When Tor.com published Daniel H. Wilson's short story "The Nostalgist" in 2009, the author wasn't yet a leading voice on robotics in fiction. Sure, the Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. had won a Rave Award from WIRED in 2006 for his book How To Survive A Robot Uprising, but his bestselling novel Robopocalypse was still a few years off. So when filmmaker Giacomo Cimini wanted to adapt Wilson's story into a film, it wasn't a big ask. After Wilson's novel hit big, though--with Stephen Spielberg and Drew Goddard tapped to direct and write the movie adaptation--the writer had to take more time to think about it. "I was just this Italian director living in London who wanted to adapt one of his short stories," says Cimini.