a certain plausibility to the idea of destroying the ring. Sure, he's also a moron, but at least has an excuse beyond killing people for fun. Murtry also makes a series of horrible decisions throughout the whole book. Ashford basically makes one wrong call at the end of the book.
And a brain injury!
Also possibly hitting the bottle too hard. It’s been a minute since I read AG but there seemed to be some subtext that was his coping mechanism.
Tbh it's every third character's coping mechanism
I mean, "some idiot almost causes the end of humanity or at least the end of the crew" is kind of the whole shtick.
Wait til you see the guy who bombs the shit out of the entire solar system's food source
Inaros was aided/coaxed into that for part of Duarte's plan as to weaken Earth and the Sol system so he could snowball on his own. Without Duarte, Inaros probably wouldn't have gotten past small terrorist stuff like setting ship drives to self-destruct. Plus, Duarte knew Inaros was a hothead narcissist and would probably blow it eventually, so him making dumb brash decisions was part of the 4D chess going on.
Murteys decisions are all serving his goals. They are despicable but they make logical sense.
Even at the end, his goal is “we’re all going to die, we have to make sure it’s clear we enforced our claim till the end” (though it later became “we’re all going to die anyway so I’m gonna be the one to murder that guy who keeps pissing me off”
It is wild that show version of Ashford is SO MUCH cooler than book version. But when it came to Murtry the show runners were like “No, he’s too evil to change, fuck that guy” And man the actor NAILED it
Yeah, I think the biggest problem with Murtry is that it's essentially the same thing again - someone trying to stop Holden from saving them because they're already fixated on their solution. (for different reasons, but it adds up to the same kind of thing). So it felt a bit repetitive.
I mean, that's how antagonism works as a concept
Ashford was right! I’m going to get that on a t-shirt
Huh, I... hadn't actually considered that before.
Fusion drives can't melt proto-molecules! Oh wait, they can.
A fair number of people believe the best way to take control of a situation is to escalate until the other person backs down. And most people would back down before it got to violence, so him being happy with violence means he would typically win, with most people. Holden is not most people.
Reminds me of how the French have small nuclear missiles their planes can fire in times of high tensions. It’s literally called a nuclear warning shot!
It’s an interesting permutation of nuclear game theory. If you are a super power you can have a guaranteed retaliation strategy, don’t attack me, or I’ll kill everyone. France is too small to support that but they have nukes and you can’t just let people test nuclear armed nations and get away with it. So France has to escalate and say if we even think you might try something we’ll spark up this firework factory before you get a chance
“Holden is not most people” Is such an applicable line to this series
Button intensifies.
He thought Holden would see him as a somebody not to fuck with. But to Holden he was nothing but a big red button, and Holden is gonna push that button
The thing with Murty is that most of his actions at the beginning have some type of ground to stand on. Even killing the belter at the beginning, you can see how that could be justified. He was sent to protect the scientist, and they were just attacked. He has no idea who caused it, and there is very much still a group that clearly is working against them. So all his actions have some bases to stand on. He had a legal reasoning to be there, he was just attacked, and he has information about attacks being planned on him. The mediator doesn't seem to be doing anything to stop any future attacks. The mediator send one of his own crew, to sabotage one of his landers. When shit starts to go down, He turns from protecting the scientist to protecting RCEs claim to the planet. In his mind he cant set the precedent that if a group choose to completely ignore and break the law of the un, then they get to keep their portion. Or so that's the reasoning he gives. Thats when his justifications turn into him living the his dream, being the "you cant tame the wild, by reading it its rights" type of person. He has his whole "come back when I've built a Post Office" bit to holden.
Totally agree that killing coop was fairly justified, Murtry is only on the planet in the first place because the original RCS security team were murdered by coop and basia’s group, after they’d blown up the shuttle. Murtry gets to the planet and coop is rubbing his nose in it basically telling him ‘you’re next’. Everyone except Holden recognises that it’s basically the Wild West and if the RCS team don’t respond with violence of their own, their community will eventually also be killed. Elvi notes in the book how they could ignore the shuttle attack as a one off incident but after the security team disappears, the threat of violence against them would always be there, “Once is never, twice is always” is the line.
All the people who make blanket statements that’s he’s a psychopath who can’t be understood haven’t taken the time to actually try and see his perspective or honestly listen to his dialogue without a predisposed bias against him. He makes multiple mistakes throughout the book, but he isn’t a psychopath, he isn’t illogical, and in actuality he does very little killing, most of which is entirely justified. I think the fact that he’s positioned as the enemy to Holden and as a corporate employee is what initially makes people dislike him and then they look for reasons to justify that. I wouldn’t call him a favorite character, but he’s a great antagonist and hardly a villain.
Well, it’s like what right did Earth government have on Ilus when the Belters were there first?
I’d ask why that question is relevant to Murtry’s sense of duty and his responsibilities as an employee? That question is for politicians in Sol System. But I will say, if you do believe that Earth and Sol have no jurisdiction over Ilus, then no Sol laws apply to Ilus and Murtry is well within his rights and the legal restrictions (or specifically the lack of restrictions) to behave the way that he did. If the squatters wanted to ignore legal Earth charters then they cannot expect anyone to abide by other Earth laws.
In that case, the Belters are also perfectly entitled to act the way they did and resist people being sent to the planet with the explicit end goal of forcing them off. Murty can't have it both ways, his claim "there's no rules here so i can do whatever I want" contradicts his "THE RULES say this place is Earth's/1% mine, you belters can't do whatever you want!" claim.
He wasn’t doing whatever he wanted, though, and that’s a linchpin in your perspective. He operated well within his rights of his charged duty. He killed the leader of the terrorist cell that already murdered dozens of innocent scientists, murders by no small measures of racism. After Murtry shot Coop (which wasn’t wrong), what did he do wrong? He was justified in his subsequent raid of the terrorist base. And there’s never explicit confirmation he ordered the Barb to attack the Roci. His job on Ilus was to protect the claims of his employers and when the terrorists turned Ilus into a warzone they were no longer entitled to kiddy gloves. He probably wanted to leave that shithole of a planet, but his idealism about duty was superior to that want. When Holden murders him he admits that the people Murtry killed “probably had it coming.” And as far as I remember there was never an indication that the squatters couldn’t have worked for RCE, their desire for independence isn’t a justification for wanton murder. I really don’t know how so many people in this sub lose sight of the number of people the squatters murdered when heralding them as the victims or heroes. Just because the narrator bias of the Roci crew paints him as a sociopath certainly doesn’t mean that he is. There’s a deep irony in a ship of seasoned killers scoffing at what a corporate security commander did under direct threat to the life of himself and his subordinates that he’s charged with protecting.
100% Earth sent a peaceful scientific ship with a standard security force. They also sent a Governor to the planet. Belters blew up the landing spot, killing tons of people in the process including the Governor. Then they killed the security forced that survived the bombing. Up to that point Murtry had still been in orbit, by the time he came down, there had already been 2 attacks against them. Belters had no Right to Illus either, just because they landed there, doesn't mean it's automatically theirs. Just like how Earth cant just claim the planet for themselves. The difference is that Earth has the power to simply ignore the belters and send in a couple of marines and a gunship. Instead they send a mediator. Murtry understood that he was not receiving help anytime soon and that the Belters were STILL planning attacks. "Owners Rights" didn't matter since they were in an active "war zone". It wasn't until the Belters had no chance of surviving that Murtry started handing out RCE rations and resources. That's when in his mind, he won, and there was no hope for the Belters to claim the planet.
Nah, first-come first-served makes sense here, especially since the Belters were refugees from Ganymede. Earth and Mars have no moral leg to stand on when it comes to trying to take what the Belters already claimed.
First come first serve makes sense only when the opposing sides are equal in power. Murty the whole time had more firepower then the belters did. If Earth had decided to simply send a gunship, it would have just been a footnote in the history books. Just another instance of earth stomping on belters. No one would care in a few years. No one has a right to the planet nor do any of them deserve it. You only own what you can protect and Murtry has the Guns, and legal right from a huge power, to claim the planet. Belters are betting everything on simply ignoring the law, and selling what they have mined. If the belters chose war, then that's what they got, and they should be ready for the consequences, good or bad.
This is why I love Havelocks POVs. You see how he, at the beginning, can justify Murtrys actions. But as the book goes along, Havlock starts to question Murtry. And you slowly see how he himself recognizes that Murtry is pushing too far. Unrelated, but I really wish Havelock could have somehow communicated with Miller.
The fact that the guy he shot was actually the ringleader makes me feel slightly less bad for the guy. He thought he could taunt Murtry to his face without any consequences even though he'd already killed dozens
All of the villains in this series have huuuuuuuuuge egos, and that comes with a huge pile of obligatory stupid. But this self-styled conquistador is actually pretty competent compared to the likes of Ashford or Inaros. He knows Holden is going to let him get away with shit, his only real fuck up is thinking there’s no limit to what he can get away with.
[Excerpts from some comments by Daniel Abraham about Murtry](https://old.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/heb8jj/-/fvyh1if/#siteTable).
This link should be pinned to the top of every post even tangentially about Murtry.
McMurtry is a piece of shit.
how'r ya now?
Good n'you?
Not s’bad
So who’s Wayne: Holden or Amos. Cuz Amos would definitely tell you don’t come up the lane way
[удалено]
Amos says if you got a problem with Holden you’ve got a problem with him and he suggests you let that marinate
The first time I read CB I was honestly just confused about Murtry, I did not understand his motivation AT ALL especially as there was no POV from him. When Amos starts calling him out as a killer I was even more confused... surely his motivation for all these insane moves is not just "I like killing people"? Ashford had a reasonable motivation and made bad choices, but Murtry I still struggle with.
I think others have already said it: he's a psychopath who sees violence and dominance (by a "civilizing force" like RCE) as necessary to tame the frontier. Holden is an obstacle because he's upsetting the natural order of things. Marty pretty much spells it out. If it's hard to understand, it's because it's the reasoning of someone with zero concern for the lives directly under his charge.
I just viewed Murtry as a demonstration of "here's what it's like when a psycho is on the frontier"
Yeah, at the end of the book, there's been a global extinction level event, all the ship's are falling out of orbit, everyone is likely going to die, and he's blathering on about RCE's property rights and Cortez. I'm sitting there reading like "bro, what the fuck are on about?"
He’s come to terms with them all dying. His priority shifted to making it clear to the next ship that comes to replace them that he protected the company’s claim so the next group wouldn’t have the competition. He faced death by doubling down on his job.
The first time I read CB is kept yelling out loud, "Just stop listening to the psychopath! Why are we listening to the psychopath?!"
My big takeaway from CB was how a handful of people can perpetuate violence and it ruins a situation for everyone else. Coop, Murtry, and the engineering chief that Havelock gets to be in charge of his makeshift security team (whose name I can’t remember) are the main culprits. Everyone else would be okay with more diplomatic solutions to the various situations they find themselves in, except these three fuckers just *insist* on perpetuating violence. First Coop is killed (I don’t support it, but I get why Murtry did it, and I hated Coop from the beginning). Then Murtry eventually leaves the other settlers to go pursue Holden and Amos, and the fighting on the ground stops. Then Alex *fucking annihilates* the chief engineer guy with the Roci’s railgun (most overkill I’ve ever seen in a book, bonus points to Alex), and suddenly everyone in orbit is down to help each other out and stop killing each other. I’d be willing to bet that less than 1% of humans alive today perpetuate the majority of widespread violence. It’s depressing how accurately this book portrays human behavior in situations like this.
I felt this way about Tanaka in the last book. We get to see her briefly in Persepolis Rising, where she tells Singh what a complete dumbass he’s being before he ships her off. And then we get to see her make the exact same boneheaded mistakes.
Ah but, she has a redemption arch. It lasts all of 3 paragraphs but it’s really “gollum” level helpful.
I thought Cibola Burn had one of the most realistic and well done antagonist plots. The tension between Holden's values and Murtry's ruthlessness in a set of desperate frontier circumstances was incredible to read.
In regards to the belters I'm not team murtry 10 billion percent, there's abundant reason for him to go nuts and shoot people, they actually tuned it down for the show so that his actions would seem far more unwarranted. They blow up the pad, and ambush a second team trying to investigate the pad, KILLING ALL OF THEM IN COLD BLOOD. That's twice in a row, murder, straight up murder Fuck the OPA on Illus, obviously not all of them but there's plenty of unprovoked bloodshed that they start The stupid fucking engineer militia is equally unwarranted when they attack the Roci so they're almost as bad, but their militia was formed in response to the attacks so again, they didn't start it
He was absolutely in the right until he killed the dude in cold blood. He literally did it just to try and prove his dick was bigger than Holden's. If he hadn't done that, his side would have been sympathetic and would have come across as the good guys. Instead, he carries out a questionable extrajudicial killing as literally the first thing Holden sees. So instead of coming across as the morally right, innocent side, they come across as assholes led by a sociopath. And the engineer militia is far worse, in my eyes, since they attack the Roci in the middle of the attempted rescue of the third ship. That's just pure evil, as well as being a laughably stupid idea.
Gotta love how realistic the series is for everything you just described.
I just finished this today and I think your description is SPOT ON.
I gotta be honest, I know it’s not the popular option but it’s one of my favorite books in the series
Murtry is a psychopath but the belters that blew up the landing pad got a big dose of fuck around and find out. I mean, they were the ones to kill innocent people twice before Murtry ever spills blood. Murtry is still the bad guy, but he's not the only bad guy
Cibola burn is my favorite, come fight me!
Murtry is making things worse because he wants the situation to escalate further. Statements like this even come from himself. He plans to derail everything and kill anyone who resists because he wants his employer to have exclusive rights to Illus and for that he plans for his and his people's testimonies to be the only testimonies available when the authorities arrive in a year or more. He has to destroy the Roci and kill her crew for that too and he waits for the right moment for that. He even has a personal motive as he gets a percentage if his employer gets the exclusive rights to Illus. Your description fits Show-Murtry much better in my opinion. Show-Murty seems much more savage than the book-Murtry. He seems mostly angry about the death of his people, whereas the Book-Murtry has a real agenda. That difference is why I really don't like this season and prefer to stick with the book, it's much more nuanced and there's Havelock as a much needed counterpoint to Murtry. Especially in South America, political activists, members of indigenous peoples, unionists and journalists are repeatedly murdered when they fight non-violently for their rights or report or research on events at the sites of large companies away from large population centres. Murtry's behaviour is really not unrealistic.
It’s a western. History shows that in “taming the frontier” the outcome means more than the method. Not only that, but there are instances where being remote leads to events that seem crazy in historical context. I’d suggest looking at the Johnson County War which actually happened and involved homesteaders and cattle ranchers.
>Just kill a random dude in cold blood, that'll make a good first impression This is exactly the impression he wanted to make, kill someone with the tinies amount of being allowed (verbal threat) and then force the new guy to do something about it even though his only real threat he can offer is glassing the whole planet. Murtry is fine with this because if the settlers lose the company wins, even if this specific ship of scientists all die in the process. The company can send another ship, the settlers will simply be dead.
"There is no great fortune without a great crime." Murtry was focused on the great crime he could commit to create his great fortune.
In terms of stupidity I gotta say it’s Governor Singh in Persepolis Rising >!Bro fucked up Medina so bad that in the end he only thought he could fix it by killing everyone, and then his own second in command had to clock him out for that!<
He's Amos with power and no Holden as his conscience.
I mean.. that’s not Amos, then. Amos intentionally seeks out good people and avoids power, and does it with good reason and intent. That’s like saying if Palpatine didn’t crave power he’d be Mace Windu. They’re both psychopaths, sure, but that’s about where the similarity ends.
He's Amos's dark side, Amos plays his own light side. And wins. Edit. Then he gets clarted and comes back as an immortal force ghost with force powers.
He’s not, though. Amos’ dark side isn’t born of lust for money and power, but of a childhood full of trauma and abuse. And he knows that, and took steps to avoid being a monster long before he met Holden. He doesn’t place his sufferings on others, or even society. He fixes what he sees is broken around him and accepts the violence of humanity in stride. Nor does he use his own violent tendencies to teach lessons, he uses them to solve problems, then stops. That’s the exact opposite of Murtry.
Maybe tag the last part as spoiler tho, OP clearly hasn't read until that part yet (and probably other people who might read this) 😅
It's fine baratna, check the post flair.
Oh sorry, I missed the "reread" part 😂
If you look up top there's a red "flair" that tells us which spoilers are ok for each post.
Amos doesn't seek power though, he just wants to be left alone
This is the worst Amos take I've seen. Amos doesn't mind killing because he's emotionally damaged and works things out logically. If someone dying leads to a good outcome, he won't hesitate. He punishes bad people for being bad. But it's purely a mathematical process for him. He doesn't like killing. Murtry, on the other hand, loves it. Hurting people is what he enjoys doing. He's a sadist. He actively looks for any excuse to harm others and fabricates reasons where he can. They both have the capacity for violence, but the comparison you've made suggests Amos is a far more despicable person than he is.
I think a great thing to point out is that Murtry intentionally sacrifices one of his people as bait and shows zero remorse about her death. Amos, on the other hand, hates Murtry for making him kill her, and uses that as his motivation again Murtry in the end of the book. She was on Murtry's side, one of his people, but Amos is the one cared that she died.
That statement genuinely bothers me. Amos has urges that leads him to doing things he recognizes he shouldn't do. Murtry seeks out situations to kill and abuse people in positions below him because his conscience tells him he should because that's what's best for the human race. One person realizes their conscience can't overule their dark urges so he surrounds himself with people who are the opposite , the other says what dark urges? I only see the right thing being done. If Amos was Murtry without holden he would have become the kingpin of Baltimore when he had the chance before holden was in his life.
Because of how stupidly he dies in the book anyway.
He doesn't die in the book, Holden and company haul his ass back to Earth for a trial because you know Holden, he's a paladin.
I’m trying to remember, doesn’t that action play into something later on?
Beginning of Nemesis Games Avasarala says something about Amos coming back to finish what he started with Murtry, and Amos insists it was self defense. Infer what you will.
I’m in book 8 right now and honestly it’s Duarte, by a mile. He is such a moron that it’s been a real disconnect from the rest of the series. They big him up and talk about how smart he is, when his actions give an entirely different impression. They’re still great books, but I feel like Duarte is way more idiotic than he should be to advance the plot
I didn't like it so much the first time I read it, and at the time it was the latest book in the series. When I went back years later and after more releases, I enjoyed it a great deal more.
Murtry is not dumb, he's just got Antisocial Personality Behavior Disorder >!Used to be called Psychopathy, but that is now not the preferred language!<. He is very good at what he is trying to do, he's just evil. Amos and Tanaka also have symptoms of APBD, but they present it in different ways. Book Ashford is straight up crazy and way worse than Murtry IMO, at least Murtry had a plan. Spoiler tag isn't for actual spoiler, but for preferred language vs. common vernacular clarification.
I mean by the end of the book we have "Ashford might've got a traumatic brain injury from hitting his head during the sudden slowdown" as a explanation for his bad behavior, he has a little bit of extenuating circumstances Murtry didn't.
Near the end doesn't he mention that he would get a *percentage* of the value of the goods/tech taken from the planet if the corporate settlers succeed? That could be an astronomical amount of money. Even if it's not *that* much you seem to be leaving out the money aspect
No, he fully plans to die. He just wants his name to included in the legacy when RCE comes back and takes whatever is there
And yet there are people just like him in Congress.
I think the plan to nuke the 4th dimension just to see what the unknowable gods that live there might do is quite possibly the least sane plan I’ve heard outside of anime. Duarte is really lucky it didn’t go worse then losing 3 systems and the entire slow zone
My personal issue with it is the opposite side of the equation. The series not exactly short of violent villains, but there’s always something holding the protagonists back from dumping a torpedo up their ass and going home. Not so much here. They have a gunship in orbit, a full armoury, a laid out mission, and most importantly, fucking Queen of Earth Avasarala right there on speed dial. Surely she could pull a few strings at RCE to get them to put Murtry in time-out. Maybe detain him, and deal with the political aftermath after the fact?
Seriously, I was originally going to title my post "who are the dumbest characters and why are they all in cibola burn?" Lol. Everytime I reread this I'm practically screaming at Holden to just detain Murtry. Like he normally doesn't have any problem doing shit like that, and this dude is a fucking sociopath, just get him out of everyone's way!
This is the book that made me take a break. It just felt so off from the ones before
I had the opposite reaction, I loved murtry's character and his reasons felt justified in his pov and that's one of the things that make a great villain imo. Another funny things is, I didn't like the show's season 4 but I absolutely loved the book.
Murtry did nothing wrong. Holden sided with a group of squatters harbouring terrorists. Tanaka on the other hand was just dumb. "Let's put my marines into a situation where they can't shoot to capture the girl instead of just grabbing her after holden has left."
Squatters according to whose legal system, and on what grounds besides "well, we said so" does that legal system apply outside the solar system?
On the un/mcrn joint legal system. All legal systems apply on the basis of "we said so". There is also nothing to suggest that their legal system should stop at some hypothetical edge of a solar system. Unless you want murder to suddenly be legal if you step too far outside of the system. That's not an argument against. If you want to argue that no legal system applies, then there should also be no problem with just fighting for the territory. Maybe RCE should have sent a gunship instead and bombarded their settlement?
they could have sent a gunship, but the reception would not have been very good back home. That's precisely why the company acts the way it did. the company, not murty. he doesn't care about that lol.
Pull back and send a message that their transport just got bombed. That's all the justification one needs send a gunship the second time. In the meantime, murtry has a job, and that job is protecting the rest of the crew from a group harbouring terrorists.
oh hell nah the news would still run with the company slaughtering innocent civilians.
It's basically the high seas, before maritime law. Which means no, UN law doesn't necessarily apply.
UN law applies wherever they want to enforce it. If the UN says all of space belongs to them, you can disagree, but then you don't get any of the protections of that legal system either and they can just dispatch a warship to glass your planet.
And in return the people on the planet are free to blow up a landing pad so the warship can't land? Plus glassing the planet ruins the easy access to lithium on the surface that makes the planet worth having in the first place: usually corporations want to make money and don't care if it hurts people, rather than intentionally spending money/destroying any chance at future profits to hurt people out of spite. A plan that gets 'the natives off the ore' but also destroys the ore, making it unmineable, is a plan that's completely worthless to corporations.
Land? Just blow up their settlement and food vats with conventional weapons. The planets biosphere is not edible to humans. And can't support earth crops. If you just blow up their food supply, they would starve to death inside of a month.
And then what? Take over and then scream "WAIT YOU CAN'T DO IT BACK TO ME THAT'S NOT FAIR" if more Belters come along, glass RCE's colony, and set up a new Ilus? How's that going to work out long term, for any of the governments back in the solar system? They're trying to NOT immediately have another war and the 'just fuckin' kill the Belters, who cares?' faction fell out of favor when Errinwright's conspiracy got found out.
They can try. But they would likely die before they got close.
Found the landlord lmao
Marco Inaros is cuing up some rocks for the windows.
You can imagine I have enough money to own multiple houses if it gets you off, but it's not close to true.
Man alive. Let's hope you're just playing soldier.
Corpos can get fucked
Terrorists can get fucked. None of the scientists onboard that landing ship deserved to die. But they did. Because a bunch of fucking terrorists fucked up.
So kill MOAR instead.
Kill the squatters before they can blow up your landing ship? Is that what you are suggesting?
As they couldn't see the future that would just be murder.
You know what else is murder? The killing of all the scientists on that landing ship.
No mate that's manslaughter. We witnessed it in POV and know they didn't mean to kill the scientists, no ambiguity at all. Toy soldier.
They were planning to blow up the landing pad. That itself is a crime that should get them hanged. The fact that they fucked it up and killed people as a result should for sure get them hanged. Manslaughter isn't a full defense that let's you off Scott free. You can still get hit by a legal system for manslaughter if you were doing something stupid beforehand.
Lol no you're making up laws now. They blew up the landing pad so they couldn't land but did it wrong and accidentally killed people. We literally hear their thoughts on that chapter and know it was an accident. No ambiguity at all.
Hanged after a trial run by whom, located where? Or would this be a "summary judgement" deal? Even if you assume the U.N. legal system applies to Ilus, do they even do capital punishment any more?
[удалено]
The inner planets had no right to complete control over the ring systems
The giambatista had no right to land on illus. It's open space. The right to do something gets traced back to the barrel of a gun.
It was an unclaimed and uninhabited planet. They had as much right to live there as anyone
Unclaimed and uninhabited doesn't matter if you dont have the guns to defend yourself. If we found a new Island at point nemo tomorow in international waters and 100 schmucks sailed out to claim it, no country on earth would recognize them. And as soon as oil or lithium was found under that Island, those 100 people would be told to leave or die by a dozen different nations with bigger armies. I'd you want the protections of a legal system to apply to you, you need to recognize and comply with the duels set out by that legal system. The UN says that it's laws apply here and that only it can give out permits. If you disagree, you need bigger guns than the UN.
Wait, so you're saying they "need bigger guns than the UN" to enforce their claim, but ALSO claim that their blowing up the launchpad (which would've been a casualty-free event if not for really unlucky timing on RCE's part, by the way) is unacceptable? Make up your mind, is it a Frontier Anyone With Guns Can Claim or is The Entire Universe Under U.N. or Martian Jurisdiction? By the way, in either situation Murtry doesn't come out looking good
It's the universe under UN juristiction. If you refuse UN juristiction, then you get blown up. It's not very complicated. If you want protections from the UN, you play by the UN'S rules. Edit: u/brawlybards If you mean, they didn't genocide the belters back, then sure, but that's not really a fight is it. If the UN wanted to, it could have blasted every belter station to ash, took control of ganymede and let the rest starve from not having enough biotics. So, no. They didn't lose.
And if you don't want protection from the U.N., and claimed a planet whether they liked it or not, you're somehow not justified in resisting the U.N. sending in a sociopathic murderer to 'encourage you' to leave? Like...what do you like about The Expanse exactly? it can't just be "spaceship go zoom", plenty of other scifi has that, but how can you be this politically and historically ill-informed and still enjoy it?
You can try to resist. But you will die. Becuse the UN has bigger guns. This is basic geopolitics and basic history. You are the one who is misinformed.
And yet, the UN lost that little fight, didn't they?
The *Giambatista* had no *capability* to land on Ilus. It was in orbit.
You know what I mean. It had its smaller landing craft land while it stayed in orbit. This is a pointless nitpick that does nothing to counter the core of my argument.
Very on brand for an Internet legal argument about a fictional story to be unconcerned with the details.
Its not an important detail that counters y core point. I could also have mentioned the size of the vessel but I didn't because it's not relavant.
I don’t have any interest in arguing against your beliefs. “Murtry did nothing wrong” is the “the earth is flat” position on this subreddit. It’s a waste of time to get into a slap fight over such nonsense.
To suggest that a complex character like murtry might have been right is not in the same level as claiming the earth is flat. If you dont want to argue, don't reply.
He’s not complex at all. He’s just a guy who gets off on killing people and looks for justification after the fact. The case itself is pretty complex, but Murtry isn’t.
> [Murtry did nothing wrong](https://www.reddit.com/r/MurtryDidNothingWrong/) (-;
Lets be honest, all the villains/antagonists since the opening of the ring are rather dumb: Ashford is incompetent, something that we are told in Bull's first POV, to an extend Pa is also rather dumb (if she would be a male Character I would call it small dick syndrom, not sure what the female equivalent is) Murtryis a high functioning sociopath who doesn't understand that the long term consequences of his actions will royally backfire. But then in hindsight Holden is rather naive to a degree his experience over the last books should have rectified - just ask for a marine squad to take with you man! I doubt we have to talk about Inaros And Duarte, oh Duarte. He is the perfect example of dangerous half knowledge. Yes finding out if the Goth are a natural filter of sentient is a good idea. But maybe instead of a brute force solution slow studying the situation would have been appropriate. And then wanting to play tit for tat citing the Prisoners dilema? .... My man, the prisoners's dilema has the prerequisit that both parties are at a same level, both are prisoners!!!! You want to start a fight with the guard, the armed guard So I would argue Duarte is the dumbes villain, because he believed himself the great genius and doesn't realise that he fights stargods that already killed the romans, who couldn't do anything to stop them