Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy Television

by Joe Nazzaro

What’s it like putting words in Buffy’s mouth? How do you go about inventing your own X-File, or coming up with a mission for the crew of the Enterprise? And most importantly, how do you get into the business, so you can leave being a mere fan behind, and actually write for your favourite show? Journalist Joe Nazzaro answers all these questions and more in this must-have collection of exclusive, in-depth interviews with writers and producers from TV’s hottest SF and fantasy shows. Some of the biggest names in the business talk candidly about how they started out, their inspirations and influences, and what it’s really like to create the incredible and impossible on a daily basis. A must for any fan of SF and fantasy TV.

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2002

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The great thing about this book is getting a chance to read what all the successful, working writers have to say in their own words in the interviews. The draw back is that the book is pretty light on discussing the actual craft of writing science fiction/fantasy television and deals more with how these writers got into the business as well as some of the politics that go on within it. More often than not the questions are about "How did you get this gig or that gig?" as opposed to "How did you write that episode?" or "What is your writing process?". This is not to say that the book is completely devoid of that information, but it doesn't have as much as I would have liked.

The list of those writers interviewed for it are a bit of mixed bag as well. I found myself highly interested to read one interview and then skimming or entirely skipping over another one because I wasn't particularly interested in that writer or wasn't familiar with the series that they worked on. That being said there's a lot of great information and interesting stuff to be found in this book.

It's also very helpful how the author has occasionally placed boxes of information throughout the book. For example, in one interview a show writer mentions someone named Rene Echevarria. So within the text of the interview the author has placed a box of information about Rene Echevarria which explains a bit about his history and his role on a particular series. In this era of the Internet I guess the reader could just "google" the name, but it's nice to have that information readily accessible amidst the text of the interview in order to have some context on who or what the interviewee is talking about.

I'd definitely recommend this book for anyone that's interested in the making of Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV and the writers who create it.

[Fraser · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was published in 2002, so reading it 14 years later is actually quite interesting with people talking about how they are wrapping up the current season of a show and you know that in some cases it continued for many years and in others it did not. Also many of the writers talk about their future plans and it is interesting to see which ones came off and which ones didn't. It has also given me a list of shows from the distant past that I should try and track down. Some I had heard of (e.g. Lexx) and some I had not, a lot of them have never been shown on free to air TV in Australia so I had missed them.