George RR Martin and Jeff Buhler discuss how Nightflyers series came into existence

Just a few days left for ‘Nightflyers’ to be aired on Syfy. The sci-fi television series is based on George RR Martin’s novella of the same name. As far as plot we have come to know so far, a diverse team of scientists embarks on a journey in the year 2093 into space in a highly advanced ship called the Nightflyer. Their aim is to make a direct contact with the alien life forms.

The novella collection ‘Nightflyers’ is the fifth by George RR Martin and was first published in December 1985. It also had a film adaptation of the same name in 1987.

While the 70-year old George RR Martin is still involved with ‘Game of Thrones,’ his avid followers are passionately looking at him to complete the much-awaited ‘The Winds of Winter,' sixth novel in his epic fantasy series ‘A Song of Ice and Fire.’ Despite his busy schedule, fans are at least happy to see him getting on with his big TV project born out of his imagination ‘Nightflyers.’

Apart from Martin himself, Jeff Buhler is also working as the executive producer of the upcoming series slated to have its premiere in the first week of December. Here’s a short version of the detailed interview of Jeff Buhler and Martin taken by Los Angeles Times journalist.

 

Q: How did this series come together?

Buhler: I was approached by two wonderful friends and producers — we had done a reboot of “Jacob’s Ladder,” which is coming out in February. They approached me with the novella, the 30,000-word version [published in an expanded form in 1983, three years after the original shorter one]. I think it was a mistake to read it backwards, I should’ve started with the shorter one and then moved on to the longer one.

Martin: Probably. Or you could’ve just skipped the shorter one.

Buhler: The thing that struck me immediately was there was an open-ended or Lovecraftian quality to it, in that there are a lot more questions than answers that are presented in the story; that it felt like it could go on.

 

Q: George RR Martin’s, ‘Nightflyers’ had already been adapted into a movie in 1987 — were you surprised to see it come back around?

Martin: Yes. It was a movie that meant a lot to me personally. I thought my career was dying as a writer because I had a book that hadn’t sold and I couldn’t sell another book and all that. But the movie came and went within a week, not many people saw it. It has its virtues, I think, but it’s not ‘Citizen Kane’ or even ‘Alien’ or ‘Star Wars.’

Then I forgot about it for 30 years. Then I was told that, oh, they’re developing that over at Syfy for a TV series and I was like, “What?”

Buhler: We ambushed him. We pulled him in like “The Godfather.”

 

Q: Will fans of ‘Game of Thrones’ find something familiar in ‘Nightflyers?’

Martin: Hopefully they’ll find, number one, surprises. I don’t like television or books or movies that are too predictable. I try to take my readers by surprise, not to just do the same story they’ve done a thousand times before. I think “Nightflyers” the novella has some of that, and I think these guys are capturing some of that. They’re even surprising me.

Buhler: Space dragons [Laughs].

 

Q: Some of the story elements in ‘Game of Thrones’ have an allegorical component that reflects modern life. Is that part of ‘Nightflyers’ as well?

Buhler: The story takes place in a world that is much like ours. It allows us to raise certain moral dilemmas or certain questions, like whether or not colonization is the answer, or should we apply our intellect or technology to fixing the earth? So we have characters that exist within George’s story that then become mouthpieces for these debates.

The story, in a nutshell, is making contact with an alien life form and that is such a powerful idea. We didn’t set out just to make science fiction, it was science fiction and horror. That was the genesis of this story. George, tell the story of when you were challenged.

Martin: Around 1978 or ’79 I was reading some science fiction criticism by a writer doing history of the genre, but he put forward the theory that science fiction and horror were opposites — they were fundamentally incompatible, you couldn’t blend them. And when I read that I said, “Well! I’ll see about that.”

 

Don’t miss the premiere of ‘Nightflyers’ on Sunday, December 2, 2018 on Syfy.