She and Mac make a formidable storytelling duo. As editors, we both weighed in on the initial drafts of the episodes, and these were further refined in rehearsal with Jordana Williams, the director of STS. We actually had a couple different proposals, but Marco and I really liked the noir angle of Steal the Stars. We knew we wanted to work with Mac, and I’ve been familiar with his award-winning playwriting for years in addition to being a fan of The Message and LifeAfter, which he did for GE. Why start with Steal the Stars? Had Mac Rogers already written it or were you involved in the development? We’ve made this very interesting new thing that we’re all very excited about. The support that we received from Macmillan as well as the great partnership we developed with Macmillan Podcast Network and Macmillan Audio has led to this really wonderful intersection of publishing and performance production. Partnering with a company like Gideon, which specializes in staging science fiction plays, has allowed us to explore dramatic podcasts in an artistic and industrial fusion of theatre and publishing. The advent of podcast technology has led directly to Americans’ rediscovery of the audio drama as a rich, enjoyable, easy-access storytelling format.
So the question for us was, for the kind of fiction we publish at Tor, is any format really out of the question? And the answer was, of course, a resounding no, especially if the opportunity is right. But what publishing is really, at its core, is the business of communicating ideas. When most people hear the word “publishing,” they tend to think it means words printed on a page, or posted online. A few days later, I was sitting with Marco in his office, and he just looked at me and said, could we do something? And I just thought, well, why not, no one said that it couldn’t be done. Then Sean Williams, Gideon’s artistic director, said, hey, wouldn’t it be great if we could do something with Tor? We all said, yes, and then ordered another round. I just thought that everyone would have a great time together.
I thought that they would really enjoy meeting Marco, who has been a friend for years, even before I worked at Tor. I worked as a theatre critic with the New York Review of Science Fiction covering the various plays in New York and other far-flung places, so I knew the members of Gideon Productions. It just might work!” ideas do - over drinks. What was the impetus? Of all the directions you could have experimented with, why dramatic podcasts? Tell me about this conversation between the two of you that sparked the idea for Tor Labs. I recently spoke with them via email about the genesis of Tor Labs, audio dramas, and other avenues Tor Labs may explore in the future. Tor Labs is the brainchild of Tor editors Jen Gunnels and Marco Palmieri, who have big plans for the experimental imprint. This year, they launched something called Tor Labs, “a new imprint emphasizing experimental approaches to genre publishing, beginning with original dramatic podcasts.” The first podcast, Steal the Stars- about government employees guarding a crashed UFO - is a 14-episode sci-fi noir thriller that feels like listening to a feature film. And earlier in 2015, they signed sci-fi writer John Scalzi to an unprecedented 13-book deal worth more than $3 million. Two years ago, responding to the rise of e-books, they launched a new line of novellas they believed to be better-suited for the platform than epic doorstoppers. Then came Tor.com, home to award-winning short fiction from heavyweights like Nnedi Okorafor and Jeffrey Ford, as well as a huge fan community that participates in massive “re-reads” and “re-watches.”īut you might not know this: Tor is easily one of the most innovative, risk-taking publishers in the United States. It began in the ’80s with Tor Books, which has since published everything from Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time to Ken Liu’s translations of The Three-Body Problem. If you’re even remotely geeky, you know the Tor media empire has long been a major force in science fiction, fantasy, and horror.
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