Spider’s Web Audiobook Interview

Conducted by Simon Morris

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Q:  Spider’s Web is not your typical Space:1999 story.

A:  I don’t know if there is a typical Space:1999 story, anymore.  We’ve certainly been trying to challenge that concept recently.  Spider’s Web was written more than four years ago.  I think a lot of things came together to make it what it is.  Its role as a linking piece between Survival and what would become Omega was certainly an important part, but when I first started mapping it out, I don’t think I knew that yet.  Coming up with an idea for what story I would do for Shepherd Moon was really where it started.  I wanted to play with the beasties from “Dragon’s Domain” but we were still mapping out the mythology for Omega and Alpha and we didn’t know what role, if any, the dragons were going to play.  So when I say I wrote it four years ago, I started working on it five years ago.  What people probably won’t realize without me saying it is this story is very much an homage to Richard Matheson’s “The Shrinking Man” – his battles with the spider.  You also can’t tell a story like this anymore without at least acknowledging its lineage to “Alien” and going back even further, “It:  The Terror From Beyond Space”.  I think a lot of people don’t realize these days that Ridley Scott or rather, Dan O’Bannon and Ron Shusett, they didn’t invent the idea of a monster stalking people aboard a spacecraft – Jerome Bixby did it first.  And there are some court decisions out there that will back me up.  But you also have to throw James Cameron in, too.  When you’re doing a story like Spider’s Web, you have to establish what people expect from a story like this before you’ll be able to surprise them, and what they would expect would be what they’ve seen in the first two Alien films.  So it comes down to understanding the structure of the Alien films, then knowing what you want to pick up from Dragon’s Domain, then knowing I wanted to play in the same milieu as “The Shrinking Man” and then you get a picture of the story you can write and a better sense of the one you want to write.

Q:  Spider’s Web also continues the horror lineage you carried through Resurrection.

A:  That’s a funny thing.  Boris Karloff always hated the term “horror film” – as if the film were made just to gross people out.  He liked the word “terror” better, which implies something scary.  Spider’s Web is definitely a monster story, but it’s more of an action story – a horror story would be the dragons hunting Victor – this is the opposite.  It’s like “Jaws” I suppose – is that a horror film or an adventure film?  It’s both – the first half is certainly horror, the second half is certainly adventure, but with the horror underlying the action.  If you fall in the water in “Jaws” you’re going to die a very, very nasty death.  Same with Spider’s Web.  Victor’s hunting these things, and his confrontations with the dragons are all meant to get your anxiety going, but that’s what action thrillers do.  At one point, Victor’s walking around with bleeding feet, wrapped in makeshift bandages.  Bruce Willis wasn’t available!  Dragon’s Domain has some of the most horrific moments of the series, and I think Spider’s Web stays exactly as horrific, if not less so, than the episode that inspired it.  Nobody gets eaten by a dragon in this story.  If this were written from the dragons’ perspective, Victor Bergman’s a serial killer.  The scary character is that dude they see on the bridge of the ship.  And Omega and Alpha let you know who that is.

Q:  So returning Victor Bergman to the series, or using this story as one stepping stone in that path, only makes things more complicated.

A:  Yeah.  If you think about it, I’ve used Victor as a hero before, in Resurrection, but this time around, he’s an action hero!  I think everybody’s afraid of the dragons.  The last person you’d want to put in hand to hand combat with these things is Victor.  Wrapping the reader up in the action and horror elements let me sneak in an understanding of the core character here, as he’s facing the dragons – when you find out it’s Victor, you shouldn’t really be all that surprised, because he handles all of this in a very Victor-like fashion.  You know the protagonist is from Earth fairly early on because he mentions wood and vampires.  You know he’s got some serious analytical chops.  So the biggest toy I had to play with was context.  We haven’t seen Victor since the end of Survival.  We aren’t even aware the Leira have found their new home world.  Nobody should have expected the character in Spider’s Web to be Victor Bergman.  But from a surprise perspective, we knew we were letting the cat out of the bag that Victor would probably be coming back to the series in this story.  You just wouldn’t know when.  So when Omega was coming out, a lot of folks were surprised that he showed up so early.  At that point, that was the only real surprise left.

Q:  Killing off Bergman’s wife Yendys seemed a little harsh to some readers.

A:  And to this author.  I like Yendys. But if you’ve read Omega and Alpha, Yendys died for a reason.  Not a good one, necessarily.  Cutting Victor off, leaving him emotionally stranded, created the glue that would make him easily fit into the Year Three continuity. His bond with Yendys could easily have kept Victor on New Leiram after the events in Alpha.  Which might also have kept Eroca on NewLeiram.  So if you think about it, Victor Bergman is more than the sum of his parts.  He’s a focal point in the Space:1999 universe, and there’s gravity to that.  Victor needed to be in pain to be manipulated.  Needed an emptiness inside him.  The last page of Spider’s Web really tells you what Omega and Alpha are going to be about, but you’d be hard-pressed to guess the details.  If there’s a lesson to be learned here it’s that demagogues can’t show up when things are good – they usually show up right after things have been bad – that’s the physics of what lets a demagogue get in power in the first place.  You don’t have the Treaty of Versailles and the economic collapse in the 1920s, you probably don’t get Adolph Hitler.  Not every crisis results in a demagogue, but every demagogue is preceded by a crisis.  So poor Victor, his role in everything that will come in Omega and Alpha, just goes to show that MUFs aren’t very nice.

Q:  Spider’s Web goes a little surreal when Victor is having his visions.

A:  A lot of that, including the physical movement he’s experiencing, is very much an homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey.  In Alpha, Koenig has a very, very similar experience, but they’re different experiences, experiences manifested by different MUFs.  That’s something somebody might have fun analyzing.  Science fiction gives you freedom to go a little surreal sometimes, to throw information at the reader that you as the author knows is in a particular context but the reader can only subliminally absorb it.  Alpha, the novel, lays things out a little more linearly at its opening.  The MUFs, like all of us, are very defined by their beginnings.  Their movement into our universe, at its birth, has huge repercussions in our universe.  Giving people multiple passes as that, in a surreal fashion, then linear, then surreal again, gives you something that’s fun and challenging as a reader.  It’s more like poetry, where you have to glean what you can from highly compressed language or imagery.  It’s not for the Tom Clancy fans of the world, who like everything detailed and spelled out for them and described to its fullest possible extent.  But then again, neither was 2001.  If you ever map out the plot of 2001, it’s very, very simple.  But the way it was presented, in typical Stanley Kubrick fashion, it’s not simple to follow.  What Kubrick did in that film, and I guess I shouldn’t just say Kubrick but also Arthur C. Clarke, they created a future, then really, really sold you on the believability of that future, then slowly removed the new context you’d gotten familiar with, leaving you almost literally hanging in space, without knowing anything.  I can argue that Kubrick did almost the same thing in “The Shining” – put you in an alien context, made it familiar, then turned the humans, or one of them, into an alien – so it’s kind of the mirror image of 2001.  “Full Metal Jacket” is the same thing.

Q:  How does the audio book for Spider’s Web vary from the Resurrection audio book?

A:  I think Rupert did a fantastic job with Spider’s Web.  Rupert walked into the project with a serious handicap, in that his name isn’t Barry Morse, and I don’t think it caused him a moment’s hesitation.  He made it his own, performed it on his own terms, and more power to him.  He gives Spider’s Web a real intensity that I think matches the story perfectly.  Barry read Resurrection like a father would, with love and warmth.  Rupert reads Spider’s Web like a kind of slightly sadistic older brother, who’s trying to scare you late at night but knows he can’t scare you too much or Mom and Dad will hear you whimpering through the wall.  But he also gets the emotional content in the story and changes tone, changes his pace at the right times. There are some very emotional moments in the story and he aced them, just like he aced the action scenes. There’s no comparing the two audio books.  They’re very different stories read in very different ways, and both end up as exactly what they should be.  So, my hat’s off to Rupert.  I’m very happy with what Rupert produced.  If he only wanted to do audio books for the rest of his life, I think audio book listeners would be the ones to gain the most.  He’s become a very serious asset in the Powys team, like a new player on a baseball team who can hit a home run whenever you need one.

Q:  Audio books are suddenly becoming a staple in the Powys line.

A:  That’s a testament to Rupert and changes in technology.  Getting Resurrection out took years.  Getting Spider’s Web out is taking only a matter of weeks.  We’re a very small outfit, but you’ve gotta admit, we are pretty cutting edge!

Q:  What’s next?

A:  Omega and Alpha, not to mention The Prisoner’s Dilemma.  And I think Eternity Unleashed at some point. Eternity Unleashed is going to come out as a regular book one of these days.  Perhaps a bit enhanced.  Time will tell. 

SPACE: 1999 Spider’s Web by William Latham, read by Rupert Booth

CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE

Hear a sample!

Interview with William Latham on the Spider’s Web Audio Book

U.S.

SPACE:1999
ALPHA

by William Latham
Afterword by Christopher Penfold

Cover art by Ken Scott

Moonbase Alpha struggles to survive as past, present, and future collide and the fate of the universe hangs in the balance!

 This novel features an afterword by Christopher Penfold, the Story Consultant during Year One.

 Released February 2010

SPOILERS!!!  Shepherd Moon Interview with Albert León, Lindsey Scott-Ipsen, Ken Scott and Raja Thiagarajan, authors of “Fallen Star”

Conducted by Simon Morris

This interview potentially contains some mild spoilers, so stop here if you don’t want to hear anything more!

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

S

Note:  This interview was originally conducted in 2007 and has been reviewed and in some cases updated by the participants.

How surprised were you to hear from Powys after such a long period of time that they still wanted you to work on this story?

Lindsey: It was an extremely pleasant surprise. I have to admit, I had forgotten about the project, but since I have always dreamt of contributing to the canon of Space:1999 I leapt at the opportunity.

Raja: I was completely surprised. As they used to say, “You could knock me over with a feather.” I was a little concerned whether I’d have enough time to participate, since we had a two-and-a-half-year-old-toddler at the time, but our editor Bill said he also had one of those, and kid delays wouldn’t get in the way.

Albert:  Since our initial meeting, after some time had passed and not hearing anything more about it, I thought the project was abandoned. By the time I received Bill’s email about working on this, I had forgotten about it. I was very glad that Powys still wanted to include this story and have us work on it.

Ken: I was pretty shocked. I was really excited when the project was suggested at the convention in Portland, and disappointed when it seemed to have been forgotten. So when I received an email from Bill, I was thrilled to find out it was back on track.

What was it like collaborating on this story without ever speaking to each other?

Lindsey: Well I have met all of the other writers at various conventions, and believe that made the process much easier. I also knew we all shared a love for the show. One exciting aspect of our group is that we seemed perfectly matched with one another. Raja is our resident scientist, so he helped shape the concepts portrayed in the story. Albert has a gift for action and brevity, which we needed, and Ken had some wonderful insights into capturing the tone and pathos of the series in a narrative form. Everyone seemed to bring a necessary aspect to the table that propelled the story forward.

Raja:  We had spoken to each other, and met in person, years ago. Though my memories of that meeting are far from perfect, it did help a lot to recall my impressions (all positive!) of my collaborators.  Also Ken Scott has a very nice website about Space: 1999 that’s full of fun and chatty tidbits (http://www.space1999.net/moonbase99/). I remember seeing Ken in person more recently, and chatting with him about the website.

Albert: It was very tough working individually on our sections without being able to brainstorm with everyone and bounce ideas off of each other, where we could get immediate feedback. As I worked on my own sections, I was worried that our separate sections wouldn’t come together nicely as one cohesive story.

Ken: As I had mentioned, we had all met at the Portland convention, and some of us have met on more than one occasion. We were lucky to have Raja set up a forum for us to be able to communicate with each other, and develop the story. Bill was tremendously helpful in guiding us on this journey. It was amazing to see what everyone brought to the table. It was like what I imagine communication on deep space flight would be like. You could transmit, but had to wait in the void for the signal to reach its destination, and then for the response to traverse the distance back.

What parts of the process did you find most fun? Most difficult? Most surprising?

Lindsey:  Writing a Space:1999 story! Most of the process was fun. It was hard work, but fun work. I think capturing the voices of some of my favorite characters was both a joy and a challenge – sort of like method acting for a writer. I know our audience is terribly familiar with these characters and love them, so I felt a great responsibility to remain true to their natures. Writing from Jackie Crawford’s point of view was especially taxing, because he is a child. I tried to imagine how odd his life has been – being the only child living on a Moonbase with adults in the strangest of circumstances – and how this impacted his personality. Still, it’s easy to forget how a child sees the world. Hopefully we captured this experience in the story. The most surprising aspect was the way the story changed and evolved with time, and all of the changes were for the better. I was also pleasantly surprised by the insight of the team and how we were able to incorporate every person’s vision to create a coherent story.

Raja: The most fun part was seeing new ideas and new story sections show up on our collaboration website. Some of these ideas were also the most surprising; my collaborators, and fans in general, have some fascinating perspectives on Space: 1999, and on life in general. Concerning challenges: As anyone who’s used email probably knows, it can be hard to gauge people’s feelings from their messages. You have to be careful not to misinterpret things. One thing that helped me with this was that I knew we all love Space: 1999 (otherwise we would not have involved ourselves in this process, starting with that first meeting all those years ago) and wanted to tell the best story we could. I tried to think my replies out very carefully, so it sometimes took longer than I expected to respond. I think others probably were doing this too-so I had to learn to wait patiently for responses to my contributions.

Albert:  The most fun was simply writing about Space:1999. I enjoyed revisiting Moonbase Alpha and the characters, while working very hard to try to accurately capture the show and ultimately produce writing that could be taken seriously. I especially enjoyed writing and reading about areas of Moonbase Alpha that we’ve only previously seen glimpses of on the show or only briefly heard mentioned elsewhere.  It was difficult to write a middle section without knowing the details of what was in the previous sections as well as not knowing what details were in the following sections that I could have mentioned or introduced in my previous sections. I kept worrying that what I wrote wasn’t “right” or “good enough”. Personally, it was also tough for me in that I had little time to write during the day, so I’d often be up until 1 or 2 am writing my sections of the story. Even though it cost me some sleep, I didn’t mind because it was well worth it! It surprised me how well some of the different sections lead into each other, as if the different authors were actually writing together.

Ken: Space: 1999 has always been my favorite show, and the opportunity to be able to work on a story that would become part of the Space: 1999 universe was definitely the best part! The most difficult part was getting past my insecurities about writing something that others will read. That and the idea of constructing the story out of sequence. I guess I think in a very linear way. That part really threw me. The most surprising thing was how well our visions melded once we shaped the general story, and how really creative everyone was, and the depth they brought to whatever they were writing about. Most fun? Reading what everyone else was coming up with.

What did you learn about writing from taking part in this effort?

Lindsey: I learned that I could be long winded! Loving the setting of the story made the work a breeze, but I sometimes found myself rambling on. I didn’t want to say goodbye to the characters. Luckily, Bill did a great job of reminding us to keep the story moving.

Raja:  I have been a heavy reader for most of my life. I also do a fair bit of editing, and a little bit of writing, for my “day job”. All of this writing is non-fiction, and its highest priority is to explain things, especially step-by-step processes, as clearly as possible. There’s a strong bias towards being concise, and the person who does most of the writing gives me carte blanche to edit, without his ego being involved. I was surprised that a lot of these things didn’t carry over into fiction; concise and clear is good, but vivid and involving is better, at least some of the time. In retrospect, this should probably have been obvious. I was also surprised that my ego got involved. I did a scene that I was quite proud of, and our editor said it was well dramatized, but it wasn’t a good fit for the story. I was a bit surprised and taken aback, but after asking for clarification, I agreed that it should be cut for the sake of the story. If this had happened with my “day job” writings, I would have cut it without blinking. I now read everything, including my recreational reading, more analytically. Sometimes this can spoil my fun a little; I can be a bit more annoyed by a bad turn of phrase or a sloppily cut corner. On the other hand, I also have a greater appreciation for some of my old favorite authors and books. Since I’ve been reading some of these books for three-quarters of my life, I’m thrilled to find new ways to find pleasure in them.

Albert: Obviously, different writers have different styles, but it amazed me how each writer seemed to have his or her own ideas for different details to the certain story elements and it seemed as if each writer was steering the story in slightly different directions, while staying within the confines of the story outline. If I were to do this again, I’d have the first section be written first, then the next writer takes and reads the first section, and then writes the next section. So on and so forth in succession, allowing each writer to work off of what was written in the sections before.

Ken: I learned that because we all wanted this to be the best story we could make it, the collaboration that could have suffered from people trying to take the story in completely different directions benefited from fresh ideas that everyone brought to it. I learned that I still have a lot to learn!

Once the book is/was officially released, who’s the person you’re most excited about showing it to?

Lindsey: My husband, Joe Ipsen, who offered many helpful suggestions during the process, and my friends in fandom, Terry Lee, Anthony Wynn, Robert Wood and Chris Paulsen, to name only a few. I also have many friends who are fans of the show, but have forgotten it, so I hope they will read this story and others in the book and be inspired to become fans once again.

Raja: I think I’ll have to fight the temptation to show it to everyone I know, and to random passers-by. Slightly more seriously, I’ll be especially pleased to show it to my wife, my father, and my friend Gregory, all of whom I asked for advice during some of the challenges.

Albert: I wanted to keep my involvement in this project quiet until I knew it was definitely going to happen, and then surprise my family and friends with the news. My youngest son also enjoys writing fiction, and I knew he’d understand how excited I was about this project, so he was the first one I had told. Once the book was actually released, I first showed the book to my closest friends Ronn and Steve, but the first ones I gave actual copies of the book to are my parents and my sons. My friends and family know what a huge fan I am of Space:1999 so they were very happy to hear that I was a part in the making of this story.

Ken: Anyone who will sit still long enough. Seriously, besides my family, I think the people I would want most to share it with are the friends I’ve made at Space: 1999 conventions in the past, and sadly, most of them are too far away to show them in person. But I will certainly let them know by e-mail, or in online chat! And other friends who tolerate (and even support) my fanatical devotion to Space: 1999!

When you look back on this experience in ten years, what do you think will stick with you the most?

Lindsey: I think that I will see it as a milestone in my life. I was a huge fan of the series as a child, but after it went off the air, I thought everyone else had forgotten it. I didn’t discover that fandom was alive and well until about ten years ago and connecting with other fans has been a wonderful experience. I think that staying up until the wee hours visiting with Nick Tate and Johnny Byrne at the Breakaway was a dream come true. I remember thinking back to my ten-year-old self and thinking about how I could never have imagined such a thing could happen. My visits with Barry Morse were a joy, and writing this story will be a cornerstone of my experience as a fan.  I imagine a worn copy of the book will remain on my shelf for many years to come.

Raja: I think I’ll either forget, or recall with embarrassment, some of my sillier worries (from “Will I have enough time?” to “Why hasn’t anybody replied to my note–it’s been a whole 20 minutes?!”). I’ll remember the thrill of seeing new sections from my co-authors. And again, I value my new perspective on the things I read; I hope that will be with me for the rest of my life. And at the risk of getting my ego in here again, I’m incredibly proud to have been involved in adding to the “canon” of my all-time favorite TV show.

Albert: Since I was 12, Space:1999 has been a significant part of my life, so 10 years from now I will continue to be so proud to be part of this project. It is truly a dream come true that I have worked on a published Space:1999 story.

Ken: I think I will look back in ten years and be glad that a series I had thought long forgotten by others was brought back from obscurity by its fans, and that I was able to participate in its ongoing legacy in some small fashion…and make some good friends in the process.

A Snippet From the Original Email

From: Bill Latham

To: The Team

Subject: Belated Greetings From Moonbase Alpha

Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 15:27:07 -0400

Okay, it’s only taken four years for this to happen, but remember a little Space:1999 convention you attended in Portland in 2003, and a little workshop you attended on writing a Space:1999 story – there was a homework assignment, and it’s finally coming due!

And the rest, as they say, is history…