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Interviews: Ask J. Michael Straczynski What You Will
He has written for many different comic book titles including Superman and The Amazing Spider-Man, and wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated movie Changeling, but J. Michael Straczynski (jms) is probably best known as being the creator, writer, and producer of Babylon 5. Recently, jms has teamed up with the Wachowskis and Netflix to create a new original sci-fi series, Sense8, coming out in late 2014. Straczynski has agreed to take a few minutes from writing sci-fi epics in order to answer any questions you may have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
I've heard that to be a good writer you need to read and write several hours daily. On average how many hours do you spend reading each day? Writing? Do you have an average word count you aim to produce for each day?
My work here is dung.
Do you frequently brush up on physics or cosmology or some scientific field to keep your forward looking ideas sharp and in-line with current academic trends or do you simply rely on your imagination? Any academic journals you subscribe to looking for something to stimulate you into envisioning a future with an interesting twist? Is this common in the writing community or do I have the wrong image in my head?
My work here is dung.
Time travel is a sticky area in Sci-Fi stories and is so pervasive it has caught the eye of Chinese censors. Since H.G. Wells it's been a major staple of sci-fi movies and has become quite pervasive from fantasy books like Harry Potter to television series like Lost and Futurama. Even modern Sci-Fi stories like Stephen Baxter can still win awards for novels based on time travel. I'm not incredibly familiar with your work so I don't know if you've relied on time travel yet, however, I would like to hear your take on it. Is it a tired cliched mechanism that is overused or do you still find yourself thoroughly entertained with the possibilities it presents? If you wrote it, would/did you go infinite parallel universes or single universe with time travel paradox correcting crumple zones?
My work here is dung.
In your opinion is there anything we as viewers can do to get more quality sci-fi on TV and keep it there without being cancelled? It's always too expensive, takes a long time to gain a strong following and syndication, and then gets pushed out in favour of wrestling or some paranormal nonsense. We don't even have a proper sci-fi channel any more, despite there being literally hundreds of channels available.
I'd love to contribute to the funding of, say, more episodes of Stargate Universe, but at $2m/episode I just can't see how crowd funding would work.
Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You've worked in television, what are the pros and cons in the deltas between Netflix and one of the big networks/cable goliaths? Do they still goad you into putting a cliff hanger at the end of the episode so the couch potato continues to veg-out and just hit 'play' on the next installment? Are you glad you don't need to plan for commercial bumps? Any dark sides to being paid by Netflix?
My work here is dung.
Babylon 5 started off very strongly, but many fans feel that the show jumped the shark after Season 3, even as it's suggested that the series story arc was planned from the start. What actually happened?
You were one of the first Hollywood writers with an online presence, hanging out in newsgroups during production of Babylon 5. My memories of that were tidbits and insights from you, along with frequent "no story submissions" reminders and threats of your departure if the story ideas didn't stop. How do you remember that experience? Was it worth the hassle? And do you view the seeming explosion of writers, directors, producers and actors on social media as a positive or negative for the industry overall?
Can you list any examples of shows that have changed your approach to Science Fiction since Babylon 5 was written? For example, the latent success of Firefly showed how smaller-scale science fiction can be effective. How have you been influenced by Firefly or any other show post-B5?
When you visited Andreas Katsulas before he went beyond the veil; you mentioned in an interview that you told him stories of B5 that never got to be told.
Would you consider telling us here, in a post somewhere, or even a compendium; those stories? I'd love to enrich the B5 Universe.
What would you say are the most valuable things you took away from your experience as creator/head writer of "Babylon 5"? In particular, the effort to create a single, long-running storyline over five seasons? Do you think you could have done things differently to avoid the issues with actors leaving mid-show and the network threatening to cancel the final season?
You know you want to.
Is it going to have a long story ark over several seasons with a definite beginning, middle and end like B5 did?
One of the things about Bab5 that was always fun for the hardcore SF fans was bringing back actors from classic SF television. Casting Billy Mumy (Lost in Space) as Lennier and Walter Koenig as Alfred Bester (a personal fav) were entertaining beyond the performances they delivered. Are there any cool casting choices about Sense8 that you have planned or can dish on?
If asked, would you guest star on Big Bang Theory?
The trailers for the World War Z movie suggest that it is radically different from the source material. Most obviously that would be things such as the whole fast vs slow zombie deal but perhaps more importantly the focus appears to have turned on a single globetrotting protagonist in the thick of the action. What was your original vision for the script and why do you think it has turned out the way it has?
I think Sheldon's hate of Babylon 5 is a way for the writer's to pimp a show that wasn't as mainstream recongized. And give it some recognition.
And related to that: Assuming no constraints regarding rights, what classic (or not so classic) science fiction stories would you like to adapt as movies or TV series?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot