FlashForward
by morgan on Jul.17, 2009, under Robert J. Sawyer
Hey Rob,
Thank you for joining us at Babel Clash! It’s been good talking with you about cutting edge science fiction. Would you like to take your last few posts and speak to FlashForward and / or WWW Wake?
Will those of us excited for the new show benefit from reading the book first? How excited are you for the show? Any hints on what to expect next from you?
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July 17th, 2009 on 11:04 am
Well, of course I think people should read the novel FlashForward — and not just because it’s being adapted into a TV show. FlashForward did, after all, win Europe’s top SF award and Canada’s top SF award, received a starred review (denoting a book of exceptional merit) from Publishers Weekly, and has been in print continuously for eleven years now. The TV series and the novel are separate entities, and I hope people will enjoy both.
But excited though I am about the show, I’m more excited about what I’m writing now, which is the final volume in the trilogy that began with WWW: WAKE (which came out in hardcover in April). A lot of commentators have said that WAKE is my best novel to date, and my editor Ginjer Buchanan at Ace thinks WWW: WATCH, the second book, is even better. Now, my challenge is to make WWW: WONDER, the final volume, the best of the three.
So, of course, I’m enormously excited about FlashForward (and am heading down to Los Angeles again to visit the set and writing staff again soon), but I am, first and foremost, a novelist. For FlashForward, the most exciting thing for me was when it first appeared in bookstores; nothing will ever top that for me.
Same thing for WWW: WAKE; my agent is convinced we’ll be able to sell WAKE to Hollywood — but nothing will ever beat the first moment I held a copy in my hands in a bookstore.
To put is more succinctly: books are my life.
July 17th, 2009 on 3:03 pm
And let’s consider the general question: should you read the book before you see the movie/tv show, or will knowing the source material spoil your enjoyment of the adaptation?
Does it really spoil the Harry Potter films, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, LORD OF THE RINGS, PLANET OF THE APES, the James Bond movies, any adaptation of Stephen King, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, MOBY-DICK, BLADE RUNNER, the Bourne movies, any adaptation of Agatha Christie, Disney’s PINOCCHIO or TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES, THE PAPER CHASE, STARSHIP TROOPERS, the miniseries ROOTS, LONESOME DOVE, THE FORSYTE SAGA, or BORN FREE because you’ve read the source material?
Of course not.
Indeed, it often enhances the experience.
July 17th, 2009 on 3:53 pm
That said, in some real sense, a movie or TV adaptation is a reboot of the underlying concept: it starts from the same point as the source material (whatever that happens to be) and then goes off in its own direction. So, should one read the book? Well, is it cooler knowing in watching the new STAR TREK movie that in another timeline Vulcan and Romulus are not destroyed? I think the answer is yes.
And I think a lot the fun in watching an adaptation of ANYTHING is seeing HOW the thing HAS been adapted — looking at what the adapters did, and figuring out why those making the adaptation thought that was worth doing.
February 4th, 2010 on 7:43 pm
Howdy, thanks for getting a Good bad, specially from the major news corperations with the big slants to the left or right. Did you see last nights O’Rielly factor? haha, that was rediculous! Sorry, I’m rambling on once again. Have a Great 1!
March 22nd, 2010 on 10:53 am
FlashForward is the best series in 2010 when I watched the pilot I was amazed,ingenious tv-show.