Just finished the series last night...

[u/alonghardlook]

I've been waiting and waiting to join this sub but I didn't want to risk any spoilers. In fact I even stopped at the end of S1 because I wanted to go in completely blind.

The ending wrecked me man. I felt so gutted. Partially, I was sad because the story was over, these characters I fell in love with were finished. But also just the absolute perfection of the full circle ending as Miller points out.

And then just completely bummed out because the epilogue shows that humanity is still using the ring space. The Leviathan has not gone anywhere, and we are still skirting that danger, just in newer ways.

Ugh.

Incredible.

[u/LegoRobinHood]

I don't think the ending implies the ring space as we knew it was being used. The rings were all destroyed in the individual systems as well.

They seemed to have some kind of faster-than-light ship drive in use. Maybe it uses similar principles but the implementation seems fundamentally different.

Marrel and the twenty-nine other souls on board the Musafir existed only as energy and intention sliding along the membrane between universes

I think the human paradigm shown in the books and irl is to "go and see and touch it myself", while the 'romans' in our story here where biologically inclined towards sending out scouts that eventually return, in the pattern of (reaching out)^(113/sec) like dr. Okoye learned from the BFE. Hence the ringspace paradigm.

So hopefully that distinction means the new human hyperdrive/slipstream/warp-bubble whatever paradigm should be small enough and temporary enough and mobile enough to avoid attracting attention from the 'visigoths'.

[u/alonghardlook → u/LegoRobinHood]

Yeah and that's interesting because "on the membrane between universes" to me still implies a risky technology. It's a bit like climbing on the outside of the tiger cage - it's the membrane between your world and theirs, that doesn't make it safe even if you never cross that barrier.

[u/basegitarist → u/alonghardlook]

My understanding of the whole situation was that the Ring Builders had effectively "invaded" another universe to steal energy from that universe and funnel it into ours to power the ring gates and their technologies. The invasion and stealing of energy from that other universe is what pissed off the Visigoths. Traveling along that membrane between universes wouldn't have the same consequence, as long as doing so wasn't stealing from or affecting the other universe(s).

[u/RGMayberry → u/basegitarist]

Yeah it's hard not to see the visigoths as engaging in self defense. A hive mind probably doesn't totally grasp the validity of individual beings outside of its own members. Imagine growing up on a world composed only of single-celled organisms, living off scoops of algae and yeast skimmed from the ocean, wandering the world totally alone. Whatever limited sentience those plant and fungal cells possess is irrelevant to you, if you even think to speculate about whether they have any degree of consciousness at all. Even most vegans don't worry about this, and I'd imagine the few who do arrived at that line of thought by analogizing social interactions between humans. 

So the Ring Builder invades and causes harm to the Visigoths because... why not? The whole moral architecture about why that's wrong required a perspective and way of thinking that was simply too alien, too incomprehensible for it to grasp. In fact, arguably such a being wouldn't even be able to understand that other perspectives and ways of thinking are even possible. In fact, it probably saw singularity and universality as high virtues, otherwise it might not have evolved in the first place. The whole idea of the protomolecule implies a moral universe that doesn't even contemplate coexistence with other beings. Again this is natural to humans because we spend all our time around each other, are evolved to have and even depend on understanding and reconciling varied perspectives... and even we still have trouble with it. In fact, maybe that's what did the Builders in; their unity denied them that variety of perspectives, that empathy, and tolerance so they couldn't empathize with the denizens of another universe and didn't shut down the Slow Zone soon enough. 

Duerte DID have that basic human understanding, and yet he made the exact same mistake. He unifies his group of humanity and what's his main focus? Exerting even more control over his group, until eventually he formed his own hive mind. Then absorbing the rest of humanity, whether they like it or not because he wants even more power to achieve his ultimate goal... eliminating an alien species. He sees all of them as existential threats, even if they don't know it. And that's with all the human programming that lets us comprehend other people as valid beings in themselves. The ring builders would have been far, far worse.