Just to continue the trend of getting us off Starship Troopers (which, by the way, I still contend is sheer brilliance and anyone who doesn’t like it has a brainpan full of day-old ricotta cheese, no offense, and anyway that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong…:))
Where was I? Oh, yeah:
Here’s one example of a novel that was greatly improved by the transfer to screen: D.F. Jones’ science-fiction novel, Colossus, is a very good idea surrounded by pages and pages of drab writing and tiresome characters, plus lots of unnecessary futuristic-society nonsense…
Then there’s Colossus: The Forbin Project, which jettisons most of the near-future background and most of the characters; takes the very good central idea of a scientist who invents a supercomputer to eliminate war, only to watch it become the merciless ruler of Earth; and turns it into THE single best science fiction film of the 1970s.
All his talk about Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and no one mentions The Puppet Masters? or **Destination Moon **. For that mater, although they are grea classic sf movies, The Thing (first ersion) and The Day the Earth Stood Still took such extreme liberties with their source material that it’s hard to call each the same story as the original.
If I remember rightly, The Forever War originally started as a short story, then at the encouragement of Ben Bova it was turned into a novella entitled “Hero,” and finally Haldemann blew it up into a novel. The novella might actually be the place to look if one were to create a script.
I must vote for *Starship Troopers * as the worst adaptation, and lean toward Derleth’s august entry for specifics. I think Verhoeven should’ve been placed standing outside the Forever War stasis dome for that movie, aka Buenos Aires 90210 in Space. Pull the suits, change the hero’s hometown, nationality, add women to the army for shower scenes, kill his dad and let Doogie Howser(Carl?) live…
Then again, didn’t he refuse to read it, as it may interfere with his creativity?
I believe Sofa is right,* Forever War* started out a short story, but didn’t some other movie start out as *The Sentinel, * a short story?? They did a decent job with 2001, even if Kubrick did play a little…
The Forever War was originally published as a series of short stories, but it’s not as if Joe Haldeman took the stories and turned them into a novel; he submitted portions of the novel for publication as standalone pieces while he was writing it.
Incidentally, the book did make it to at least one visual adaptation: The Forever War was optioned by Chicago public television, to be produced as a four-part miniseries. Haldeman wrote the teleplay and Stuart Gordon, of the Organic Theatre Company, was to direct. The project was dropped, but Gordon and Haldeman went on to produce the final segment of the miniseries as a stage play, which the Organic put on for a six-week period in the early 80s.
After seeing one of my favorite films Field of Dreams I read the book it was based on because after all [snotty voice]‘the book is better.’[/sv] Well Shoeless Joe Jackson Come to Iowa is not better. The book has useless characters and meandering plot and no real resolution.
On the subject of Philip K Dick
I don’t think any movie would be very much like the source material. Unlike some writers (King for one) his stories don’t read like film treatments and much of the action either takes place in imaginary worlds or in someones head or both.