I am especially intrigued by the 3rd and 4th installments.
I love the story “Jerry was a Man”. It is a classic and some say the inspiration for Planet of the Apes*. I have hopes that someone will finally do a good treatment of a Heinlein story.
I of course look forward to seeing any of Ellison’s works. I always enjoy his stuff. I have to set up my DVR for these.
My TV watching this summer has consisted of the New “Dr. Who” and Yankee baseball. This will be a welcome addition.
Good to see they’re adapting Robert Sheckley. He’s one of the first SF authors I’ve read, and over the years his stuff has been badly adapted (Freejack, the 10th Victim, Condorman) or simply ripped off (Total Recall, I maintain, owes an awful lot more to Sheckley’s “The Status Civilization” than it does to the Philip K. Dick story that is its nominal source. I can give plenty of other examples). Maybe, for once, they’ll do a good job with his stuff.
Of course, I keep hoping that someone will do justice to a Heinlein story, too. Maybe we’ll luck out for once.
He’s from the literary end of the sf spectrum, so even though he’s been writing for 30 years and has won the Nebula, Sturgeon, and Tiptree Awards, he’s effectively invisible to the sf audience.
Anyway, the novel to start with is Corrupting Dr. Nice, which starts with one of the best-realized time travel tales in the field and then goes into a screwball comedy. With dinosaurs. The apocalyptic satire Good News from Outer Space is next.
But like most sf literary writers, I think his best work is in short fiction, another reason why literary sf isn’t as well known. So his longer short story collection, The Pure Product, is the place to start there. It includes “A Clean Escape,” the story that will be dramatized on Masters of SF. It doesn’t include his Nebula Award-winning novella, “Another Orphan,” but that can be found for a penny on Amazon in the Ace Double edition.
Sheckley will not be dramatized. His was one of the two stories filmed but dropped for this shortened run. Maybe if there’s a DVD…
I think it is in terms of introducing the works. He will say a bit at the beginning and maybe the end. Think Rod Sterling, but of course in Hawking’s very distinct and mechanical voice.
(looking at the list) But there are no light sabers or unicorns and they are all based on something called “short stories” instead of trilogies or longer series. How could they be science fiction?
Once upon a time, Science Fiction asked its writers and readers to think and have some knowledge of or at least a keen interest in science. Despite decades of Hollywood and TV disabusing the common person of this knowledge, Science Fiction can be one of the best formats for story telling and can be kept believable at the same time. Strangely enough, instead of a Unicorn, we will probably see a Pegasus. Of course, this Pegasus will be a creature of advance science not fantasy. Therefore, I think the show will still be able to meet your expectations.
I hope that cleared up your confusion,
Jim
I know you were joking, I just felt like playing on your joke. Plus I thought you might have forgot about the Pegasus.
Well, we all know what the fate of this series shall be now, don’t we? You aren’t going to attract favorable demographics with such a staid old title. Yet Another High Quality Yet Short-Lived SF Series, at best…
It’s being broadcast on Saturdays at 10 pm. That’s the lowest-rated slot in all of television. You could have Ron, Hermione, and Chewbacca in a nude three-way and it wouldn’t get ratings.
Yeah, the website starts by saying that it is 8/7c, but then later on says:
TV Guide concurs with the later time.
Speaking of Sturgeon and Masters of Science Fiction (okay, yeah, it’s a hijack), anyone else buying the Sturgeon collected short stories? The Nail and the Oracle just arrived yesterday. I swear, every new volume costs more and contains less.
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