Realising Sci-Fi Novels w/ Modern Film-Making Techniques?

caitsith01 asks: "Like many of you I recently downloaded and watched the full-length Matrix Reloaded trailer . The glorious special effects contained therein caused me to reflect on how, up until very recently, it would have been impossible to effectively realize many great science fiction novels on film. In many instances, the sheer grandeur of what is described and the inherent difficulty in representing complex future technologies realistically would be nearly impossible to overcome without using computer-aided special effects. A case in point are the novels of William Gibson: apart from the lamentable Johnny Mnemonic and the little known New Rose Hotel (both based on Gibson short stories rather than novels) there have been no major films based on his work. With today's computer generated effects Gibson's descriptions of cyberspace and future technologies in Neuromancer and Count Zero could finally be presented in visual form. What other sci-fi novels would you like to see turned into movies with the benefit of modern special effects? Before the flaming about how plot and characters are more important than eye candy starts, perhaps you should take some time to reflect on how far we've come."

Comments

Redshift Rendezvous

[wowbagger]

OK, there are the obvious biggies: Ringworld, Rendezvous with Rama (but definitely NOT any of the so-called sequels), Have Spacesuit Will Travel and so on.

But here's an interesting story that would be pretty damn cool as a movie:

RedShift Rendezvous. Here's a brief excerpt.

Basically, just as Flatland used geometry to explore social mores, Redshift Rendezvous uses general relativity to set up a pretty good whodunit. The basic postulate of the story is that there are hyperspacial universes that are accessible to us that have 2 interesting properties - they are smaller than this universe (but map point-for-point onto this universe), and they have a slower speed of light. However, as you go "up" in hyperspacial layers, the rate at which the universe gets smaller is much larger than the rate at which the speed of light slows. So that in hyperspace layer 10, the speed of light is 10 meters per second, but traveling at 10 meters per second in that universe is equivilent to traveling 1024 times the speed of light in this universe. However, with the speed of light so low, you experience relativistic effects just walking around.

Making this story as a movie would be pretty hard, and probably wouldn't make lots of money given that the norms would be "cornfuzed" by it, but it would be pretty cool.

Maybe in a few years some indie will make it on his desktop 8-way 10GHz machine....

Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash"

[Judg3]

That would be a great one to see. I'd love to see if the directors vision of Hiro and the Aleut racing their motorcycles at the speed of light in the metaverse would match my own.

Or how about "The Diamond Age"? Cities made entirely of Diamond where glass used to be, that'd be pretty slick.

Ohhh, hey, I think seeing Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" would be sweet as well. The battleroom on the big screen!

Man, the list is almost endless now that I think about it. But I think I'd have to rate "Snow Crash" up at the top of the "wish I could see it" list.

Re:Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash"

[Judg3]

it's not necessarily the best Stephenson book but its probably the most filmable (and, as the most -obvious- the most likely to do well commercially.

I agree with you on that. I'd really love to see Cryptomnicon as a movie, but it's not really Sci-Fi, so I didn't include it. And the Diamond Age, I think, would make a real good movie as well.
Especially with the RActor's, and Nell's primer and all. Personally I feel that The Diamond Age is more well rounded book of his, and end up re-reading it more often then the others.

Thanks for the link btw, I had no idea. Though now that I look at it, it doesn't seem quite as interesting or as true as to my take on it as I had thought.

The lost Gibson adaptation

[ngibbins]

[...] apart from the lamentable Johnny Mnemonic and the little known New Rose Hotel (both based on Gibson short stories rather than novels) there have been no major films based on [Gibson's] work

There is a third, even less known adaptation of Gibson's work, namely Tomorrow Calling. This short (11m) film is a fairly faithful adaptation of the Gernsback Continuum, if you ignore the change of location from California to the British northwest (plenty of Art Deco buildings in Blackpool), that was made for Channel 4 (UK broadcaster) and featured a post-pop career Toyah Wilcox. Well worth watching if you can track it down.

The whole Amber series by Zelazny

[Randym]

Because of the peculiar effects of hell-riding, movies from these books simply could not be made with traditional techniques and would benefit from the new technologies.

(For those who don't know 'hell-riding': as a man is riding a horse [galloping], he is also seamlessly changing the landscape around him using his abilities. The landscape changes, the weather changes, the flora and fauna change, etc.]