Adam Christopher, sci-fi writer.
Stephen Jewell talks to Kiwi writer Adam Christopher, whose career choice was sparked by Star Wars and Doctor Who
Long-time Star Wars fan Adam McGechan was born in February 1978 — barely two months after A New Hope — as it has since been titled — first soared on to the big screen at Auckland's now-closed Cinerama theatre. Now a successful author with around 20 books to his working name, Adam Christopher, the 44-year-old, who was raised in Titirangi but now lives in Cheshire, has now realised one of his childhood ambitions with the publication of Shadow of the Sith, his first novel set in the popular science fiction universe.
"I really am a classic child of the 80s," he laughs. "I was exactly the right age for the original trilogy, and Empire Strikes Back was my favourite movie as I watched it over and over on VHS. The first movie I remember seeing is Return of the Jedi, although I apparently went to see the first film in August 1978 when I was just a baby, as my dad was into sci-fi and wanted to see it."
As a child, Christopher's burgeoning creativity was fuelled by his interest in both Star Wars and Doctor Who.
"Doctor Who was all about the Target novelisations and that's what made me want to be a writer," he recalls. "I was making up my own Doctor Who stories at primary school, which were written down. Star Wars was all about the toys, so I'd make up stories while playing with them."
Moving to the UK in 2006, Christopher's debut novel Empire State was published by Nottingham's Angry Robot Books in 2012. His first venture into licensed territory was 2015's Elementary: The Ghost Line, which was based on the CBS television series, starring Jonny Lee Miller as a modern-era Sherlock Holmes. After penning 2016's Elementary: Blood and Ink, he produced three books set in the Dishonoured video game world. He eventually got the chance to try his hand at Star Wars, contributing to both of the A Certain Point of View short story collections.
"I've always wanted to write Star Wars," he says. "But it's tricky to get into because it's at the top of the tie-in market, so there are few opportunities. It was a case of working on my own stuff, and I'd also done a few other tie-ins, so I was used to working in an existing mythology."
After writing 2019's Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town for the same editorial team at New York's Del Ray Books, Christopher was initially offered a book starring Pedro Pascal's The Mandalorian. But when that fell through, he was given what turned out to be an even more enticing assignment. Inspired by a brief conversation in 2019's Rise of Skywalker, Shadow of the Sith chronicles what happened when Lando Calrissian and Luke Skywalker teamed up two decades earlier to save the then-infant Rey and her parents from falling into the clutches of ruthless assassin, Ochi of Bestoon.
"It's kind of a bigger book because it's Luke and Lando, who are two of Star Wars' main characters," says Christopher. "It's also set during that period between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, which was really kind of open, so there was a lot of excitement."
Christopher was able to make his own small contribution to the Star Wars mythos, fleshing out and naming Rey's parents, Dathan and Miramir.
"Miramir came from a mistyping, as I wanted something fantasy-like and Lord of the Rings-sounding for her, and it's funny because Miramar is where Peter Jackson's studio is," he admits. "Dathan is someone I went to school with, and I just thought it was a cool name, which I always wanted to use."
Christopher is the latest Kiwi to make his mark on the interstellar epic after actors Daniel Logan, Jay Laga'aia and Temuera Morrison starred in the 2010 prequel trilogy — while the latter also appeared in the recent Book of Boba Fett — while Taika Waititi directed an episode of The Mandalorian and is attached to helm an upcoming Star Wars film.
"There's this New Zealand connection to Star Wars," he says. "I used to work at Whitcoulls on Queen St and I used to sell Temuera Morrison his weekly Mana magazine and New Zealand Herald."
Having concentrated on licensed titles since completing the fourth instalment of his Ray Electronic series in 2018, Christopher insists that he finds working on other people's properties as fulfilling as creating his own stories.
"It uses a different part of my writing brain," he explains. "I really enjoyed nailing Hopper's character in Stranger Things because we've got David Harbour playing him on TV and getting Jonny Lee Miller right as Sherlock in Elementary because he's a very particular character as his mannerisms and speech are so intense and precise.
"Ever since I wrote my first Elementary book, I've realised I could do it because not every writer likes doing it, as they like freedom and want to do their own thing. I absolutely enjoy doing my original work, but I get a different kind of enjoyment from tie-ins. Also, I'm a total geek about this stuff and I love Stranger Things and Star Wars."
Shadow of the Sith by Adam Christopher (Del Rey, $37) is out now.
1.Your "overnight success" stemmed from the tragedy of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. It must have been overwhelming at the time. How do you view your sudden prominence now?
It's definitely taken me a long time to adjust to and feel comfortable with it. I think I've found my feet now, and have a much stronger sense of who I am. I have a clearer idea of what kind of work I want to be associated with. It doesn't mean there aren't still big overwhelming moments of uncertainty, and I often feel imposter syndrome creeping in, but I know I'm not alone in that either.
2.Your work is simple, highlighting small human moments of acceptance and kindness. Why do you think it resonates so strongly with people?
I think we love feeling like we're not alone in something, no matter how good or bad or big or small it might be. I think my work sometimes encapsulates a feeling, an idea or a moment that people aren't able to articulate for themselves. Sometimes I think of my work being like the glimpse you catch of yourself, your reflection in a window, the bathroom mirror when you've just woken up, not prepped — just you as you are — little real moments.
3.You have been commissioned to make art for Amnesty International, the New Zealand Government's Covid-19 response, Time magazine and more. What has been the most meaningful for you and why?
I think the most meaningful was a project with Accor Hotels in 2020, where I got to talk to returning Kiwis during the height of the pandemic, and all sorts of people working in MIQ who quietly supported it all, doing all sorts of work that went unnoticed. Illustrating their stories was pretty special. We were all going through such a bizarre time, and everyone I spoke to trusted me with their stories. They were honest and open, and ready to share their experiences. Some people were returning home because of a death, a birth, for work.
Some had lost everything overseas and had no other options. I was so humbled to be trusted by these people. I was also very aware of what deeply strange times we were in, that we may never live through anything like this again. It was such a privilege to turn those stories into illustrations.
4. What are you most proud of when it comes to your second book, In This Body?
For someone who's always been incredibly shy and quiet, I feel really proud for sharing more of my own story in this book. I live with a pretty significant visual impairment that a lot of people might not be aware of. It's led to some big insecurities and challenges over the years but that's what this book is acknowledging - that our relationship with our body is not simple or straightforward. Our bodies grow, change, evolve, disappoint or delight us — they carry us on our journey.
5. At this stage you could support yourself as a full-time artist but you choose not to. Why?
I think if it weren't for Covid I would have taken that leap but with the uncertainty of the last couple of years, the thought of relying entirely on sporadic income stressed me out a bit too much. It also doesn't help that New Zealand is an incredibly expensive country to live in. There might still be a time when I do art full-time but I have a lot of other interests I'd love to explore alongside it.
In This Body, by Ruby Jones (Penguin, $35), is out on November 8.
Dick Seddon's Great Dive and Other Stories
by Ian Wedde
(Te Herenga Waka University Press, $30)
Reviewed by David Herkt
An ability to recover the past in all its richness and texture has always seemed appealing. It can often be the primary reason why a book or a television or streaming series becomes successful. There is a surrender to nostalgia in all its complexity, a chance to revalue personal or social histories, and a moment of recollection of gone things in all their wonderment.
Ian Wedde's Dick Seddon's Great Dive is a novella first published in 1976. A whole issue of Islands, New Zealand's premier literary magazine at the time, was given over to this purpose. This decision of then-editor Robin Dudding, was bold. A literary journal is seldom devoted to a single work and Wedde had only been known as a poet and a critic, not as a writer of fiction.
Now republished in Dick Seddon's Great Dive and Other Stories as a THW Classic by Te Herenga Waka University Press, a new reader has a chance to evaluate this seminal work. It is a story of the early 1970s revived in all its specificity. In his account of a doomed love, Wedde pans across emblematic places, songs, and objects: Vance Vivian slacks, Birdwood Crescent in Parnell, green Badedas bath gel, Janis Joplin's song Mercedes Benz, Kombies, the Kiwi pub on Symonds St, Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon, the soft-focus photographs of David Bailey, Port Chalmers …
Chink is a rebel with a motorbike, whose father is recently dead. He's out of place for many reasons: a collector of New Zealand history and the connoisseur of odd facts (the chauffeur of the 1940s Hollywood film star, Errol Flynn came from Picton) and resonant photographs including that of "Dick Seddon's Great Dive" around 1900, where the then Prime Minister went underwater at the Ngāruawāhia Regatta and stayed down for five minutes ("A record!"), which adorns the book's cover.
Chink's relationship with Kate is the passionate heart of the novel. Her marriage has faltered. They pair, they debate, they hitch-hike, they win at pool in a country pub. There are parties, drugs, and people. "Memory becomes a power grid," Wedde writes, and it is possibly even truer of this novel in the present than when it was written. It echoes in a collective contemporary New Zealand consciousness with the force of a familiar and reflective past now shown to the reader differently.
Dick Seddon's Great Dive is a tragedy played out to its end, captured between the poles of Auckland and Port Chalmers. While it might deal implicitly with the relationship of New Zealanders to their own history, the story is strangely filled with premonitions. Wedde was a writer who found New Zealand's future in his present and located it with uncanny accuracy. The novella has grown with time and captures it.
The collection also contains other works from Wedde's early career. There are often similar revivals of place through acutely observed and luminous detail. Characters are buffeted by the tides of their days. But it is upon the titular novella, Dick Seddon's Great Dive, that the true value of this collection rests. It holds the enigmas of its era, repays re-reading, and will remain in thought like a perfectly shaped white stone picked up on the black sand of Bethells Beach, where it both begins and ends.
Relationship expert Nic Beets shares his insights – and four Kiwis share their stories.