Elliot Blake: Skip the Permission, Launch the Sci-Fi Novella

Elliot Blake has spent his career inside the entertainment industry, directing Sir Ben Kingsley and Helen Mirren on Audible's Moriarty trilogy, executive producing Apple TV's The Sisters Grimm, working on an Emmy-winning Tomb Raider series. On this episode of Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, he joins Mookie to talk about his debut novella, Into the Great, and the very different, very DIY road that got it into print.Elliot's novella mashes up genres most writers keep separate: military sci-fi conflict, a full alien invasion, and a real romance at its core, all pulling from influences like William Gibson's The Peripheral, This Is How You Lose the Time War, and The Expanse. The book's central metaphor came into focus almost by accident. Elliot started writing it right around the 2024 election, using the story as a place to retreat from a world that felt like it was on fire, and an early reader pointed out that the aliens in his book, silent, invulnerable beings who arrive and simply observe, were really standing in for the disorienting speed of political, environmental, and technological change itself.Into the Great comes from Li'l Factory AB, a Swedish boutique press run by former video game executive David Polfeldt, printing just 500 numbered, hardbound copies. Elliot and Mookie dig into what it actually takes to launch a book that small and that independent, from an ASMR unboxing video his Gen Z daughter talked him into, to a local reading at Romans Bookstore in Pasadena.The conversation turns sharp when AI comes up. Elliot draws a hard line: he wants no part of generative AI in his creative process, and makes a genuinely compelling case for why. Drawing on years spent in writers' rooms and animation studios, he argues that collaboration creates serendipity no single mind, human or machine, can replicate, and that removing people from the process removes the actual magic of making something. He and Mookie also take on Hollywood's current identity crisis: franchise fatigue, oversaturation, and why scarcity, not more content, might be exactly what audiences are hungry for.The GuestElliot Blake is an Emmy-winning animation producer, former Amazon Studios production and development executive, and writer. He is the executive producer of the animated Apple TV kids series The Sisters Grimm, the EP and director of the flagship Audible Original series Moriarty, and the author of the forthcoming science fiction novella Into the Great.Some of his past work includes the Emmy-winning animated web series Tomb Raider: ReVisioned, the cocktails and comedy podcast Daydrinking with Gary & Elliot, and the crime comic The Package. He's also a creative consultant, with past clients including preschool entertainment giant Moonbug Entertainment and video game developer PlayerUnknown Productions.More from Elliot Blake: https://elliotblake.comGet the book: https://lilfac.comWant to be on the show? Have feedback? Send Mookie a text!Support the show