Do we like Ty Franck?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful or nasty found in his words, work or company, but there is little on the record either way, so it stops short of the top.
Ty Franck is one half of James S.A. Corey, the pen name he shares with Daniel Abraham. Before the novels he was a business-minded game designer who worked in George R.R. Martin's office, mostly on contracts and business matters. He calls himself an 'Accidental Novelist', which tells you most of it.
The Expanse started life as story for a planned online game. Franck has said he was trying to write enough story for a $100 million MMO that never happened. All that solar-system worldbuilding got recycled into Leviathan Wakes and then a whole TV series, which is a pretty good return on a cancelled project.
The one real scandal near his work isn't his. In July 2020 the studio behind The Expanse opened an independent investigation after claims of sexual misconduct against actor Cas Anvar, which Anvar denied. Franck and Abraham, writing under the pen name, said the studio was taking the allegations seriously and told those who came forward 'We hear you'. That's a decent response from the people who made the thing.
On the harm test, I went looking for his own words on LGBTQ+ people, women, climate, vaccines and politics and found nothing harmful. I also found very little either way, so that is a gap, not a gold star. His recent work is with the same Expanse crew, with Abraham and an Amazon MGM development deal, and nothing in the reporting I read raises a flag about the company he keeps.
The recent news is mostly about work. The Faith of Beasts, the follow-up to The Mercy of Gods, got a solid Booklist review in March 2026, with the reviewer calling it a good set-up for what comes next. Franck told Polygon the TV adaptation of the series is just getting going and compared the process to stacking tiny blocks. It sounds like a bloke who enjoys the grind.
As for being easy to work with, his own line on writing with Abraham is that no word is precious and either can change anything without argument. That reads like a collaborator who checks his ego at the door, and the public record backs that up. He's not a saint on the page, because there just isn't much page, but there's no bad behaviour to report.