The Cassutt Files
Chaos Theories

It is one of the curses of being a sci-fi writer that close friends and even random strangers will expect you to be visionary about the future. They don't just want speculations on the order of "Someday there will be a single button that can program your television." No, people demand outright predictions about tomorrow's stock market, the fate of the Dodgers' pitching staff and, more to the immediate point, how are writers supposed to make money this year?

(We can put this on a higher plane and ask, instead, "How are writers supposed to reach an audience?", but let's be honest: You know you're reaching an audience when you start getting paid.)

I've already described one challenging scenario for the sci-fi writer ("Cassutt Files," December 2007), in which one becomes a 21st Century troubadour.

There are other possibilities. One prominent colleague of mine is searching for—and finding—subscribers to his homepage, noting that a thousand subscribers at a hundred dollars a year equals a decent income.

True. But who has a thousand readers who are willing to buy the equivalent of three hard-covered books one page at a time via the Internet? For installments of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, maybe. But what about the rest of us?

The problem is magnified when applied to the performing arts, which is to say, movies, television and the Web. You can't just be a writer, you have to be a producer, director, editor and probably talent and distributor and PayPal manager, too.

To quote Robert A. Heinlein, "Words are worth what people will pay for them," which is good, except that he added, "frequently they will pay nothing."

Sci-fi's foreseeable future

No, for the foreseeable future—at least as far as I'm able to see it—the best way to reach an audience is still television. If you're fortunate enough to be studio- and network-approvable, and represented by the five major agencies, you have a good chance of making a decent living.

And the series you write for will reach audiences of millions ... as many as 10 or 15 millions, in fact, in a given evening.

And what will be reaching us in fall 2008 and beyond? More to the point, what writing and viewing opportunities are emerging from the wreckage of the 2007-08 season?

NBC—owners, I should disclose, of the SCI FI Channel and our very own SCIFI.com—was first out of the starting blocks on April 2, with what it calls its "in-front" presentation, as compared to the usual rah-rah "upfront" pitch made to advertisers in mid-May.

Heroes will be back, but Heroes: Origins is off, a victim of the strike. Knight Rider will be rolled out of the garage for a full season. The new year will bring Merlin from BBC Productions. Since fantasy, especially Arthurian fantasy, has traditionally been more popular than hard sci-fi, I expect this to do well.

There is also a project called The Listener, about a telepathic emergency medical tech.

It is Fox that seems like the most sci-fi-oriented of the major traditional nets, with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles proving strong enough to earn a second season—and with talk of a possible spinoff. (How about a crossover with the BBC/SCI FI Doctor Who spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures? You can make up your own title.)

Fox has ordered seven episodes of Dollhouse, a new project from Joss Whedon to star Eliza Dushku as one of a team of "dolls"—human beings whose memories are erased and rewritten in order to allow them to accomplish new missions.

Trailing close behind—also bearing an episode order—comes Fringe from the J.J. Abrams team, about a Frankenstein-like (I mean the doctor, not the monster) scientist who investigates "fringe" events. It is said to have the feel of a Twilight Zone or X-Files.

David Kelley's redo of the British Life on Mars looms, too.

CBS, which has prospered with dramatic procedurals like CSI but stubbed its programming toes with its sci-fi procedural Threshold, is dipping back into those waters with The Eleventh Hour, based on a British series about a scientist who uses his talents to save people from bizarre circumstances.

Also in the works—The Mentalist, written by Bruno Heller of Rome fame.

The network's vampire cop series, Moonlight, remains in bubble land.

The CW is sticking with Smallville for the moment, though its eighth season will fly without original show runners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and weighing Reaper's future. No new sci-fi or fantasy developments have been reported, although I, personally, think a new Beverly Hills 90210 qualifies as some kind of mythical setting for a series.

ABC, which has another two seasons of Lost in the works (does anybody still doubt that Lost is sci-fi?), is said to be enthusiastic about Captain Cook's Extraordinary Atlas, from writer Thomas Wheeler, about a girl who discovers an alternate Earth.

Coping with the coming chaos

What is odd is the lack of announced sci-fi series on the other channels—HBO, Showtime, FX, AMC, TNT, USA Network. Of course, these outlets work a different schedule than the broadcast nets. And HBO has just undergone a major management change.

It's also possible that, given the increasingly niche-like markets each channel tries to reach, these entities are not willing to compete with the SCI FI Channel. (Is Lifetime going to do a sci-fi series? Unlikely.)

Speaking of SCI FI, it will say goodbye to Battlestar Galactica while ramping up a possible successor in Caprica. There are other pilots in the works, among them a superhero concept from Rosario Dawson titled True Believer. Eureka and Stargate Atlantis continue—but you don't need me to catch you up on matters SCI FI.

With all the heat and light generated by the WGA strike—and still powering the SAG negotiations—concerning new media, it would be foolish for a sci-fi commentator to overlook the Internet as a source of concepts. SCI FI Channel has ordered Sanctuary, starring Amanda Tapping (Stargate SG-1). The track record for web-network crossovers is poor—Quarterlife, anyone? But it's early days.

The 2007-08 season had a notable trend—franchise characters (cop, detective, reporter) with unusual traits (vampire, time traveler, immortal). I can't see anything similar with 2008-09—unless it is the Scientific Investigator (Eleventh Hour, Fringe), especially one with an English accent.

The real trend, of course, is fragmenting audiences and increasing chaos. It's a vision I don't much like, but am powerless to ignore.