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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..."
my biggest Dune fans friends didn't like 'Dune' they did at all
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
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.
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?
That's because "Joe Sixpack" can usually tell when he's being preached to instead of entertained.
Let's face it, most of us who fell in love with morality-ladden Sci Fi stories did so when we were in our early teens and still growing into our own world-views. To be a 12 year-old and grok Heinlein might make you a little smarter than your peers... It's flattering to a kid's ego: you're not just another nerd, you're '1337! However, once you reach a certain age, it's time to stop kidding yourself that understanding the message behind Asimov's "Darwinian Pool Table" short story makes you any smarter that somebody who instead chose to spend his Sunday afternoon watching NFL games, and realize that the story you just read was kind of crappy, and even preachier than the feminist pablum your dingbat sister watches on the Lifetime channel.
For my own part, I prefer sci-fi that asks interesting questions (like "2001") over sci-fi that crams answers down our throats ("Cube"). To each his own, but there's no need for us to go on imagining that our tastes for movies about aliens, robots, and outer-space wars makes us any better than the average slob.
And right now, doing the story of a war based on a cultural misunderstanding might be particulary unpopular.
Doing a "story about a war" will never be as popular as a story about people. That's why "Glory" (a nice little film about an all black regement) did much better, both critically and commercially, than "The Civil War" (a four-hour movie which did a pretty good job of re-enacting some of the major battles, but never really got you to care about anybody on the screen).
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
the sex was completely missing
So you missed the scene in the first book with the queen of Rebma? And the entire first half of of the second book with Lorraine? And the interlude with Merlin's mother? And the attempted seduction by a creature of chaos on the black road? Or the lady near the end of the world?
Did you even read the same book I read?
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.
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'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