Exclusive: Joe Abercrombie to write more Love, Death & Robots episodes for TBA Volume 5

Joe Abercrombie feels "like part of the furniture" at the Celsius 232 fiction festival, having attended 11 of its 15 editions so far. Fans pretty much expect to see him in Asturias every year, and while this time the hottest topics were naturallyJames Cameron's adaptation of The Devils and its newly announced sequel, The Heretics, we also had the pleasure of exploring some other aspects of his past and recent work in our one-to-one interview below.

From creative process and origins, including how video games shaped his narrative, to pure fan service such as which character from The First Law he'd bring into the team of The Devils, the fully subtitled interview has plenty more for Abercrombie fans. But one particular part of his recent career will be especially interesting to animation fans: the episodes of Love, Death + Robots he has adapted.

"Yeah, I mean, a really interesting exercise altogether", Abercrombie says when asked about adapting other authors' work for LDR and working with much shorter, punchier formats than his sprawling novels. "So I've worked quite a lot, both on adapting my own stuff for screen, with very little success, I should point out. And also I've worked with some other writers adapting their books for the screen as well, so a much longer format, kind of hour-long formats or film kind of formats. And so this was kind of, in a way, a natural step to work on Love, Death and Robots, where pretty much all the stories are based on a short story or adapted from something."

• Did you know? Joe Abercrombie wrote "Mason's Rats" (Volume 3, Episode 7), "Spider Rose" (Volume 4, Episode 3), and "Golgotha" (Volume 4, Episode 6).

Adapting someone else's story can occasionally be frustrating, he admits, but for Abercrombie the constraints are largely part of the appeal:

"And it's kind of, it can be a frustration to have the story there", he then admits about adapting someone else's idea, "but generally I find it's a really nice change because you're able to come into something that is largely established, you have the structure there, you have a shape that people already like and enjoy, and it's about trying to just bring it out in the most effective way for the format and also to often bring it right down to a focus point, because some of those are five minutes, some are 15 or 10, but some are very, very short, and so it's all about trying to boil it down to the most efficient shape, and that's actually quite an exciting kind of opportunity."

The collaborative nature of animation also offers a welcome contrast to the usually solitary life of a novelist:

"And you work with great directors, great animators, who have amazing ideas", the writer finally adds regarding teamwork, "and that's fun as an author who's generally working on his own to come into a team of people, sometimes with bad ideas, and sometimes with great ideas, and you kind of work your way through the bad ideas and hopefully find the kind of best form of the story."

Love, Death & Robots Vol. 5 to have some Abercrombie flavour

But beyond his experience adapting stories for Volumes 3 and 4, we asked whether he might eventually like to see an original story of his become an LDR short. As it turns out, there will be more Abercrombie in the anthology first, only still in adaptation mode:

"I mean, it's always possible [to have an original story in there], so I think I'm doing a couple in the next series again, a few episodes which are all adapted from people's stuff. Maybe one day an original"

For now, however, Abercrombie is still waiting for the right original idea to fit LDR's compact format:

"I suppose you're waiting for that kind of, that diamond of an idea that fits the format, and I'm not generally a short story guy", he concludes. "I'm kind of a long story guy, so hopefully one day that will happen. That will come to me. A diamond bullet of a story to do."

Which existing Joe Abercrombie story would you like to see adapted for Love, Death + Robots, or would you rather see him create something entirely original for the anthology? Let us know below.