It’s a possibility.
From the UK comic 2000AD, Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog, and ABC Warriors would all rock. But more likely than not, because of the failure of Dredd will never get a look-in. Though Rogue Trooper would be cheap to make, and would be ideal for a few current B-movie action stars like Jason Statham, Daniel Wu, or Luke Goss, with Gina Torres as Venus Bluegenes.
On the contrary, I think a good screenwriter could make FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE into a very good movie. Or how about Andrei Norton’s “The Stars Are Ours”?
I think it’s time for a Dream Park series, to be honest. The CGI is finally good enough and cheap enough, and there’s enough material to do season-long arcs with some single-episode stories woven in. You’d just have to find someone better than Niven and Barnes to actually write it.
Agreed as to both. Depending on tone, language and added action, either could be scaled up to a PG or even an R film, if the studio insisted.
True, but all that could be taken out of the screenplay without losing much.
I think some of Robert L. Forward’s stuff is screen-adaptable, e.g., Saturn Rukh.
Likewise, anything in Ben Bova’s Grand Tour series. No ETs, just humans spacing around the Solar System – which makes for lots of plain old human-vs.-human conflict.
And anything in Allen Steele’s Near-Space series. At present, we’ve got films like Gravity, featuring present-day astronauts using present technology. And we’ve got films with far-future galactic-scale settings and interstellar states. But we don’t have much set in the near future we or our grandchildren might actually live to see, with the Solar System being explored and near space being colonized and industrially exploited. It would be thought-provoking.
Larry Niven’s Draco Tavern would make a good TV series.
I want to see Runner. Unfortunately, the single sci-fi element doesn’t lend itself well to translation to screen and is more of a hook for an amazing chase story. Even the primary relationship story is an unromantic father daughter story. I’m not really a good judge, though, since Patrick Lee’s work is the only of the genre I’ve read in years.
While it’s only marginally SF, more in the nature of dystopian fiction, I would really, really like to see a straight, faithful-to-King’s/Bachman’s-book remake of The Running Man.
And I’m quite certain we never, ever will see it. If you’ve read the book, you know what I mean.
Haruki Murakami’s Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
The one’s I love most can’t be done in two or even three hours.
I would love to see John Steakley’s Armor done, but without narration a lot of the good stuff will be lost, Felix psychology is really interesting.
Also, Legacy of Heorot by Larry Niven is basically Alien without the rape.
This is a really long shot, and should (at least from our present viewpoint!) perhaps be labeled alternate history rather than science fiction, but I would love to see War with the Newts made into a movie.
(If you haven’t read the novel, do it!)
I think the next one that will actually be made and be huge is Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson; it’s also the 1st book the Reckoners trilogy, so that’s a big plus to Hollywood.
The one that I’d most like to see that will never happen is David Weber’s Safehold series.
I again realize that no one reads Cordwainer Smith anymore.
I don’t think either Norstrilia or The Ballad of Lost C’Mell are visual enough for a film adaptation, but The Crime and the Glory of Commander Sudzal or The Game of Rat and Dragon could both make good space shoot-em-up movies.
This Perfect Day, by Ira Levin. A 1984ish tale of escape from an authoritarian dystopia.
Norstrilia not visual enough? It’s filled with wonderfully outlandish SF images.
In fact, I’ve wondered if the Wachowski’s Jupiter Ascending might not be an attempt to co-opt a lot of Cordwainer Smith’s imagery and concepts into a movie.
Think about it – animal-based “Underpeople”. A Battle over control of a drug that prolongs human life. A protagonist who ends up “owning the Earth”.
My lasting impressions are of a computer manipulating the economies of worlds to make the protagonist the richest person in the Galaxy, and a lot of talking.
But a CGI giant mutant sheep would be awesome.
What about all the travelling between worlds, the built-up supercity that the Earth has become, and the Underpeople – The Doctor Chimp (who’s really a bird), the cat-woman C’mell, the Eagle guy E-Telli-Kelli, Rod being disguised as an Underperson, the chase through the maze of the city…
Go back and re-read the book. You’ve forgotten a lot.
I do not think that “Rendezvous with Rama” would be any kind of a hit, once people who have seen it report that there are NO questions answered AT ALL!
The only point to the entire story is revealed at the last moment when the scientist that wanted to go but could not (can’t remember why) suddenly realized that “Ramans do everything in threes!” (Sequel!)
One I forgot; James White’s Hospital Station series; a huge, multi-species space station dedicated to medicine for all the sapient races (of wildly varying sizes and habitats), with your basic squared-jaw hero-doctor, beautiful nurse, enigmatic (and frightfully capable) boss…
I think special effects may be up to the challenge by now.