Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars coming to Spike TV

and J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) and Vince Gerardis (Game of Thrones) will be coproducers. Not sure how I feel about this. Loved the books and I’m more than a little nervous about seeing it brought to any TV, let alone Spike.

Spike announced today that it plans on adapting Kim Stanley Robinson’s award-winning novel Red Mars into a television series.
*Red Mars *is the first book in the Mars Trilogy, a series of science fiction novels that chronicles the lives of a group tasked with terraforming and settling on the harsh surface of Mars while Earth suffers from overpopulation and environmental disasters.
All three books — Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars — are award-winning and have seen translations in over 20 languages.

Link

This should be interesting. On the one hand, i’m incredibly excited, because the Mars series is one of my favorite sci-fi works. On the other hand, i’m a little dubious about whether they will be able (or willing) to pull off the stuff that made the book so compelling.

The challenges of the early arrivals are, indeed, fascinating, and i love the science and engineering stuff. But one of the things i also loved about all three books was the depth of the political and economic debates over the future of Mars. I’ll be very surprised if much of that, especially the rather anti-capitalist undertones that characterize many of the conflicts, make it into the series.

“I am not convinced this can be adapted reasonably faithfully, given the medium in general and this outlet in particular.”

There, that outta save some typing and bandwidth.

Red Mars: ++
JMS: +++
Spike: - - - -

I think 10 episodes could cover the book adequately

Brian

This should be interesting. On the one hand, i’m incredibly excited, because the Mars series is one of my favorite sci-fi works. On the other hand, i’m a little dubious about whether they will be able (or willing) to pull off the stuff that made the book so compelling. Especially, as others have noted, because it’s Spike in charge. I’d have much more confidence in someone like AMC or Netflix or HBO doing it.

Source

The challenges of the early arrivals are, indeed, fascinating, and i love the science and engineering stuff. But one of the things i also loved about all three books was the depth of the political and economic debates over the future of Mars. I’ll be very surprised if much of that, especially the rather anti-capitalist undertones that characterize many of the conflicts, make it into the series.

I remember liking Red Mars quite a lot, the next one half as much and then I didn’t even care about the third. There were three books, right?

I’d be real interested in seeing this.

I loved all three books. Hope it’s done well; I’ll become a fan if so!

Merged two topics about this.