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"The Chronicles of Amber" and "The Forever War" For TV
DarkRabbit writes "i just noticed at the Futon Critic that the Sci-Fi channel announced April 2nd that amongst other popular pieces of fiction, Zelazney's "The Chronicles of Amber" and Haldeman's "The Forever War"
will be getting the mini-series treatment by them sometime in the next year. I'm sure their adaptions will be just as contentious here as was their version of "Dune." Oh, and "Tripping the Rift" arrives as an 'Edgy-South-Park-esque' half-hour cartoon series..."
Zelazney's "The Chronicles of Amber"
I sure hope they let Corwin keep his black and silver leisure suit. It goes so well with the sword.
And I also hope that Eric's beard is "moist" throughout the entire series, because that and the fact that Corwin hates getting little hairs down his shirt are quite possibly the most bizarre details included in the whole series.
--saint
(from the article) NEW YORK (Variety) -- A remake of the TV series "Battlestar Galactica" as a four-hour miniseries, the transformation of the mini "Firestarter: Rekindled" by Stephen King into an hourlong series Maybe I'm not as hard core manga geek type as everyone else but those two excite me more than the article topic. Imagine if they had produced Battlestar with today's computer graphic capabilites and the hype that you can generate by using the net... Oh wait, what am I doing now?
Error: Erection reset by beer.
Wow, great! Forever war was a really good book. I also liked the sort of seqel, Forever Peace.
It is good to see Sci-Fi find and exploit their niche. Network TV will not be willing to risk making miniseries out of hard core sci-fi.
Twostep
There are 10 different types of people in this world... those who understand binary, and those who don't.
"Never underestimate the power of a dark..."
my biggest Dune fans friends didn't like 'Dune' they did at all
More worthless news here on /.!
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
Well I thought it was a great book, good story.
But I don't see how they could make it a miniseries.
You can't communicate the same sense of irrelevance on TV that you can in a book.
For me the fact that the characters felt so separated from the world, "They didn't know what they were fighting for".
This is a common concern in books & movies, and would be lost. (Enders game, he goes and spends a month in his boat, Armageddon, they go out for a wild party)
I just don't see it working.
It's a little bit of surpise to me, because at least some time ago, domain nineprincesinamber.com was owned by Warner Bros (and redirected to their site). So, the concept has changed? Or will WB make the series for Sci-Fi? We'll see.
Still, I hope they'll make a good movie. The book's worth it.
STFU!
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
While /. may or may not approve of the film, I think it'll be most interesting to see what everyone else thinks of their adaptation of the Forever War. I can't think of ANYTHING to hit the airwaves that deals with homosexuality in such a manner, and it's sure to raise more than a few eyebrows.
Hope they can pull it off without watering it down.
Which one is that, the "War on Terrorism", or the "War on Drugs"?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
"Tripping the Rift" will be Sci Fi's first animated series. Produced by Cine Groupe and Film Roman, the show is about a misfit group of cabinmates aboard a spaceship. Created by Chuck Austen and Chris Moeller, the series "will have the kind of edgy feel that makes 'South Park' a hit on Comedy Central," said Hammer.
Will it have an animated piece of fecal matter called "captain's log"?
Finally we get to experience the REAL power of a dark clown! Now let's hope they show it here in the UK. I doubt it'll happen, but someone's bound to record each episode and put it online. Maybe they'll even release a DVD!
It's great to see an underground(ish) cartoon like Tripping The Rift get some real recognition instead of them just showing another program invented by a major TV company 'cause their marketing stats say it'll do well.
You've got mail. Pattern baldness. - Crow
My God, how the heck will they get that on TV? The original animation had enough sexual innuendo to give any Conservative American a heart attack. Mind you, it had some excellent quotes:
Why don't you fight without using your faggot clown powers, son? -- Chode
Come on you lipstick wearing felch monkey! -- Chode
Never underestimate the power of a dark clown!! -- Darph Bobo
I'm looking forward to it!
Dr Fish
Tripping the Rift sounds like a rip off of the brit classic Red Dwarf. We tried to steal the original with an American Cast and it did not work. A white rimmer.
Nope Sc-Fi can pull it off. Hell Lexx is just plain nasty.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
It's really gratifying to see a cable channel that's becoming more serious about its stated mission as the audience grows. It's a nice counterexample to certain music television stations that seem to have entirely forgotten about the music...
wasn't Forever Peace, but Forever Free.
Both very good books, IMHO.
Part of the feeling of irrelevance came from Joseph and Marygay's feeling of being stranded in time. ST:TNG touched on this topic one episode, though with a different treatment - the soldier who fought for a society, and is no longer able to return. In Forever War, the alienation is from cultural drift exaggerated by time dilation. In ST:TNG is was from the violence conditioning the people received in order to become soldiers.
Which brings us back to Forever Peace, in an odd way.
I also preferred the SciFi Dune miniseries to the old movie. I hope they do good treatments of both Forever War and Amber.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I first read the Chronicles of Amber in the 3rd grade. I did a book report on it. And one of those shoebox things (diorama?) My diorama was from the cover of the first (second?) book: Corwin, sword in one hand, bloody severed head of talking shadow cat in the other hand.
I can remember being puzzled why my third grade teacher kept asking me if anyone had tried to touch me in an uncomfortable way....
Considering their abysmal failure in making the Dune miniseries I am dreading anything that has the SciFi channel stamp on it.
Of course more science fiction work needs to be filmed. But not by them. It will be a travesty, I assure you.
I hope that the Sci-Fi network keeps this up. Whatever one's opinions about particular TV adaptations, I think that it would be a very good idea for Sci-Fi network to make bringing classic SF literature to television as part of their mandate.
That's a lot better reason for the channel to exist than to show continuous repeats of the same old serieses.
Zelazny. Zelazny. Zelazny.
I'm not sure about this one. I'm usually pretty skeptical when it comes to series/mini-series/movies based on books I've read and liked. I'm not saying thy are all worthless of course and some very decent adaptations have been made, yet I'm allways a little disappointed. I read a lot and love the way imagination is used when reading, something that is totally devoid in videos/TV etc...
Because of this, I'm dissapointed when I see a movie after reading the book and at the same time I'm usually not as enthralled when reading the book after seeing a movie (as it was the cas for Jurassic Park for example).
What I'm trying to get at is that these series are cool, yes but who are they targeted to? The readers who may be dissapointed? or the people who hav'nt read the books (lots of them running about) and that may be dissapointed if tey decide to do so after? Or probably your average viewer who hs'nt read the book, will like the series and will not read the book?
Who's a winner in this situation?
how does one change his
Science fiction, computer games and cartoons. Stunted children? You decide.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
Sci fi will get it, show four episodes, then wait six months to show the rest all while re-running the FIRST four episodes over and over.. then cancelling the series halfway into showing the rest...
sigh.
ariven.com
Imagine Amber as a 2-hour mini-series. It is enough to cover the first *book*, maybe. If anyone had the feeling that Lord of the Rings was rushed, this will be ten times worse.
Then 'Forever War'. One word: Battlesuits. Certainly the special effects technology is up to showing them... but *you can't see the actor's face* in a battlesuit. My bet is they'll throw away any part the book which doesn't relate to combat action, and botch that by throwing away the suits. Result: a 'Starship Troopers' clone. Enough Said.
WHY can't the movie industry *build* on the great SF out there? Imagine "Snow Crash" done with the technology used for "Final Fantasy". Imagine Lord of the Rings as a *series* - say, 5 hours for each book. Imagine a production of "Bridge of Birds" on the same lines as "Princes Bride". I could go on for *hours*.
Maybe "we" ("the guild of paying movie-goers and ad-watchers") don't deserve any better. Even when a good production gets made (by accident or thanks to the courage of some producer), it tends to be a commercial flop.
Take for example the animation move done based on "The Last Unicorn" by Peter S. Beagle. Can you believe it? serious fantasy, in animation, not targeted at kids! In a word: a flop. You probably never even heard of it, but trust me, you won't regret seeing it, even if you've read the book.
BOOK. That's the answer, *read a good book*. Come to think of it... it doesn't have ads, it costs very favorably compared to a movie ticket, and you don't need Tivo to time-shift it!
Star Ship Troopers was a decent book, but the movie just skipped all that "stuff" that didn't make a flashy movie.
As was said at the time: "Starship troopers: Based on the back of a book by Robert A Heinlein"
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
I guess I can hope against hope that they will do the same for Daniel Keys Moran's _The Continuing Time_ series, starting with Emerald Eyes...
There was once an Infocom-like game based on the Chronicles of Amber; does anyone recall it?
I've been a Roger Zelazny fan for a long time, somewhere around 1985 when another student gave me "Lord of Light" to read. About that time, after reading the Chronicles, I adopted "Dworkin" as a BBS handle (and that has since morphed into my present moniker).
Though the first Amber novels are good reads, I think his true talent was in the short story. Pick up "Unicorn Variations" if you'd like a fairly representative anthology. And of course, read "Lord of Light", one of the seminal (heh heh, he said seminal) novels of Science Fiction.
And if you are a Chronicles fan, stay far away from the Second Chronicles -- they're horrible. There were some really interesting ideas in it such as the Ghostwheel -- a hyper computer that was designed with the assumption that different laws of physics applied, but they were written near to his end, and I think it shows.
Doesn't that sound just like Red dwarf?
:)
Lister: "Hey dude, is our ship, like, attacked?"
Kryten: "Engage lie mode. No sir."
weeeeee \o/ !
In France there we had this great tv show called 'Objectif nul' which was the trashy version of Red Dwarf. I'd be curious to see what you guys over the ocean will come up with
Anyone know if they're doing the entire series, or just the first five?
I think it would be a better series if they stuck to Corwin's story. It's more complete (was the tenth book supposed to be the last? If so, it's the worst ending to a series I've ever read), and it's easier to produce (sure, you've got the Trump effect and the shadow creatures and the Pattern, but all that Logrus/Ghostweel crap is gone). Besides, it's just a better story that way. Merlin's story has always seemed tacked on, and the second-generation characters are far less interesting.
ttr is *hysterical*, not to mention chock-full of violence and nudity. Go kill this poor guy's server and get yerself the ~35 MB mpg to see for yourself. Every bit as good as the original Spirit of Xmas.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Does this mean someone might reprint the Amber books..? It's getting pretty hard to find them these days as well as some of his other early stuff. Bookstores list them as "out of print." :-(
Pretty sad but a lot of my favorites from my younger years seem to have gone "out of print." Wish the publishers would release them to the public or something. :-) Would love reading Amber on my PDA while commuting.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Yes, you're right. Irrelevance was what I was thinking.
Thursdays are my monday, just don't function good.
The day after hump day is just rough on me
But seeing the quality job that SciFi did with Dune, I'm actually hopeful. I wonder if they're gonna do the entire 10-book series, or just the first 5. And Forever War could be a geek-drool fest, with gigantic, relativistic speed battlecruisers and powered armor for the troops...it could be Starship Troopers could have been, expecially if they keep the authors message and don't insert the directors instead.
So when is someone going to do a series, mini or otherwise on Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land"?
It is a far better book than most...or haven't you douchebags read any Heinlein?
The latest announcement has gotten fans of the original Battlestar Galactica more than worried since it's speculated that the new series is going to be more or less "Battlecreek 90210" ignoring basically everything from the original. This is despite the fact that a petition has over 14000 signatures in support for the original cast and themes. Recently a new one has been created with a more strict tone.
The Amber Chronicles have been reprinted, as
_The Great Book of Amber : The Complete Amber
Chronicles_ [Eos (Trade); ISBN: 0380809060], which
has all 10 books in it.
Of course, I wish they'd done it as two separate
books for the Corwin and Merlin series, since I
think the former is *far* superior.
Personally, I couldn't stand Zelazny's prose, so by the end of book 5, reading it had become a tedious chore. I never even cracked book 6. I might like the miniseries somewhat better... Lots of gratuitious action and dialogue, which will translate well to the screen. And the books are fairly short -- all ten combined are shorter than the Lord of the Rings trilogy -- so I don't see screen time as being too big an issue.
Besides which, pulpy novels are easier to adapt. Amber is pure pulp sci-fantasy, so it will be much harder to screw up than something as weighty as Dune.
With the exception of NPiA, I didn't even like the books. But I'm looking forward to the miniseries.
They could easily make the Forever War without battlesuits. The point of the war was that it was dehumanizing, utterly violent, depressing, futile and unnecessary. That could be conveyed without the battle suit, although they do need something better than the Starship Troopers movie.
Also, the aliens need to be reflexively repulsive. Like a spider on your desk, they have to be something you would shoot on sight without thinking...
The part I'm interested in seeing is the changes in earth's culture each time the time-displaced soldiers return home. Particularly: How are they going to handle the homosexuality aspects? That plays a large part in the book.
Finally, it wasn't clear to me at the end of the book, did the humans and aliens merge into one race, or had the aliens actually won the war and taken over humanity? I'd like to see thier take on that.
Read a good book lately?
You fail your reading comprehension. What on earth did you think it was referring to in Nine Princes between Corwin and Moire? Between Benedict and Lintra? (I may have butchered the spelling of her name, sorry, don't have my books handy) Between Corwin and Dara? And not between Corwin and Lorraine? I'm sorry, but if you missed the sex, you weren't reading closely at all.
If you mean, there's no explicit descriptions of penises, vaginae, breasts, and suchlike? Fine, then there's "no sex" in Amber. It really torques me off when folks like you define "sex" in a book as the explicit, titilating depiction of sexual activity. There was plenty of sex in Amber--how can you not cover sex in a book about power rivalries in an immortal family who perceive the rest of the multiverse as mere pawns?
No, there's sex in Amber, all right. It's just the subtle, literary kind, not the kind you can whack off to.
TTP is a ripoff of every scifi movie and show.
It will be chesse but it will be CG chesse.
I only hope that it will be just like the pilot on the page, if they put it on scifi then it will be edited for content nudity, language, and violence. It would have to be rated R for these reasons. But some dumb person in control of content will try to market it to kids, instead of the older crowds that the show was meant for.
Dr. Suess: 'Gandalf, Gandalf! Take the ring! I am too small to carry this thing!' 'I can not, will not hold the One.
You obviously did not see what the Sci-Fi channel did with the Dune series. I was of the feeling that they did a rather good job on covering the first book in the Dune saga. It was a two hour mini-series with six episodes in all.
The special effects were great, on par, if not better, than something that would have come out of traditional Hollywood movie series (and remember, this was six two-hour episodes.)
Although the acting left a little to be desired, it wasn't horrible. Many people will disagree with me on this, but I preferred how House Harkonnen was portrayed as an arrogant aristocracy in this series than the filthy pigs in the original, 1980s version of the movie.
While the series did not feel rushed, one could definitely tell that it catered to people who already read the book. There were a lot of important, implicit, character thinking stuff in the book that was missed in the movie and so to a person unfamiliar with the Dune series would have been completely lost and would have a hard time understanding the entirety of the plot.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
The initial DVD of LOTR: FOTR will be the normal 3 hour cut, but a subsequent one coming in November will have a FOUR hour cut, which should be pretty close to your wish. FYI.
The Chronicles of Amber were some of my favorite books growing up. Yeah, Merlin's chronicles weren't as good... There were good ideas, but they ended up getting drowned in a lot of not-so-good ideas that really changed the entire premise of the series. Still, Corwin's story was excellent. Why do I think the series would fit in a big (or small) screen format? First, the books are short. Really short. Teeny, in fact. I'm sure that the entire Amber series (Merlin's series included) doesn't even reach the length of some of the books in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series (I mean, Lord of Chaos was what, 1000 pages?). The problem with most movie adaptations is that the source material is much longer and richer than could ever be put in the standard 2 hour movie format or in a mini-series of reasonable length (reasonable to the networks, not to the viewers). Now, not only are the books short, a huge portion of those books are taken up by descriptions. Somebody up above mentioned Eric's "moist" beard and how Corwin hates getting hairs under his shirt. Stuff like that fills the books (unfortunately, it has been so long since I've read them that I couldn't think of my own examples, but oh well). You know how they say that a picture is worth a thousand words? With a good director, this would be more than true. What about the rest of the book? The stuff that isn't description? Stuff happens, and it happens rather quickly - to the reader at least, if not in the book itself. Take the plot of the first book (ummm... *SPOLIERS*... yeah...): Corwin wakes up, escapes from a mental hospital, goes to Flora's house, beats the crap out of some shadow creatures, goes on a drive to Amber and sees lots of strange stuff on the way (wasn't there a big guy eating cars or something?), gets attacked by Julian's men, runs down to Remba, gets laid, walks the pattern (and lots of flashback scenes), heads on over to the castle, gets in a fight, runs to Bleys, builds an army (this would take, what, one or two scenes?), attacks Amber, and so on. This is pretty much one action scene after another, and with Corwin's initial memory loss, it wouldn't be so awkward when another character gets to explain the Nifty Science Fiction/Fantasy Laws of Physics (tm) to him. Pacing could be made quick without any huge spans of time (like the armies getting built) seeming to vanish due to time working differently in Shadow. Of course, that somewhat changes when Corwin gets thrown in the slammer, but it still could be done very well in a TV or movie format. My only fear is that all the sword fights will be filled with Crouching Tiger meets The Matrix special effects.
Does anyone have the audio tapes of Zelazny reading the Amber novels? They came out from a company called Sunset Productions. I suspect he was somehow involved with the founding or running of this company because Sunset was based in New Mexico and the majority of their catalog was either his readings or stuff I know he was interested in, like Native spirituality. I have the first 5, his voice is hilarious; he sounds like Humphrey Bogart.
I don't think the Second Chronicles were as bad as you think they were. IMHO, the worst of Zelazny's writings were better than the best writings of many more widely read authors.
I'm reminded of an old review (written by Harlan Ellison, IIRC) of the movie 'Field of Dreams.' In it, Harlan claims that most literature (at least that written by men) is about a man's search for his father. The reasons for this are fairly obvious and I won't bore you with them. By extent, there are portions of such fiction that are autobiographical. It's certainly obvious that this theme is pretty prevalent in both Amber chronicles. Read a little deeper and you just might find that the Second Chronicles is worth your time.
Of course the end of the Chronicles is disappointing. It was meant to be. I think Zelazny made a decision not to tie up all the loose ends. The end of a real story is never wrapped up entirely. Merlin, and Zelazny, get the same ending we all do. We turn and head back to Chaos.
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I was really hoping B5:LotR would get picked up as a series.
While the Legends of the Rangers tv-movie wasn't the greatest thing ever committed to screen, I thought that like pizza, not so great B5 is still pretty good, and MUCH better than anything Trek has put out lately.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
According to this official post from sci-fi on the demise of The Chronicle, they will be doing a movie based on Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld.
Also, some 20 hour miniseries from Steve Spielberg called "Taken". Also, according to this post, they will be doing a 4 hour Myst mini-series.
The first 2 sound quite neat, but I'm not so sure about the Myst series...
Oh, was that my outside voice?
'Nine Princes' will suck, not because SciFi Channel's authors are a bunch of hacks who wouldn't recognize a good story if fell from the sky and whacked them on the head -- but because SciFi Channel doesn't have enough money to do it right.
- Corwin's Mercedes SL? Uhhh, budget crunch - he's in a '92 Ford Taurus wagon. Sorry.
- And, uhh, Nine Princes? More like 5, really. They had the other four signed to do it, but then they left for "Saved By The Bell: The Final Prom Dance".
- Dworkin's animated cards? "Magic: The Gathering" cards that one of the crew stole from his little kid brother's room.
- Walking The Pattern? They simply asked the LAPD to administer field sobriety tests to the cast.
If SciFi were to put the appropiate amount of effort and money into this (like USA Networks did for Stephen King's 'The Stand'), then they'll have something worth spending 6 hours of my life on.
I hear "Zelazney book made into movie", And I think "Damnation Alley"
Horribe movie, after which Zelazney said he would never want any of his works to be a movie again.
Of course, now that he's dead, his estate can throw all respect to the wind and cash in!
Papas dead CHaCHing!
sheesh.
by the way, Damnation alley is a great sci-fi book.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Finally, it wasn't clear to me at the end of the book, did the humans and aliens merge into one race, or had the aliens actually won the war and taken over humanity? I'd like to see thier take on that.
Humans started creating clones and using them to crew their ships. The Taurans were clones without the concept of an individual.
The other point was that it was the humans who started the war.
Janifer Bibliography
What appears to be his homepage
Of other science fiction writers he reminds me of maybe L. E. Modessit and Mack Reynolds the most. His writing isn't quite as political as that of either, but to me it has that same feel. Maybe Mike Resnick too?
Writing is the only socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. (E. L. Doctorow)
I have read both. And let's be honest. The books are always better that the movies. Would you really sit through an eight-hour movie so they can get all the details right? And I hate to say it but SEX sells. How else are you going to get the teenagers money. Plus Hollywood sometimes will make a good movie and follow the book. Harry Potter was a great book and I loved the movie. Lord of the Rings great movie and I then decided to read the book. The movie is making the book better, although it takes away from my imagination on how things look. And one last thing, at least they are trying to have quality television and not another Bay Watch. However, that had its Pluses.
How are they going to handle homosexuality? I'm more interested in how they're going to handle HETEROsexuality. They seemed to be having sex about every night, at least at first, and that's something you definately can't show on TV.
Re: the end of the book. As the above reply said, the Taurans were all just clones of a single individual. As humans started using clones to fight the war, they somehow managed to establish a rapport with the Taurans (I think that part was a little fuzzy), and in communicating established that the Taurans had never attacked humanity, early human ships were simply very accident prone. Furthermore, had the war continued indefinately, humanity would eventually have won, because the Taurans were much less used to fighting.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I have a compilation of all ten Amber books in trade format; I believe it has almost exactly 1100 pages. So, yep, short little books.
I've read Dune upwards of 10 times now. I've seen the 4 hr movie, the horrifically hacked 2.5 hr movie, and Sci-Fi's miniseries.
If we could've had the costuming and actors of the movie with Sci-Fi's adaptation it would have been a helluva mini-series.
I will never forgive the original movie for turning the "wierding way" into "wierding modules" quite possibly one of the stupidest ideas in an adaptation. That and the final battle scene..."This is Paul Atredies on a sand worm." "Here's the rear view of Paul Atredies on a sandworm" "Sand worms are REALLY BIG" "Here is yet another shot of Paul Atredies on top of a really big sand worm" "Did we show that sandworms are really big?" It was pathetic. They could've cut 30 min of worthless footage from the movie simply by paring down that scene.
On the Sci-fi side, the Bene-Geserit costumes were laughable, and the guild navigators looked like ET gone horribly wrong. I also expected the foam sound-stage rocks to come tumbling down if one of the actors leaned on them. Costuming and sets aside, the actual way they adapted the book was pretty good. Giving Irulan a larger role was necessary to allow the audience a better understanding of who both she and Feyd were. You get a glimpse of just how slimy Feyd was.
I've read the Amber series a couple of times, so I look forward to Sci-Fi's adaptation with a mixture of trepidation and anticipation. Watching Corwin on a Star Trek (the original) style set pathetically trying to pass as one of the more bizarre shadows of amber would be positively painful to watch.
"That's no moon"... Obi-Wan Kenobi
Click here to visit the Chronicles of Amber website.
Hell, all I want to see is how they do the patern, and what Ghostwheel and Logrus look like!
I think Moon is one of Heinleins better books.
Although he has an obsession with the super intelligent quick witted character.
Chronomaster was a game that was one of Zelazny's last projects. It was an adventure game that got pretty good reviews, and had cool graphics.
Having recently read the re-release of the book, the ending (spoiler):
Humanity breeds to a perfect individual, and then decides that since that individual is perfect, they'll just make clones of that person so that humanity will be as efficient as possible.
Once a sufficient portion of humanity is made up of clones, they begin to form a group mind.
The human group mind contacts the tauran group mind (to me, implied telepathy) and they discover:
a) the taurans have been all-clones and group mind for a long time.
b) the taurans didn't start the war. Actually, some humans who wanted to profiteer off of producing war-time goods started the war.
c) the taurans are more than willing to bend over backwards to achieve peace now that they can comprehend 'human' thought.
Also, haldeman has brought out two pseudo sequels fairly recently, neither of which measures up to the first, but both of which do help to explain some of this stuff better.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The abbreviation "B5:LotR" always makes me think of a Babylon V/Lord of the Rings crossover. Elves in Spaaaaaaaace!
If they stick to the story of the first five books, there'll be a lot more room to get it right, and a more spectacular ending.
I never liked the second chronicles anyway. I'm still not 100% convinced that they were actually written by Zelazny himself. He was playing around with the concept of authorship in his later years, I think it would have been just like him to want to see if someone else could write in his style, convincingly enough to pass as the second chronicles of Amber.
Actually what I like most about the Chronicles is the way its universe keeps expanding. Every time I thought I'd figured out how Corwin's world worked, he discovered something new that blew my mind. Of course, it doesn't work that well on a second read, but I still spend some evenings puzzling out details about how shadow-walking works :-)
I loved everything this article mentioned.
I hope Roger is smiling, where/whenever he is right now. I met him once at a book signing. His reputation as a terribly kind, witty and urbane individual was well earned. Think I'll go light a candle for the repose of his soul.
Jeez, wouldn't it be cool if Bruce Cambell was Corwin? Brian Blessed as Oberon? Too bad Billy Barty died, he'd have been a killer Dworkin.
Who'd else would be a good Random besides Dennis Leary?
Tripping the Rift, woohooo! Bring it on you purple bastard!
You must not have been looking very hard. You can get all 10 Amber books in one large volume, The Great Book of Amber. I've seen this in Barnes and Noble as well, and a relative bought a copy for me for Christmas.
The Forever War is a great book, won the hugo and nebula that year. I suspect it'll make an awful mini-series. The politics at the heart of the book would prevent it from ever getting much air.
...)
Just as Heinlein's Starship Troopers was written throught the eyes of a WWII veteran, the Forever War is a pretty naked retelling of Haledman's his experiences in Viet Nam. His protaginist becomes increasingly jaded, cynical and disgusted with the government and the military, until he comes to see them as the enemy, not the aliens he is supposed to be fighting.
And at the end of the book, we discover that the military actually started the war (and were not just responding to agression). A story was fabricated, and the war kept the military industrial complex in power and the population under control, while feeding millions of people into an unstoppable meat-grinder. This is not far off from what happened in Viet Nam . (and Germany and Japan and
Throw in lots of casual sex, drug use, actual homosexuality, etc, and you have a very unpalitable combination.
Given the current policical climate of panic-induced patriotism, this show seems doomed to failure, unless they turn it into something more
like Starship Troopers; glory in death, blood in your hands, flag-waving heroism and xenophobia.
I wish them luck and hope they stay true to the nature and tone of the book.
=brian
Nice to see that some of the best kept secrets of storytelling and entertainment - SF novels - are finally getting to a wider audience, even if they've been bastardised to hell.
Now can someone please point the Sci-Fi Channel powers-that-be to The Moat in God's Eye, Niven's Known Space series, or Iain M. Banks Culture series. With current CGI, these are do-able!
"I am Heisenborg. You will probably be assimilated"
"Forever Amber" :)
The man was the best prosodist of 20th century s/f (I would say other than harlan ellison had his porcupine attitude not ceased to be charming). Think of the hellrides, or fred cassidy's reflections in 'doorways in the sand'. Or the rhapsodic nostalgia of the main character of 'this immortal', whose name I won't attempt to spell off the top of my head. As far as I'm concerned that's where he shines, and a picture is never going to compare, no matter how many words it's worth.
Phage Press is not defunct, or at least it wasn't two years ago when I met Eric Wujcik in person. Rumors had been going around about the death of his company for a couple of years thanks to one of the major catalog companies claiming that it was dead. The truth of the story is that this company had not paid Phage Press for a shipment of the Amber DRPG and its suppliment "Shadow Knight." Since Wujcik was holding off on another shipment until they paid for the first, this distributor told all the stores that were trying to order more that Phage Press was out of business and continued to refuse to pay Wujcik.
Since Wujcik does not have enough money to fight them in court, this rumor persists to this day even though you can still get the game through other channels.
I just wish I could remember which company it was...
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I think I'd rather see somethind done along the lines of "Eye of Cat". No large amounts of cash needed; only Cat requires computer animation (and perhaps some of the delusional scenes later in the book).
Although I doubt 95% of the audience would actually get the ending without it being explained to them....
Still, it's chock full of action, character development, and even does the Hollywood Politically Correct thing by putting Native Americans in a good light.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?