or a while there—by which I mean, all through the 2003-2004 television season, and well into this summer—it was looking as though the last thing you wanted to be in Hollywood was a sci-fi writer for television. (Well, actually, the last thing you wanted to be was a sitcom writer. Which is another painful story.)
Sci-fi is dying, they were telling us. Enterprise is on its way to dry dock ... Firefly failed to ignite ... Andromeda's syndication deal crumbled ... the typical attempts to pump life into old names (Time Tunnel, Lost in Space) failed. ...
The message was this: The sci-fi audience is off playing video games. The only thing television networks want is procedurals, more Law & Order, more C.S.I. More Wal-Mart television.
But now, thanks to the boffo summer ratings performance of USA's The 4400, networks and studios are pricking up their Spock ears. They're listening to sci-fi pitches. They're looking forward to SCI FI's Earthsea. They're turning their attention toward the upcoming feature Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow—to strip-mine its techniques, if nothing else.
Purists out there—and I know who you are—will claim that The 4400 went out of its way to downplay its sci-fi content. You may be right about intentions; I haven't seen the original script.
But networks, studios and agencies think of The 4400 as sci-fi—and consider it a huge success, a forerunner of that thing we discussed in SFW #352 ("The Aftermarket"), a limited series that pays for itself while serving as an extended pilot for a potential weekly series.
Hollywood couples' counseling
I find this encouraging for a very selfish reason. In spite of three volumes of mainstream fiction, and work on half a dozen shows that had no shred of fantastic content, I'm typed as a sci-fi writer. Or, to perpetuate a possibly strained metaphor, I'm on the sci-fi shelf in the television Wal-Mart. ...
The idea that I can get a meeting to pitch a sci-fi concept is rain after a drought ... dawn after a long winter night ... remission after a bad diagnosis. ...
Yeah, it's like that. Because careers do end.
In the last week I've had two chance meetings with writing teams. Coincidentally, both happened to be husband-and-wife teams.
The first husband and wife were both second-generation in the business, wise in the ways of Hollywood. He had started selling before she had ... worked steadily for a decade, with a good three-season run on one series, creation of his own series (which lasted only a year), then trickling off into the twilight of a few assignments, TV movies, pilots ... then nothing.
She had come to writing later, and worked steadily in sitcoms for seven or eight years before running out of assignments. Where a writer with drama credits can sometimes make the transition to long forms such as TV movies, miniseries and limited series, a sitcom writer's path to career stasis runs through reality shows to ... what? Makeover series? Standup?
Oblivion.
This team was going to write fiction.
The second husband-and-wife team also had dozens of credits over 20 years, from TV movies to soaps to syndicated series. They had ridden the Hollywood roller coaster. Like the first team—like me, too—they understood that no one has a constitutional right to a career writing television. We know that it's akin to professional sports: If you're lucky enough to play in the big leagues, you still have to remember that you get old ... your eyes weaken ... the knees go ... the new rookie takes your place. ...
The second team, however, wasn't gloomily talking of writing books. This couple was completely jazzed about a new project.
A sci-fi project, an honest-to-goodness series set in the far, far future, in a distant galaxy. (I realize this makes it sound like Star Wars, but it's not.)
It might not sell. Most series don't. But it was wonderful to see how eager these writers were to explore a strange new storytelling world.
Sci-fi will sail on
Of course, the whole idea that sci-fi is either dying, or in remission, is simply today's word on the street. The 4400 hasn't been the only successful sci-fi project, no matter how you categorize it. Stargate Atlantis, for example, is well on its way to finding an audience, even as Stargate SG-1 sails on to a Star Trek-scale run. Battlestar Galactica did well, even though 5 Days to Midnight didn't. Quasi-SF series like Joan of Arcadia and The Dead Zone are doing well.
In fact, there is another bit of wisdom or guidance percolating through the circuit of writers, agents and executives these days:
Get far out.
Give us alien landscapes ... go to the far future ... create characters that aren't human.
One network dropped an upcoming series because it wasn't strange enough—and immediately put a weirder concept into fast-track development.
Rumors on the circuit: Red Mars, based on the Kim Stanley Robinson novel, seems to be moving ahead, after years becalmed in development. Riverworld, based on the Philip Jose Farmer concept, is coming back to life. Larry Niven's Ringworld is hot again.
What all of these projects have in common—aside from their foundation in written sci-fi—is that they take place on other worlds.
Still ... another producer-writer of my acquaintance met last week with a different network concerning a quasi-fantastic concept of his own, one intended to be a limited series.
The network wanted to revive the development, fast-track it for next summer.
All they wanted was the elimination of the sci-fi stuff.
What? You expected the data-du jour of studios and network executives to be consistent? Have you learned nothing from me?
More seriously, it does seem as though we're moving into a new phase of sci-fi television, where some networks demand off-this-world, exotic concepts while others want nothing of the sort.
Well, I don't really want the entire television schedule to be filled with sci-fi. ... I can't watch that much, and neither can you.
But it's nice to know we have some good stuff to look forward to.
Michael Cassutt has written fiction and non-fiction as well as scripts for television. His new aerospace thriller, Tango Midnight, will be reprinted in paperback by Tor this winter. In addition to work on USA's The Dead Zone, he is also writing a project for Fox Studios.
