Translating those cores into television, though, has meant a few instances of laying bare some of Grossman's subtexts — Quentin's depression, for example. In the novel The Magicians, it might take awhile for a reader to realize Quentin's sorrow isn't only circumstantial. On the show, when viewers first meet him, he has checked himself into a mental hospital because, as his psychiatrist repeats back to him: "The feeling of not belonging anywhere was overwhelming. And that you were the most useless person who ever lived." Gamble said, "It's clear when you read the books that he's pretty depressed, and we wanted to make that real: We wanted to put him in a mental hospital."



For Gamble and McNamara, they feel loyal to the spirit of Grossman's work, but the novels aren't their bible. "There's been a time or two when I've sat in a movie and felt how hamstrung a screenwriter was, because they had to hit every single beat that is beloved in a book," Gamble said. "It was clear to us from the beginning that the TV show couldn't function that way. The scope has to be different for us to produce it effectively."

For The Magicians readers who turn into viewers, that will mean finding out more about Eliot (Hale Appleman), Margo (Summer Bishil), Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley), and a very different sort of Penny (Arjun Gupta) — less of an annoying gnat, more of a carnal provocateur. At first, Grossman thought about the changes to Penny, "What are you doing? I don't get it.” But as soon as he saw the pilot, “it was great. He's a great counterweight to Quentin, he gives Quentin shit when Quentin deserves to be given shit."

And Quentin and Julia — the two poles of magical privilege — will remain central. Quentin was Grossman’s fictional stand-in from the beginning, and he is pleased with Jason Ralph's portrayal. "He has to project a lot of intelligence; he has to project a lot of sadness," Grossman said. "He has to be a little bit maddening, because he is much smarter intellectually than he is emotionally. He has to be both disillusioned and deeply idealistic. And he has to go from being kind of a depressed shoegazer to being a hero."

As for Julia, she is Grossman too — even though he originally intended for her to be only in the first scene of the first book, never to be seen again. "But for some reason, she kept coming back," he said. Julia became a main character in the second novel, because, he said, "Once I started writing in her voice, her character just exploded. She was so angry, and so insistent that the story was about her and not about Quentin. I couldn't stop telling that story."

In this world, the consequences of magic can sometimes lead to sad, if not ruinous, turns. Syfy's McGoldrick, echoing a theme of Grossman's, said in a recent interview, "These kids that are in these big fantasy things, if they saw and witnessed the things they do, the death and destruction, it would damage them. They wouldn't come out the other side all pristine and happy — it would really, really affect them."

It’s clear The Magicians books — and now the television show — are very much for adults. There is sex and violence and swearing and scares and some sexual violence. According to McNamara and Gamble, Syfy, an ad-supported network, has not been afraid of those things. After they began writing, they got their first notes back from the Standards and Practices department. "I was ready to either just ignore them or have a big fight or whatever," McNamara said. Before he could decide which, they heard from the Syfy executives: "We've told Standards and Practices they can't give you notes," read the email.

"There's a word we have to dip sound — the word 'fuck.' It means either the 'f' has to go or the 'k.' We basically have to follow the same rules Mr. Robot has to follow," Gamble said, referencing the Golden Globe–winning drama on USA, Syfy's NBCUniversal corporate sibling. "We should send them a fruit basket."