For years, now, I’ve wanted to see David Brin’s Startide Rising made into a visual story. However, the way I envision it, it wouldn’t be a movie - making this novel into even a three hour movie would still chop some of my favorite parts. What I envision would be a full 13 episode ‘season.’ And while CG has improved to the point that the various aliens might be able to be done in a live action version, I still think that this calls for being animated.
Seriously, a storyline where dolphins are about half the major characters - including at least one who’s gone insane. The idea of trying to escape in a trojan ‘horse’ made from the hulk of a larger enemy ship that crashed. The fascinating look at all the alien societies, and why they’re trying to catch Streaker. Just beginning with the Thennannin Battleship crashing into the ocean of Kipru would be stunning… And from there the story starts getting exciting.
But, however it were done… I want most to see the scene where the humans use dumping the water from their dolphin crewed ship, while being chased at relatvistic speeds, as a weapon against their pursuers! Go Wolflings!
Not that I’ve got anything against the suggestions made earlier, many of them would be great movies, too.
Holy crap, I’ve read that! In… sixth grade, maybe. Damn, I’d forgotten all about that. And I’ve since read other books by that author! Didn’t realize I’d been a fan for so long!
Thanks for the reminder, elfkin477. I wonder if I still have the copy I read way back when…
I would love to see Dan Simmons’ Hyperion series as a movie. Are you kidding? The Shrike could be the best special effect ever and everybody’s favorite cinematic nightmare for the next 20 years. What do you think of Billy Crystal as Saul? (Just kidding; I kid.)
Since Hollywood adaptation of sci-fi novels usually boil down into stupid, mindlessly destructive action flicks with no sembalance of a plot or characterization or whatever, they might as well do Bill the Galactic Hero and save everyone the heartache.
Wow, lots of good ideas! Special seconds to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Glory Road, but only if done right.
Another from Heinlein that I’ve always wanted to see on the big screen is Star Beast. It would be excellent as a full CG movie, a la Shrek or Finding Nemo. How else are you going to show an 8-legged elephant sized talking “pet” shoving it’s head through a courthouse wall? It’s safe and enjoyable for the kids, and clever enough for the grown-ups too.
In a completely different vein, I’d like to see Joe Haldeman’s novel Buying Time. The leads could be played by Nicolas Cage and Halle Berry, and it should have an “R” or hard “PG-13” rating for adult language, violence and brief nudity.
There are so many others …
“Steel Beach” - John Varley
“Footfall” - Niven and Pournelle
“Lord of Light” - Roger Zelazny
“Bill, The Galactic Hero” - Harry Harrison
“The Gods Themselves” - Isaac Asimov
“The Flying Sorcerors” - Larry Niven and David Gerrold
" …
Consider Phlebas, by Iain M. Banks. Probably the only one of his books that can really be made into a movie, it’s packed full of the requisite action, and I think the sheer scale and scope of the technology that Banks describes would really blow the average audience member’s mind. He really forms a whole 'nother world. And the book is so insidiously smart, its brilliant moments cloaked in a laser fight or a frenetic starship chase through the bowels of a massive General System Vehicle that’s almost a hundred kilometers long…
And the final showdown will just rip audience hearts asunder. ASUNDER, I tells ya!
I generally don’t like child actors, so I wouldn’t like to see Ender’s Game. But I would like to see Speaker for the Dead, especially if Ender was treated like a mysterious figure with a dark backstory that was only gradually, and partially revealed. Ender’s Game would be hobbled by the limited settings available – a few Earth childhood scenes, a few scenes inside the game, and the rest on the space station. Filled with child actors. But Speaker for the Dead has spaceship, game, and foreign world scenes. It has aliens, colonists, philosophy, gore, action. I think it could be well adapted in a two hour movie.
Another book which I think could be well-adapted is Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Or his other one Deepness in the Sky. Aliens, space battles, planet battles, lots of special effects. Both have gripping plots, interesting aliens Fire has sentient dog-like creatures with a multi-entity intelligence as well as a galatic millieu of aliens in which humans are a minor part, Deepness has insects fighting a war against religious fundamentalism and brainwashed humans.
Another book series that may be classily compressed into one movie are the four books of the Pleistocene Exile by Julian May (starting with The Many Colored Land). I think these books are bad-ass. They have a bunch of misfits opting out of a futuristic galactic society to travel back 6 million years into the Earth’s past through a one-way time portal for self-imposed exile. No metapsychics (the galactic society is based on them and human psychic operants abound) or real criminals are allowed. Well, they get back there and they find, surprise, a race of humanoid aliens who have fled there from their home world in another galaxy. And who promptly enslave them and Ramapithecus, man’s precursor. Then follows the alien on alien and human on alien wars.
I am surprised that nobody has picked up one of the Neanderthal books that made a splash a couple of years ago. Can’t remember the second one, but the first was a book called Neanderthal by Darnton about a group of people who find a tribe of Neanderthals alive and well in the mountains of Central Asia. Of course, they just happen to be psychic and pissed.
I would agree with a multi-part series of the Uplift series of Brin or just Startide Rising. But just keep Costner well away – witness what he did to Brin’s other adaptation, The Postman. Blech.
First of all, I’d like to second the Hyperian Cantos, although I’m not sure how it could be done - there’s just so much there. Any film translation would also lose most of the literary allusions, which would be a damn shame.
I also think that the fact that Roger Zelazny has never been adapted by Hollywood (Damnation Ally doesn’t count) is downright criminal. He has snappy, funny dialog, well-drawn characters and fast-moving, imaginative plots. Pklus, his books are short, which means not much will be lost on the way to the screen. Why haven’t we seen any of that?
Another suggestion would be Stephen R. Donaldson’s Gap Cycle, if they have the guts to film it as a hard R rated film. It has tons of action, good science, complex characters and loads of psychological depths. The main problems are that it can get too intense and miserable at times, and that the aliens - the Amnion - are a bit too Borg-like (although I’m not sure who ripped off who, here).
I’m tempted to say “Last and First men” by Olaf Stapleton.
However, I know that there’s no way in Hell that anyone could ever make a decent movie out of that. It would take far too much time and far too much money.
That and the fact there are no characters.
Barring that, I’d settle for “At the Mountains of Madness” or “The Shadow out of time” by HP Lovecraft
Hey, you took mine! I’ve thought the same thing for a long time. I’d like to see a remake of Forbidden Planet too. With the new technology, they could do a really neat job on that one.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
I’ve always thought that Childhood’s End would be a good movie - especially now, when you could do justice to the Overlords.
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So did C.S. Lewis, seriously. It was also my first thought when I saw the OP title.
Speaking of…, Lewis’s SPACE TRILOGY (tho I’m not fond of OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET, I love PERELANDRA & THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH)- Alexis Denisof as Ransom going from tweedy bookworm to action hero to Arthurian Saint.
Heinlein’s STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND -Sex, cannibalism, Jesus, Mars! A few years ago, Tom Hanks was reported to be interested. I have no idea who would be good casting.
Ayn Rand’s ANTHEM (as she wanted, in stylized animation- per her request to Walt Disney himself).
Finally, NBC has attempted it twice- maybe third time will be a charm (and in someone else’s hands besides NBC’s)- Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD-
cloning, virtual reality porn, religious technocracy- Fordy! Also envisioned in the 1930’s!
I really can’t see a lot of these suggestions getting done, for reasons given in my post. Hyperion? Maybe as a ten hour miniseries. There’s no way you could shrink that down to fit a standard 2 - 2.5 hour time slot. Footfall? not even remortely possible. C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra trilogy? Only if you do it in bits, like LOTR. And Lewis’ series hasn’t anywhere near as many fans as Tolkien did.
I’d love to see more Heinlein, and think you could adapt one of his juveniles. But I think that trying to do Stranger in a Strange Land is biting off more than you can chew. It would be grotesquely altered. Look at the hatchet job they did on Puppet Masters – and they were trying to keep that one faithful!
