Continuing from Part 1, Wired writer Jenny Williams recently sat down for lunch with Alan Dean Foster and had a chance to ask him a few questions.  This is part 2 in a three part series.

To prepare for my interview, I listened to the audiobook version of Foster’s Star Trek book. I very much enjoyed listening to it while driving to the Maker Faire, and the narration by Zachary Quinto was done very well. The book expanded quite a bit on the movie, gave some added background to the characters and was very funny in spots. Foster does an amazing job adding incredible visual detail to his writing. Overall, it makes for a much more complete experience. You come out of it knowing exactly what happened in the story, without having to guess in certain spots.

JW: I listened to the audiobook of your Star Trek book version. The movie was great, but it was very action packed. There was not a lot of character development, probably because it was assumed that people knew the characters already from the original series. You filled in a lot of holes that I felt were in the movie, and just gave a little bit more background and feel for the characters.

ADF: A movie like that, too, goes by so fast. Unless you go back and see the movie again, you miss a lot of stuff anyway.  So, a book always goes at a slower pace than a film, even if it’s a slow movie. The book still goes at your own pace. You can pause whenever you want and start it up again whenever you want. But it is fun with something like Star Trek where you have a good screenplay. Where you can go back and you can fill in and get in the characters’ heads and maybe you can adjust some of the science and some of the details as much as you can. The thing people don’t realize about a film of that magnitude, or Terminator or Transformers, is that there are a million things going on on the set, all at the same time, and each one of them costs a dollar. So there is a million dollars going by every day, and there is no time to waste. And it’s impossible for any one person, the director, the producer, anybody, to keep absolute track of everything that’s going on. You can’t be in the costume department, you can’t be up setting the lights with the guys who are rigging the lights. It’s just impossible to keep track of everything. So some things are going to slip through that they don’t want to. And you look at the film and say, “Well, that was stupid.” And what they need is another year to go back and redo everything and go over everything in minute detail. And they just don’t have it.

JW: It costs too much money for that.

ADF: That was the problem with the original Star Trek, the first film that I wrote the story for. They were locked into a release date. They had to have a film in theaters by that date. So a lot of the special effects, which were problematical from the beginning, had to be rushed, and some weren’t finished properly on time. But you go to the theater and you spend your seven bucks and you don’t see that.

JW: Star Trek in the theater took about two hours and twenty minutes, whereas listening to the audiobook took eight hours. So there is a whole lot more complexity there and not so much action.

ADF: It’s different [....] They are called moving pictures for a reason. What you have to visualize in the book is a lot easier to just see on screen. And things you put in a book, like characters’ thoughts for example, they just don’t have time for it, in two hours and twenty minutes on the screen.

JW: How final of a screenplay were you working from for the Star Trek book?

ADF: Star Trek was exceptional, because for the first time, I actually got to see the finished film before I started the book. It’s never happened before, and it shows you how well the production went. That’s not something you read about in the paper. But for someone like myself who has been around the business for 35 years, to actually see the finished film before I start the book, never happened before. They are always working on the film up to the last minute.

JW: Well, the film was supposed to come out in December, and they pushed it back, so I’m sure that gave them some extra time.

ADF: Yeah, that probably had something to do with it, and I’m sure they made a lot of last minute revisions and tweaks, too. But I’ve never even been able to see the rough copy of a film before. Sometimes they don’t even ask me. But in this case it was very helpful.

JW: Did you do a lot of scientific research before this book?

ADF: Before Star Trek? No. I have a pretty good grounding in science. Just as an amateur. I’ve always been interested in science and I always do… I pride myself on doing that research. There is a lot of very lazy science fiction out there. But you don’t need to have a PhD in astrophysics or something. You just have to be able to research your material, and it’s surprising how many people don’t. There were some scientific concepts in Star Trek that I kind of wanted to elaborate on, if you will, and so you go online, in the old days you’d go to the library, and you go online and check things out. And if I have any real sharp questions, there are people like Greg Benford, a fellow writer, who do have a solid academic scientific background. I’d send him an email and ask a question. Everybody shares very freely within this very small group of people who do this on a full time basis. (source Wired)

Read the full article here.