I Have Seen The Future

The increasing pressure on the publishing industry to function more like Hollywood (event movies marketed aggressively, all others fighting for scraps) makes me wonder whether fiction writers might not soon find themselves in positions similar to those of screenwriters. This Times article describes a screenwriting conference in which attendees pay an extra fee for the chance to ‘pitch’ to a producer.

Trying to make himself heard above the din, Mr. Johnson sat before two executives from Braga Productions and, his mouth dry, rolled out one of the 19 ideas he had brought, this one for “The Scavenger,” a sci-fi adventure in which the deep-space salvage ship Carpathia “is taken over by an artificial life form that reconstructs their garbage scow into a lethal war machine bound for Earth.”

The Braga men passed.