Well, what about my namesake Icerigger by Alan Dean Foster. A planet with frozen oceans where the natives use sailing ships on skis. A clipper ship with airfoils and massive masts with billowing sails flying along on skis. What’s not to love.
Again, Foster’s Nor Crystal Tears A first contact story from the perspective of insect like aliens. I would love it see this filmed because nothing like it has ever been done. Could audiences relate to giant bugs who are the protagonists of the story? Their whistle/click language in subtitles, it would be an ambitious film.
I guess The Man Who Folded Himself is possible, and time travel stories are always interesting – but I’m afraid they’d get squeamish about the main character having so much sex with both himself and his sister from an alternate timeline.
My favorite SciFi series, and I thought I was the only one. If they made the movies on a Star Wars budget it would be great, otherwise, not so great. I’d pay just to see Smade’s planet.
I had forgotten that the Featherstone books had gotten up through WWII as well. I always think of that series as starting in WWI and forget that the story progressed through the inter-war years up through the end of WWII.
I meant the In the Balance books (first series)…I think that would make a killer series of movies if they could do them right.
Could it ever make it as a movie? hard to see how-the plot spans centuries…and Asimov never deined a lot about how things worked in the distant future. However, i’d cast sean connery as hari Selden; maybe Sing as gen. Bel riose.
The prologue to ITCOTCK – you can read it and six sample chapters here – has SF authors at an SF con watching the live TV broadcast from the first Mars lander in 1962. The venerable Leigh Brackett exults:
And, come to think of it, some of Brackett’s Golden-Age Solar System stories might make good movies – in an alternate-universe kind of way.
(In particular, keeping faithful to the late-'60s-early-'70s cultural milieu – a time when both social revolution and fascist crackdown appeared real possibilities to many – without appearing hopelessly dated. And working all that utterly indispensable philosophy and historical stuff into the dialogue and/or exposition without glazing over the eyes of the audience. The special effects, OTOH, would be easy.)
Ok, there are a lot of really good stories that could be made into movies, but the thread asks not for good ones, even great ones, but the “greatest.” That has to mean the best Science Fiction story that would survive transformation into a really good movie, that hasn’t had it done, yet.
I would offer an unusual selection: “Nightfall,” by Asimov, but I see it’s been done as a couple of low-budget cheeseys.
I’d have to go with Stranger in a Strange Land. It’s got religion, sex, violence and sex. Movies thrive on that. And it has a pretty good story, which might even manage not to be screwed up.
Unfortunately, way past its expiration date. I remember seeing an ad looking for a Stranger screenwriter in 1967. Back then, it would have been cool.
While I like the idea of Lensmen movies, how about Skylark of Space? A lot more episodic, a much stronger and continuing villain, and the invention is even more believable in the present day than in 1919.
I’d like to see deCamp’s Lest Darkness Fall. You can use the sets and costumes left over from Rome.
As for Lewis, I can maybe see Out of the Silent Planet, but I can’t see Perelandra being good cinema. I forget if the Eve figure is naked all the time (I read it a long time ago) but even that wouldn’t help enough.
