Discussing Sci-Fi Storytelling & World Building with Writer Jon Spaihts

Prometheus is coming. It’s merely weeks away. And to say my hopes are interstellar-ly high would still, somehow, be an understatement. Thankfully in this interim before I get to soak my brain in Ridley Scott’s latest sci-fi odyssey, I’ve had something in my back pocket to get me by, that today, with this article, I’m going to share. It’s a taste of the very beginnings of Prometheus from the man in the very engine room of the ship itself. Screenwriter Jon Spaihts speaks more clearly and deftly about writing than almost anyone I’ve heard. He’s the credited writer of The Darkest Hour and co-credited with Damon Lindelof on Prometheus, but it’s his unproduced sci-fi work for which he’s most known and for which he has become so sought after. One of his unproduced scripts, Shadow 19, is a big, bold sci-fi head-trip that toys with the basest notion of man versus …