Warren Ellis is a name familiar to comics readers because of the many great series hes written over the past two decades including Transmetropolitan, Planetary, The Authority, Nextwave, Global Frequency, Fell and FreakAngels. The graphic novel Red, which he wrote, was adapted into a 2010 movie starring Bruce Willis, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren. The films sequel, Red 2, will be released this August.
Hes also written multiple videogames including Dead Space. Ellis first novel, Crooked Little Vein, was released in 2007. Hes also written extensively about futurism, design and other topics for Reuters, here at Suicidegirls and currently for Vice Magazine.
Ellis new novel is Gun Machine, a great thriller set in New York City about a policeman who has to hunt a serial killer. Using that armature, Ellis uses the novel to comment on the nature of police work, explore the history of New York City, the meaning of wampum and more. We spoke with Ellis over e-mail about the book, the future of the webseries Wastelanders which hes writing with Joss Whedon and whether hes abandoned comics.
ALEX DUEBEN: Where did Gun Machine begin for you?
WARREN ELLIS: Technically, in conversations with my original editor, the sainted John Schoenfelder. But I think it actually began in a meeting with a film studio, where we were talking about one of my horror books, and their intent to keep much of the action in its original UK setting because America doesn't have the ancient mythologies and weird history of Britain and they liked that atmosphere. Which got me to thinking. Because American does have its own weird ritual landscape and deep time. We just tend to think of it as only a couple of hundred years old. And even then, those few hundred years are pretty compressed stuff. So it actually began there, really, in a determination to write something that evoked antiquitous American strangeness.
AD: When you began how did you know that this idea was a novel and not a comic?
WE: Mostly because I'd been asked to write a novel, so I'd started off thinking very specifically about a story that would work better as a novel than as a comic. Comics are good at lots of things, but I wanted to write something that'd live better as a book.It's a hard thing to quantify in conversation.It's more like an instinct you get for these things. It's about density of information on the page, it's about evocation as opposed to illustration, it's about wanting to be more verbal and yet more preciseit's vague and handwave-y. Sometimes you just know.
AD: This is very much a New York story and I'm just curious because you've written about cities a lot but you are a Brit. Has New York long been a fascination for you?
WE: I spent quite a bit of time there in the 90s. Very fond of New York.But I settled on NYC very quickly because we have a lot of information about how the island was inhabited and used prior to the white folks showing up.It was a great place to drill down into history.
AD: Who is John Tallow?
WE: John Tallow is, basically, anyone who's lost enthusiasm for their work. Anyone who was doing great right up until they realised it didn't matter. Anyone who let themselves get disengaged from the world and then discovered they liked it better that way. I don't think he even thinks of himself as a "loner," although other people put that label on him. He just reduced his expectations and got comfortable.It's a nice deep rut he's in, where people can't see him and therefore leave him alone.
And that all goes to hell when he sees his partner's brains fly past him on the end of a shotgun blast.A situation that leads him to uncover the worst box of cold cases New York City's ever seen: a sealed apartment full of guns that each have an unsolved homicide on them.
AD: I don't think I'm giving anything away to say that various chapters of the book are told from the point of view of the killer. Was it a challenge to convey that kind of mindset?
WE: Each of those sequences took me an entire day, at leastsome, much longerand I couldn't write anything else in that time. Once you get into that mindset and start seeing things the way he sees things, you're useless for anything else. Without giving anything away, you are forcing yourself to see the world in a very strange and actually quite vivid way.It was fun.I was always reminded of what Aldous Huxley is reported to have said, the first time he dropped hallucinogens: "This is the way one should see."
AD: Gun Machine is a book where the main characters are cops or crime scene investigators, but it's a book that's ambivalent about cops in many ways. I think a lot of that comes from the character of Bat, but I wondered if you could talk a little about this because the default setting for cop storiesin the U.S. at leastis about how this is a noble calling and cops are a special breed of people and almost always correct, but Gun Machine is a much grayer kind of story.
WE: I don't think the varnished noble cop story really survives the light of day. Especially not an NYPD cop. Friends in New York who read the manuscript actually gave me a little bit of shit about my treatment of NYPD in Gun Machine. They said I was too kind. NYPD cops raped Abner Louima half to death with a plunger. An NYPD officer was caught in an operation that revealed his plans to kidnap, rape, slaughter, cook and eat women. That's just two of the more famous cases, and the barest topslice. We're not getting into even, say, the casual brutality and assault committed at Occupy Wall Street.
It's ambivalent because that's what the genre demands, and because it's a fantasy.A truer story would probably have been more excoriating: but that would have necessarily been a story about something else, not the story I was writing.
That all saidI've known a few cops who were noble. Crazy as fucking hell, but certainly solid good. So that's out there too.
AD: The great actor Reg E. Cathey is reading the audiobook. Did you get to pick who read it?
WE: I asked for Reg.Because he's great. But he only just recorded the thing, so I haven't gotten to hear it yet.
AD: This is your second published novel after Crooked Little Vein. What did you learn from your previous experience writing a novel that helped this time around?
WE: Mostly learning to let the book breathe. Crooked Little Vein was a short bookit took as long as it needed to tell the story, but I could have let it pause for breath and reflection more often.And the actual prose in that book was functional at best, whereas in Gun Machine there's a lot more atmosphere and psychology that needed to be summoned, which required me to step up to that a bit as a writer. We'll see if I blew it or not.
AD: I know that the rights to the book were bought a while back for a television series. I have to ask, has there been any progress, that you've made aware of?
WE: I just saw the sixth draft of the pilot episode script, as written by putative showrunner Dario Scardapane. TV is full of hurdles. Once you're inside the process, those hurdles make sense, but from the outside it looks like an insane endless steeplechase. So we're a ways away from a possible pickup for a pilot episode shoot, and even that is not the final hurdle to getting it on the air. But the script is in nice shape so far.
AD: Have you started writing or thinking about another novel?
WE: I'm into a new novel right now. Mulholland won't let me talk about it.I think it's due out summer 2014.
AD: You also have a nonfiction book coming out in 2014. Do you want to say anything about the book and what it covers?
WE: It's based on a talk I gave in Berlin last year called "Spirit Tracks." It's generally about the future of the city, but it's also about the past of the city, the crossover between the modern-day "science fiction condition" and hauntology and hauntings, and generally embracing strangeness and trusting no bastard.
AD: Is there any progress on Wastelanders, the webseries that you and Joss Whedon were writing? Dead? Alive?
WE: Alive and being pushed around the leafy grounds of a sanatorium in a wheelchair. Joss had Avengers and now has SHIELD and one or two other things, I have two books and a few other things, and we're kicking bits of script between us as and when we have time. We'll get there.Just slowly, like the shuffling old men we are.
AD: So Gun Machine is just out and you have two books in the works. I am wondering if you're working on any comics projects or have any thoughts about what you'd like to do next with the medium?
WE: I have four or five ideas I'd like to do in comics over the next couple of years, but I'm not really active on anything right now. At the moment, I'm just trying to get through the book launch, finish the next novel and then head into the non-fiction book for a few months. I mean, things can change at any time, and I certainly haven't left the comics fieldany more than I left the field of novels after Crooked Little Vein. I'd like to do something direct-to-digital, there are a few graphic novels I'd like to do, and sometimes I even get nostalgic for the classic monthly serial. But that's usually when I start drinking.
Hes also written multiple videogames including Dead Space. Ellis first novel, Crooked Little Vein, was released in 2007. Hes also written extensively about futurism, design and other topics for Reuters, here at Suicidegirls and currently for Vice Magazine.
Ellis new novel is Gun Machine, a great thriller set in New York City about a policeman who has to hunt a serial killer. Using that armature, Ellis uses the novel to comment on the nature of police work, explore the history of New York City, the meaning of wampum and more. We spoke with Ellis over e-mail about the book, the future of the webseries Wastelanders which hes writing with Joss Whedon and whether hes abandoned comics.
ALEX DUEBEN: Where did Gun Machine begin for you?
WARREN ELLIS: Technically, in conversations with my original editor, the sainted John Schoenfelder. But I think it actually began in a meeting with a film studio, where we were talking about one of my horror books, and their intent to keep much of the action in its original UK setting because America doesn't have the ancient mythologies and weird history of Britain and they liked that atmosphere. Which got me to thinking. Because American does have its own weird ritual landscape and deep time. We just tend to think of it as only a couple of hundred years old. And even then, those few hundred years are pretty compressed stuff. So it actually began there, really, in a determination to write something that evoked antiquitous American strangeness.
AD: When you began how did you know that this idea was a novel and not a comic?
WE: Mostly because I'd been asked to write a novel, so I'd started off thinking very specifically about a story that would work better as a novel than as a comic. Comics are good at lots of things, but I wanted to write something that'd live better as a book.It's a hard thing to quantify in conversation.It's more like an instinct you get for these things. It's about density of information on the page, it's about evocation as opposed to illustration, it's about wanting to be more verbal and yet more preciseit's vague and handwave-y. Sometimes you just know.
AD: This is very much a New York story and I'm just curious because you've written about cities a lot but you are a Brit. Has New York long been a fascination for you?
WE: I spent quite a bit of time there in the 90s. Very fond of New York.But I settled on NYC very quickly because we have a lot of information about how the island was inhabited and used prior to the white folks showing up.It was a great place to drill down into history.
AD: Who is John Tallow?
WE: John Tallow is, basically, anyone who's lost enthusiasm for their work. Anyone who was doing great right up until they realised it didn't matter. Anyone who let themselves get disengaged from the world and then discovered they liked it better that way. I don't think he even thinks of himself as a "loner," although other people put that label on him. He just reduced his expectations and got comfortable.It's a nice deep rut he's in, where people can't see him and therefore leave him alone.
And that all goes to hell when he sees his partner's brains fly past him on the end of a shotgun blast.A situation that leads him to uncover the worst box of cold cases New York City's ever seen: a sealed apartment full of guns that each have an unsolved homicide on them.
AD: I don't think I'm giving anything away to say that various chapters of the book are told from the point of view of the killer. Was it a challenge to convey that kind of mindset?
WE: Each of those sequences took me an entire day, at leastsome, much longerand I couldn't write anything else in that time. Once you get into that mindset and start seeing things the way he sees things, you're useless for anything else. Without giving anything away, you are forcing yourself to see the world in a very strange and actually quite vivid way.It was fun.I was always reminded of what Aldous Huxley is reported to have said, the first time he dropped hallucinogens: "This is the way one should see."
AD: Gun Machine is a book where the main characters are cops or crime scene investigators, but it's a book that's ambivalent about cops in many ways. I think a lot of that comes from the character of Bat, but I wondered if you could talk a little about this because the default setting for cop storiesin the U.S. at leastis about how this is a noble calling and cops are a special breed of people and almost always correct, but Gun Machine is a much grayer kind of story.
WE: I don't think the varnished noble cop story really survives the light of day. Especially not an NYPD cop. Friends in New York who read the manuscript actually gave me a little bit of shit about my treatment of NYPD in Gun Machine. They said I was too kind. NYPD cops raped Abner Louima half to death with a plunger. An NYPD officer was caught in an operation that revealed his plans to kidnap, rape, slaughter, cook and eat women. That's just two of the more famous cases, and the barest topslice. We're not getting into even, say, the casual brutality and assault committed at Occupy Wall Street.
It's ambivalent because that's what the genre demands, and because it's a fantasy.A truer story would probably have been more excoriating: but that would have necessarily been a story about something else, not the story I was writing.
That all saidI've known a few cops who were noble. Crazy as fucking hell, but certainly solid good. So that's out there too.
AD: The great actor Reg E. Cathey is reading the audiobook. Did you get to pick who read it?
WE: I asked for Reg.Because he's great. But he only just recorded the thing, so I haven't gotten to hear it yet.
AD: This is your second published novel after Crooked Little Vein. What did you learn from your previous experience writing a novel that helped this time around?
WE: Mostly learning to let the book breathe. Crooked Little Vein was a short bookit took as long as it needed to tell the story, but I could have let it pause for breath and reflection more often.And the actual prose in that book was functional at best, whereas in Gun Machine there's a lot more atmosphere and psychology that needed to be summoned, which required me to step up to that a bit as a writer. We'll see if I blew it or not.
AD: I know that the rights to the book were bought a while back for a television series. I have to ask, has there been any progress, that you've made aware of?
WE: I just saw the sixth draft of the pilot episode script, as written by putative showrunner Dario Scardapane. TV is full of hurdles. Once you're inside the process, those hurdles make sense, but from the outside it looks like an insane endless steeplechase. So we're a ways away from a possible pickup for a pilot episode shoot, and even that is not the final hurdle to getting it on the air. But the script is in nice shape so far.
AD: Have you started writing or thinking about another novel?
WE: I'm into a new novel right now. Mulholland won't let me talk about it.I think it's due out summer 2014.
AD: You also have a nonfiction book coming out in 2014. Do you want to say anything about the book and what it covers?
WE: It's based on a talk I gave in Berlin last year called "Spirit Tracks." It's generally about the future of the city, but it's also about the past of the city, the crossover between the modern-day "science fiction condition" and hauntology and hauntings, and generally embracing strangeness and trusting no bastard.
AD: Is there any progress on Wastelanders, the webseries that you and Joss Whedon were writing? Dead? Alive?
WE: Alive and being pushed around the leafy grounds of a sanatorium in a wheelchair. Joss had Avengers and now has SHIELD and one or two other things, I have two books and a few other things, and we're kicking bits of script between us as and when we have time. We'll get there.Just slowly, like the shuffling old men we are.
AD: So Gun Machine is just out and you have two books in the works. I am wondering if you're working on any comics projects or have any thoughts about what you'd like to do next with the medium?
WE: I have four or five ideas I'd like to do in comics over the next couple of years, but I'm not really active on anything right now. At the moment, I'm just trying to get through the book launch, finish the next novel and then head into the non-fiction book for a few months. I mean, things can change at any time, and I certainly haven't left the comics fieldany more than I left the field of novels after Crooked Little Vein. I'd like to do something direct-to-digital, there are a few graphic novels I'd like to do, and sometimes I even get nostalgic for the classic monthly serial. But that's usually when I start drinking.