Robert J. Sawyer on Psychopaths, Adaptations, and the State of Publishing

Robert J. Sawyer is one of Canada's most successful writers, both at home and abroad. He's one of only seven writers in the world to have won all three of the top English-language science fiction awards (the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards), and his works have been translated into a dozen languages and become bestsellers around the world. He has adapted his work for film and TV, including the ABC series Flashforward, from his novel of the same name.

He's also known for being an outspoken critic of grant culture in Canada, and the Canada Council for the Arts in particular, even as he continues to set many of his novels in his home country. His love for Canada is apparent, with the inclusion of sly details that Canadian readers would appreciate, like Calgary's popular Mayor Naheed Nenshi appearing as Prime Minister in his recent novel, Quantum Night.

Mr. Sawyer speaks to Open Book today with his trademark candidness, chatting about everything from the existence of a mappable "psychopath brain" (as explored in Quantum Night) and his experiences adapting his work for the screen to why he feels today's publishers and granting bodies are failing authors. 

Grace O'Connell for Open Book:

I wanted to talk about some of the themes in Quantum Night with you. The novel touches on the idea of whether we are our biology. What do you think of the research around this idea of "a psychopath brain"? In that balance of individual control over our destiny vs. biological destiny, where do you fall?

Robert J. Sawyer:

You definitely have to have a psychopath brain to be a psychopath. That is, it is a physically definable phenomenon. What we've seen in actual studies, and I riff on these to some degree in Quantum Night, is that without a specific set of damages to the brain, often to the amygdala, you cannot be a psychopath.

But that's not sufficient in real life, in and of itself, you also have to have been, in almost every case, traumatized, usually in childhood, usually sexually, for it to actually manifest as psychopathic behaviour. So it's a double whammy; there's a social or personal, external thing, and there's an internal, physical thing, a damage to the brain.

Now in the case of my novel, Quantum Night, I riff on that to say "Well, you know, those studies that show you have to have the trauma aren't 100%, maybe it simply is a physical difference in the brain". I postulate that it is a quantum mechanical difference in the brain.

GO:

I wanted to change gears to ask you about something else you've been doing – you've had significant experience with the adaptation process. What have you learned while working with television and film adaptations? Is there anything about the process that you've found surprising?

RJS:

They are two different media, books and film/TV. Books are all about the inner lives of characters, the stream of consciousness, you have a viewpoint character whose worldview you are following, knowing that character's intimate thoughts, and seeing things that only that character can see. Film and TV is like watching a Ping-Pong game; you're in the audience and you keep shifting your attention left and right, left and right. You can see not what any given character sees (except in the very rare Point of View shot), but you can see what anyone in that room can see, you have a viewpoint that moves around. But you hear nothing of the inner lives of characters, you only hear what they actually say and what their body language or facial expression might betray about an inner life. And you have equal access in that sense to all the characters' inner lives, rather than one specific viewpoint character.

So they're very different writing processes, psychologically how you portray emotion, how you portray motivation, and how you get someone to identify with the character. It's easy – you always identify with the viewpoint character in a novel, whether it is first person or third person, you know, okay, this is who I am in this scene. In a movie or TV show, when there is more than one character on screen, you identify with whoever you feel the most empathy for. It's a very different kind of writing.

So what you have to do when you go into it is say "I don't care what I wrote in the book, all I care about is how this story can best be told for the screen". And as long as you go in with that attitude, you'll do fine. But as soon as you say, "Well, I had this favourite little –" No, no. That worked in the book. What will play well on a big screen? What will play well in that medium? You have to construct from the ground up how you're going to tell the story for a new medium.

GO:

And you've adapted screenplays yourself, correct? As well as working with screenwriters? 

RJS:

I was commissioned to adapt my novel Triggers into a feature film screenplay,  which is in some degree of development here in Toronto right now, I was a consultant on all the episodes, including the pilot, of the adaptation of Flashforward, and wrote one of the episodes. I'm working now in collaboration with a screenwriter in Los Angeles, adapting my novel Illegal Alien, so I've done all three arrangements. But it is a collaborative process even if you are in theory the only person writing the screenplay, because somebody else ultimately has the forty, fifty, hundred million dollars it's going to take to make the movie. I don't have it! You don't have it. You have to satisfy the guy who does, and he or she has a representative or story editor or development executive, who is going to have notes.

One of the notes on the adaptation of Triggers was that it is really hard to open – this is sad but true – a theatrical motion picture with a female lead if it's a thriller. And I had in my novel a female lead and a male sidekick working under her, two secret service agents. And you know what, for this to work, for us to get the funding together, they said, "You have to flip it". Now, I was angry of course, but on the other hand my second lead in the novel was an African American secret service agent, so we're going out with a script where the main character is African American, which is not a complete win for equality because the woman got demoted, but at least it's a step in the right direction that people do say now, routinely, that you can open a feature in the cinemas with a black actor as the lead.

GO:

That's great to hear. We need a lot of progress in the film world, and that seems, in one sense, like an encouraging direction.

RJS:

You do it subversively; you try to portray as much equality as you can in the film while recognizing you can get in an audience that didn't think they were going to see a kickass female character, and have them leave thinking "Oh that's kind of interesting, that a woman was able to do all that".

I don't mean to excuse this in any way, shape, or form, but it is in fact what we do in science fiction all the time. We say, "Ah, it's about apes on horseback – Oh, it's really about race relations, or the fear of nuclear war – I wouldn't have gone to see a film about that, but now I'm thinking about it".

GO:

It's a subversive operation within the framework, the constraints.

RJS:

Exactly, exactly.

GO:

It's really interesting that you've been involved in all the different permutations of screenwriting, I imagine it's a really interesting process.

RJS:

I love it. I love it – it's fun, it's lucrative, and it's collaborative. I thought, as a novelist, I wouldn't play well with others, let's say. Because I've been God of my own universe, as I was sitting there writing alone in my garret. No matter what you see on a TV episode, there was a team of writers in a writers' room. Contractually, you're entitled to so many "written by" credits, but everything you see on screen these days has gone through multiple people and is the distillation of the best that everyone on the team brought to the project.

GO:

Definitely a very different process than being, as you said, God of your own universe as a novelist. To return to your novel Quantum Night, one of its many accolades is that it was the best-selling book for all of 2016 at Toronto bookseller Bakka Phoenix.

RJS:

Kind of cool, eh?

GO:

Very cool! I just wanted to ask about your relationship with the store, given its special place in the Toronto bookselling scene.

RJS:

I have two relationships with the store. First, many years ago, though hardly anyone remember this, in the summer of 1980 – I don't even want to think about how many years ago that is! Thirty-seven?? – I worked at Bakka Phoenix for a summer. So I worked there for eight, ten weeks. But there's been a 100% turnover of the staff since then of course.

More so, I have the home turf advantage in Toronto. Big fish, small pond. That's been the philosophy of my career! But that said, Bakka has always been very good to me. We did our book launch – I'm lucky enough to attract too big a crowd to do it in the store, but we always make an arrangement with a bar or other venue, but Bakka is always the bookseller. Now that's only one day out of 365, so the book had legs, but I'm the son of a statistician so I also have to acknowledge that a book that comes out in March has a way better chance of being the bestselling title of the year than a book that comes out in December. 

So I take the accolade and am proud of it, but I also acknowledge, as with all of the accolades that have come my way, that it's a lucky roll of the dice and some other equally deserving writer might have won. That's why you celebrate everybody's victories, and you're never petty.

GO:

You've had strong words for the Canada Council in the past. I wanted to ask what changes, if any, you'd like to see to the way grants are awarded in Canada.

RJS:

I was a Canada Council juror well over a decade ago. One time in one jury. Karl Schroeder, who is another Canadian science fiction writer, was there as well. They think, okay we've had them. Once a decade, like clockwork, we'll get one in. We might even get a thriller writer in, or a romance writer, once in a while. And then our bona fides are established and we represent all. But the reality is they don't. There is a community, a pool, that they draw upon to decide who will get grants, and lo and behold, if you look at that pool, of who sits on grant juries, and the venn diagram of who receives grants on a routine basis, there is an enormous degree of overlap.

No one can argue that Quantum Night or other novels that I've submitted Canada Council grant applications for, is not fragrantly Canadian. It's set in Winnipeg and Saskatoon. It deals with the plight of the missing and murdered Indigenous women in Manitoba. It explores Canada's conceit of thinking that it is infinitely superior to the United States, exposing the prejudice that exists, certainly against our Indigenous population. It ranges across the nation, it deals with Canadian politics. And it's a damn well-written story, as the reviews attest. And yet of course, no grant. What is it... ten, a dozen times, that I've applied now? With works that have gone on to do well – Quantum Night was longlisted for the Canada Reads competition, Maclean's bestseller, #1 bestseller in the Winnipeg Free Press. They say, "Oh well, it's going to get all those accolades anyway, it doesn't need the support". Well, when authors of the caliber of Margaret Atwood and so forth stop receiving and applying for grants – when I was on the jury, I was astonished. The biggest names in Canada routinely put in for grant applications. The same thing is simply not true amongst my brethren in so-called popular fiction; things in other words that taxpayers want their taxpayer dollars to be spent on creating. Those things don't get a fair shake – there is absolutely no question in my mind that they do not get a fair shake.

GO:

Thanks for speaking to that. It's nice to have a fresh point of view, on the issue that we may be seeing the same voices repeatedly.

RJS:

Which is so counter to what we're supposed to be doing in this country, which is diversity. Our official government policy is diversity – everything we do is supposed to be about diverse voices in arts and culture. And that has to mean diverse forms of narrative, not just checking the box and saying, "Do you self-identify as a member of this group". It has to be people who are telling stories in different modes as well.

GO:

As we wrap up, can you tell us what's next for you? 

RJS:

Quantum Night may very well be my final novel. And it's not because the Canada Council isn't funding me, although that actually might be a factor. But really, it's because I'm somewhat disenchanted with the state of traditional publishing right now. The boilerplate contracts have gotten worse and worse. Advances used to be paid half on signing the contract, half on delivering the book. Now they're a quarter on signing the contact, a quarter on delivering the book, a quarter a year or more later when the book comes out, and a quarter a year or more after that, when the paperback comes out. Meaning ultimately, it is two years after you finished your work, when you're still getting the advance for writing the novel, and you don't even start earning royalties until the advance is earned out. So, this is pernicious. Now, I have clout. I have an agent who has clout. We might be able to claw these things back. But the reality is, one gets tired of the fight. I'm doing way more film and TV writing, and I've recently gotten a development deal with one of Canada's major broadcasters – I can't talk about the deal yet, but that is what I'm devoting my efforts to right now; creating what we hope will be the best science fiction show television has ever seen!

GO:

I imagine I will be tuning in – that's very exciting.

RJS:

Excellent, excellent.

GO:

And to what you were saying, it's a tough time in books right now, I definitely sympathize.

RJS:

The problem is, it's not. Everyone of the Big 5 New York publishers in the last couple of years have posted their all-time highest profits. It's a tough time for authors. It's a tough time for booksellers, except for Amazon. It is not a tough time for publishers; everything economy that the digital revolution has made possible, every penny of that has been kept by publishers. It's ridiculous that in this day and age, 8% of the cover price is the standard royalty. Actually 6% in some cases. A ridiculously low percentage.

Every bit of cost savings that came from reducing the number of accounts from tens of thousands to a few hundred that have to be served, every penny that's come from the streamlining of the production process – they don't have to manually keyboard typewritten files anymore, the author provides all that. Everything that's been simplified in terms of electronic typesetting, in terms of short-run print technology, and electronic distribution where there's no physical product produced – every single penny of those savings has been kept by the publishers, and they're all – the remaining Big 5 – are reporting record profits. It is the authors – they couldn't claw back from Amazon, so they're clawing back from the sine qua non of publishing, the creative writer. 

GO:

I think as well, for the staff at publishing houses, it's a tough time for them, with layoffs, and editors and publicists expected to handle more titles.

RJS:

Oh all of that is true. It is not a good time to work in publishing. But if you own a publishing company, or you have stock in a publishing company – it's not a good time to be working anywhere, everybody is being laid off. If your job is repetitive, which is manuscript evaluation, at the simplest level, if your job is one that lots of people want to do – supply and demand – everybody wants to into publishing still, so of course wages are low.

No, it's a crappy time to be a bookseller, it's a crappy time to be an author, it's a crappy time to work for a publisher. Except in terms of annual bonus, perhaps, which might be $5000 per employee, as it was a couple of years ago for Random House. Per employee, across the company, because they made so much money off of Fifty Shades of Grey, they literally didn't know what to do with it. A piece of garbage literature, but they didn't know what to do with the profits. But if you're a stockholder, or if you're the publisher, if you're a profit participant in a publishing company, there has never been greener grass than there is now.

GO:

Wow, let's hope it improves the lots of all the aforementioned groups then.

RJS:

Absolutely.

GO:

Well, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk and to speak so candidly. I think we've covered a lot of interesting stuff.

RJS:

My pleasure.

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Robert J. Sawyer was born in Ottawa and lives in Mississauga with his wife, poet Carolyn Clink. He has won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel. The ABC TV series FlashForwardwas based on his novel of the same name.