Ann Leckie

The first part of “She Commands Me And I Obey” is now live!

I’m going to briefly say that this story is sort-of dedicated to my mother. In the last eight or so years of her life, she became an enormous Blues fan. The hockey team, not the music. She regularly bought season tickets and took various grandkids with her to the games. And this was, of course, during the first several years I was working on Ancillary Justice.

But it’s only sort-of dedicated, because my mother would not have particularly appreciated or enjoyed some aspects of the story, and I suspect she’d have been unamused at a dedication to her being put at the top of it. So I haven’t. But I’ll say here that I partly wrote it for her, and I also thank her for bringing me to the hockey game so often.

If you can, and haven’t already, please consider donating to Strange Horizons so part two can be unlocked ASAP. If you can’t, or already have, or have decided against it for whatever reason, do please tweet or blog–about She Commands, or about some other SH story you love, or just about SH.

And never fear being left hanging. Now the first part is up, I am determined the second will be, eventually. For now, let’s see how the fund drive goes.

So, several times in the past few months I’ve been asked if there was any chance of Ancillary Justice making it to the movies–or TV. And mostly I’ve replied that, wow, that would be awesome!

Which, actually, was mostly a kind of evasive answer, because stuff was maybe brewing behind the scenes but you don’t talk about that kind of stuff until it’s real. But now it’s real. Ish. And I am told that I can now blog about it!

Basically, Ancillary Justice has been optioned for TV. Now, “optioned” doesn’t necessarily mean that anything is going to actually happen–things get optioned and then never made, quite frequently.

So who has this option, you ask? It’s production company Fabrik and Fox Television Studios. They have previously worked together on THE KILLNG for four seasons on AMC and Netflix, and they started their relationship with BURN NOTICE, which ran for seven Seasons on USA.

Fabrik is currently in production on BOSCH, Amazon’s first ever hour-long drama pilot based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling Harry Bosch book series

Fox TV Studios is the studio behind THE AMERICANS for FX, and WHITE COLLAR, GRACELAND, and COMPLICATIONS at USA, among others.

Now. Like I said, this doesn’t mean there’ll ever actually be any Ancillary Justice on television. But it does mean there could be, and lately it seems like there’s been quite a lot of science fictional television turning up. So, who can say?

I am also aware, of course, that bringing AJ to any sort of screen (not counting your eReader screen, of course!) would be…an interestingly difficult project. I made sure to have a conversation with the folks at Fabrik about my specific concerns–namely, the approach to gender, and the issue of whitewashing (as in, I do not want to see the book whitewashed, I would like to namedrop LeGuin and mention her Earthsea experience here, thank you). I was very pleased with their response. And in fact, if I had been the least bit unhappy with how that conversation came out, I would not be writing this blog post now.

The fact remains that even with all the best intentions in the world, there’s a lot of leeway to really misstep badly in trying to bring AJ to any kind of visual medium. On the other hand, there is quite a lot of potential for a really good team to do something really cool, that may or may not be what I was trying to do with the book, but that is still something new and marvelous. And actually, I think the best adaptations work that way. It’s an exciting thought.

So, um, that’s my news! Remember–option. Option doesn’t mean anything’s actually happening. But the potential is there, and that’s tremendously cool!