James Swallow talks SGU’s ‘Air’ novelization

When Fandemonium needed someone to transform the 3-part teleplay for “Air,” the series premiere of Stargate Universe, into a novel, they turned to James Swallow.  A genre veteran, Swallow has penned original novels and audio dramas for Stargate, Star Trek: Voyager and Deep Space Nine, Doctor Who, and more.

In a new entry at SGU creative consultant John Scalzi’s blog, Swallow talks about the challenges of turning a teleplay into a fully fleshed-out novel — and why the art doesn’t get the respect it deserves in the industry.

Here’s a sample:

I didn’t have any opportunity to see the finished cut and edit of the episodes until several weeks after the manuscript had been delivered.  While I worked from the three episodic scripts that made up the pilot, I was a good way through the writing before I discovered the drafts I had were months old, with key details that differed from the final versions; it was only thanks to the help of a certain creative consultant that got solved (thanks, John). The challenge was to paint inside the lines but still deliver something with originality.

So what did all this leave me with? In the end, Air the novel isn’t “Air” the TV episodes, and I’m happy that it isn’t.  After all, what would be the point of reading a book that slavishly follows every tiny element of the TV stories?  What the novelization brings is what made me read novelizations as a kid — an internal viewpoint for the characters that explores them in a way that TV just can’t do, a seamless story experience that broadens out the scope of the narrative, and a chance to see the bits of plot that were cut for time.

The latter is the kind of thing that DVD extras bring us now, and in no small part I imagine that’s why then novelization is something of a dying art; but back in the day the book of the film was the only place where you saw that kinda thing, like, say, Alan Dean Foster’s tense adaptation of Alien with the chilling cocoon scene still in place.  So I put back in Rush’s monologue about the origins of the starship Destiny and the confrontation between him and Jack O’Neill; but I also added new stuff and expanded out what was already there, lengthening scenes and deepening motivations.

The complete entry from James Swallow makes for a very interesting read, and you can find it now at Whatever.  And check out GateWorld’s review of the Air novel before you head over to Amazon to pick it up!

(Thanks to Andrew for the tip)