There’s lots to like (and dislike) about The Expanse, but one thing I’m really enjoying is the random appearance of totally banal objects in a ‘cosmic’ setting: transport ‘pods’ that are just Thule car-storage things, Sodastream seltzer-makers with phone screens glued to them to make them look space-age. Years ago this would have been an idiotic commodity-oriented variation on James Agee’s The Moviegoer (‘OMG I have one of those in my kitchen!!!’), but it’s something else: signs of the shifting boundaries between amateur and professional media-production. Give it a few years before gangs of savvy teenagers can make sci-fi movies that look about as credible as anything else. Actually, now that I think about it, that pretty much describes everything going on now, doesn’t it? Silicon Valley, the Internet…