t's cold out there," my friend the sci-fi show runner told me recently.
She was staffing a series and had openings for three, maybe four writers, depending on the deals. "You wouldn't believe the people who are available!" A quick survey of the list showed two Emmy winners, as well as enough high-ranking writer-producers to fill all the available slots on the SCI FI Channel for a season.
"People are even willing to write episodes," the show runner added. Now, this statement won't elicit any sympathy from the legions of writers who would kill to have a single television script assignment. But to go back to the beginning of your career, to go through the torture (OK, the challenge) of trying to fashion a story from the outside of a series, is a significant concession from a seasoned professional with years of experience on staff.
It means writers need the money. They're desperate for an assignment.
It's what happens when nobody's buying sci-fi any more, and you're typed as a sci-fi writer.
We all know that actors get typed. But writers are writers, right? They deal in words and plot twists and images and dialogue—what's the difference if it's for a coroner in Las Vegas or the captain of a starship?
In fact, you'd think that the creator of a striking and successful sci-fi concept would be considered more versatile (and employable) than a writer who has concentrated solely on a more familiar genre.
I certainly think so. And I'm wrong, wrong, wrong. From my admittedly biased and possibly skewed perspective, making a reputation in sci-fi means you are typed forevermore.
Yes, there are two scarlet letters—S and F.
Spaceships on a one-way street
The transition from "mainstream" to sci-fi is easy. Gene Roddenberry broke into television writing for Dragnet, then made his reputation on one of the best westerns of the 1950s, Have Gun, Will Travel.
In 1963 he created The Lieutenant, a drama series about a young officer in the U.S. Marines. No one at the networks made a face when he decided to create Star Trek, which was originally pitched as a sci-fi western ("Wagon Train to the stars!"). Well, no one made a face because Roddenberry wasn't a sci-fi writer; they certainly did make faces about the whole idea. ...
Years later, a writer like Donald P. Bellisario could move from Baa Baa Black Sheep to Battlestar Galactica and then Quantum Leap. Chris Carter went from a deal with Disney developing sitcoms and TV movies to The X-Files. J. Michael Straczynski was best known, in the network universe, for work on crime series such as Murder, She Wrote and Jake and the Fatman before Babylon 5.
Yes, Bellisario made it back to the mainstream, with Jag and Navy C.I.S., but he managed to follow Galactica with a giant mainstream hit—Magnum, P.I.
For the others, for most of those on that "available" list, the road between sci-fi and mainstream is a one-way street.
So what, you say? Why would any decent, God-fearing sci-fi writer want to go back to mainstream writing?
Well, there's artistic growth. As I said above, writers are writers: We have different kinds of stories to tell. I've written pure sci-fi, fantasy, police dramas, teen soaps and middle-of-the road sitcoms—granted, some more successfully than others. I enjoyed them all; I think the sci-fi projects were better because I was able to write in other genres. (And maybe some of the mainstream stuff was a little more interesting because of my background in fantasy.)
Hell freezes over in Hollywood
What's it like?
First of all, the money starts to run out. "I'd really like to start cashing checks instead of just writing them," one producer said to me not long ago. No matter how much you've saved, the money goes ... whether through a stock market decline, increasing school tuition, care for aged parents or everyday living expenses.
Then the meetings dry up. The phone stops ringing.
You call your agent a bit too much, and get dropped. The hard truth of the matter is that in today's marketplace, there are only half a dozen agencies that have sufficient muscle or clout to get you a job. So if you're not with Endeavour or ICM, to name two, you are only going to get hired if someone wants you and you alone. Usually some friend. (See "The Cassutt Files," "You've Got To Have Friends")
You will get a new agent, of course, because you have credits and a reputation. But all it takes is one cold, dry season and you will find that the people you knew at the networks are no longer there. That the development executives who championed your work have changed jobs. Your new agent can't do squat for you.
Making matters worse, another year's worth of newer, fresher, cheaper writers has moved into the business.
Oh, yes, there's the age problem: Half of the candidates on my friend the show runner's list were over 40, some over 50.
I don't believe there's age discrimination when it comes to writers; I know one sci-fi series staff where the median age was 45—there were as many writers older as there were younger.
No, what chills your career in television is tenure. You can be just as cold at 34, with 10 years in the business, as you can at 50 with the same 10 years.
In 10 years, if you've worked at all, you've made enemies. Another show runner told me once, "Staffing decisions are ultimately made by 10 people sitting around a table, and one of them will have had a 'problem' with every writer mentioned."
And, he added, "every problem will turn out to be something the exec heard, not something he experienced."
By then you are hoping to grab one more episode, if only to keep your Writer's Guild health care. Meanwhile, you're sending out resumes to junior colleges, returning to journalism or trying to start writing a series of mystery novels, each one of which pays about what an episode does—for 10 times the work.
And you are cold, dead, forgotten, like an icy planetoid wandering in the interstellar darkness.
I have a job. But I haven't always, and I'm realistic enough to know that I'm closer to the end of my days as a sci-fi television writer than I am to the beginning.
Is it just me, or is the temperature falling?
Michael Cassutt's first television credit was on a mainstream sitcom called Love, Sidney, in 1982. He is currently executive consultant on USA's The Dead Zone, which is fantasy if not sci-fi. He has a mainstream novel, Tango Midnight, out from Forge Books in November.
