TVSquad

If you're like me, you raced out to your local book merchant last Tuesday and got yourself a copy of Neal Stephenson's latest book, Anathem. Then, more than likely, you tore through it before you realized, "Crap, it's going to be another five years before there is another one." But this isn't Book Squad, so what am I on about?

You might recall a January 2007 post by Kevin about Stephenson's earlier novel, The Diamond Age, being adapted for the Sci Fi Channel. As a longtime fan, I was thrilled to hear the news. But then, months and months passed with no real updates. I make periodic runs through IMDB, the official Neal Stephenson site, Smokehouse Productions, the Sci Fi Wire, wikipedia... Nobody has any information on just what the heck is going on with the adaptation. Given the nature of TV and movies, I was starting to worry that it had all just been back burnered. Or worse, they spent all that Diamond Age cash on Painkiller Jane. Not so fast...

One of the benefits of my geography is that Stephenson also calls the Great Northwest home. Because of that, we managed to make it on the short list for his book tour. I ventured across the lake on Sunday to hear him read from Anathem. And when my turn came up at the Q&A microphone, I asked him if he could give us an update on the status of the project, and what he thought of the differences between writing for TV instead of a novel.

It turns out that The Diamond Age was yet another production that was caught up in the writers strike. Unfortunately, he couldn't pin down any kind of a production schedule. He said that there are just far too many aspects of it that are out of his control. The good news though, is that he says they are still working away on it. It's not the concrete -"You'll see it on this date."- answer I was hoping for, but it's enough to keep me obsessively looking for more information for another year or so.

As to the differences in writing for TV, Stephenson said that the first and most obvious one is that with TV you just don't get a lot of pages. And he joked that for him, that can be a problem. It's a joke that works well on a room full of his fans. He went on, adding that it comes down to not being able to tell people things. You have to find a way to show them. So he has to boil it down to what it is he wants to say, and figure out a way to convey that in just a few lines of a script.

It looks like we're not anywhere near actually seeing the adaptation hit our screens, but it is a little bit of good news. I'm glad that Stephenson is involved and I remain optimistic that it will get done eventually. And with any luck, it will be the kind of hit, or solid moneymaker at least, that lights the fire for what I'm really after, the Snow Crash adaptation.