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

What about Riverworld?!?

[Roger Keith Barrett]

Aren't SCI-Fi ever going to continue with the Riverworld books, or was the response to that too disapointing?

Woah... How was "The Lathe of Heaven"...?

[Mitleid]

I meant to watch The Lathe of Heaven when Sci-Fi aired that a few years back, but missed it, so I'm whether or not to have my hopes up or not. I was sort of impartial to their interpretation of Dune, but then again I only saw the first miniseries. A Wizard of Earthsea wasn't the most "dense" of LeGuinn's novels, so hopefully Sci-Fi won't be able to mangle it too bad. This should be sort of interesting to check out; I might be actually excited. Heh...

Prepare for disappointment

[rjstanford]

More than most fantasy, the Earthsea books spend time on internal character development. They can make you think. Their plots, frankly, are nothing to write home about - in my opinion, at least. Unless this is going to be an "adaptation" along the lines of Starship Troopers, I can't see it doing very well. But, who knows - I'd love to be wrong about that...

Re:Prepare for disappointment

[mariox19]

[T]he Earthsea books spend time on internal character development.

The first one, especially, is a kind of Once and Future King with a touch of Harry Potter (though of course it predates H.P.). I'm thinking about the old wizard tutoring Ged a la Merlin, before sending him off to wizard school.

The whole way to make this successful would be to concentrate on character and philosophy. These were the most enjoyable parts of the book, as I recall.

I still remember being fascinated with the idea that Ged, having transformed himself into a bird to effect an escape, might lose himself in the bird's nature and not be able to transform himself back. (The old wizard eventually had to lend him a hand.)

Television might have a hard time carrying this off without a lot of boring exposition. (Of course, well-written dialog and charismatic casting would avoid all that.)

Re:Prepare for disappointment

[david.given]

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.

You should be aware that Ursula LeGuin has an evil twin, Skippy. Quite a lot of her books were in fact written by Skippy.

For example: the original Earthsea trilogy was written by Ursula LeGuin, and is wonderful. Tehanu, on the other hand, was written by Skippy.

Likewise, The Eye of the Heron is by Skippy, The Lathe of Heaven is by Ursula. The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness are collaborations, however.

Basically, while Skippy is not necessarily a bad writer, she's so concerned about pushing her message that the plot suffers immensely. 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. (The huge deus ex machina at the end is just clumsy, too.)

But when Ursula manages to keep Skippy under control, she can be fabulous. You didn't like The Left Hand of Darkness, but I love it. There's a message, but it fits so beautifully...

Never really clicked for me

[AnonymousKev]

It's been a long time since I read the Earthsea trilogy. I remember enjoying the first book, but the other two just didn't click. The premise was really interesting and held a lot of promise, but I just couldn't get interested in the plot.

Not sure why. I like the Lathe of Heaven and think The Ones Who Walk Away from Oomlas is one of the best short stories ever written. If I had cable, I'd probably watch it out of curiosity. But since I don't ... oh well.

Re:And a recent interview

[Pastey]

Favorite part of that interview:

Q: Do you have a favourite TV programme?

UKL: I used to watch Star Trek, until they went off the rails with Voyager, and when we were in England about two centuries ago we got hooked on Dr Who - the guy with the long scarf and the great nose, not the one after him who looked like he needed some vitamins. There isn't much to watch on American TV now unless you are into violence and/or canned laughter. Did you know that most of the laugh tracks they use are so old that the people you hear laughing at the sitcom are mostly dead? It seems appropriate.

Appropriate indeed. I always wondered why "Friends" left me feeling "unclean". Now I know it was the living dead laugh-track.

Or David Schwimmer's acting abilities....

Re:Hate to be a Cassandra

[Unknown Kadath]

I don't know if they have any designs on Lord of Light yet, but last I heard, Sci-Fi was planning on an Amber miniseries, written by Richard Christian Matheson, whose past writing credits include such tours de force as The A-Team, Knight Rider, and The Incredible Hulk.

P.S. You're not a Cassandra if people believe you. ;)

-Carolyn

I always thought...

[tassii]

I always thought the Miles Vorkorsigan books would make a fantastic miniseries. So much material to work from and a lot of blanks to fill in for new stories.

Space combat, political intrigue, charismatic lead character.. how can you go wrong?

Unless Disney got a hold of it, of course.