Skip to main content

Yes, but will it Translate to Film?




I just finished reading Deepsix by Jack McDevitt. It is the second book in his Academy series, and no, you don’t have to have read the first one to enjoy this one. In this novel the scientific community has gathered to watch a planetary collision. A gas giant cast out of its own system is about to smash into the terrestrial planet Malevia 3 (now nicknamed “Deepsix” as its future is doomed). Everything is going to plan, as scientist and tourists have gathered to watch the event until one of the scientists observing the world through powerful imagery, notices signs of civilization on the surface. Now a team will have to investigate, and it will only have days to do so before the world is to come to an end. Deepsix a real potboiler of a novel. Plenty of action, plenty of risk. Strong characters that we care about, and others that we dislike.

It struck me that this would make a wonderful movie or a limited series. But then, how many times have you heard that before. “This would make a great movie!” Some people think that just because they like a book means it would make a good movie, but books and movies are two different media. We could all name bad movies that came from good books. Sometimes that is the result of a director who doesn’t know what he’s doing or studio interference. But it can also be because that particular book does not translate well into film. Books that are too cerebral, that take place too much inside characters’ heads tend not to not work well as movies. Movies tend to need to move along at a faster pace than books. Sometimes the movie makers have to change so many things to make it work cinematically that it scarcely resembles the book. Soylent Green is was a decent movie, but you can’t find much of Harry Harrison’s novel, Make Room! Make Room! in it.

Anyway, it got me thinking about what science fiction/fantasy novels would make good movies. I came up with a very incomplete list. It is possible to make a good movie out of anything if you change it enough. I tried to make a list of movies that could be made without substantially changing the plot. So, besides Deepsix, I have:

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
Red Mars/Green Mars/ Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (But you would have to do it as a series)
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Warrior’s Apprentice (actually the whole Vorkosigan series, if you could find an actor to pull off the part of Miles) by Lois McMaster Bujold
Split Infinity by Piers Anthony
The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison
Bloodsucking Fiends, (a Love Story) by Christopher Moore
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. (The one they made was not great, but that does not mean that it couldn’t be made into a fantastic movie)
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (same note as above)
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (same note as above)
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King (same note as above, but maybe we should give Stephen King a rest. He’s had plenty of movies)

This list just scratches the surface, and every such list is subjective. What about you? What books do you think would make good movies? Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments below.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon and other online sources)


Star Liner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Trip Home

  My wife and I recently returned from a trip to New York to visit my son and his wife. What follows is an excerpt of my notes from that trip. Departure day. So we and the kids (adult kids) leave by 5:30 AM. These “kids” are night owls. They rarely wake before 10:00 if they don’t have to, so we appreciate the sacrifice. Daughter-in-Law (DIL) drove us the 30 minutes to the train station. Hugs and good-byes for her (we love DIL. DIL is an irresistible force). Son navigates us a route to the platform with fewer stairs than the way we came. We get a ticket and get on the train headed for the big city and Grand Central Station. I soon realize that this train is not an express train like the one we took coming out. Instead of taking a little over an hour like we did before, this one would take a little over an hour and a half. We stop at places with names like Cold Springs and Peekskill (on this trip we saw a lot of place names that ended in “kill” including Kaatskill, i.e. Catskill, and
2 comments
Read more

That 70's Decade

  Can a decade become a caricature? My teen years were in the 1970’s and none of us who lived through the 70’s thought our decade was going to be a figure of fun. When you are a part of it, you don’t realize what people are going to make fun of later. I think there are two reasons why people snicker when the 70’s are mentioned: clothing styles and Disco. Both things could be called extensions of trends that started in the 60’s. When the hippy styles of the 60’s became more formalized for the dance floor, the result was (in hindsight) rather bizarre. They did not seem bizarre at the time. People following present fashion trends never understand that they are wearing something that will be laughed at in ten years. Yes, I did have a pair of bell-bottom blue jeans (are they making a comeback?) The mere mention of the 1970’s conjures up someone in a ridiculous pose wearing a disco suit. We who lived through the 70’s just went about our normal life. There were quite a lot of things that ha
Post a Comment
Read more

Tyranny of the Masses

  I was listening to Benjamin Netanyahu on the radio. He was justifying his change in the law that removed power from the Israeli Supreme Court, saying that it was the will of the people. Majority rules. This made me think of “Tyranny of the masses,” a concept that notes: just because a majority of people are for something, that doesn’t make it right. I am sure you can think of historical examples where the people of a country supported a policy that was demonstrably wrong. When everything is completely governed by majority rule, the rights of the minority can be subverted by the majority. The framers of our American Constitution knew this, and tried to put in some checks and balances into our system of government. This was to guard against all forms of tyranny whether from a dictator, or from tyranny of the masses. One of those checks is that we have a representative government. The people themselves don’t pass laws, but instead elect representatives at the federal and local level t
Post a Comment
Read more