Interview Robert J. Sawyer

[marie.m]

Robert J. Sawyer, l'auteur de Flashforward, est en interview pour le site Ekultura. L'occasion pour lui de revenir sur l'adaptation de son livre à la télé, son rapport à l'écriture, les nombreux prix gagnés ou encore son avis sur les livres électroniques.

Extrait :

It was Flashforward that brought you fame outside the science fiction scene. As far as I know you’ve been involved in the creation of the television series as an advisor. To what extent could you influence what actually appeared on television?

I had no control, but I was consulted all the time. I argued a lot with the producers, and I won about half those arguments. I think that’s a good ratio, after all it was their money being spent – a hundred million American dollars – to make that TV-series, not my money. So they had to be doing what they thought was going to be the most likely to get a return on that financial investment. I was content with the way the show turned out. We didn’t get renewed for a second year, so clearly some of the choices that were made were not the right choices, but we all thought we were doing the right things at the time, and whether I won or lost a given argument didn’t matter – we were trying our best.

If you could start it over, what would you try to convince them to change?

Well, the opening episode starts with this huge disaster – which we depict on the cover of the book –, where everybody has blacked out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, and 20 million people have died. By the end of that episode, the very first episode, our main character’s wife manages to drive home from work. All of that carnage that was on the roads, all of the millions of automobiles that have had accidents have magically disappeared. By the second episode all of it was in the background, all of the disaster had been forgotten.

I think that was a huge mistake. We promised with our promotional advertising – that was the imagery that was used, that was the scene on the cover of the book, the posters, and so forth – this almost post-apocalyptic sense to the show. Yet, it’s lost within the first episode – only 44 minutes long. So by 42 minutes into the series we’re done with the apocalypse, and back to life as normal. I think that was a big mistake.

Pour lire l'intégralité de l'interview, c'est sur le site ekultura.hu