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…

HubertManne,
@HubertManne@kbin.social avatar

well it used to be wheel of time.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

My condolences for your loss.

Buddahriffic,

Still is for me. I want to see Jordan’s story and world, not this other one loosely based on his.

HubertManne,
@HubertManne@kbin.social avatar

Me2 but I would call it more than loosely. Just enough to sorta spoil a better done production that had more fidelity.

ButtDrugs,

Season 2 was a big step up from S1

HubertManne,
@HubertManne@kbin.social avatar

I agree but mistakes from season 1 are still going to be problematic to the story, still wondering if they are just going to ignore that they made the idea of reincarnating as a different sex as something someone would expect to happen over being something no one would expect.

spittingimage,
@spittingimage@lemmy.world avatar

The Quantum Thief trilogy. Mainly because part of it takes place in Oubliette, a city whose buildings, plazas and monuments are carried across the surface of Mars by giant robots. That ought to be quite a spectacle.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

I have to reread that series. I loved it, but it’s not easy to digest in one sitting.

I kinda think it’d do better as a high-concept anime, like the original Ghost in the Shell anime. I think some of the concepts/cultures would be easier to render in animated form than live action.

VegaLyrae,

No one has mentioned The Culture?

There really wouldn't be much to update because a good chunk of it is still modern. Not only that, but Banks really fucked with gender, ideology, and civil rights in a way that is still incredibly relevant in 2023.

I also really want someone to try to portray Fwi-Song from Consider Phlebas.

teft,
@teft@startrek.website avatar

I came looking for The Culture. Those are such great stories.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

Man, I’ve been stuck in this place where I really want to read those books (somehow I missed them), but I write SFF too and have some near-future thoughts that I don’t want to get tangled up with his stuff. (Part of the reason I went back and read the Chronicles of Amber was to keep my mind away from modern SFF while I work on projects.)

Some day I think I’ll just have to give in and read it and my own stuff is too close to his…oh well. I feel like I’d enjoy his work based on what everyone says about it.

dustyData,

Oh don’t worry, The Culture is anything but near-future. Some concepts are so out there that they border surreal existentialist philosophy.

VegaLyrae,

And some are set in the past! A large period of time is covered.

VegaLyrae,

I think that it is an influence worth risking.

The settings themselves vary wildly, and technically the books occur before, during, and after the present. The level of technology varies wildly.

The one thing in common is the examination of the content of the character of the "human" being, and how we are the same or different, adapt or don't, expand or hide.

It's truly masterful work that, yes has cool gizmos and concepts but worries more about how the gizmos make you feel.

SheDiceToday,

THE CHAIR!

Use of Weapons was definitely one of the best of that style I’ve ever read.

VegaLyrae,

I don't think it would work well as a movie, but I think it would make for a great miniseries with converging chronologies.

zeekaran,

PoG would make a good movie or TV show. Imagine Denis V putting Dune level effort into a movie adaptation of it. UoW would easily translate to TV and unlike most Culture novels, wouldn’t require that much CG budget.

athos77,

Well, I have some good news for you!

Stephen Colbert to Produce ‘Chronicles of Amber’ TV Series Adaptation.

spittingimage,
@spittingimage@lemmy.world avatar

Stephen Colbert strikes me as someone who knows how to respect the source material.

athos77,

Given his love for fannish things, he's one of the few people I'd trust with the adaptation.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

Huh–crossing my fingers then! It’ll be interesting to see if it actually gets into development.

I was thinking about casting Corwin, and after the finale of Loki, I kinda think Tom Hiddleston would do a great Corwin. I think he could portray Corwin’s arc of fighting for the throne at first just so his brother wouldn’t get it, to someone who doesn’t even want the throne wonderfully. He’d also do great as one of Corwin’s brothers.

But I’d also kinda like to see some newcomer knock it out of the park too.

Nastybutler,

Stephen Colbert, yay! Robert Kirkman, ugh.

redballooon,

The Cosmere, or at least the Mistborn part thereof. While reading I often pictured movie scenes.

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.

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.

Travalanche,
@Travalanche@lemmy.world avatar

Jeff Long’s The Descent:
In a cave in the Himalayas, a guide discovers a self-mutilated body with the warning “Satan exists”.
In the Kalahari Desert, a nun unearths evidence of a proto-human species and a deity called Older-than-Old.
In Bosnia, something has been feeding upon the dead in a mass grave.
So begins mankind’s most shocking realization: that the underworld is a vast geological labyrinth populated by another race of beings. Some call them “devils” or “demons.” But they are real. They are down there. And they are waiting for us to find them…
And it’s sequel, Deeper:
A decade has passed since doomed explorers unveiled a nightmare of tunnels and rivers honeycombing the earth’s depths. After millennia of suffering terror and predation, humanity’s armies descended to destroy the ancient hordes. Deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, a doomed science expedition killed the subterraneans’ fabled leader, and suddenly it seemed that evil was dead and all was right with the world again.
Now “Deeper” arrives to explode that complacency and plunge us back into the sunless abyss. Hell boils up through America’s subways and basements to take its revenge and steal our children. Against the backdrop of a looming war with China, a crusade of volunteers races to find the vestiges of a lost race. But a lone explorer, the linguist Ali von Schade, learns that a far greater menace lies in the unexplored heart of the planet. The real Satan can’t be killed, and he has been waiting since the beginning of time to gain his freedom. Man and his pitiless enemies are mere pawns in the greatest escape ever devised.

TheKingBombOmbKiller,

Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere universe would be fantastic. The last thing I remember hearing was that he was working on a script for a Mistborn movie. I would’ve preferred a TV-show, but he feels it would work better as a movie, and I trust his judgement.

finestnothing,

I both want and don’t want the stormlight archives books adapted to movies. On one hand, the books are amazing. On the other hand movie/tv adaptations usually go badly and it would require a lot of special effects that I think would come out badly

Mrcheesle,

I honestly believe that if they adapted the story as an animated series similar to Arcane it would work really well. I don’t think I can image a live action representation of the various races and spren looking good without a massive budget, but with the right animation studio it could be gorgeous.

Vaggumon,

I’d absolutely love a faithful adaptation of SnowCrash by Neil Stephonson to a TV series, don’t think a movie would be doable, unless they did a trilogy or something.

Jackthelad, (edited )

I just finished the Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee, and that would work great as a gangster/martial arts show.

TeenieBopper,

I can’t believe I had to scroll this far to see The Green Bone Saga mentioned. Get the choreographers from Into the Badlands to work on this show. Shit, with half decent make up Daniel Wu could probably play Kaul Hilo.

Alatarius,

“The Sword of Truth” series by Terry Goodmind. But better than they did before, like, actually follow the books.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

Are you sure about that? Wizard’s First Rule was great, and they slowly (then quickly) started to unravel.

Richard being a white savior showing the mud people how to make tile roofs seems like it’d be nigh-unfilmable/unwatchable if it were rendered book-accurately cuz boy is it chock-full of veiled racism!

VaultBoyNewVegas,

Disagree. There’s far too many rapes and weird sex shit in those. There’s the whole BDSM torture in the first book, the MC is a product of rape, the second book has some form of demon beastiality ritual. The way kalan loses her virginity (thinks it’s her bf evil brother and she is really not into it at all and her bf is offended at her because she thought she was being rapes be his brother)

Then there’s big bad conqueror who forces a woman to suck his dick while in a meeting, then there’s kalans sister who’s a queen who gets literally thrown into a pit with a dozen men who proceed to rape her to the point that she’s permanently traumatized.

nezbyte,

Demon Cycle series by Peter V. Brett. They had a film adaptation in the works a few years ago, but it fell through.

Hyggyldy,

This is what I said but I’d want them to rework it some. Largely for far less rape.

CarbonIceDragon,
@CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social avatar

I feel like the Destroyermen series would fit a tv show format pretty well.

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