Location from The Expanse by James S.A. Corey
Earth's solar system — humanity's original home and the stage for the three-faction power struggle between Earth, Mars, and the Belt that defined human civilization before the Ring Gates opened everything up.
Sol system is where humanity grew up, and like most childhoods, it was defined by family conflict. Earth controlled the government and the economy. Mars built the military and the technology. The Belt did the work and got the least. This three-way tension — sometimes cold war, sometimes hot — shaped every political decision, every military deployment, and every personal relationship in the system. The Epstein drive made the system traversable. Before it, humanity was confined to Earth and Luna. After it, Mars became independent, the Belt became populated, and the solar system became a political arena where three civilizations competed for resources, territory, and legitimacy. The Ring Gates changed everything by making Sol system one system among thirteen hundred. The strategic calculus that had driven centuries of conflict became obsolete overnight. Why fight over asteroids when whole worlds were available? The answer, it turned out, was that people don't fight over resources — they fight over identity, power, and fear. Sol system's conflicts didn't end with the gates. They metastasized.
The solar system as workplace: Earth and Luna gleaming with civilization, Mars red and slowly greening under its domes, the Belt a scattered archipelago of stations and rocks, Jupiter's moons hosting farms and labs, Saturn's rings providing water. Ships burn between worlds on pillars of Epstein drive fire, transit times measured in weeks and months. The distances are real — space is vast, dark, and empty, and the human presence in it is a thin scattering of fragile habitats separated by millions of kilometers of nothing.
Also known as: Sol System, Sol, The System