Exklusivt: Joe Abercrombie skriver fler Love, Death & Robots-avsnitt till TBA:s volym 5

När vi träffar författaren och manusförfattaren Joe Abercrombie på eventet Celsius 232, berättar han att han nästan känner sig som en inventarie efter att ha deltagit i elva av festivalens hittills 15 upplagor.

Under vår intervju med honom berättade Abercrombie bland annat om sin kreativa process, hur TV-spel har påverkat hans berättande och vilken rollfigur från The First Law han skulle vilja ta med till The Devils. Vi pratade också om hans arbete med Love, Death + Robots.

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Abercrombie beskriver erfarenheten som en intressant utmaning:

"Yeah, I mean, a really interesting exercise altogether. So I've worked quite a lot, both on adapting my own stuff for screen, with very little success, I should point out. And also I've worked with some other writers adapting their books for the screen as well, so a much longer format, kind of hour-long formats or film kind of formats. And so this was kind of, in a way, a natural step to work on Love, Death and Robots, where pretty much all the stories are based on a short story or adapted from something."

Abercrombie har skrivit "Mason's Rats" (säsong 3, avsnitt 7), "Spider Rose" (säsong 4, avsnitt 3) och "Golgotha" (säsong 4, avsnitt 6). Att filmatisera någon annans berättelse kan vara frustrerande, men begränsningarna är också en del av tjusningen. Abercrombie förklarar:

"And it's kind of, it can be a frustration to have the story there, but generally I find it's a really nice change because you're able to come into something that is largely established, you have the structure there, you have a shape that people already like and enjoy, and it's about trying to just bring it out in the most effective way for the format and also to often bring it right down to a focus point, because some of those are five minutes, some are 15 or 10, but some are very, very short, and so it's all about trying to boil it down to the most efficient shape, and that's actually quite an exciting kind of opportunity."

Samarbetet med regissörer och animatörer är dessutom en välkommen kontrast till det annars ensamma författarlivet:

"And you work with great directors, great animators, who have amazing ideas, and that's fun as an author who's generally working on his own to come into a team of people, sometimes with bad ideas, and sometimes with great ideas, and you kind of work your way through the bad ideas and hopefully find the kind of best form of the story."

Vi frågade även om han skulle vilja se någon av sina egna originalberättelser bli en del av Love, Death + Robots. Det visar sig att mer Abercrombie redan är på väg, även om det även denna gång handlar om filmatiseringar:

"I mean, it's always possible [to have an original story in there], so I think I'm doing a couple in the next series again, a few episodes which are all adapted from people's stuff. Maybe one day an original"

För tillfället väntar han dock fortfarande på rätt idé för det korta formatet:

"I suppose you're waiting for that kind of, that diamond of an idea that fits the format, and I'm not generally a short story guy. I'm kind of a long story guy, so hopefully one day that will happen. That will come to me. A diamond bullet of a story to do."

Vilken av Joe Abercrombies befintliga berättelser skulle du helst se i Love, Death + Robots, eller vill du hellre se honom skapa något helt nytt för antologin?