From page to screen
PIERCE BROWN TRIES TO TURN HIS MULTI-LAYERED CAKE INTO A CUPCAKE
Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy has made a steady climb up the New York Times bestseller list since its debut in 2014. The first book ( for which the trilogy is named) landed at number 20; Golden Son, its sequel, reached single digits; and Morning Star, after heavy preorders from an audience hungry for the conclusion, debuted at No. 1.
Publisher Del Rey Books thought they had a hit when they first acquired the trilogy — sentiment at the time was, “If we can’t make this work, we can’t make anything work” — and their confidence was not misplaced. With time and positive word-of-mouth, the sci-fi saga built a large enough following to reach the top spot.
Though the trilogy came to a conclusion on the page with the release of Morning Star earlier this year, Brown is just beginning to adapt his work for the screen. A cinematic version of Red Rising is in development at Universal Pictures, with director Marc Forster ( World War Z; Quantum of Solace) attached, and Brown himself working on early drafts of the screenplay.
It’s all a much different experience for Brown. “Imagine having a beautiful cake,” he suggests. “One you’ve made from scratch and tediously layered with chocolate swirls and topped with strawberries and candles. Now imagine trying to make that cake into a cupcake. That’s a bit how it feels if you try to make the same product, but in film form.”
Despite that, the author doesn’t see introducing the changes necessary to adapt a book into film as a bad thing, and instead found it liberating to focus on preserving the “soul” of the story. The idea of seeing it play out at the theatres has been something he’s gotten used to as the trilogy progressed.
“I was much more conscious of a movie adaptation for Book 2, after Red Rising already had pretty substantial interest from produ- cers and studios,” he says. “But Red Rising itself was written in a creative and strategic vacuum in two months above my parents’ garage in Seattle. That said, I do write action scenes from a very cinematic perspective, so I think movies have certainly helped shape my writing style.”
The film adaptation of Blade Runner ( from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) is a particular favourite of Brown’s, as is Lawrence of Arabia and the more recent adaptations of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings.
Red Rising echoes some of the hallmarks of these classics, featuring a small band of heroes facing off against a seemingly insurmountable power. It explores the nature of social hierarchy through an authority that sells society one thing, but delivers something altogether different. It’s a stratification so complete that the trilogy’s protagonist, Darrow — whose Martian tribe is essentially the industrial chaff of an empire spanning the solar system — has no idea that the castes above him even exist.
Though we’re (hopefully) a long way off from the kind of violent conflict found in Brown’s novels, science fiction has always had a knack for tapping into an exag- gerated version of contemporary fears. His novels are as much about intrigue as about combat, and the political aspects of his universe are all too familiar — especially when they explore the dangers of a cult of personality.
“Demagoguery cannot exist without crisis,” Brown explains. “On the whole, people can be pretty rational when they are not afraid or angry. So I look at the current climate and blustering demagogues and I shake my head because we act as if these politicians just popped up overnight.
“The only reason demagogues throughout history have been able to gain a foothold is because of dissatisfaction with the status quo. Things suck. Then someone starts talking very loudly, and he might be a little weird, a little wonky, but at least he speaks his mind. At least he’s honest. At least he wants to try something different. Something he believes in. He’s gotta be better than the establishment jerks, right? Then, of course, he’s not.”
Brown intends to explore this topic more in depth with his next trilogy, called Iron Gold, the first book of which is due next year. Taking place a decade after Morning Star, and featuring the characters “blessed enough to have survived the first trilogy” ( there’s a George R. R. Martinesque level of character reduction in Red Rising), Iron Gold will focus on what happens after an empire is destroyed and opportunists rush in to fill the vacuum.
The writer Oliver Morton once posited that a thriller was about stopping something from getting out of control, and science fiction was about exploring what would happen if it did. As Brown’s next sci- fi trilogy unfolds, hopefully it remains merely an exploration. However, given the runaway success of Red Rising ( and its potential film franchise), the only area in which thrills might be lacking is in Brown’s journey to the top of the bestseller list once again.