Genre buster

Stephen Gallagher’s career has spanned novels, short stories, scriptwriting and original TV series. UK Writer spoke to him about his writing life.

UKW: Do you consider yourself a genre writer (in either books or scripts)? Do you think genre is a useful concept for writers?

SG: I like genre but I like the idea of genre-busting even better. Which means meeting the demands of a chosen form and then doing your best to exceed them. Audiences don't come looking for big themes or great characters. They show up for story. But it's the big themes and character work that send them away happy, whether they realise that or not.

How do you balance writing novels and scripts?

At the ideas level, it's never a problem. The problem comes when you have to buckle down to the execution, because novels and scripts demand completely different working rhythms. With screen work I can juggle as I go – turn in a draft, then catch up on something else while I'm waiting for the notes to come back. But for a novel you have to block out long runs of weeks where you can't divide your attention. That requires a bit of foresight and management.

Who are the writers who have influenced and inspired you?

I grew up on the short stories of H.G. Wells, and it’s surprising how often I’ve seen the same volume on the shelves of other writers of my generation. As I got into my teens I tried to read something of everything, even from genres I wasn’t interested in, like westerns and romances. I suspect it’s still not fashionable to say it, but my TV heroes were those magnificent journeymen of the ITC stable – people like Dennis Spooner, Philip Levene, Tony Williamson, and the great Brian Clemens. I’ve only noticed in recent years how a surprising number of those writers moved back and forth between the TV I was watching and the thrillers I was reading. Writers like Berkely Mather, James Mitchell, Martin Woodhouse.

People have talked about a recent renaissance in sci-fi and fantasy on British TV. Is that something you feel aware of?

I think there’s been a welcome breakthrough, spearheaded by the new Dr Who. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a renaissance, mainly because there isn’t enough of a reliable skill base for that kind of thing within the industry. There’s the start of one; you’ve got people like Steven Moffat and Paul Cornell becoming go-to guys for the same kind of song elsewhere. But amongst producers you can still sense a belief that imaginative fiction, the polar opposite of what Angela Carter called ‘the low mimetic’, is just another string that any writer can add to their bow. It’s just not so. You have to start from a place where it’s the form you most care about.

How did you pitch Eleventh Hour to commissioners?

When I sold Eleventh Hour I pushed it as the Prime Suspect of science – a pro-science procedural with today's ‘bad science’ in its sights, grounded entirely in the current state of technology. What I wanted for Eleventh Hour was the same kind of probity that you’d apply without question in a legal drama or a medical show. The last thing I wanted was a pasting from the Government’s chief scientific advisor.

The rights in the series have been bought in America [by Jerry Bruckheimer and CBS.]. Do you sense that transatlantic TV cross-fertilisation is on the rise?

These past couple of years have seen a lot of format-hunting traffic from the US to the UK, but it’s debatable whether it’s borne any great fruit. I hope it does, because they can’t keep pointing to the success of The Office forever. The problem is that a successful show is lightning caught in a bottle, and you don't recreate it by simply buying the empty. I'm crossing my fingers that Eleventh Hour will work – it's in with a chance because Bruckheimer's own shows are the model I looked to when putting the format together.

But I think that the transatlantic conversation is going to pay off more gradually and in more subtle ways. There’s a lot we can learn from the American approach to running a series. They don’t just buy stories; they hire writers, and instead of being pieceworkers defending their one story to the hilt, those writers come together and make the show. They’re all part of an efficient production structure and they're credited accordingly. I can initiate a £4m drama and I don't even get a pass to let me into the building – I have to be led to the meetings like a chimpanzee in a nappy. The American system may be pressured and ruthless, but by God, look what it can do. Twenty-two hours of House written and shot in a matter of months! And then they just spit in a bucket and do it again!

Are there elements of American sci fi/fantasy TV in particular that you think we could learn from in this country?

I don't think we need to look that far. We could start by looking to our own history. In their day, series like Out Of The Unknown and Mystery And Imagination scored with tonally spot-on adaptations of published fiction. That's where the killer stories are. When Irene Shubik was making Out Of The Unknown she didn't buy green pitches from TV pros – she hired the editor of New Worlds magazine to give her a steer.

But I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to be aware of the class and relevance of a Battlestar Galactica or the ingenuity of the sci-fi channel’s The Lost Room, or the sheer human warmth of the marvellous-but-cancelled Firefly. They're solid grown-up entertainment, for a more general audience than the rubber-forehead shows.

Despite healthy sales, sci-fi books still seem to be considered outside the mainstream. Why do you think this is? Is there anything that can be done?

Back in the 1980s, just about every mainstream publisher had a healthy science fiction line. Most of those were closed down in the 1990s as the standalone houses were absorbed to become imprints within a bigger corporate structure. Some of the editors were reassigned, but most were let go, and their skills and in-depth knowledge were lost to the industry. Niche imprints like Tor and Orbit and Voyager have risen up to meet demand, but the old infrastructure's gone.

The major exception I can think of is Gollancz/Orion, and that’s mainly down to the high placement of people like Malcolm Edwards and Jo Fletcher, who know their stuff as well as being born sf fans and lifelong readers. Edwards is behind the SF Masterworks series, which we absolutely need to have out there. Science fiction is a rich and diverse literary culture way above and beyond the latest Star Wars tie-in. Don't take my word for it, ask Doris Lessing.

You’ve written many sci-fi and horror short stories. Is that a form that’s important to you?

I’ve never considered myself a short story writer, but it's the short stories that have brought me my awards. I've always rather squeezed them in between other jobs. I do consider them the most exacting form, because there’s no room for imprecision. I’d already written a couple of novels before I placed my first short with The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and I have to say that the story sale probably gave me the most satisfaction. Apart from getting into one of the major magazines that I’d grown up reading, there was another factor. When a publisher buys a novel, there’s always an economic calculation involved. When an editor buys your short story, it’s generally a quality call.

Have you had many dealings with feature film companies? What’s your take on the state of the British film industry? Could we, for example, be making more good quality low budget horror?

I don’t have a feature film on my CV, but I’ve done plenty of paid screenwriting over the years. I've worked for individual producers rather than companies, and their projects have always fallen at the stage of production finance. That’s where the big problem is. I sometimes think that in the UK we’ve turned development into a substitute for an actual film industry. Could we be making more low-budget horror? I can see a place for professionally done exploitation in any healthy industry. It was a business founded on exploitation cinema that enabled Tony Tenser to produce Witchfinder General and Polanski’s Repulsion. And I’m all for low-budget horror if it’s going to be like Neil Marshall’s The Descent, but please God spare me any more home-made horrors by a bunch of friends with a DVcam in a borrowed house.

How important are graphic novels to you? Do you have ambitions to write one?

By coincidence I just turned in the introduction to a DC Hellblazer album gathering together Andy Diggle’s first eight issues. I don’t have a deep involvement in the field, but I think it’s a place to go for intense and expressive visual storytelling. As for writing one – no thoughts, no plans, but never say never.

What projects have you got upcoming?

Right now I’m deep into the writing of a big-sweep historical thriller to follow last year’s novel The Kingdom of Bones, and I’ve roughed out my plan for a third book to complete the – not a trilogy really, more a triptych of novels with overlapping themes and characters. It's turning into a bit of a magnum opus. As a consequence of the Eleventh Hour deal I’m hooked up with ICM to make a couple of series pitches to the American networks, but all that’s on hold until the WGA strike can be resolved. Somewhere along the way I've promised a second John Lafcadio novel to a US publisher. So there's plenty of the foresight-and-management thing going on.

Stephen Gallagher blogs at Hauling Like A Brooligan

This article was first published in the Guild's magazine, UK Writer (Spring 2008)