What's a sci-fi or fantasy book or series that you want to see adapted as a movie/television series?

I didn’t read this series when I was a kid, but I finally got around to reading Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber.

Given it’s an older series, I wasn’t sure how much I’d like it (some of those older series age horribly), but it was actually REALLY good still, and the few minor things that’d aged too much wouldn’t be hard to update for a modern audience.

But the concept of Amber is fantastic, Corwin’s behavior and arc perfect, and I think a TV series could do it justice nowadays. Man, some CGI artists could do some beautiful work depicting a hellride through shadow.

I also would really, really love to see Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern adapted…but there’s a few parts that have aged pretty badly, so it’d need careful handling of things like Lessa and F’lar’s relationship and such. And maybe, you know, keep Jaxom the hell away from Corana.

But I think the whole idea of threadfall, and Impressing dragons, could be done beautifully on the screen. I think a run from Dragonflight to All The Weyrs of Pern (including the Harper Hall Trilogy) could be done. (Then leave the later books out, they don’t really add much, lol.)

The series would need a top-notch composer scoring it, though. I’d vote for Natalie Holt. She did wonderfully with Loki, and it’d be a nice touch having a woman score the series that’d have the Harper Hall Trilogy included in it.

Starglasses,

Discworld. I would love to see the shenanigans of Samuel Vines and co, Mort, the witches, and so many other wonderful stories

Zorque,

Theres a ton of BBC adaptations, I believe. I know of at least Going Postal and Hogfather

Starglasses,

I know about The Light Fantastic and The Color of Magic (did i mix those two up?) But there’s more?

It’s crazy whats out there that you want but you never thought to look.

Pirasp,

I have good news and bad news, you can indeed watch Samuel Comes in a TV series, but it’s utter shit. They just took the names and fucking butchered the rest. It’s called “The Watch” if you really want to do this to yourself.

Somewhat related, the hogfather and going postal adaptations are great!

threesaken,
@threesaken@lemmy.ca avatar

They did one season of The Watch. It’s not bad.

vivadanang,

Damn.

Why did they have to change so much? Like, if you told me that trailer was for some sci-fi border world cop, that would make sense. Why the fuck…

hakunawazo,

Tad Williams - The Dragonbone Chair

Trudi Canavan - The Black Magician Trilogy

RizzRustbolt,

Wraeththu by Storm Constantine.

starbreaker,
@starbreaker@kbin.social avatar

I'd kick in a few bucks to see that produced, just because once conservatives find out what it's about they'll be having shit hemorrhages from sea to shining sea.

Transcendant,

Hyperion Cantos (Dan Simmons)

Any of the Xeelee series (Stephen Baxter)

Quantum Magician series (Derek Künsken)

Aermis,

Second the hyperion cantos. I’m surprised it’s not mentioned more

Transcendant,

Dan Simmons is an incredible author, I really should check more of his books out. The only other ones I read (before Hyperion actually) were the Ilium / Olympos ones which were very enjoyable.

Starb3an,

Quantum Magician is really cool. If it was made into a movie it would look like The Mechanic or the Equalizer

Transcendant,

It would also heavily utilise the graphic from that meme where the woman is thinking deeply and all these equations appear around her head

Moneo,

Hyperion would be cool but for gods sake they better stop after the second book.

Transcendant,

Aww. I loved all three, though perhaps that opinion is formed in some way because I was heavily into learning about Buddhism at the time.

Moneo,

There’s 4 aren’t there? Fair enough, I liked his writing but a third of the way through the 4th book I realized I didn’t give a shit about the characters anymore.

The age dynamic between them is really fucking gross and pointless too.

That first book was amazing though, no doubt about it.

Transcendant,

I liked his writing but a third of the way through the 4th book I realized I didn’t give a shit about the characters anymore.

xD fair point. I guess we all have different tolerances for different stuff. I was dating women in their 40s when I was in my 20s so maybe the age gap stuff flew over my head when I read them. I just finished a really enjoyable book by Stephen Baxter called ‘World Engines’, the main character also appears in other books by him and I really, really struggled with it purely based on the character.

He’s called Malenfant, and would you believe it, he’s bad-tempered! ‘Malenfant grunted:’, ‘Malenfant snorted’, Malenfant scowled, oh very subtle Stephen. He is capable of imagining such diverse creatures, thought patterns and genuine ‘hard sci’ concepts, then went with ‘grumpy old man’ for the protag. There’s enough grumpy old men running the place already, I’d prefer my fiction to be a respite from that!

Looking forward to his next book about a protaganist paralysed by indecision called Soppy McSimpleton.

Pirasp,

Barrayar. Giant SciFi world, tons of cool characters, politics, action, romance and intrigue. All in all it probably would make for a pretty great series.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

I suspect the big thing that’s always held Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series back from being made into a movie or television show is Miles being disabled. Peter Dinklage could’ve played him, but he’s too old at this point for young Miles. And there’s probably not a lot of acting talent with dwarfism AND the manic charisma that playing a proper Miles needs.

I wonder if it’d work as an anime though? Lois McMaster Bujold reviews a lot of manga on Goodreads so I imagine she might at least entertain the idea if anyone ever approached her.

I think her Chalion series would work as an excellent series of shows, either live action or animated. Penric is, personality-wise, a lot like Miles, but easier to cast.

Pirasp,

Maybe, or any animation really. Still live action would be the thing I would look forward to the most.

dynamojoe,

The Hyperion books by Dan Simmons.

dorron,

An Endymion trilogy with bits of Hyperion sprinkled in for flavour would be perfect

be_excellent_to_each_other,
@be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social avatar

so it’d need careful handling of things like Lessa and F’lar’s relationship and such. And maybe, you know, keep Jaxom the hell away from Corana.

I read the original two trilogies in the 80s so I've forgotten some bits, but what were the things that would be problematic today? I don't think I remember any details relating to the above. Lessa is always one of the first people I think of when someone says "so and so was the first strong woman in scifi" and it's a character that came 30+ years later.

I only just read the Amber books a couple of years ago myself; I don't know how I'd missed them. Very much unique stories in my experience, really unlike anything else I've ever read. I did enjoy them, but I think I respected what he did as a storyteller more than I enjoyed them, if that makes any sense.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

I read the original two trilogies in the 80s so I’ve forgotten some bits, but what were the things that would be problematic today? I don’t think I remember any details relating to the above. Lessa is always one of the first people I think of when someone says “so and so was the first strong woman in scifi” and it’s a character that came 30+ years later.

So, when the books were originally published, it actually was pretty feminist/forward-thinking that Lessa got to lead Benden Weyr as an equal partner, and she’s the one that saved Pern, and she’s the heroine who gets songs sung about her. Sure, F’lar “saved” her by slaying Fax and bringing her to Benden, but she mind-manipulated him into it so it was really her using him as her tool, and then she went on to save the WORLD all on her own. And that was all pretty forward-thinking, when most SFF of the era had ladies being damsels in distress, or running around in chainmail bikinis.

The bits that haven’t aged well today is how Anne McCaffrey writes romance. Basically, back when the books were written, there was this cultural trope that “good” women didn’t want sex. Like, even if the main gal obviously wanted the romantic lead, you had to put up a show of resisting, of saying no, for some dramatic tension or something, because if you said yes too quickly you were a slutty slut just slutting around or the like. Good girls don’t say yes, even to the people they want, too quickly. And it was “romantic” for the man to be pushy and not take no for an answer.

So McCaffrey has a lot of her lead men “ravishing” their partners in some way after the female resists or says no, which reads as really rapey with today’s understanding of sex and consent. F’lar grabs and shakes Lessa physically at times (I don’t recall if he outright hits her at all or not–he might, once or twice. I’d have to re-read). And Jaxom basically rapes Corana–she says no, but he’s just so horned up by dragons and goes ahead anyway, and the whole scene seems to be some attempt by the author to “show” that Jaxom is as virile a lead as any other dragonman, even if Ruth is asexual. It reads as if she were afraid Ruth not being a bronze would make people doubt Jaxom’s manhood or something, so she writes a scene to supposedly “prove” it.

And then the dragonlust thing during mating flights initially suggests between the lines the queen rider is going to have sex with the bronzerider whose dragon catches her queen, whether she wants to or not. “Aliens made us do it” is totally an old-school SFF trope especially any time a human or alien is telepathic, but again, in modern eyes it’s super-rapey since consent and being able to say no is important.

McCaffrey rolled the rapey sort of thing back in later Pern books as social mores changed going into the 90s–but the books written in the 60s and 70s mostly didn’t age great when it came to romance/sex. So there’s inconsistencies between the Pern portrayed in the early Pern books, vs. the ones written before her death in the 2000s, with the early Pern having some of the “heros” doing kinda awful things, and the later ones sort of forgetting or erasing that.

I don’t think it’d be going against the spirit of the books to update the mores here, though, for a modern audience. Anne McCaffrey was obviously trying to be forward-thinking with certain things, and it’s honestly really hard to be ahead of your time when it comes to the social/cultural stuff, esp. in the pre-internet era.

Personally, if I were to update Pern for a modern audience, I’d keep some of the dragon mating stuff, like I’d purposefully keep some of the huge downsides of being telepathically bonded to a mind that is not fully human and which can cause a human to act in inhuman ways when the dragon gets over-emotional. Mostly so there can be this cultural tension between the Weyrs and the Holds so that the Oldtimer storylines work better. Dramatically-speaking, it’d be a great scene to watch a dragon get hurt–but it’s the dragonman howling and clutching his eye or something, when he clearly isn’t bleeding at all and is getting feedback from his dragon. (Or, dragonwoman…I think I’m recalling Brekke right there.) And there’d be a huge contrast between the weyrs who have fluid relationships with other riders that start and stop on a whim, and the Holds that are very traditional and still do arranged marriages and such.

Also, if the Weyrs are seen as hotbeds of greed and depravity, it’ll be easier to take Pern through a story such as Dragonquest where the Holds and Halls start to rebel against the people who saved them from thread. The Oldtimer storylines from the books. Cultural friction, where the planet’s heroes also act in ways that are strange and different to ordinary men and women, and a way to play with modern cultural concerns too.

But I’d do away with things like the Jaxom and Corana plotline because there’s tons of other ways to make Jaxom an appealing lead character that don’t involve the future Lord of Ruatha Hold abusing his power over a peasant girl. I don’t think a modern audience would consider Jaxom weak or feminine just because Ruth is ace/nonbinary. In fact, him having a possibly nonbinary dragon might be a super-interesting story to follow. ::shrug::

be_excellent_to_each_other, (edited )
@be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social avatar

Thanks that was a great analysis. Once you started in I did recall about half those details, but mostly I guess it needs to go on my reread pile since I've forgotten so much.

As a tangentially related side - one of the first emails I ever sent when I first started to use email in about 1996 was to Anne McCaffrey.

I was in the "everything you can imagine is on the internet" phase of just looking up random things, and somehow I found her email address.

I sent her a short note about how much I'd loved her books, and she sent me a brief, nice note back.

That email is long lost to the twists and turns of life - I didn't even understand the concept of keeping backups back then (Edit - that's not true, it would be more accurate to say I just never bothered) - but it was a cool little interaction that I always remember fondly. 🙂

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks that was a great analysis. Once you started in I did recall about half those details, but mostly I guess it needs to go on my reread pile since I’ve forgotten so much.

I find, when I re-read, one thing that stays with me is how vibrant and beautiful her narration is. I think the books are still worth reading, but that modern audiences who’ve been participating in more modern discussions around storytelling would recoil at some of the bits we sort of just accepted as being “normal”, as standards for what is “normal” have shifted. The spirit of the books always was forward-thinking, even if she got some stuff wrong.

When Anne McCaffrey did a signing in Chicago when she won her Grand Master award, I had a battered copy of Damia (from her Talents series), and she told me Afra Lyon was her own 2nd favorite character, behind Robinton.

I was on “The New Kitchen Table”, which is where her online fandom ended up in the late 90s for a while, but her fandom was HUGE and had already been around for nigh 20 years with Weyrfest and all at Dragon*Con so aside from the one in-person comment (after I waited hours in a line that twined around the bookstore–the only time since that I’ve seen a bookstore event line that long was for a Harry Potter release), I was very much on the periphery of the fandom vs. those who’d been in it for 20 years already.

silver_wings_of_morning,

Something by Alastair Reynolds. I think Eversion would work as a mini series. Otherwise Revelation Space would be sick, but perhaps as an animated show instead of live-action.

klemptor,

Pushing Ice might be cool. His other stuff is so hit or miss for me.

GenesisJones,

Project hail Mary is my favorite literature I’ve read in the last few years.

I would love to see it done justice with a movie done right.

Vaginal_blood_fart,

Thank

CitizenKong, (edited )

You’re in luck, Chris Miller and Phil Lord (LEGO movie) are working on an adaptation with Ryan Gosling set to star. Drew Goddard (The Martian) wrote the screenplay together with Andy Weir himself.

GenesisJones,

Oh fuck yes. I’m so goddamn hype to hear that Andy is involved

WereCat,

Cosmere - Mistborn, Stomlight Archives, etc…

theletterw,

I know it had a brief go in the 90s, but I’d love to see a proper adaptation of Animorphs. Those books were wild, especially for something I remember starting in 3rd or 4th grade. I’d prefer animated personally, but I would tolerate another live action series. Tech has definitely improved enough to do the alien races justice in either format. Another pick would be Vampire Hunter D. It got a couple anime movies but I think a series could really do it some justice. It has such a fascinating world.

Vaggumon,

A real adaptation of the Foundation Series. Not the abomination we are getting from Apple.

eu,

I love the books and would like to see a 1:1 adaptation so I have no interest in the Apple show, but I've been told the show is good if you pretend the books do not exist.

redballooon,

I loved the books, and I loved season one on Apple TV. But then it lost me. I didn’t recognize any storyline anymore

Marin_Rider,

season 1 I thought was S tier, really good. Season 2 was horrible

Transcendant,

I didn’t watch it until second season was out, I just didn’t see how they could possibly do it justice… look at how Altered Carbon floundered, I expected (and was proven right) the same problems.

People need to attach to characters and plot. It’s very hard to do that when the characters (or actor in the case of AC) change every chapter, and the plot arches over 10s of 1000s of years!

I have to say once I was able to let go of preconceptions based on the books and just enjoy it for what it is, I really enjoyed Foundation series.

AVengefulAxolotl,

For me its simple: Metro 2033 as a movie. Do I want that real bad.

ChrisMcMillan,

The ministry for the future by Kim Stanley Robinson. And moreso after the Texan republicans are trying to keep climate science out of classrooms!

Pulptastic,

That was a surprisingly good book. Lots of ideas for public policy and guerilla climate strategy.

ChrisMcMillan,

Totally! Makes you want to DO something!

Marin_Rider,

that was the one with drone swarm attacks was it? feels very prophetic

I think it was 2312 where they had multiple asteroids set on distinct trajectories to all meet a target at the exact same moment to produce undetectable large impacts as well from memory

theywilleatthestars,

Still waiting for a Mistborn adaptation.

tuxtey,

All of Cosmere. Do a Marvel with it.

nathris,

It won’t work as live action, and Sanderson is probably a little cagey after working on Amazon’s WoT. He would need to have absolute control over the writing.

Wax and Wayne in the style of Fullmetal Alchemist would be amazing though. Comedic but also serious.

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