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Scifi Channel to Make Ringworld Miniseries
Snaller writes "The Sci Fi Channel has listed its programming for the upcomming year, it includes the Farscape miniseries already mentioned by Slashdot, it also includes a miniseries based the legendary scifi story by Larry Niven: Ringworld. In the far future 4 travelers crash on a ring around a sun in a distant system. Shall be interesting to see how they depict the Puppeteers."
According to the article, they're making Le Guin's Earthsea, too!
I for one have been waiting anxiously for someone to do a movie or miniseries on Ringworld. Hopefully they'll treat it as well as they did the Dune books.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWConsidering the ringworld idea was one of the primary sci-fi influences of Halo, this should be pretty cool.
I'm looking forward to this series!
let it be better that RiverWorld! I loved the book but SciFi's miniseries sucked, big time.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
Well, do you remember a few years ago? George Lucas made a movie called Episode One. Well they're thinking of using the actor who played Jar-Jar...
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
It's about time some one makes this. Too bad it really needs to be on an IMAX though.
Well, a rendition of one, anyway:
/ br ain.html
8 94 803247/002-9348466-3390413?v=glance
http://students.biology.lsa.umich.edu/bio208_11
The image is taken from this book, which is definitely teh awesome:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Not as interesting as rishathra.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
... the Discovery Channel will be releasing its new parody miniseries: Ringworm
I really had the hots for her in Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles...
As long as they keep the whole sex bit out of the series
Why, what's wrong with alien sex?
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Cutting off Jar-Jar's head with shadow-square wire works for me.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"THE MAN WITH THE SCREAMING BRAIN: When a upscale banker suffers a traumatic head injury, part of his brain is replaced with that of a street hustler. The movie will be written, directed and stars EVIL DEAD's Bruce Campbell. Shooting begins this spring. "
Come on, it's got Bruce Campbell. It must be good!
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Also on that page was this:
...)
ALIEN APOCALYPSE: Another Bruce Campbell action fest, this time with Campbell playing a deep space explorer who returns to Earth years after leaving it, only to find the planet has been invaded by an alien race and mankind reduced to slaves. Campbell and his fellow astronauts try and mobilize a rebellion.
Aliens, an invasion and Bruce Campbell? They might aswell rename this 'Duke Nukem: The Movie'. Should be cool. (Tho knowing Sci-Fi
His book is obviously an unimaginative rip-off of Halo. ;)
Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ...and a Kzinti played by a muppet.
my response: Scream and leap.
Last I heard, OSC was working on a screenplay for Ender's Game. No URL's, but it was up on his website. I'm sure google will point to this.
-- DrZaius - Minister of Sciences and Protector of the Faith
"As long as they keep the whole sex bit out of the series"
dont worry. I am gathering that the 'Sci-Fi' channel is american so you wont see anything but precious precious violence.
*rocks back and forth, slowly carressing his sweet sweet gun*
As long as they keep the whole sex bit out of the series, it should be very cool miniseries
True. Goodness knows that we shouldn't think of sex as part of normal human behavior, so it should never be depicted, nor even talked about in polite company, especially around the children (We MUST Protect the Children!). And then once we perfect in vitro fetilization and artificial gestation, there's no reason to have that disgusting sex whatsoever.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
Ender's game is already being made into a movie by the same people as XMen2! :)
Rishathra -- Furries in space.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
In the open scenes of Ringworld, Louis Wu travels around the Earth for his 200th birthday -- using transporter booths to jump to the next timezone and have a 48-hour long birthday party. In the very rare first edition of the book, he travels from West to East, which is the wrong direction. Later versions corrected this.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
You may not want to bother with the sequels.
Ringworld Engineers was almost as good as the original, maybe, but Ringworld Throne was a huge disappointment. I'm not the only one who gave up on it halfway through. It's almost like Niven let somebody else write some of it, or decided to fuse unrelated plots into one book, or something equally horrid. Just stay away.
After reading (half of it), I'll probably never read another Niven again.
I'd ask for other book recommendations - but somehow the Slashdot structure isn't very suitable for recommending stuff (books, MP3 players, whatever) and rating it on a regular basis, so we have to make do with a roundup story once or twice a year.
Agreed. I'm no prude by any stretch, but the whole "rishathra" thing was an annoying subtext that added nothing to the stories. I recall being embarrased for Larry Niven everytime he threw in "rishing" - which seemed to be every ten pages.
I bet it's fun being his wife - having to put on a puppeteer costume before getting busy.
Homer: Urge to kill RISING, RISING...
Please see this one.
Apparently, a pair of ostriches. But.... maybe not.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Heh. "Meesa chosen by Hindmost because meesa clumsy. Also, Meesa bipolar."
I'm wondering exactly how much material from the books they're going to include.
The original Ringworld book doesn't really end with a tense climax. It's a satisfying ending for a book, but I think it would fall a bit flat in a movie/miniseries.
Ringworld Engineers ends with a good fight scene, but including that would mean they'd have to explain Pak Protectors and a lot of other things. I don't think that much material can be adequately handled in a four-hour miniseries.
Ringworld Throne just wasn't very good at all, so let's not go there.
And how faithful will they be to the books? Will they have the "invulnerable" General Products hull? Will they have the Slaver shotgun? Will they include the Puppeteer Fleet of Worlds?
This has so much potential to be great or awful.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
It's about time some one makes this.
I've been hoping for this movie since I read the book in 1989.
I'm glad they waited until now, though, because I'm old enough to actually be in it.
Well, old enough to audition for it, anyway.
Nothing at all. I just happen to be one of the few who feel that they did a pretty good job translating Dune to the screen. I know I'm in the minority on that one. Still, you have to appreciate that it's Scifi doing the translation rather then Lynch/De Laurentiis. Think Puppeteers with wierding modules.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWIt will be interesting to me how they imagine and portray the scope of the Ringworld. All the great science-fiction that inspired me let me "see" things I'd never seen before. To see thousand-mile high walls, oceans the size of planets and the curve of the Ringworld in the sky would have to be mesmerizing.
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
You're thinking of "The Integral Trees" - another Niven work. Not "Ringworld".
This was like a show I saw when I was ten years old. There was this family living in a flying saucer. They had two robots: a tall gold one and a short one like a trash can. There was a Doctor, who always said "Dammit Jim" and insulted the robots all the time. They were running from bad silver robots with red eyes who were trying to kill them. Wish I could remember the name of that show.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Halo consisted mostly of shooting aliens on an artificial planet, while Ringworld consisted mostly of having sex with aliens on an artificial planet.
Eh, close enough.
The Louis Wo character is over 200 years old.
Thanks for solving the speculation of who gets to play Louis. Keanu Reeves will get the part.
Just imagine "Shadow square wire: Wo."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I'm sure this is flamebait but...
Ringworld: Nebula Award 1970 (Best Novel), Hugo Award 1971 (Best Novel), Locus Award 1970 (Best Novel), and the Australian Ditmar 1972 (Best Novel).
The setting certainly was important and sparked conferences, debates and papers (including some thoughts from Freeman Dyson).
But the characters and civilizations certainly were deep, this was the first in-depth look at the Kzinti who became the centre of many later novels written by other authors. There have been a series of (at least) ten novels on the time of the man-kzin wars, Poul Anderson anyone?
As for stereotypical characters:
-A two hunded year old Asian man who travels deep in to space every few decades when he gets bored.
-A female lead who is charmed by sucessive generations of fertility lotteries.
-A diplomat from a race of eight-foot Lion people.
-An emmisary from a race of herbivors who are fleeing the galaxy in a convoy of five planets that rotate around each other.
so cliche
The PC police believe that Jar Jar is an offensive caricature of black people (correction African-Americans). Similarly, the trade federation people were caricatures of Asians. And Watto was a Jewish stereotype.
Of course, all of this could be the result of George Lucas being a mere caricature of a good screenwriter.
Gratuituous cross-species sex to seal contracts is not part of normal human behavior, it's just some guy with weird sexual hangups playing out his bizarre fantasies in print.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
How in hell's name was Jar-Jar offensive!?
Well if I was Jamaican I'd probably want to kill George Lucas for sticking that accent on him.
Why the Hell did I go and see that film? Does anyone remember 'Acting?'
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
that it doesn't turn out like riverworld.
Ringworld deserves far better treatment. I can totally see scifi fagging it up to turn it into some retarded adventure movie a la xena.
Well, the whole boring and laying of eggs thing I can do without...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And don't forget, Ringworld Fans, the new book, Ringworld's Children, comes out June 1!!! Woohoo!
:) )
It trails the children of Teela Brown and Seeker (Who it turns out was also the product of a "Breeding for Luck" selecting breeding project.), and what happens to them. (Before Teela turns into a Protector, and also explains why Protector-Teela wanted to lose the fight with Louis Wu!
Not to rehash a years-old argument (how did you miss it?), but Jar-Jar reminded some viewers of how Jamaicans and African Americans have been caricatured in popular entertainment (e.g. loping, dim-witted, exaggerated mouths, speaking pidgin English). Some of the other aliens in SW:TPM were bore some resemblance to racial stereotypes as well (e.g. the trade federation reps =~ Chinese, Anakin's master Watto =~ Jewish), leading to some spirited debates about the subject.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
My personal favorite is:
Louis Wu, I found your challenge verbose. In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap.
--Speaker-to-Animals, "Ringworld"
Other good quotes (almost all of which belong to Speaker-to-Animals/Chmee):
If you can heat some bourbon, I can drink it. If you cannot heat it, I can still drink it.
--Speaker-to-Animals, "Ringworld"
Exercise is wonderful. I could sit and watch it all day.
--Louis Wu, "Ringworld"
A docile kzin. You sought to produce a docile kzin, Nessus. If you think you have produced a docile kzin, come and rejoin us.
--Speaker-to-Animals, "Ringworld'
It does not disturb me to play a god. It disturbs me to play a god badly.
--Speaker-to-Animals, "Ringworld"
To kidnap a kzin is probably a mistake.
--Chmeee, "The Ringworld Engineers"
Scars are like memories. We do not have them removed.
--Chmeee, "The Ringworld Engineers"
Hindmost: The easy way to find out is to accelerate until something happens.
Louis: I do not believe I heard a Pierson's puppeteer say that.
--"The Ringworld Engineers"
Chmeee: With such a weapon I could boil the Earth to vapor.
Louis Wu: Shut up.
Chmeee: It was a natural thought, Louis.
--"The Ringworld Engineers"
Chmeee: Furthermore, they [kzinti] of the Map of Earth have fulfilled an ancient daydream of my people.
Louis: Oh?
Chmeee: Conquering Earth, you idiot.
--"The Ringworld Engineers"
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Hey!
This guy brings up a legitimate point. I don't think he deserves to be modded "troll."
I loved Ringworld back in the day; it was one of the first grown-up genre SF novels I read, and I flipped head over heels for it and Niven's other stuff. I read it and the other "Known Space" books many times.
Now, I wonder what the heck I was thinking. It's heavy on sense-of-wonder, but there really is not much to the story.
The setting itself turns out to be kind of shabby: Niven had to add all sorts of kludgy patches to keep the poor Ringworld together and viable. If your aim is to create lots of secure living space, you are far better off building lots of self-contained space habitats.
Looking back, I suspect I was blown away by the Big Thingness of it, and the intricate background material that added versimilitude. I know more about people now, and more about science and engineering too. Ringworld just doesn't cut it for me any more.
Before I'm accused of having "too small a mind" to appreciate it, go read another book I first read way back when but still respect: Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker.
That non-novel fictional future history is utterly lacking in interesting characters, but dang, talk about scale! Talk about scope! Star Maker details the rise and fall of galactic civilizations over a span of billions of years. There are battles involving mobile planets and nova bombs. Dozens of bizzare races. Water-filled artificial worlds full of aquatic sapients linked together with webs of nervous tissue. The good guys have something like the Prime Directive. Their big ultimate project runs so long that it is threatened by the heat death of the universe.
And, hey! This Stapledon guy? He INVENTED the Dyson Sphere . . . go ask Freeman Dyson*. The far-future super-civilizations in the book use enveloping spheres to gather every bit of sunlight from the few remaining stars.
Stefan
* Or, if you don't have his email address, go read Disturbing the Universe, where he directly credits Star Maker for the "sphere" idea.
I think you meant:
:(
Ender's game is already being made into a movie by the same people as XMen2!
There's no possible way I see that book being faithfully translated into film. Far too much of it is... 'unamerican'. At least unamerican film.
(*spoilers*)
Almost the entire book has the tone of a child/teen who's teased, taunted and manipulated how how that child/teen strikes back. I doubt God Fearing soccer moms will be interested in seeing or allowing others to see Columbine-like tragedy on planetary scale for amusement.
I'd love to see it, and I'd love if the movie *was* portrayed in a "hey, teasing a manipulating people leads to them snapping you morons" type message, but there's no way Hollywood would create that movie.
You're absolutely right. Better stick to movies about torturing people and nailing them to pieces of wood.
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
Do NOT screw a puppeteer.
Yes, the two mouths with prehensile lips suggest all sorts of kinky possibilities, but if you make a "home run" you might end up with a hungry puppeteer larva inside of you, and man, you just know that that's not going to be a fun pregnancy.
Stefan
I'm less interested in seeing a Puppeteer than I am in seeing a kzin. Maybe they should rent the team who did Sully in "Monsters, Inc."
I had forgotten about the alien sex part (it's been 20 years since I read it). I was thinking of Louis Wu, Teela and the zero-g bed. However, Niven was never that graphic about it anyway.
As for "weird sexual hangups", there is a (possibly apocryphal) tale about an early sex researcher who, when defining various sexual behaviors, categorized everything he personally did not like as "abnormal" or "perverted".
And just because they are "weird" doesn't mean they are "wrong".
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
So cliche, character-wise. Let me count the ways...
- We have a brave genius human (male, naturally) who solves the problems. Check.
- We have an attractive but ditzy girl for him. Check.
- We have some sex. Check.
- We have some fierce aliens. Cat people'll do. Check.
- We have some cowardly aliens. Check.
But wait! the twist!
- We have *another* attractive girl for him, and the first attractive girl goes off with someone else, hence giving brave genius male some more sex!
I'm not even going to *start* on Engineers and Throne - too many targets, too little time. If erotic furries is your thing, knock yourself out. Otherwise read something better.
Like Asimov and Clarke, Niven has a major failing as an author - he can come up with astounding technical details, and then wrap them with a story that's for shit. Niven's obviously done *amazing* research into stuff, and invented whole civilisations and past histories like Tolkein would be proud of, but the story (which basically means things happening to people and how people react) could be any trash novel from anywhere.
Grab.
Check Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestials for a pix of a Pierson's Puppeteet.Let see how they do Speaker To Animals (C'hmee),A Kzin (8 ft tall organge cat with hands.(carnivore)
Geek Hillbilly
With Bruce Campbell as "Amon"...never mind.
I wonder how well SciFi will handle WHR?
FIRE!
Niven, Card, and also Greg Bear. The Forge of God is in the works, with the superior Anvil of Stars also optioned.
As long as they release a DVD set, I'll be all about it.
/.) that there was supposed to be a Children of Dune. Ah. Bought it on amazon while typing this. I see it as a failure of marketing if I have to go looking for something...
The problem with the Sci-Fi channel is, my local cable company refuses to carry it. I think I can get it if I go with the expensive digital cable. Or maybe if I get a dish thing. Not going to happen. But I will buy the DVD set the minute it's available. I really like they way they did Dune. I heard rumors (here on
Anyway, I won't be seeing this on SciFi channel, but I'll sure buy the DVD.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
We know why Teela wanted to lose the fight. It was explained oerfectly well in Engineers. You know, when it actually happened.
Why do successful series always feel the need to go insert unneeded stories in the "gaps" between the same stories that made them successful? We don't need a day-to-day diary.
Following the events of Teela's children would be interesting, though.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I really liked the concepts presented in Ringworld, but the character interactions just seemed ... juvenille ... to me. Sorry if that runs counter to your own (well-reasoned, I'm sure) opinion.
If the sex scene contributes something to the story, by all means, include it. But if it's <pun>inserted</pun> only for shock value, then replace with with something clever that does further the plot.
Anonymous Kev
Proudly posting as AC since 1997
(Finally got a dang account in 2004)
And, while I appreciated the Sci-Fi Channel's rendition of the novel, particularly that they more or less stuck to the story, the sets all had a very Star Trek feeling to them. In scenes that were supposed to be out in the open desert, it was obvious that they were on a soundstage with a wooden floor under their feet. In 1977, Star Wars did a better job of convincing me that the deserts of Tatoonie (sp?) were real than this did.
I suppose that I should be happy for any true-to-the-story rendition of a novel that I like, but I've gotten so used to epic-scale visuals in theatrical movies that watching "made for TV" productions is hard.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
People are so damn PC these day's they'll make the idiotic mistake of calling black people from anywhere african-americans. I just wanted to yell at this one girl who asked durring a Q&A with german exchange students (all white) if they had any african-american students at their school. 'Black' may be offensive to some people(certanly less offensive than some other things), but 'african-american' is stupidly PC and confusing (charlize theron, teresa heinz-kerry). We're all just americans(although the canuks and mexicans dont like that either) some of us are brown, some of us are peachish, and so on. I'll start calling 'black' americans african-americans when everyone starts calling me, a 'white' american, a belgian/irish-american... [/rant]
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
At any rate, I may be desensatized to it by Heinlein, but I don't find Niven over the top in that department. Also, while I agree that everything you named is a cliche now I'm not sure how cliche they were back when he wrote it. I certainly think the puppeteers where original, especially when you take into account the irony of their cowardice given their immense power, and the way the puppeteer in the book was viewed by his fellow aliens back home. And really, a LOT of good books can be made to appear simple if their details are stripped away. Tolkein's books all start looking like simple "quest" plots. Star wars ditto. Really, it seems to be the case with most any author that puts the kind of thought and detail into the world of their books that authors like Niven and Tolkein do. In these books, the scenery is what makes the book interesting, not so much what happens. If you don't like those types of books, fine, but there are quite a few that do.
Surely some one should be able to adapt these books into a series
... Miss Jolie perhaps?
More than enough material...
Who to play Angelina though
Hmmm
Help! help!, the termites are eating my DRAM!!!
The press release implies at least a little bit that it's going to mix together multiple books into one movie, which seems to be me a big mistake. Ringworld is a self-contained story and should be kept that way; including elements of the sequels is a pattern that the Scifi channel likes to do but doesn't bode well for making a quality miniseries.