Imagine a tale about a not-too-distant future in which murder is nearly impossible. And then imagine that one of today’s most gifted and versatile actors delivers it straight to your eardrums. Enter , written exclusively for audio by Hugo Award-winning author John Scalzi (Old Man’s War, Redshirts) and performed by Zachary Quinto (Star Trek, American Horror Story). We sat down with the stage and screen star to talk about performing for audio, living in a world without death, and how The Dispatcher leaves traditional sci-fi and fantasy behind.
Note: Text has been edited for clarity and will not match audio exactly.
Audible: In your own words, what is The Dispatcher about?
Zachary Quinto: The Dispatcher takes place in a future world in which anyone who’s murdered comes back to life. Basically, murder’s not really possible because if you’re killed by somebody else, you immediately return to your previous state just before you were murdered. It’s created this space for these people called “dispatchers” who perform a service for somebody who is injured or ill to the point where they’re not going to survive. A dispatcher can come in and end their life and then that person is ostensibly resurrected. The story kicks off with the disappearance of one of these dispatchers and the pursuit of what happened to him.
A: What struck you the most about this novella?
ZQ: I would say that there was a really evocative sense of this kind of other world, and yet it was so firmly rooted in a world that was really relatable, easy to access, and easy to understand. That creates a really unique dynamic, I would say — something that, for me, goes beyond just traditional fantasy or sci-fi and gets into this realm of real character and real drama. There were moments, of having to explain what the idea is — what this construct is in the world where if you get killed by somebody else, you will 999 times out of 1000 come back, but there’s always the one chance that you might not. That was particularly fun to understand how people have come to integrate this reality into modern life.
A: What would things be like if death wasn’t actually final?
ZQ: Probably pretty chaotic, I would say. The book, I think, does a good job of containing the chaos by giving its reality boundaries and parameters. But I imagine it would be pretty bleak. I think part of the preciousness of life is that it’s fleeting. If that suddenly ceases being true, then I think life loses its preciousness in a lot of ways. I think the book tips into that a little bit and explores it.
