what books are you waiting for to be in turned into SF-films

[Har]

There are so many great sohrt stories by almost anyone I can think of that it would be impossible to say but one Arthur C. Clarke story sticks in my mind. It's about an astronaut who has a problem blasting off from the moon and gets into a decaying orbit which makes rescuing him before he slams into a mountain a risky proposition. It's a simple, suspenseful story that would make a cracker of a flick.

Yes...I remember that story!! That would be perfect for a film!
(I think it was in his old collection "The Wind From The Sun"...?)

For the life of me I can't remember the title, though.....arrggghh!!

[paradiddle]

Nice thread, I'm gonna check out some titles mentioned over here.

i believe Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man is being made into a film (just in case no-one's already mentioned it).

I was gonna suggest that one. I'm glad to know it is being made into a film.

One I definitely would like to see on the big screen is the 1st novel of the hitchhiker's series. Definitely the funniest of the lot and has a lot of potential if done right. Zaphod is hilarious.

[mckenic]

Someone mentioned 'Stranger in a Strange Land' - I'd love to see that. Actually anything by Heinlein!

I read ages ago about Chris Cunningham doing something with Neuromancer but Ive heard nothing in a long time. My favourite book and my favourite music vid director Anyone have any info?

Old news Here Right down at the bottom.

Cheers,
Dave

[Doug Nelson]

The primary contradiction in making movies from classic sci-fi novels is that the very complexity and nuance that allows them to endure makes them impossible to reduce to a 20-word salespitch. Making things even more impossible is that nowadays whatever sci-fi movie does get made must appeal primarily to teenage boys who have never read a book.

So how many of the books listed here could be reduced to a 20-word summary that would make millions of non-literate teenagers say "I gots to see that"? You're allowed to cheat and substitute "Tom Cruise" or "Bruce Willis" for "a man", and "Halle Berry" or "Carrie-Anne Moss" for "a woman".

No compelling 20-word summary, no movie.

[Scot Solida]

Ah, a pet subject for me...

I think, to put up with Hollywood's idea of science fiction, we have to accept a flawed definition of the genre. I love a lot of the movies listed in the "favorites" thread, but few of them can be considered science fiction. They ignore the science and reach for the fiction. Unfortunately, Hollywood more often than not cannot accept the fact that a movie can STILL entertain, and get the science right, too.

Personally, I have a hard time wanting to see Hollywood turn out yet another insipid popcorn-pusher based on a great book. I dearly love science-fiction, and I dutifully line up for far too many mediocre flicks out of desperation to see some SF hit the screen. Even when they get it right (Blade Runner), they f**k with the source material (the ending! Driving off into the woods? WTF?). As long as Hollywood producers insist on ignoring the basic tenents of science which drives these authors, they will be all but incapable of turning out good science fiction films.

Moves are expensive, science fiction movies doubly so, and Hollywood can only make a profit at aiming at the lowest common denominator. Unfortunately, it is under the impression that the lowest common denominator is utterly unschooled in basic physics (things that go "BOOM!" in the vacuum of space...spaceships that dart around in dogfights that could only occur in an atmosphere).

Mind you, there have been exceptions...and some of them have been named in the favorites thread. "2001" got the science right, but missed the timeline. Clarke could not have predicted man's apathy...he has often claimed that he thought putting a station on the moon by 2001 was the least we might have been expected to do, and that he would be perfectly safe to predict it. Blade Runner dealt with many of the basic questions of science-fiction (as I said, great movie...piss-poor adaption...but I don't think "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" would have been as good on film as "Blade Runner"). George Pal hired Heinlein to script "Destination Moon", and it got the science down as far as we knew back then.

Sometimes, the science is all wrong, but the human ideas that drive science fiction are in place..."Silent Running", for example. Great movie, lousy science fiction (if we killed all the plants, what the heck were we doing about oxygen back home? And why send the greenhouses out in incredibly expensive spaceships to another part of the solar system? Couldn't we build greenhouses at home? And if Lowell is the Gardener Incarnate, how did he miss the problem with the lack of a light source? Those things may not matter, because you see a more important story about isolation and emptiness).

Okay, rant over. This is a commonly hashed out subject with my friends and I. We are old enough to remember when the science fiction conventions usually had actual authors as guests of honor, not TV actors. It is usually about this time that we start railing against "Independence Day", which gets my vote as the single worst piece of dreck and illiteracy to ever disguise itself to the masses as science fiction...

I think Hollywood COULD handle some good ol' fashioned Harry Harrison, Fred Pohl ("Gateway"...PLEEEASE!) and some others it will never notice. I'd love to see an adaption of any number of Clifford Simak novels..."The Visitors" or "Way Station" would be wonderful movies, if done right.

By the way, I quite agree with the assesment someone made of Harlan Ellison's script for "I, Robot". Would have been beautiful...

[shamann]

...It is usually about this time that we start railing against "Independence Day", which gets my vote as the single worst piece of dreck and illiteracy to ever disguise itself to the masses as science fiction...

Ooh, tough call. It is definitely one of the worst. Starship Troopers has to be close (it at least has the benefit of passing as sleazy pulp). Millenium Man (or whatever that Robin Williams crap was called) felt more painful to me.

While on Harlan Ellison, after reading his collections of essays and reviews on movies and television (in which he makes the clear distinction between science fiction and the Hollywoodized Sci-Fi), I sort of wish they never touch a great book again.

Cheers,
Steve

[Scot Solida]

Ooh, tough call. It is definitely one of the worst. Starship Troopers has to be close (it at least has the benefit of passing as sleazy pulp). Millenium Man (or whatever that Robin Williams crap was called) felt more painful to me.

I think it stands out as a bigger abomination to me because so many people packed the theatres to see the thing. It simply solidified, as did Star Wars before it (don't get me wrong, Star Wars is actually a good movie...but it aint good science-fiction) the threat that we'd see lots of mindless space-hooey to follow.

The Robin Williams thing was "Bicentennial Man". A devastating violation of the wondrous Asimov and Asimov/Silverberg source material. I have always considered Chris Columbus to rank alongside Michael Bay as Hoolywoof's most offensive director. Yet they keep throwing money at 'im.

Yeah, ol' Harlan has it down pat. I dig that guy so much. One of my favorite writers.

[nuffink]

Ooh, tough call. It is definitely one of the worst. Starship Troopers has to be close (it at least has the benefit of passing as sleazy pulp).

Work of genius. Funny as f**k.

[DrApostropheX]

I personally would like to see the Camel Audio Cameleon 5000 manual turned into a Sci-Fi film: "The creature that ate my weekend."

[Zoing]

Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislav Lem.

Not as depressing as SOLARIS. Collection of short stories, some are quite funny.

My fav is the one about an astronaut caught in multiple timewarps and gets into arguments with multiple copies of himself.

I've only read one book by Stanislaw Lem, 'The Cyberiad', one of my favourite books of all time, very clever and funny, and brilliantly translated from Polish. Even has good pictures!! Although I doubt it would make a good movie. They'd probably cast Jim Carrey in one of the main roles (shudder).

Have you read that one PawPawPatch? I haven't read the ones you mentioned, I'll have to check them out.

[pheeleep]

Le petit prince ( the little prince ) by Saint- Exupery.

[Bigg John]

My Life by Bill Clinton - especially the bit with the alien and Monica Lewinsky

Is that the part that had the cigar shaped anal probe ???

[Bigg John]

"This Present Darkness" by Frank Peritti. huuummm, don't know if that would be exactly science fiction, but it would be a cool ass movie.

[Bigg John]

The Reaktor manual

I don't like doomsday plots, oh-no, that's dynamo.

[saulc12]

This is an easy choice -

'Mrs Beeton's Cook Book'

I think that turning it into a sci-fi movie would be such an original treatment and I am pretty sure that the folks in Hollywood, could be equally true to the text as they have been with most of Arthur C Clarke's, Phillip K Dick's and Issaac Asimov's work...