Related Sections: Columnists Movies TV
Michael Cassutt explains why sci-fi writers are so damn gloomy
Last time, I complained about reviewers who devoted too much energy to bashing popcorn movies. I wasn't suggesting that they should automatically like these movies, or give them some blanket approval ... just that it's a waste of time to go medieval on them.
Reviewers aren't the only folks who squander valuable hours of their lives. The worst offenders are writers themselves.
Thanks to a bit of travel and some public appearances, I've been in touch with a lot of my colleagues lately.
And we are a grumpy group. We look at what's on TV, what's in the theaters, what's in the bookstores—assuming we can still find a bookstore that isn't part of a chain—and we conclude that nothing we want to write will ever find an audience, ever again.
To head off half a dozen comments, this is not a plea for sympathy. To quote The Godfather in a related circumstance, "This is the life we chose."
Yet, in some way, it also chose us. Grumpiness, pessimism, worry ... they are in our nature—those of us who play on the sci-fi or syfy side of the field. We're used to looking at the future, and seeing the bad things that can happen.
Otherwise sci-fi shows and fanta movies would be about happy worlds. No alien invasions. No cyborgs running amok. No Mordor.
In features, we look at the blockbusters—yes, those popcorn movies—and conclude that they leave no room for more ambitious, character-oriented sci-fi.
We look at television and see the economic troubles that have devastated the traditional network television world—GM and Chrysler TV ads contributed a lot to a company like CBS, which asked some of its most successful series to cut 15 percent from their budgets last spring.
So we see projects like ABC's FlashForward or Lost, or NBC's Heroes. Assume each costs $3 million an hour to produce. With ad revenues slipping, audiences continuing to fragment and find their sci-fi fix on other outlets, from Syfy to HBO, a writer has to ask:
How many of those are the six networks going to be able to afford?
Not so many at all. So writers look at these shows as the last of their breed.
It isn't just the money ... It's the type of shows being produced. If you like to write spaceship shows, you could look at the returning and new shows and conclude that you're out of luck. For example, I have a terrific space-based series of my own right here in my pocket, and know that the quick death of Virtuality and the lingering suffering caused by Defying Gravity mean that I'd be better off wrapping fish with it.
No matter how strongly a writer defends his or her versatility, how rabidly one fights being pigeonholed, there are two undeniable truths: We are compelled to use the same characters. And we revisit the same themes and settings.
Gore Vidal once wrote that storytellers have one, two or at most three long-running serials in their heads, all starring themselves. Just last weekend I heard a multiple-award-winning SF writer declare that his characters were all ... him.
Settings and themes are even more personal, especially for sci-fi, fantasy and horror. Stephen King has always said that he writes about the things that scare him. Ray Bradbury's darker visions of the future emerged from his own extensive list of fears.
Well, we write what we know.
So, when a writer looks at her market and sees things she wouldn't write, or couldn't, well ... it makes her nervous.
And it isn't just about money, though there is that. It's the fear that you have lost your audience. That your characters, your worlds, are just no longer interesting.
So how does a sci-fi, fantasy or horror writer get from there to a happier place?
First, step back, take a breath, and open your eyes. You might actually see the sun shining ...
Note that this past summer set a record for gross receipts for sci-fi films. Not that money is the only worthwhile yardstick, but when movies make that amount, it suggests there is an audience for what we write.
Comic-Con drew 140,000 attendees.
HBO's True Blood is the hottest thing on television right now, based on my admittedly idiosyncratic sampling. (Who'd have thought that sexy vampires in a series with lots of nudity and erotic goings-on would ever be popular? Vampire stories without some kind of sexual element, overt or covert ... well, that's like a space movie without an EVA oops.)
Warehouse 13 is turning out to be a huge success for the Syfy Channel.
And the new television season looms—and it's stuffed with sci-fi and fantasy offerings.
From ABC there's FlashForward, adapted by David S. Goyer and Brannon Braga from the Robert Sawyer novel. Then there's V, a re-imagining of the original 1984 series created by Kenneth Johnson—which made a huge splash the first time it appeared—from a new script by Scott Peters.
Fox will bring us Human Target, adapted by Jonathan E. Steinberg from the D.C. comic created by my friend Len Wein and Carmine Infantino.
The CW launches Vampire Diaries, from the L.J. Smith novels, adapted by Kevin Williamson.
(All of these are based on earlier sources ... coincidence? Trend? Can you even sell an original? Wait, there's that writerly gloom again ... )
And these are just some of the new offerings. Caprica is unleashed in January. Lost returns then, of course, for its long-awaited final revelations.
Heroes continues on NBC ... and I'm going to sample it again, after two seasons on my punishment list.
The now-venerable Smallville (venerable is a strange word to apply to a show on the CW, but there you have it) and the always-amusing Supernatural live on.
Then there's Fox, and Fringe ... the J.J. Abrams/Alex Kurtzman/Roberto Orci series wobbled, for me, during its first season, but continues to compel.
And Dollhouse ... which more than wobbled. It fell right over. The last couple of episodes of its first season showed more promise ... and it's Joss Whedon. It has to be worth a look.
So here we have explorations of fate and predestination ... alien contact ... cool comic books. That's not a bad sweep across the sci-fi spectrum.
Certainly these series allow a writer—a writer who hasn't forgotten that he's a viewer—to make those wonderful leaps into lives we couldn't possibly lead.
Which is why we read, write and watch sci-fi and fantasy, right?
So to all my writer friends ... and myself ... I say, Look at the new stuff. Consider the market—the world—as it is, as it's evolving ... not as it used to be.
It will make those around you happier.
And it might make your writing fun again.
In spite of a sense of lingering unease and uncertainty dating back to the early Carter years, Michael Cassutt has written 60 scripts for television, for such series as Twilight Zone, Max Headroom, Eerie, Indiana, Stargate SG-1 and Farscape, as well as short stories, novels and nonfiction. He also teaches a the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts.
By UnRiel at 10:43 AM ON 09/08/09
As many of us serial opiners on SyFyWire have said time and again, the networks need to evolve their understanding of what makes a show worthwhile and how to best market it. We've lost so many great shows to whatever executive rule of thumb determines that a show should be canceled. For me, many shows did not catch me until after they were released on DVD but boy did they catch me when I finally found them. I miss Firefly and Moonlight in particular. Some shows like Medium and Buffy find an extended life on another network. Other shows like Sarah Connor and Life (not SciFi) I did watch faithfully, but they apparently did not get the requisite Nielsen response.
It's not just the writers having hope, its probably more about changing the formula of how to measure success. It isn't about selling soap anymore.
By Andreas at 10:47 AM ON 09/08/09
Dear Michael,
Always interesting reading your columns.
Definitely watch this about authors and how they feel they will never replicate past successes. ;)
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
By chicagorob1 at 11:30 AM ON 09/08/09
It isn't the writing or the setting (spaceships, etc.), it's usually the corporate suits who manipulate, pigeon hole and castrate shows they just don't understand. Shows like Dollhouse, from a proven creator like Whedon, almost didn't make it because the ones holding the purse strings wanted to flex their muscles (just not the one between their ears) and demand changes to better appease the demigraphics.
The problem is these are the same suits who brought us "Do Not Disturb" and "Vanished." They are obviously masters of (not) knowing what the American public really wants.
It doesn't make sense with some of the inane, indistinguishable and one-dimensional shows that are on the fall schedule. A lot of them are just thinly disguised clone ripoffs from other networks.
My cancellation predictions based solely on the networks press releases?
Fox - Past Lives, Brothers
ABC - Eastwick, The Forgotten, Hank, Modern Family, The Middle
CBS - Accidently on Purpose, Three Rivers
NBC - Trauma, Mercy
CW - The Beautiful Life, Melrose Place
By TMR013 at 11:31 AM ON 09/08/09
I don’t have much hope for Sci-Fi on TV. Flash Forward might be interesting but I think it will fall into the trap of soap opera-ness that seems these shows always fall into. I don’t know if it’s the writers or the execs at the TV networks, but nobody does anything original. And when they do they have to add stupid elements to it to make it like Lost. Take Defying Gravity, why couldn’t it just have been a show about an amazing mission to the other planets in the solar system. Isn’t that exciting enough? Couldn’t a talented team of writers make that interesting? Why does it have to devolve into the hokey alien/paranormal mystery with lots of sex in between? It’s just another Desperate Housewives.
So since BSG is gone, I guess I will just have to live for the Dr Who episodes on BBC to get my Sci-Fi fix (although might be able to get a fix from The Plan, Caprica looks really dumb). And hope the kid they picked to replace David Tennant is any good.
By divephotog at 1:35 PM ON 09/08/09
Michael brings up some great points. Science Fiction on TV and even the big screen is in a downward spiral.
But to say that the writing is subject to financial woes is not acceptable. Ones writing is not fueled by dollars, but by imagination. Some of the greatest writers were in fact very destitute writing their first 'launching' pieces.
No, Science Fiction is dying (in all venues), because we are diluting it in it's most prime sense. The mindset that draws raw sex and vampires into the genre of Science Fiction (True Blood, Being Human, et al) and not the Horror genre where they belong is the reason we are seeing a real decline in the Sci-Fi genre.
Look at the programs listed in the article, and truthfully, half belong in the Horror genre. Look at the programming on SyFy, and easily half of it belongs in the Horror genre (and thereby best aired on the NBC-Uni channel Chiller instead!) and a good 15% is the Pseudo-Science garbage or junk (yes, wrestling is junk). Even the pick up of Syndication to replace ST:TNG on Monday nights with Ghost Whisperer has a bad side; it is even more available on the WE network, if that gives you any idea that it is NOT Science Fiction.
Yes, the BBC is a better source of real Science Fiction as of late, and sad to say that their output is slow as of late, but they do stay true to the genre in the shows they tout as Sci-Fi.
The implication applies, that SyFy is not true to the genre. This results in the graying of the lines, and the real dilution of the genre. Really, the decline in SyFy in it's portrayal of the Science Fiction genre is more to blame for it's decline than economics. If they were demanding real SCIENCE, writers might be more motivated, if only for the craft. Heck, just look at the shows Mr Cussautt has written for, and they are Science Fiction at some of it's best, and not the diluted, horrified remains of a corpse it has become as of late. - KH
By Jeff77042 at 2:17 PM ON 09/08/09
Michael, been reading your stuff here for years. Keep up the good work.
I have nothing original or profound to say or add. Audiance is too fragmented from too many choices to include video/computer games. Scifi TV shows cost so much to produce as compared to a show set in the present day that can use current cars, clothes, buildings, etc. The generations that followed us boomers don't read books.
Randum musings: I'm 50-years-old and still obsess about original _Star Trek_ having only 79 episodes. I miss Norman Rockwell America. It wasn't a perfect world--but it was my world. When Stan Lee dies someone just shoot me, please.
By Jeff77042 at 2:19 PM ON 09/08/09
"Randum," oops, make that "random."
By Jeff77042 at 2:21 PM ON 09/08/09
***Darn***: "audience."
By Hank Jekyll at 4:15 PM ON 09/08/09
Sci-fi is an embarassing genre. Just ask any actor who wore a costume on DS-9. This is mainly to do with the fact that sci-fi is an "imagination" genre meaning it is a genre that works most effectively through the mind written on paper. The move to the screen is great but true sci-fi will never leave the blank page
By mywwealth at 7:11 PM ON 09/08/09
I recommend you a very interesting place ___ MyWealthyLove.com_____ It 's where you have the opportunity dreaming about dating a millionaire and make it true!
By Andreas at 7:37 PM ON 09/08/09
Science Fiction fans and authors have been complaining about the genre's death for decades; probably since the end of the golden age.
It hasn't happened yet. SciFi is still around, and it looks better than ever.
One example: While Defying Gravity may not be the deepest genre experience, it certainly looks great. Go back and check out Space 1999, which also had lots of "paranormal" stuff, to really see how the look and feel of a show has changed. Heck, check out the new BSG compared to the old one.
Producers now have the tools to make movies and shows look much more realistic. This means they have an easier time telling the story they want to tell.
If it takes a few shows like Defying Gravity, with "Grey's Anatomy" type themes, to keep the genre going, I'm all for it. A show like that allows mainstream TV viewers, some of whom may tune in, to understand that SciFi is about people in unfamiliar and fantastic situations. It may even convert some of them to BSG or Stargate.
To summarize my somewhat jumbled post, SciFi has been called "dying" for as long as it has existed. I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon.
By divephotog at 9:21 PM ON 09/08/09
Admitted.... Science Fiction is alive, but not as well on the TV screen as once was.
It is, however,all but dead and buried on the SyFy sissified and horrified channel, who has all but buried it lately.
Wanna see a jump in the Big Screen? Have Lucas and Speilberg announce that Star Wars VII, VIII, and IX are back and being done over the next few years.... Wanna see the small screen improved? (imagine greater...) Get the garbage off SyFy, and get back to a purer Sci-Fi, and leave the horror and other junk for the NBC-Uni sister channel Chiller. - KH
By hermy at 1:06 AM ON 09/09/09
it's the writing.tell good stories that we haven't seen a million times and people will watch.regardless of the budget.trueblood is good not just because of the sex in it.but every episode is a cliff hanger.the original star trek had silly effects.but it was the stories that hooked you.and with CGI even small budget shows can look good.remember babylon 5?
By Al at 11:55 AM ON 09/09/09
Writing is always about telling good stories, be they science fiction or other. I can easily see how writers become fairly "gloomy" as they progress in their careers. We viewers have been frustrated over the years as good shows are cancelled while reality tv and pointless other shows fill the airwaves (the caveman show? what were they thinking?).
I'm sure writers must deal with constant replies from publishers, networks and executives who come back and try to convince them to change the entire storyline by adding sex and explosions "for the ratings".
We get to sit back and hope for worthwhile shows and movies to cross our path, but writers must trudge those muddy waters with constant "creative" suggestions that would drive most of us away with our heads spinning.
There may be some stories that are not considered "marketable" but if a writer puts the time (months or years) into a story, it deserves to be brought into the world. The writer saw something worth creating, so it only stands to reason others will see the same thing.
Visit mobile.syfy.com/wire on your mobile device.
Al:
Writing is always about telling good stories, be they science fiction or other. I can easily see how writers becom...More »