Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Intellectually challenging material with plenty of action, fighting, etc. The message-couriers with smart skateboards and magnetic harpoons for catching rides on cars are worth the price of admission all by themselves!
The Running Man – done the way King/Bachman actually wrote it, up to and including the ending! No wussing out!
Well I liked the movie but then I adore Arnold.
And I can’t find this book, anywhere, without buying it, and I don’t wanna buy it unless I’ve read it. Any local Dopers feel like loaning me a copy? I promise to return it!
Post 9-11, there’s no way anyone would do this. Would you settle for Robert Sheckley’s The Prize of Peril, as written?
I personally think Stranger in a Strange Land would make an awful movie, even if the director didn’t screw around withy the story – and you know any director would
Riverworld would be pretty good (not done as the SciFi TV series, though), as would The Puppet Masters, if they stuck to the book. One of the screenwriters had a posting on the Internet, though, explaining how the script ended up getting wriiten, sold, resold, and finally made. I’m amazed it came out as close as it did. But still pretty disappointed.
I’d like to see Raymond F. Jones’ This Island Earth done as he wrote it. The 1950s movie started off OK, but it hit the wrong note before it even finished the initial Interociter section, and after that it abandoned the book altogether (There are no “Metalunan Mutants” in the book, or superscientific aliens who nevertheless need human help to do R&D).
I’d really love to see Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court done straight, since no one’s ever done it that way, but I’m not holding my breath.
How about L. Sprague deCamp’s Let Darkness Fall or Silverberg’s Up the Line or even H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (done right, for once)?
Heinlein’s Glory Road could do well…
Vernor Vinge’s True Names. Maybe the Wachowski brothers could do it justice.
John Varley’s Titan trilogy would be wild, lots of action and crazy creatures, the 50’ Marilyn Monroe would be priceless!
I’d love to see Vinge’s Fire upon the Deep just so I could see the bonded ferret clusters in screen.
Oh, that’s a great book. I don’t know if it’s really filmable, but I’d love to see someone take a crack at it.
I’ve always though that Robert Asprin’s early novels would be great movies. They’re nice and short, so you don’t have to cut out half the meat to fit it into 2 hours. I’m thinking of Mirror Friend Mirror Foe and Cold Cash War here.
In addition to the others mentioned, I’d like to nominate Vernor Vinge’s Marooned in Real Time as a book that I’d love to see made into a movie.
I’ve got a copy I can let you have. Actually, it’s an anthology of all the stuff King wrote as Richard Bachman.
I second The Gods Themselves. It would be a CGI challenge, but I think it could be pulled off.
I also second BwanaBob’s suggestion of Asimov’s Foundation books. Adrian Brody is a perfect fit for the Mule.
Would you? I’d so appreciate it!
How can I get my hands on it?
Frank Herbert’s The Santaroga Barrier. I know it’s not strictly SF, but Herbert is mainly known as an SF author, so in it goes. Perhaps one of my motivations is that I’ve been hearing Morgan Freeman’s voice in my head whenever I read Win Burdeaux’s dialogue, and I’d like to hear it “for real” sometime.
(On an even less sci-fi note, perhaps something involving Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy.)
I’ll skip my usual rant about Johnny Mnemonic done right, and suggest Cordwainer Smith’s Norstrilia. (Quite a few of his short stories would also be good.) How could you pass up the story of a simple farm boy who parlays his enormous wealth into enough to buy the Earth?
While looking up that, I found this list, which reminded me of Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time, about an R&R team offering support to fighters in a time-travel Change War. (See his ‘Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser’ series for a great entry if somebody wants to start a fantasy-movie thread!) I also faintly remember his A Specter is Haunting Texas, mentioned in the same list, as being pretty good.
Gateway by Frederik Pohl would also be good. An asteroid full of alien spacecraft offers ‘prospectors’ a chance at huge royalties if they bring back anything good from a trip … but nobody knows how to tell where the ships are programmed to go.
Much as I like The Stars my Destination, I don’t think it would do well as a movie. In a book, you can get away with a paragraph at the beginning saying “All of a sudden everyone has the ability to teleport short distances at will”, but I don’t think that you could present that smoothly in a movie. Audiences will have a hard time identifying with a world where such an ability is commonplace.
I’ve heard much talk about an Ender’s Game movie. Apparently, the biggest obstacle is the difficulty of casting child actors: The kid who’s perfect for Ender right now would be too old, by the time you pushed through production to the point of filming. So you either have to rush production the moment you find the right actor, or you have to somehow be able to recognize the right actor before he grows into the part.
And there was, in fairness, one movie faithful to Heinlein, Destination Moon. But yeah, we could certainly use some more.
My picks:
Seconded The Stainless Steel Rat. Aside from the spaceships, the mastermind criminal who turns secret agent law enforcer is a genre that Hollywood has done many times before, and it seems to work pretty well. Toss in some special effects and gee-whiz gadgetry, and you’ve got it.
Seconded Starship Troopers. I can’t fathom why there hasn’t been a movie of this book yet. Powered armor, alien warfare, and nuclear hand-grenades: This has summer blockbuster written all over it. Unfortunately, this probably won’t happen now, thanks to Verhoeven.
One or more of the Honor Harrington books. Female warriors who kick ass and take names work well on film. Epic naval battles work well. Political intrigue works well. Big explosions work well. And furry sidekicks work well.
Asimov’s The Caves of Steel. This, I think, is what they were trying for (and failed) with i,robot this past summer. They could even have cast Will Smith as Lije Bailey, if they had wanted. Again, though, as with Starship Troopers, it’s probably too late now.
If we want Heinlein, a good bet would be Tunnel in the Sky. With most of the characters in their late teens (and hence no big-name actors), and most of the action in an almost-Earthly jungle, it could be done on a fairly low budget, and most of the story is told in action. All necessary exposition could be smoothly handled in the classroom prior to the exam.
And there’s some talk floating around of a Ringworld movie, which could be stunning if it’s done well. The movie should be light on plot, but would make up for that with sweeping visuals to a background of a good classical score.
“Inconstant Moon” by Niven could be really, really cool- if a trifle depressing.
“Good Omens” by Pratchett and Gaiman. I mean, come on!
Spider Robinson’s Mindkiller. Or maybe something about Callahan’s Place! 
Harry Harrison has sold the movie rights to The Stainless Steel Rat several years ago to a television producer who has continued to option the rights, despite the fact that he can’t raise the budget required. I agree that this would be a fantastic movie, though you’d have to decide what tone you’d want the film to be in. The first book was far more serious and straight than later (and IMHO, more fun) novels, especially The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World and The Stainless Steel Rat For President.
At one point, as an exercise (no intention of actually submitting), I started to write a spec script for an SSR movie, more or less based on a combination of events in The Stainless Steel Rat and The Stainless Steel Rat Get’s Drafted. (I want to ignore the whole “Time Corps” thing…ugh!) It was a lot of fun but found it difficult to maintain canon. There are numerous inconsistancies between the novels (though the later books were more interlaced.)
Other novels I’d like to see: I think Charlie Kaufman could do a good job of adapting (heh) the more cinematic of either Vonnegut or Dick, both of whom have been badly maligned when translated to the screen. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, A Scanner Darkly (for which Kaufman did write a commissioned script), and The Man In The High Castle would all be excellent candidates. Cat’s Cradle just begs to be adapted into a film.
I think Niven’s The Integral Trees would make a visually stunning film, though you’d have to trim a lot of the pointless (and flat) character development. It would need to be centered around a single character. It would work a lot better than Ringworld, which, if you start to work the numbers, you realize wouldn’t be all that impressive-looking up close. The Gil Hamilton stories would be easy to translate but not all that impressive, IMHO. Maybe Protector, though the evolutionary biology speculations are horribly out of date, or A World Out Of time.
Stranger
The Man Who Never Missed by Steve Perry (from whence I got my user name.)
Maybe Stranger in a Strange Land - but primarily because it is filled with buxum young women.
I strongly second the nominations of Double Star by Heinlein, and Left Hand of Darkness by Le Guin. They’re both more psychological, character-driven stories that wouldn’t require a huge budget, but can still have quite spectacular environments if the budget is available.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson would also make a great movie, with special effects and a budget more like Minority Report than, say, Eternal Sunshine.