Location from The Expanse by James S.A. Corey
Not a place — a people and a political identity. The asteroid belt and outer system stations, home to millions of Belters whose bodies have adapted to low gravity and whose culture has adapted to scarcity. The OPA speaks for them, when it speaks with one voice.
The Belt is a diaspora that never had a homeland. Belters were born in space, raised in space, and die in space — their bodies adapted to low gravity in ways that mean they can never comfortably live on a planet. Long limbs, fragile bones, enlarged heads, and a Creole language that mixes every Earth tongue into something new. They are humanity's working class in space, doing the mining, hauling, and construction that makes the inner planets' comfortable lives possible. The OPA is the Belt's political expression, but it has never been unified. Fred Johnson's diplomatic faction, Anderson Dawes's pragmatic operators, Marco Inaros's radical militants — the Belt contains multitudes, and they agree on only one thing: the inner planets have treated them as expendable labor for too long. When the Ring Gates opened, the Belt faced a different existential crisis. If humanity could spread to thirteen hundred new worlds, who needed asteroid miners? The Belt's strategic value — controlling the resources between planets — evaporated overnight. Some Belters adapted, becoming the transport network for the gate economy. Others followed Marco into rage. The Belt's story is the story of people who built a culture from nothing and then watched the universe change the rules.
The Belt is everywhere and nowhere — thousands of stations, rocks, and ships scattered across the vast emptiness between Mars and Jupiter and beyond. Each station looks different: carved asteroids, constructed platforms, converted ships welded together. What they share is the aesthetic of survival: recycled everything, jury-rigged systems, hand-painted murals on tunnel walls, grow-lights in every spare corner. Belters themselves are tall and thin, their bones elongated by low gravity, their gestures expansive in ways that mark them instantly to any inner planet observer.
Also known as: The Belt, Belt, Asteroid Belt, OPA Territory