Last night, the New York Review of Science Fiction drew one of the largest audiences ever for its reading series at the South Street Seaport Museum as fantasy author Naomi Novik read a scene from the still-in-progress fourth novel in her series which restages the Napoleonic Wars with the additional presence of dragons, focusing on the bond between one former Royal Navy officer and his dragon, Temeraire. The series debuted in paperback earlier this year to huge commercial and critical acclaim, and we couldn’t help but ask, perhaps a bit cheekily, if all that Peter Jackson option money had changed her life. “Well, Charles was already making a lot of money,” she laughed, gesturing to her husband, Charles Ardai, who directs the technology development group at D.E. Shaw when he isn’t flying the pulp noir flag for Hard Case Crime, “but now I can keep him in the manner to which I’ve been accustomed to him keeping me.” In response to another fan’s question about the film deal, she explained that an option doesn’t really mean that Jackson’s bought the rights, just that he’s bought the rights to buy the rights, and that they’re a long way from adapting her novels into any other medium. Which means the news that New Line has booted Jackson off The Hobbit left her somewhat conflicted: “The fan geek in me is disappointed he won’t be making the film, but does this mean Temeraire could move up on his schedule? I don’t know.”
Also reading that evening was Ellen Kushner, who picked out a narrative throughline from her “genderf— swashbuckler” The Privilege of the Sword, which I simply have to track down now on account of its so funny and dashing and dances so charmingly along the knife’s edge of camp. Chatting during the intermission, I learned that she and her partner, fellow fantasist Delia Sherman, have been in New York for the last six months, collaborating on a musical theater piece called The Bone Chandelier which she describes in her online bio as “based on Jacobean revenge tragedy and nineteenth-century waltzes.” Can’t wait!