When Robert J. Sawyer returned from the movies on Friday, he checked his e-mail and found a Google Alert notifying him his life was about to change: ABC had ordered 13 episodes of Flash Forward, based on his 1999 novel of the same name.

About an hour after receiving the news, Sawyer received an e-mail from David S. Goyer, who co-wrote and directed the pilot episode. The message ended with this warning: “This will change your life.”

Indeed, the network is already positioning the series as a successor to Lost. It even began promoting the show before a deal was in place; though it won’t debut until the fall, the show gained buzz after a series of mysterious promos aired during the 100th episode of Lost on April 29.

Flash Forward focuses on the aftermath of a bizarre event in which everyone on the planet blacks out for two minutes (two minutes and 17 seconds on the show) during which time many experience visions of the future. The book won an Aurora Award, Canada’s top prize for science-fiction, in 2000.

Soon after it was published, the book fell into the hands of Goyer’s wife, and in 2000 Goyer – a Hollywood heavyweight who wrote the script for Batman Begins and the story for The Dark Knight – expressed interest in spearheading an adaptation. HBO was keen at first, but passed after reading the pilot; ABC secured the series last October after a bidding war with Fox.

“There’s been a buzz about this [book] since it first came out,” Sawyer says, adding they turned down an offer from an American broadcaster a few years ago because his agent thought they could get a better deal. “It took forever and then suddenly boom! It’s all happening at a breakneck pace.”

Sawyer will serve as “creative consultant” and will write one of the first season’s episodes. Goyer and Brannon Braga (24; Star Trek: The Next Generation) will serve as executive producers. The cast includes Joseph Fiennes and John Cho.

Sawyer was on-set for some of the filming of the pilot earlier this year.

“When I was on set, “ he says, “I felt, to the very core of my being, that they were filming my novel Flash Forward. Philosophically. In theme, in emotional impact, it is what I wrote a decade ago.”

He says fans shouldn’t worry about Hollywood ruining his book.

“The standard response from fandom whenever anything is changed – even in a very faithful adaptation like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings – is: ‘How could you let them do that to your book?’ My response is they haven’t done anything to my book. It’s right here on the shelf.” Anyway, he says, there’s a difference between adapting for a movie and a TV show: with a movie you need to start tearing away to fit the material into a two-hour time frame, while for television you need to start adding. “Since I get paid very well for each of those hours, I am not grousing at all about anything they are adding.”

Sawyer is the author of almost 20 books, including the Hugo Award-winning Hominids. His most recent novel is Wake, published earlier this year, the first in a trilogy about the world wide web gaining consciousness. The second volume, Watch, is due next year. While Sawyer is excited about Flash Forward, he’s more excited about writing the final volume of the series, Wonder.

“I love Hollywood, and I certainly will be bopping back and forth a fair bit, but I am first and foremost a novelist.”

SOURCE: National Post