Nothing can stop book lovers; it doesn’t matter whether the weather is chilly, or the wind blows fiercely, or the sky gets cloudy and suddenly it begins to rain. On the first cold day of October, readers enthusiastically filled the neat, red-chair conference room of Foyles (Charing Cross) to attend the fifth Gollancz Festival – an entire day of panels and signing sessions with the most famous and creative sci-fi and fantasy authors of Gollancz publishing company. Books have often become films and incredible cinema successes, but the process hasn’t always been smooth and congenial for the writer. Ben Aaronovich – although he began his career in the TV world – started off saying that, when a novel got optioned to be a film, there was also the possibility the producer will ever not make it. “It’s part of the game,” the author admitted. “It’s simply a fact that you have to accept as the producer are b******s.” Another aspect the authors had to accept was the change the screenwriters might do during the writing process. “Writing a screenplay takes less time and fewer words,” Aaroovich said. “Novels usually develops characters deeply, adding details and explanations, while, in films, the ability of the actor creates and forges the characters.” Approaching the end of the conversation, a question from the audience brought up novellas. Shorter than a novel, this kind of story has been having a good success, both as reading and film. The reason was in the brevity of them which allowed producers and scriptwriters to turn it into a film easily, while the complexity of a novel might make the adaptation complicated. Following the film adaptation process, the new set of authors got pretty engaged in talking about life in the space. Many novels represented unbelievable species getting in contact with the humanity – or the humanity itself exploring and colonising new planets. “The scenario in which we set our stories needs not to be terraformed,” Pat Cadigan said. “If we imagine the future, we simply adapt the human nature to the environment we create.” The creation of an environment in which human life struggled to survive demanded the authors to work on their characters’ survival. Coexistence became the main factor. “The same concept of freedom changes,” Pat Cadigan added. “In the space, we can’t do whatever we want like on Earth. We haven’t even got the same resources.” Fantasy is another genre Gollancz is proud to publish, and the following conversation focused on the relationship between history and worlds’ making. The authors invited to this panel all got inspired by a historical period. Seventeenth and Eighteenth-century motivated Alexander Dan Vilhjalmsson. Istanbul, Venice, and Athens have always enchanted Miles Cameron. The Elizabethan era fascinated Ellen Kushner. The debate on the world-building was the most controversial as the authors on the stage didn’t agree on the matter.
“Being a writer means being creative, and the worlds we make have to be new,” Adam Roberts said when his colleagues claimed that the scenarios authors made were how they saw the reality. “We, indeed, see the reality, but we have to create something new from that. The sublime of our creation stems from that novelty.” Reaching the end of the amazing festival, the themes focused on research and magic. “Research is important – although boring – and it takes a lot of time, but it is necessary for your story to make sense,” Ed McDonald said. “Beyond that, we anyway don’t have to forget that we have a story to carried on.” The approach to the use of magic in a story has always been troublesome for the authors as, quite often, editors and publishers prefer a sensible answer for the appearance of it. “The explanation of the magic in that world and how people get taught to use it ruins the magic itself,” Joe Abercrombie said. “The answer ‘it’s just magic’ doesn’t ever work out.”
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