I was hoping for Stephen King or something.” Whenever I’d present Ted’s short story to producers, I was met with a not-insignificant level of suspicion. The only horror script I’d ever written was the one that sold, and I soon discovered this was all I was trusted to write. Six of those spec features were science fiction. I just knew I had to find a way.Īt this point in my career, I had written 13 spec screenplays. I knew I wanted to translate to screen, but I had no idea how, or with whom. It shadowed me by day and hovered over me when I slept. And while so much of his work is built purely as literature, when I think about adapting a story I don’t dwell on how cinematic the source material is but rather how it makes me feel. He can educate me about theoretical physics and then leave me sobbing into my couch cushion. Ted is one of those rare finds in that he writes compelling fiction that is both intellectually invigorating and emotionally true. Nevertheless, science fiction was my first literary love, and after years away from the genre, the author who brought me back was Ted Chiang. It was a key ingredient in my childhood, but one I learned to keep quiet in my hometown in Oklahoma where, occasionally, adults used air quotes when saying the word science. Stories of new worlds, new ideas, and possibilities for the future. My mother read to me when I was young, like mothers do.
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