Sci Fi Channel Plans 'Earthsea' Miniseries

Gumpy writes "The Sci-Fi Channel has started producing a TV miniseries based on the first two books of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series. The Earthsea miniseries is supposed to start on the Sci Fi Channel in December 2004."

Comments

DragonLance

[ruronikenshin83]

I'd personally rather see a DragonLance miniseries.

Re:DragonLance

[B'Trey]

The Earthsea series is one of the defining series of fantasy. It is a classic in every sense of he word. The Dragonlance series is mildly entertaining escapist fiction with stock characters and a predictable plot. A Dragonlance movie or series might be amusing, but it wouldn't be near as significant an event.

Re:DragonLance

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dragonlance series is mildly entertaining escapist fiction with stock characters and a predictable plot. A Dragonlance movie or series might be amusing, but it wouldn't be near as significant an event.

Just replace dragonlance with belgariad, I enjoyed these books as a teen only to reread them and realize that what I once thought was fantastic foreshadowing, was more along the lines of a plot summary, and the characters were written to be oblivious to it. Its as if the prophacy were as follows

A great hero will come, he is standing right beside you, he is that kid, you can't miss him, yes him, the one pointing to himself and shaking his head, yes he is the next great wizard and hero and is going to marry that chick over their, yeah her. He is going to defeat the big bad guy, yeah that one over there, yes you mr brooding arch type, the string bean kid is going to whip your butt. Just to make this more prophecy like, it will all happen after the sun rises in the east, your cat coughs up a fur ball that looks like jay leno, and the ground hog sees his shadow runs and hides but spring come early anyways because he is in fact just a ground hog and not soothsayer of doom and weather.

Re:DragonLance

[blancolioni]

I'd personally rather see a DragonLance miniseries.

What a bizarre non-sequitur.

Earthsea is widely regarded as a classic, and not just within the genre. Dragonlance is somebody's D&D campaign written up with pedestrian prose, shallow characterisation and a corny plot.

Though I admit Ged doesn't roll nearly as many natural 20s as whoever those PCs were.

Re:DragonLance

[B'Trey]

Narnia is escapist and Dragonlance is not? Surely you're trolling.

Re:DragonLance

[BJH]

Heh. I agree with you.
I tried re-reading the Belgariad just recently, nearly twenty years after I initially read it.
I loved it when I was a pre-teen; now it just gets up my nose. All the twee repartee, the fantasy cliches piled on top of each other, the utter lack of anything approaching suspense in the plot... taken all together, the books are just unbearable.

Re:DragonLance

[jd142]

There is definitely a stock element to some of the characters

The big problem I had with the books is that not only are the characters stock characters, but the world they lives in demand that they be that way. Any person born in *that* country must act like this. Sure, it made sense within the book that the people would be affected by their patron god and take after him in personality, but it made the characters that much flatter. Not only are they stock, but they can never grow beyond it because they are limited by the rules of the world they live in.

Rereading the Belgariad and the Mallorean is like reading a checklist. You just check things off as you go. Flowers supposed to bloom? Check. Person supposed to be saved? Check. Evil defeated? Check.

Re:DragonLance

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok:

Narnia: Written by a professional author who was also a college professor, in an attempt to produce quality literature for young adults. The 'infantile' segue, which is a very common literary device in classic fantasy, serves as a mechanism to help the reader understand that they are transitioning from the real world to a fantasy world, so that they know to suspend their disbelief.

MKFS/S: Written by a professional author who was trying to sell books by creating a humorous line of fantasy novels. The 'infantile' segue is meant as a parody of other fantasy novels which use similar techniques and have among their respected ancestors the Narnia books mentioned above.

Dragonlance: Written by a couple of former game designers, with very little writing experience, in an attempt to make some extra money and help their company sell more games. Continued by numerous other authors also employed by that company, in order to sell more games. Sold by that company to bookstores by using the term 'soap opera' in their marketing literature. Full of infantile segues of the quality of soap operas from scene to scene, even if they do not try to segue from reality to fantasy.

I did enjoy Dragonlance series at the time, but the quality of writing and plot definitely do not compare to Narnia. Although it may compare to MKFS/S.

All three are definitely escapist, but name one piece of fantasy literature which is not. Then tell me why it's not escapist, and explain why Dragonlance also fits that reason.

Re:DragonLance

[dustmote]

Thank you. To follow up the above poster, the Chronicles of Narnia are widely considered classics of children's literature, and the series is an allegory to the religious themes that Lewis explored much more fully in his adult writing. They teach graduate level courses over CS Lewis, spending the first two months on the heavy symbolism and messages inherent in the Narnia books. My mother just finished one such course as a part of her Masters program. Aslan as a Christ figure, et al. If you think there are no themes being explored through them, I submit that maybe you haven't read them since you were a kid?

Not trying to flame or anything, seriously, but I think that if this is the case, there's a whole 'nother level to those books that you may not have been able to catch when you were young. I know I didn't. Now bear in mind, I think Lewis' heavy-handed Christianity as displayed in his other works kind of makes me leery of actually taking on the undertaking of reading them all again, and they are children's literature, after all, but having to listen to endless analysis after analysis of C S Lewis' books over the last semester or two from my mother has given me a different viewpoint on them than the you seem to have.

Another thing that I think a lot of people don't think about with the Narnia series is that they were written in the 50's. They predate pretty much all of the modern fantasy genre. Even if they don't seem that fresh or thought provoking to you, (though they do to me), they were astoundingly original at the time, and helped shape a generation of authors. Don't get me wrong, I loved the Dragonlance series, but I don't think that a hundred years from now they will be considered classics. I imagine the Narnia series still will.

This is good news... but I want to see the movie

[myownkidney]

This is indeed good news. I am a big fan of Ursula K. Le Guin. Whilst a TV miniseries is better than nothing, I was really hoping for a film coming out soon.

Hate to be a Cassandra

[arivanov]

Time to put the asbestous suit.

Hate to say it. It is likely to be a flop. Compared to Earthsea the Lord of the Rings is simple. I(very biased)MO this is the second most impossible movie after the Lord of Light. The reason is that you have both an extremely complex, logical and well described world along with a complex story line and complex characters.

I love the rings, but the rings characters are like cartoons compared to the Earthsea (or nearly any Ursula Le Guin book).

Re:Hate to be a Cassandra

[jfengel]

Earthsea's characters are much better developed than LotR's. I think that's an opportunity for them, not a predicament. The script for LotR is tricky because the dialogue, which reads beautifully as an epic poem, sounds silly coming out of the mouths of actual characters. Additional plots were written in to give the characters some depth. They used distressingly little of the original dialogue.

If the writers, director, and actors of Earthsea can use this to their advantage, they have an opportunity to give strong, interesting performances.

The strength of LotR is the depth of its background material. That allowed them to create extraordinary visuals, and that's the real reason for the success of the films. Not that I have any particular faith in the Academy, but they roughly reflected its strengths: many awards for visual elements, zero for acting. Not that the actors were bad, but the roles don't give them many opportunities to really succeed.

Earthsea, on the other hand, was written more like a modern story and less like an ancient epic. They've got a real opportunity here, a great work by a master storyteller. I hope it works out.

Don't get too excited

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the uhmmm, "quality" of most SciFi Channel productions, I'm not exactly jumping up and down over this one. The Earthsea books aren't likely to translate well to TV even in the best of hands.

I'd love to see a big-screen version, though. I think there would be a better chance of getting it right in the larger format. Not because of "action" scenes or dramatic landscapes or any of the usual things people want to see in a movie, but because to do these books justice, you really would need to immerse the audience in the film in a way that isn't possible on a typical 29" screen.

Re:Never really clicked for me

[R.Caley]

The premise was really interesting and held a lot of promise, but I just couldn't get interested in the plot.

That's rather the problem for a visual adaptation. They aren't really plot driven. The plot is just an excuse to watch the characters grow. The first three are little studies of three aspects of becoming adult (responsibility, identity, mortality).

The fourth never spoke to me, and I haven't yet read the fourth.

I can't imagine them manageing to recreate that when the temptation to jump at magic battles with dragons is there.

Read the books whilst you can...

[mccalli]

For anyone planning on watching this, now would be a good time to read (or re-read) the books.

I'm not suggesting that the books are about to disappear. Nor am I implying that the TV series will be terrible. I have no idea how well the product will turn out, and the books will be as available after as they are before.

No, what I'm saying is that pretty soon this series will influence your view of things, whether you want it to or not. I'm seeing this with my nephews, who are reading Lord of the Rings directly after seeing the films. They're seeing the book as much more action-packed than I did, and I'm sure that this is due to expectation after watching the films.

So read them now, and then watch with interest. You're going to be influenced - can't help but be, but at least you'll have your own ideas in place beforehand.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Prepare for disappointment

[Otter]

Certainly my tastes are a long way from standard sci-fi fan -- you couldn't pay me to read anything by Robert Heinlein except Starship Troopers and his older space opera-ish short stories. So take this with a large grain of salt:

I find Ursula LeGuin's books utterly painful, the most boring things this side of, well, Robert Heinlein. Even Left Hand of Darkness, pretty much a consensus all-time top ten, bored the hell out of me.

(As an aside, where's Connie Willis' rabid fan base? Her books range from excellent to mindblowing, but I've never heard people fawn over her like they do LeGuin or the other tedious female sci-fi authors. Is a general warmth towards tradition and religion too politically incorrect to be assigned in those classes that are always pushing LeGuin? It's not like she's Margaret Thatcher.)

Re:Fantasy, SciFi

[Reverend Beaker]

I remember reading a book on writing "Speculative Fiction" by Orson Scott Card, and he put it as, in the most basic of terms, in fantasy something happens because of magic, in science fiction something happens because of a machine. Obviously you can go into all sorts of variations and point out where that explaination is wrong, but, in my opinion, or sort of comes down to how the story feels to the reader.

Re:SciFi Channel

[Anonymous Coward]

Not wanting to post flamebait, but this is why capitalism shines (sometimes)

Yeah, it has nothing to do with personal choice, freedom, pursuit of happiness, being allowed to chase the American Dream, not having to wait in bread lines and being able to buy as much toilet paper as you want. The real reason capitalism is great is because we get to watch shit on TV. BWHAHAHAA! What a fucknut.

Re:Prepare for enjoyment

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be skeptical too, but they did such an incredible job with Dune that I have *some* hope that they'll get this one right too.

Every time someone tells me that the reason Peter Jackson butchered Lord of the Rings is that "it's too hard to make a book like this into a movie", I point them to ScFi Channel's production of Dune -- which was done with a very small budget and with (excellect!) no-name actors.

Making a good movie is really about having a great script and great actors. The rest of the Hollywood crap is just eye candy for restless nine year olds.

I wonder if they'll use black or dark Polynesian actors like the books call for?

Re:Nice synopsis for Earthsea Trilogy newbies

[The Grassy Knoll]

"The hero, Ged, born with the name Duny, learns magic tricks from his aunt, the town witch, who sees in him the possibility of great power. When his home island of Gont is attacked by the vicious Kargs, Duny casts a simple fog spell which enshrouds the village, hiding the villagers from the enemies and saving the village from certain massacre. Word of this deed spreads to Ogion, the great mage of Re Albi"

Lordy! What a bucket of absolute toss.

not really suited for SciFi

[laura20]

They are wonderful novels, and I'd love to see them adapted but... so completely not suited for the SciFi style of miniseries making. They need almost nothing in the way of special effects, and a proper adaption would depend on really strong actors who can bring out the inner development. This is especially true of Tombs of Atuan, where a large part of the story involves the main characters wandering around underground.

It's truly a pity that the BBC never picked up an option -- that have been a perfect combination.

What about a bit more science?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find that the SciFi channel is always on the fantasy, sensational side, to the detriment of the scientific side. I wish they had more sci-fi shows where science plays a more important role. That is, more in the way of hard sci-fi shows.

Cautious optimism is called for

[Anonymous Coward]

The three thin books of the Earthsea Trilogy are IMO the second best fantasy series ever written (LoTR being #1), and probably the most *original* fantasy series ever. How LeGuin was able to create an entrie world with such economy is totally beyond me.

If you haven't read it yet, I envy you.

The SciFi Channel did an amazing job with Dune, another very cerebral book, so there's hope that they'll take the same intelligent approach with Earthsea. That clown Peter Jackson could learn a lot from these people: respect the books, have a great script, and don't spend so much time wanking around with special effects.

When did miniseries become a cable thing?

[ianscot]

In general it seems like the major networks can't make miniseries float, ratings wise. The last network ones that made my radar were the Jesus one on CBS (long enough ago that Debra Messing played Mary Magdalene and it wasn't a weird casting) and the Dinotopia one that flopped badly.

Back in the day, Shogun and Roots and that kind of thing were big money makers for the three broadcast networks. Now it's the SciFi Channel and that kind of venue putting out new series, or first-time-in-the-US ones anyway. (A&E ran the [fantastic, literate, well-acted] BBC Pride and Prejudice, for example.)

How long ago did this happen? Personally I'm not so sure it's a bad thing. The production values are lower, okay, but CGI can fill in rough edges for this science fiction or fantasty stuff. A miniseries is much better, much much better, for most books, and for characters in general, than any film release. The Aubrey Maturin movie this spring was pretty good, really, but there's just no way to do that in two-plus hours.

Maybe in 25 years we'll get Harry Potter miniseries done by some sort of children's network, and the plots and characters won't feel like they're being crammed inside of three hours to cash in at the box office. That first HP movie in particular was way, way frenetic.

Re:When did miniseries become a cable thing?

[NSash]

Maybe in 25 years we'll get Harry Potter miniseries done by some sort of children's network, and the plots and characters won't feel like they're being crammed inside of three hours to cash in at the box office.

In 25 years, no one below the age of 30 will know what Harry Potter is. (Kid living with mean family discovers he has magic powers, secret history. It's been done better before, and it will be done better again. Don't get me wrong -- I liked [most of] the books -- but don't confuse them for something they aren't.)

Re:Prepare for disappointment

[BJH]

Skippy - heh.
I didn't particularly like Tehanu either, but I don't think her "message" did the book in - I think it was just that my memories of the original Earthsea trilogy come from my childhood, and Tehanu took a point of view that tended to stomp those rather naive memories into the ground.

Re:SciFi Channel

[galtenberg]

Making one point about capitalism doesn't mean it applies to the entire concept. Or are we not allowed to make points in this forum?

Be humorous, but drop the rudeness. You had a point, but now you're a troll.

Re:Prepare for disappointment

[Mr. Slippery]

Tehanu just doesn't fit in Earthsea: but instead of designing a new world were the message could fit comfortably, Earthsea got twisted until the message could be wedged in somehow. In my opinion I think the book's terrible.

I was disappointed with it initially too, it's a jarring change in tone from the original trilogy. It went down better on a re-read, and with the last two books in place, it fits pretty well (even the deus ex machina at the end of Tehanu makes sense at the end of the The Other Wind).

But I don't have high hopes for this miniseries - they're doing A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, which means a lot of restructuring to get a single plot line out of both books. (The ending of A Wizard of Earthsea still amazes me almost a quarter-century after I first read it.)

devastation

[LordMyren]

they are going to blaspheme against one of my greater childhood memories.

i reread Wizard this summer. beautiful little Man v. Self. but there's no way they can lace the movie with all the subtle surrealism of the book.

Myren

Re:Never really clicked for me

[Mr. Slippery]

But I read Earthsea at the same time I read The Prydain Chronicles. I was more drawn to Taran's journey of maturity than Ged's.

Taran's is a straightforward tale of becomming a man. Ged's is a complex tale of becoming a wise man. So yeah, you might have been too young to realize the character development. :-)

I might re-read The Prydain Chronicles for fun and escape if I came across a copy; but even now as an adult, each time I re-read the Earthsea novels I feel a little wiser.

Re:My Lord... (um...)

[Markvs]

You do realize, of course, that Card got most of his ideas *from* Ursula Le Guin? I encountered this little phenomena upon one of my friends being blown away by Card's "originality"... :-)

That's not a flame, just pointing out the obvious...

with all of SciFi's funding...

[The Lynxpro]

Why can't they [SciFi] put the funds to good use, like co-financing the Beeb's revival of "Doctor Who" slated for 2005? SciFi would be a better outlet in the States for it than BBC America...and reach a larger potential audience since SciFi is a basic cable channel and BBC America is usually treated as something reserved for digital cable packages. Yep, load up 10 Spanish-speaking stations in basic cable, but make the Beeb a premium cultural channel. Nope, that's not discrimination at all! Damn you to hell, Comcast! :)

Re:better, by far, than harry potter

[Ruds]

then came harry potter. a wizard going to wizard school, making friends and enemies while learning his special abilities and discovering his hidden power. huh. that sounds familiar. i awaited word of a lawsuit, but alas...

i have yet to trudge my way through any of the potter books, or for that matter see the movies, but i recommend to any of my adult friends who do that they read a wizard of earthsea before inflicting potter on their children.

hey, what a good idea! let's trash a book we've never read!

i heard that wizard of earthsea has a wizard in it that fights dragons! that sounds a lot like the hobbit! tolkien's estate should sue!

it's great that you recommend that parents have their children read earthsea; it's a great book that's perfect for readers from curious pre-teens to fantasy-minded adults. but rowling writes some fine fiction for children, and for you to discount it without reading it is pretty lame.

here's a tip--try not to be so pretentious.

Re:Very cool

[tillerman35]

I must be in a very small minority because I liked the second more than the first. Don't get me wrong- I loved the first book! I simply liked the direction that the character Ged had taken. Here he is this amazingly powerful wizard- the Archmage of Roke, in fact- yet his gentleness and human qualities are what really make him what he is. IMHO, the character development is very well done. Ditto for the third book.

I agree, however, with the majority view in that I can't see how they can possibly pull this off. Here's an example: LeGuin uses the concept of everything having a true name, that is, a name in the true speech, the language the dragons use, the language that Ea used when he spoke the world. This is not just some interesting concept found throughout the novels- it defines them and binds them together as a coherent whole. The first book is Ged's quest to find the true name of the Gebbeth and thus bring about its absumption. The second book's most inspiring moment is where he gives the girl her true name. In the third, the drama is made more intense when Ged discovers that the dragons lose their speech. How can these be communicated (meaningfully) in a visual medium? I think it would be quite shameful for this central theme to be made irrelevant or worse transformed into something entirely different from the author's intent. At best, you get dialogue that completely confuses anyone who hasn't read the book. At worst, you either leave it out (which makes the mini-series pointless) or you turn it into something completely different and piss off the very-vocal fans of the book (e.g. "Wierding Modules" in the original Dune movie). And this is only one of many important themes LeGuin weaves into these books. Leave them out and all you have left is a "Magik Island Adventure" story.

Anyone who trusts the sci-fi channel to remain true to the book should look at what they did to Battlestar Galactica (yes, I know it was a series, not a book). To quote Edward James Olmos, "I know the Sci Fi [network] wants to say that everyone's going to like it, but in the case of longtime fans, they're not." I think the same will apply to Earthsea.

My Predictions (serious and otherwise):

1. They'll turn this into another Harry Potter clone.
2. The tiny hedgehog creature (Hoag) will be replaced with an ewok.
3. Looksfar will have an outboard motor.
4. The gebbeth will be played by a wisecracking Eddy Murphy
5. Ged will NOT be black, nor will the majority of the cast. The Kargad people, however, will be black savages. (For those who haven't read the book or haven't read it in a while, it's the reverse).
6. Ged and Tenar/Arha will fall in love in the mini-series.
7. The ring of Erreth-Akbe will be referred to as the Ring of Earthsea or some other name to avoid explaining who Erreth-Akbe was. There will be no mention of it being in half, nor will it have any rune on it whatsoever.
8. Alternate prediction to #7 above: The ring will not be mentioned because test audiences thought it was "too much like Lord of the Rings." The screenwriters will come up with some other plausible explanation for Ged to be wandering about underground.
9. One of my most beloved books will be ruined for those people not fortunate to have read it before seeing the mini-series.

Re:STOP AT THE 3rd BOOK!!!

[ddama]

Tehanu is a fine book. It just happens to be utterly and completely different from the three before it.

Deliberately. LeGuin wrote it as an adult looking back on her juvenile work and finding it less than satisfactory, with the intent of allowing all of her readers to see as she did. Difficult, yes. I found it very powerful. Few people, especially creatives, have the self-discipline to critique themselves in that way.

It is neither utter crap, nor anti-men. That said, the Deus Ex Machina style ending, while foreshadowed adequately, is predicatble and a little tedious -- it is how the third ended, after all.

Re:Prepare for disappointment

[Gilmoure]

When I read the first two HP books, I was totally bummed out by how they had missed the whole awe factor in magic, unlike the Earthsea books. In Harry Potter, magic is basicly the same as James Bond gadgets; cool but meaningless.

In the Earthsea books, Le Guin really captures the wonder of magic and the danger it's use carries. Another set of books that really explore the whole consequences of power is Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy. Would like to see a big screen version of those books.

I hope this production doesn't miss out on that as well.