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Le Guin Peeved About Earthsea Miniseries
Several readers have written in with unhappy opinions on the Legend of Earthsea miniseries just aired on the Sci-Fi channel. Ursula Le Guin has also chimed in, with a short but highly critical blurb on her website, and now this dissection on Slate.com.
Now I don't feel so guilty for skipping it to play World of Warcraft.
I'm guessing her next blog posting will be a complaint about Slashdot.
Who exactly is Ursula Le Guin?
website to go dis'ing the elements!
I was just pissed that stargate wasn't on... How can you NOT AIR the series that makes your network famous!?!
Given just how mangled Fellowship of the Ring was in terms of the original characters and meaning of the book, I can only assume that UKlG has never read Lord of the Rings. Boyens' presence was a guarantee that the characters would be unrecognisable and that the story would be reduced to a shallow and meaningless shadow of its former self.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Le Guin's work is one of the greatest in fantasy writing, comparable to Tolkien in my opinion. That said, expecting a TV/movie adaptation of any book to compare favorably to the written work itself is unrealistic. Peter Jackson's LOTR was a masterpiece and by definition masterpieces are rare. I am not going to watch this Earthsea product; I don't want to mess with my memories of reading the series.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
Text from her website...
"Earthsea"
11/13/2004
"Miss Le Guin was not involved in the development of the material or the making of the film, but we've been very, very honest to the books," explains director Rob Lieberman. "We've tried to capture all the levels of spiritualism, emotional content and metaphorical messages. Throughout the whole piece, I saw it as having a great duality of spirituality versus paganism and wizardry, male and female duality. The final moments of the film culminate in the union of all that and represent two different belief systems in this world, and that's what Ursula intended to make a statement about. The only thing that saves this Earthsea universe is the union of those two beliefs."
Sci Fi Magazine
December 2004
I've tried very hard to keep from saying anything at all about this production, being well aware that movies must differ in many ways from the books they're based on, and feeling that I really had no business talking about it, since I was not included in planning it and was given no part in discussions or decisions.
That makes it particularly galling of the director to put words in my mouth.
Mr Lieberman has every right to say what his intentions were in making the film he directed, called "Earthsea." He has no right at all to state what I intended in writing the Earthsea books.
Had "Miss Le Guin" been honestly asked to be involved in the planning of the film, she might have discussed with the film-makers what the books are about.
When I tried to suggest the unwisdom of making radical changes to characters, events, and relationships which have been familiar to hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world for over thirty years, I was sent a copy of the script and informed that production was already under way.
So, for the record: there is no statement in the books, nor did I ever intend to make a statement, about "the union of two belief systems." There's nothing at all about the "duality of spirituality and paganism," whatever that means, either.
Earlier in the article, Robert Halmi is quoted as saying that Earthsea "has people who believe and people who do not believe." I can only admire Mr Halmi's imagination, but I wish he'd left mine alone.
In the books, the wizardry of the Archipelago and the ritualism of the Kargs are opposed and united, like the yang and yin. The rejoining of the broken arm-ring is a symbol of the restoration of an unresting, active balance, offering a risky chance of peace.
This has absolutely nothing to do with "people who believe and people who do not believe." That terrible division into Believers and Unbelievers (itself a matter not of reason but of belief) is one which bedevils Christianity and Islam and drives their wars.
But the wizards of Earthsea would look on such wars as madness, and the dragons of Earthsea would laugh at them and fly away...
Toto, something tells me Earthsea isn't Iraq.
I wonder if the people who made the film of The Lord of the Rings had ended it with Frodo putting on the Ring and ruling happily ever after, and then claimed that that was what Tolkien "intended..." would people think they'd been "very, very honest to the books"?
Ursula K. Le Guin
13 November 2004
And it's not our fault that you don't recognize a quite famous author and have not read her works.
Constant mediocrity, pedestrian intellect, and growing roster of pseudo-science crap.
Jesus. Are you helpless? Can you not grok the basics of doing a Google search?
At least it didn't have Will Smith in it!
(Name Withheld)
I hereby dub the fantastic term "McMagic" to be the official description of any Hollywood attempts at fantasy. Freakin' great.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Since when does the Authors opinion count!?
One of my sisters likes telling the store of how they had discussed a book in class in great detail. The teacher going to great depths about how the story originated, etc. Later the teacher was able to get the author of the story to appear before the class, where she dismissed every 'insight' into the story as being completely wrong and misinformed.
It's called 'Sky-Wind'.
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
Just wait until you get Battlestar Galactica in January.
:)
That may change your mind.
Does anyone think that the Sci Fi channel will ever get actual decent Sci Fi authors to do their scripts and come up with series for them?
It's one thing to be low-budget in production (the original Star Trek was about as low budget as Sci Fi comes), but they could at least make an attempt to get decent writers. Someone should explain to them that people who watch/read a lot of Science Fiction are more interested in a decent scientific plot instead of their writer's latest flavor-of-the-week politically-correct-philosophy with "futuristic" stuff tacked on. I can think of at least three recent "original series" that may have been a series, but were original in all the wrong ways.
USA has better "Sci Fi" original series than the Sci Fi channel. What's up with that?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
7 comments, and I had to use Google.
o J: www.ursulakleguin.com/UKL_info.html+&hl=en
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:BMsCMw5b1W
I had a dream where everyone, everywhere had infinite bandwidth, but the dream turned into a nightmare because you could only run IIS.
Ursula K. Le Guin happens to be a long time SF and Fantasy author who happened to write a series of fantasy called EarthSea...
...or wait until the slashdotting is over, or just google...
I'm sorry I can't give more detailed info as it's been about 6-7 years since I've read any of her books...
For more information about the Author, click here
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
I've tried very hard to keep from saying anything at all about this production, being well aware that movies must differ in many ways from the books they're based on, and feeling that I really had no business talking about it, since I was not included in planning it and was given no part in discussions or decisions.
That makes it particularly galling of the director to put words in my mouth.
Mr Lieberman has every right to say what his intentions were in making the film he directed, called "Earthsea." He has no right at all to state what I intended in writing the Earthsea books.
Had "Miss Le Guin" been honestly asked to be involved in the planning of the film, she might have discussed with the film-makers what the books are about.
When I tried to suggest the unwisdom of making radical changes to characters, events, and relationships which have been familiar to hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world for over thirty years, I was sent a copy of the script and informed that production was already under way.
So, for the record: there is no statement in the books, nor did I ever intend to make a statement, about "the union of two belief systems." There's nothing at all about the "duality of spirituality and paganism," whatever that means, either.
Earlier in the article, Robert Halmi is quoted as saying that Earthsea "has people who believe and people who do not believe." I can only admire Mr Halmi's imagination, but I wish he'd left mine alone.
In the books, the wizardry of the Archipelago and the ritualism of the Kargs are opposed and united, like the yang and yin. The rejoining of the broken arm-ring is a symbol of the restoration of an unresting, active balance, offering a risky chance of peace.
This has absolutely nothing to do with "people who believe and people who do not believe." That terrible division into Believers and Unbelievers (itself a matter not of reason but of belief) is one which bedevils Christianity and Islam and drives their wars.
But the wizards of Earthsea would look on such wars as madness, and the dragons of Earthsea would laugh at them and fly away...
Toto, something tells me Earthsea isn't Iraq.
I wonder if the people who made the film of The Lord of the Rings had ended it with Frodo putting on the Ring and ruling happily ever after, and then claimed that that was what Tolkien "intended..." would people think they'd been "very, very honest to the books"? Ursula K. Le Guin
13 November 2004
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
OK, I'll try. Here in the USA, we have these things called "books". Le Guin writes some of these "books". A TV movie of her "books" was made, and it is not good, so she is not happy and wrote articles about it.
Firstly: I am not Jesus, although it's a common mistake.
Secondly: I could do a google search, but I wanted to know if I cared at all before expending even that small effort.
Phil
(not Jesus).
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Why doesn't someone do Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle? Now that would kick butt. I wanna see the surfer smack against the side of the skyscraper!
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
that the fellowship of the rings screen play was written based on the animation lotr"fotr from a "few" years ago
"He's a real midnight golfer"
They made Xena: Warrior Princess look like a dignified aesthetic masterpiece by comparison.
I did find it funny though. I saw their featurette "making of" thing they were spamming the movie theaters with and they must have referenced "Lord of the Rings", like, every six seconds. "We wanted to do this [thematic style], like Lord of the Rings". "We thought this [costuming/set methodolgy we used] was a lot like Lord of the Rings." "We think this [story] is an epic that approaches Lord of the Rings." Gee, anyone have aspirations outside their reach, maybe?
Good Sci-Fi is a genre where authors play hypothetical sociologist to reflect on humanities strengths and weaknesses (albiet with often erotic consequences), but it doesn't translate very well from book form to screen form, particularly when done by a second-rate cable channel just trying to make a buck on the name recognition.
From the soon to be inoperable website.... Ursala's very own words on the mini-series remake of her books.
"Earthsea"
11/13/2004
"Miss Le Guin was not involved in the development of the material or the making of the film, but we've been very, very honest to the books," explains director Rob Lieberman. "We've tried to capture all the levels of spiritualism, emotional content and metaphorical messages. Throughout the whole piece, I saw it as having a great duality of spirituality versus paganism and wizardry, male and female duality. The final moments of the film culminate in the union of all that and represent two different belief systems in this world, and that's what Ursula intended to make a statement about. The only thing that saves this Earthsea universe is the union of those two beliefs."
Sci Fi Magazine
December 2004
I've tried very hard to keep from saying anything at all about this production, being well aware that movies must differ in many ways from the books they're based on, and feeling that I really had no business talking about it, since I was not included in planning it and was given no part in discussions or decisions.
That makes it particularly galling of the director to put words in my mouth.
Mr Lieberman has every right to say what his intentions were in making the film he directed, called "Earthsea." He has no right at all to state what I intended in writing the Earthsea books.
Had "Miss Le Guin" been honestly asked to be involved in the planning of the film, she might have discussed with the film-makers what the books are about.
When I tried to suggest the unwisdom of making radical changes to characters, events, and relationships which have been familiar to hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world for over thirty years, I was sent a copy of the script and informed that production was already under way.
So, for the record: there is no statement in the books, nor did I ever intend to make a statement, about "the union of two belief systems." There's nothing at all about the "duality of spirituality and paganism," whatever that means, either.
Earlier in the article, Robert Halmi is quoted as saying that Earthsea "has people who believe and people who do not believe." I can only admire Mr Halmi's imagination, but I wish he'd left mine alone.
In the books, the wizardry of the Archipelago and the ritualism of the Kargs are opposed and united, like the yang and yin. The rejoining of the broken arm-ring is a symbol of the restoration of an unresting, active balance, offering a risky chance of peace.
This has absolutely nothing to do with "people who believe and people who do not believe." That terrible division into Believers and Unbelievers (itself a matter not of reason but of belief) is one which bedevils Christianity and Islam and drives their wars.
But the wizards of Earthsea would look on such wars as madness, and the dragons of Earthsea would laugh at them and fly away...
Toto, something tells me Earthsea isn't Iraq.
I wonder if the people who made the film of The Lord of the Rings had ended it with Frodo putting on the Ring and ruling happily ever after, and then claimed that that was what Tolkien "intended..." would people think they'd been "very, very honest to the books"?
Ursula K. Le Guin
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
Ha ha ha! Sorry, but I include BG in my statement. Some nerds will watch anything.
Years ago, I went to a panel discussion at an SF convention about how books are adapted to film. The authors on the panel had all had their works adapted.
First up was Barry Longyear, whose novel Enemy Mine was turned into a "B" movie. He rattled off a good-natured Hollywood horror story.
Next was Gary Wolf, whose book Who Censored Roger Rabbit was turned into what I recall was a rather popular movie a few years back. He was wearing the fancy jacket provided to the cast. He got to go to the Hollywood premiere and got very rich.
When he described getting to sit with Kathleen Turner at a celebratory banquet, Longyear got up and pretended to strangle him.
So far, I've only watched the first episode, but I'm very unimpressed.
It is like watching "Harry Potter of the Rings", with some good old Dune mythology thrown in...
The plot thus far is old, forumlatic and clique.
The other tragedy is that CG isn't even that good. When they did the fly over of the city/village, it was very very VERY obviously CG...
Who knows, maybe it'll get better?
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
For real? You guys have books now?
Phil
I guess today is a passable day to die.
If you've not read any of her books in 6-7 years, then you're probably not aware that she added a fifth novel to the Earthsea series back in 2001 or so (The Other Wind).
Oh,yeah, also insert the standard "I submitted this story Tuesday" rant here, too.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Come on mods. Okay, so the other two elements would give Fire-Wind, but it's still a good joke.
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Complain about movies made from their books often have just cause. However one very rarely hears about them returning the money they received when they sold the rights.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Movie producers have been reducing SF and fantasy to mindless drivel at least since "The Wizard of Oz," with only a handful of glowing exceptions. If a writer is willing to sell screen rights without some defense written into the contract, one can only assume that they'd rather have their work defaced than do without the money.
rj
A Google Cache is here: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:BMsCMw5b1WoJ: www.ursulakleguin.com/UKL_info.html+&hl=en
A list of general-purpose Slashdot-caches are here: http://slashdot.org/~davidwr/journal/92257
Mirrordot is down, and archive.org doesn't have the latest version of the author's home page. The site is too heavily slashdotted for the Coral Cache to pick it up either, but hopefully that will end soon.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I can just picture it now, the Left Hand of Darkness: The Movie.
A romantic comedy about men and women, trying to find love together in a tropical paridise. Starring Julia Roberts as Estraven and Hugh Grant as the Envoy.
Le Guin has written another public apology, published at Slate.
I have mixed feelings about her reactions. She seems a lot more peeved with the skintones of her characters being changed than with the entire plot being gang-raped.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
and absorb more reality tv, because it seems that in the fact that you don't know who she is, instead of doing a quick find on the web (not to point out a particular search engine) you show intellectual sloth by posting that question in the forum. And I'm posting AC because, indeed, I'm flaming you. Stupid git.
BG is good sci-fi, and has some non-nerd appeal because of the vague hope that they won't have strategically placed enough scenery to hide all the nipples this week.
Within the first five minutes we had:
* People throwing around each other's true names (witness the girl talking to Ged).
* A hot-looking Kossil sleeping with some guy.
In the books, you *NEVER* spoke someone's true name out loud. And Kossil was a fat, dumpy, ugly woman who was high priestess of an order that shunned men.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
well the article is 503'ing, and it didn't get coralized, so here is a link to the google cache'd copy.
and why do we care what he has to say
In the commune on the moon, does Supreme Power derive from a mandate from the masses? Are there and strange women lying in ponds, distibuting swords?
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Funny points, and he didn't even use "but I've never even been to Mexico".
It's sad that color still plays such an enormous role in what sells on TV. I guess the sci-fi channel felt that they would get more advertising dollars without all of the red and brown cast members.
When I was your age, we used to call TV "books".
:)
Turkey Day was so lonely without Crow, Tom Servo, Gypsy, Cambot, Dr. F, TV's Frank, Mrs. Forrester, Brain Guy, Bobo and Joel and/or Mike. So very, very lonely.
Yes, Phil, and we brush our teeth here too!
I'm not a big Le Guin fan, and I looked at The Legend of Earthsea simply as a diversion.
The mini-series was not awful, but it certainly wasn't very good, either. The actors were so understated as to be boring; the only reason I cared about Tinar is because she was cute. ;) As for the main character, he was a stereotypical pretty boy; his sidekick Vetch was the traditional pudgy geek. The best character was a dragon, who figures in about three minutes of screen time.
Le Guin should be upset, but not surprised. Publishers, TV execs, and movie makers have always twisted ideas to their own ends; even examples such as Jackson's LOTR do not prevent "the powers that be" from dumbing down artistic vision for mass audiences.
So why do creative people let their worlds be perverted by publishers and movie makers? Because you can't make money if your work doesn't get printed and sold. It's a myth that people will pay artists through online contributions; it just doesn't happen.
All about me
Well, fuck you mods. Ask an honest question, get modded down. There is no justice.
Phil
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Hey, out of curiosity, I wonder which demographic bought most of le Guins books? Which demographic actually "awarded" her with the book awards she received? Do these questions matter?
Briefly, Earthsea is a world composed of hundreds of islands. The society is non-industrial, but magic is an integral component of everyday life. Women are seen as a lower class, and only men perform magic. Otherwise, the rest of the world is "normal" in our sense, except that dragons are a reality, though their presence is rare.
The books tell tales of a few recurring characters, most notably a wizard named Sparrowhawk (also known as Ged). If the producers of such a series went through all the trouble to proclaim this as based on Earthsea, you would think they would have been more faithful to the books. However, they seem to have written a completely different story, with some small number aspects of the original sprinkled throughout the shows. The end result is something that barely resembles the books and thus loses its uniqueness as a fantasy world.
It seems that the NY Times review (Registration required.) of the series is dead on: what is left is a mishmash of various fantasy stories, sort of Harry Potter meets Lord of the Rings meets Hercules meets Star Wars.
Anyone hoping to see a film version of the beloved books is going to have his hopes dashed upon the thorny rocks. Instead a different story is presented, using people with the same names but completely different experiences. Anyone hoping to learn about the books by watching them will be misled into thinking they are shallow cookie-cutter versions of everything else. Imagine if Frodo had "lived happily ever after" when he kept the ring himself to bring peace to the world... even though Tolkien never envisioned such a world.
Undoubtedly, a film producer must change the story presented on screen in order to compensate for the differences between visual and printed media, but this is one of the sloppiest adaptations I have ever seen. Ms LeGuin's comments only underscore my own opinion (or is it the other way around??). Don't watch it, unless you don't care whether the Earthsea movies match the Earthsea books, then it won't matter anyway. --dv
Insert witty saying or aphorism here.
FT(/.'d)A (via Slate):
"They [the filmmakers] replied that the TV audience is much larger, and entirely different, and would be unlikely to care about changes to the books' story and characters."
The entire story in a nutshell: the producers and the Sci-Fi Channel are so powerdrunk with their huge audience that they care about Earthsea only as a brand, not a story or a community. Maybe they're right, given their success with their mediocre oversimplification of the masterpiece, Dune, and their large audience for the low-grade crap that fills their schedule. They're the MTV of SF, worthwhile only for their interstitial station-identification, riding the wave of the coming-of-age of their audience with the lowest maintainble quality of exploitation. If only there were a spell strong enough to cure them.
--
make install -not war
at least asimov was already dead before 'i robot' was horribly basterdized. elija bailey did NOT exist in the book - those were the later books in the robot series (namely 'caves of steel', 'the naked sun', and 'the robots of dawn'). and the robots would NEVER have attacked a human (at least until 'robots and empire').
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876-October 5, 1960) was one of the most influential figures in American anthropology in the first half of the twentieth century.
Kroeber was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. He received his doctorate under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, basing his dissertation on his field work among the Arapaho. He spent most of his career in California, primarily at the University of California, Berkeley. The anthropology department's headquarters building at the University of California is known as Kroeber Hall.
Although he is known primarily as a cultural anthropologist, he did significant work in archaeology, and he contributed to anthropology by making connections between archaeology and culture. He conducted excavations in New Mexico, Mexico, and Peru.
Kroeber and his students did important work collecting cultural data on western tribes of Native Americans. The work done in preserving California tribes appeared in Handbook of Indians of California (1925). These efforts to preserve remaining data on these tribes has been termed "Salvage Ethnography." He is credited with developing the concepts of Culture Area and Cultural Configuration (Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America, 1939).
His influence was so strong that many contemporaries adopted his style of beard and mustache as well as his views as a social scientist.
He is noted for working with Ishi, who was claimed (though not uncontroversially) to be the last California Yahi Indian. His second wife, Theodora Kroeber, wrote a well-known biography of Ishi, Ishi in Two Worlds.
His textbook, Anthropology (1923, 1948), was widely used for years.
Kroeber was the father of the academic Clifton Kroeber by his first wife and the fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin and academic Karl Kroeber by his second. He also adopted the two children of his second wife's first marriage. Clifton and Karl recently (2003) edited a book together on the Ishi case, Ishi in Three Centuries.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
When I was your age, we used to call TV "books".
yeah, there's nothing like sitting down for a nice relaxing night of book watching.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
The producers of the TV show have "no idea" of the mistake they have made by butchering these books. They could have made far far more money by following the story honestly.
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
The books are really quiet, almost spiritual, the characters' journey's being internal and not just external.
I really couldn't see how they could be filmed, and certainly not as action TV (which is what I got out of the trailer).
I gave A Wizard of Earthsea to a friend to read as they claimed that they read alot of sci-fi. They couldn't read it having been raised on shite like Battlefield Earth and Robert Jordan.
Needle Nardle Noo
Why are people so surprised that something on the Sci-Fi channel was all messed up and contained inaccuracies? It's the Sci-Fi channel. Their business is the extremes. Nothing less than the boradcast we saw should have been expected.
Next, people are going to be expecting neutral reporting from Fox News.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
IANAL, but it seems pretty clear to me that a level of understanding was meant and not upheld contractually. I think it is fair to say that being a consultant is not being told "this is what we are up to." Additionally, I would think you could sue for some form of damage of intellectual property. If companies are not left with a bad taste in their mouth, they will continue to go on crapping on writers. Hopefully on a side note, this may spark enough interest that someone else may want to do justice with your work. If you do, I think you'll already recognize that you need absolute veto power or no deal in the future.
Best wishes and thank you for giving your work to the world,
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
A love interest for Ged, maybe Tenar?
In January? Go check the usenet or your local torrent site of choice. Episodes 1 to 8 are already done, aired, and available for thef...errr..download.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
as -1, Troll? What does Iraq have to do with anything in the discussion?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
"No."No. Because they aren't interested in Science Fiction. They want the tech-fantasy crap.
The stuff that will be guaranteed to appeal to the 12 - 24 year old male audience.
This isn't even about "low budget". Look at Red Dwarf's first few seasons. They had no budget, yet they had great characters and amusing plots.
They haven't realized that going with the status quo will always result in mediocrity.
In order to produce something memorable, they have to push the envelope.
Watching their crap, I get the feeling that the actor's salaries, the FX, everything is calculated to the exact penny and matched against the ad revenues. They know exactly how many people will watch another rendition of the same-old same-old and they're not going to break a profitable formula.
Theodore Sturgeon (an SF author) said that 90% of everything is crap. This is known as Sturgeon's law, and tends to be pretty accurate regardless of context. The Sci-Fi channel is no exception. On the up side, it's usually possible to determine just from the previews/trailers/commercials which of their shows will be bad and which will not.
I've been very happy with the two Stargate series. I actually liked the two Dune miniseries (they weren't great, and I liked the David Lynch version better, but they had their appeal). The Battlestar Galactica miniseries was excellent and I have high hopes for the upcoming series. Farscape was fantastic, and I was very happy with the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries that came after long work on the part of the fans. On the other hand, 100% (with very little margin of error) of their original movies (not miniseries) are pure shit. Much of the stuff they play during the day (Dark Shadows, anyone?) is godawful. So it works out... 90% of the programming on the Sci-Fi Channel is crap.
Here is an excerpt from an interview http://www.bookslut.com/features/2003_10_000738.ph p
with Augusten Burroughs (author of Running with Scissors) that is relevant here:
INTERVIEWER: Are you going to write the screenplay?
BURROUGHS: He is. I'm not going to write the screenplay.
INTERVIEWER: Are you going to have an advisory role with it?
BURROUGHS: Yeah, but I'm not writing the screenplay. That's one of those things -- maybe my advertising background makes it easier -- but when you come up with an ad campaign, you come up with this vision, something you think is really smart, yet really entertaining, and then you give it to a director and he takes it to the next level. You learn early on in your career -- if you're going to have a long career -- that you need to let it go. You either need to have complete control over [a film], write the screenplay, choose the director, much the way John Irving did for Cider House Rules, or you need to let it go. But you can't option it, and then whine about it not being good, because the only reason you option it is for money. That's why you do it.
well... not quite. google didn't release the book search yet. but we're expecting them soon!
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
Actually 1 to 9.
;)
How do you think I know it's good?
I had a feeling it wouldn't be that good, and ofcouse, when slash dot posts and everyone floods the site, most servers seem to not be able to handle all us /.'ers all at once.
Several places in the film, people talked in "modern TV language" - it was like I was watching a modern-day TV show for a few seconds.
Quite annoying.
Memo to Sci-Fi:
A general-purpose TV network may get away with radical changes to the books and hoping the audience won't notice.
When it comes to making movies from Science Fiction and Fantasy books, you don't have that option.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Another great story getting ripped appart and turned into a money magnet for the producers.
If they wanted to do things like Lord of the Rings, they should have READ AND ENJOYED the book. It's no mystery that Peter Jackson was a huge fan of LOTR, and even the part where they altered a slight point of the plot was controversial. Obviously Jackson wanted to follow the spirit of the book, and try to be the most respectful of it.
But here, these producers are just USING the book for their own benefit, without even consulting the author - and worse, they put words in her mouth.
So, it's a completely different story. A mockery. It does NOT have the right to use the name "Earthsea".
probably because you're an idiot
you only hate the movies because other people like them
you're nothing more than a wannabe rebel who tries to hate what's popular
That's probably the mini-series that was done last year. New BG episodes have not aired on SCI-FI.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
For real? You guys have books now?
Yes, they aren't catching on as much as espected; television is much more accessible to people who attended our schools. Also, the talking heads have told us not to get too attached, as the Lord (GWB) is sending out the thought police soon to start burning them all. I hope they start before winter's over.
Thanks for the summary. If it makes it over here I shall definitely ignore it.
Phil
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Every time a work is adapted for another medium(like a book to a movie), the creator is going to respond, "You ruined it! You completely missed my point!" The true fans are going to tear down the changes, for similar reasons(Han shoots first).
The problem is a director has two hours to make, and keep the audience, engaged with what the director thinks is the point of the movie. The director has to make changes to the storyline, script, and eventually, the film itself to keep the movie flowing. They have to make the movie good enough so you want to see it again, and will tell you friends to see it. Authors have more say in how long their books are, directors have 2 - 2 1/2 hours.
> Movie producers have been reducing SF and fantasy to
> mindless drivel at least since "The Wizard of Oz,"
The Wizard of Oz IS mindless drivel, and the inspiration for the constant misuse of cuteness in SF & fantasy films.
You only need to vote up an article mirror once. Like, the first one in the discussion thread. When the third post is an article mirror, that's useful, just go ahead and vote up that one only. It isn't the fault of the people who posted article mirrors at the fifth, ninth, 13th, and 43rd posts that their mirrors were dupes; they didn't know. However, that isn't any reason to vote them up. Yet somehow they have ALL been voted up. This is not useful.
When the MAJORITY of the top-level posts are long article mirrors, this makes things somewhat hard to read. Thus by causing the only voted-up posts to be these article mirrors, you are causing the moderation system to have the opposite effect as desired-- reading at score:3 will disappear all the real comments and just leave you with nine copies of the article.
After reading her comments it basically boiled down to her having no control/involvement in the production. She trusted the producers, which even I know you don't do. Unfortunately she dug her own hole on this one. Her agent should have asked for more control in the process.
Well if you saw the second episode, you should be even more disappointed in the story. Now I have to say I've never read any Earthsea. I've read other books by her, but I wasn't into reading fantasy and never even read the Lord of the Rings until I was out of high school.
I have to say I thought the ending was rushed, tripe and the whole show badly acted. It will make me read the books because I know they're better. It was so obvious IMHO that they barely touched on the details of the story.
Like others, I was more surprised at LeGuin's ignoring the plot changes (including switching use-names and true-names) and focussing on skin color.
...Naah.
Who gives a flying fsck about skin color, anyway? I'd say "dinosaurs from the 50s," but I was born in the 50s! In the South, yet!
Besides, Caucasian though I am, leave me out in the sun long enough and I certainly turn "red-brown." In fact, if I had to describe the skin color of "white" people, it'd be pinkish-brown anyway.
Perhaps she's just trying to see if anyone noticed that.
What I saw of it I liked, but waking up after key sequences, I don't know what was going on. Guess I can watch it again 2nite.
My favourite Polish writer (Andrzej Sapkowski) once said (according to him, repeating after Harry Harrison):
If you sell a book to Hollywood you can't complain if they cast pink poodle as leading character -- if you don't like it, don't sell.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
She should blame herself first for not demanding some input into the production, then the agent who handled the sale to the production company for not getting these rights written into the contract.
Even though authors really do hate it when their books and stories need to change to work for theater, movies and TV, not giving them an input on how the story changes usually does bring out the worst in the final product. (Oh, of course there are some egos that can't stand the fact that someone has a different take on their mangum opus which could be just as valid as the author's intent. The name Jerry Pournelle comes to mind for instance.)
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
That's okay; we'll ignore you too.
I haven't read the books before, but I saw the series on Sci-Fi (how could you not, they only advertised it 1,000 times), and while I'm sure the books were butchered, I now have an incentive to read them. I found the mini series was somewhat decent and enjoyable.
I like the SF writers who are also scientists. Those without a science background are just not qualified. Plenty of really good SF writers are also scientists (or were, before they became writers)
David Brin has a PhD in astrophysics:
Ivan Efremov was a paleontologist:
One of the Strugatskii brothers (either Arkadi or Boris) was an astronomer
Stanislaw Lem was a physician (well, medicine is a profession, like law, not a real science like astronomy or biology, still a medical backgroud is good enough for a sf writer)
Isaac Asimov had a PhD in Biochemistry.
Even Tolkien was a linguist (linguistics is still a science, although not as great as physics, biology or astronomy)
Didnt they do a redo of "Lathe of Heaven"? similar to the one done back in the late 60's or early 70s
We substituted the coffee Slashdot normally drinks with "Sandoz Crystals", Lets see if they notice the difference
They have already aired on Sky One in the UK.
- RiverWorld
books?Let me just add "Star Cops."
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
i am in no way affiliated with the sci fi channel:
the sci fi channel is a forum for presenting works of sci fi
that means something
so please, dear sci fi fan, don't criticize more than you should, lest you prove to those who would program for you that it is not worth trying to program for you... see?
you can argue about who gets to present what, but for most of the sour grapes here, i find that complaining is what they do best
now i'm not saying my opinion supercedes that of le guin, nor that this tv series is worthy of praise... and i have fond memories of the tombs of atuan from when i was kid that i am certain the hacks at the sci fi channel can not possibly fully realize as the same magic on the small screen
but you do realize that to do something of what peter jackson did with tolkien requires so much effort, so much time, so much passion, so much skill, so much money, so much blood, sweat, and tears... and EVEN THEN you will find asshats who will whine and nit pick about it
so what am i saying?
i am saying that sci fi fans can be such incredibly cranky, perfectionist know-it-alls that you can deduce from their criticism in the end that it is impossible to please them... and therefore, why try?
so embrace the sci fi channel for existing and being a forum for works you enjoy, and give thanks for that, and build on it, and do not disparage those who try! please make sure that your criticisms are properly directed and scoped, or they will have an impact that only hurts you in the end: that sci fi fans are an impossible audience... do you want that impression to impact the future potential of presenting great works of sci fi on video or film?
do not bite the hand that feeds you, lest you not be fed again
sour grapes can be defined as "disparagement of something that is unattainable"
it is NOT unattainable to make of le guin's earthsea books on video something like what peter jackson did with tolkien on film
but it IS on the limited resources of the sci fi channel
consider that, then criticize, and don't criticize someone in such a way that you seem to be criticizing them for even trying, or they won't try anymore... is that the message you want to deliver? do you think i'm being strident in this characterization? read some criticisms of the sci fi channel's efforts again, and get back to me if you still think i am being overly strident
some of you threaten to destroy the very forum which tries to please you, simply because a lot of you, dear sci fi fans, can really be some horribly impossible to please perfectionists
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I watched about 10 minutes, I quickly recognized that it was a (bad) pastiche of the books. Typical dribble from the "Entertainment" industry. I really do feel sorry for her.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
On the plus side, the hues of the characters would have been as imagined by the author in the books.
On the negative side, the characters would be dancing and singing their way through the story.
"First you get the Linux, then you get the power, THEN you get the women"
We have actually had books for hundred of years, but the DMCA put paid to us actaully remembering any of thier contents. Unauthorized mental replication of copyrighted materials, you see.
The author sold the rights off for a chunk of cash knowing full well at the time that she had no creative control over the content of the movies and then turns around and bitches about how the producers screwed up the stories finishing her rant with an admonishment about responsibility.
How about her own responsibility back when she was looking to sell the rights? All she saw was dollar signs. Why couldn't she have refused to sell the rights? It sounds like she wants to have her cake and eat it, too.
....hasn't Ms. LeGuin ever spoken to, or read about, Harlan Ellison?
His Hollywood deflowering was detailed in "The StarCrossed", about his attempts to keep one of his novels from being bastardized by TV. He failed, and told about it.
She's of an age with Harlan, she should have known this would happen.
I can't understand why Ursula LeGuin is talking so much about skin color. I can see she's trying to not be racist. But in doing so, she's perhaps being one ?
If we truly don't care about skin color, why all the talk about it in her article ? What's she trying to prove ? That you need to have proper percentage representation ? What does it have anything to do with the story ?
Its really silly to see people go out of their way to show there's no racism and in doing so, they're being racist. Like in the TV ad's where you have the token african-american people in the ads just to balance. This is crap.
She's all confused. If she's writing a futuristic story, she needs to step away from the past issues. It doesn't matter how much skin color is on screen. All that matters is what the story is.
btw, there are 1 billion Indians ( brown ) and 1.5 billion chinese ( yellow ) in a 6 billion Earth population. does this mean we need 16% brown and 20% yellow all the time to represent Earth ??
Yes I know that she is this "great" author, but to be that critical over the color of a fictional characters skin is rediculous. If is was made in asia they would have been mostly asian. If it was made in south america they would have been mostly dark skinned. She got her pay and signed away her rights to the mini-series so she should stop bitching and live with her choice. If you don't like the terms of a contract DON'T SIGN IT.
Change the title and some of the names and you would not know that it had anything to do with EarthSea.
But I'm unsure who to blame; the director, or Le Guin? Because it sure did feel a lot like her books, which bore me to tears. I know there are a lot of Le Guin fans out there; to each their own.
Now, when is someone going to make a movie from a Stephenson book? Or Niven? C'mon, finding great SF to make movies from is easy, and getting easier. I submit that CGI recently got to the point where you could make a really good Kzin movie.
Crispin
I don't see where she gets off comparing the SciFi channel's treatment to changing the LOTR ending.
I also don't understand, financial considerations aside, what would posess an artist to relinquish so much artistic control over their material, that such complaints ever need to be raised. With Tolkein or Heinlein, it makes sense that they might not be respected by a screenplay writer -- but this author is alive.
Does Stephen King have this problem?
You can't have your cake and eat it too, Ursula.
If you surrender your rights to control of your work, you pay the price.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It's a quote. Watch the Princess Bride. Seriosuly. It's good. And based on a book. And the author was involved.
Having just watched the first half last night (taped!), I have to say that I am dissappointed.
Let's leave alone the obvious deviations from the plot, and focus on more germaine aspects of the production.
First, acting. When you are producing something like this, having good actors is appropriate. The chick from Smallville (Kristin Kreuk) is good, as is the guy who plays Ged (Shawn Ashmore). Some of the others are decent, such as the Arch-Magus, the King (decent) and his whore(er.. preistess), Ogion (Danny Glover), High Priestess Thar (Isabella Rossellini) and even Vetch (Chris Gauthier). Ged's father? Terrible acting--wooden, poor delivery, obviously fake, and poorly written.
This (the father's acting) is TYPICAL of ALL the non-central characters. The sound is off too, but that could be a function of the tape I was watching it on.
The special effects are decent (the scene where Vetch is describing his island and using bits of sugar to represent them [the sugar turns into the islands breifly] is interesting), as is the scene where the Arch-Magus comes to talk to the king. But they are only decent. The fire shot out by the mages defending Roke? Pathetic. In fact, the entire seige of Roke is pathetic. They DO NOT tap into HOW difficult it is to find Roke, or the releationship between the king and his pet wizard.
Overall, I think it has been worth my time to watch the show, but I won't be keeping it on tape, nor will I be recommending it to anyone for viewing. This would be true EVEN IF I had never read Earthsea.
A final complaint--when Ogion and Ged meet, Ogion raises him, and then gives him his name. As I recall this was a much more lengthy and involved ritual than is shown. The whole treatment of names is done FAR too lightly from what I remember. This is characteristic of the show in general--there is NO real character or plot development.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Business as usual then...
I had some real hope for this series upon learning that only the first two books were to be covered (I did not care for the later ones). It sounds like a pretty bad hatchet job in any case. I have one minor beef with your summary, however. The statement, "and only men perform magic" is incorrect. The first book had a witch girl character with whom Sparrowhawk interacts as a student of Ogion, and who he later encounters allied with "old powers" in the north somewhere. She performs several feats of magic.
Even when it is not a central aspect of the story, race can be part of the story.
Didn't the plans to make Ender's Game into a movie fall apart on considerations of the racial representation when showing Ender in training?
from a sci-fi/entertainment/plot standpoint, the series TOTALLY SCUKED ASS!!!!!
This was the most bland, lame, lifeless, tedious piece of crap I have ever seen out of the Sci-Fi channel. And that's saying alot!
By optioning the titles, that basically cuts her out of the loop. Everything that she is saying is true, but the movie studio frankly has no reason and no incentive to go back to the author for anything. It means that the studio has bought all of the rights to the title and that they can do anything that they want to with it, including changing the skin colors of everyone and including making changes to the story. I feel for her, but honestly, if she wanted to have some way of maintaining the integrity of the story, then optioning the rights away is NOT the way to do it. The thing to have done is for her to have the movie produced herself. That would have started by her writing a script and peddling it around Hollywood to see if there is interest. Once there is interest, the producers come on and make the movie happen, but at least it would have been according to her own terms. Yes, there are authors that have more clout in Hollywood when they option their books, like Stephen King and the such, but she is not in that category and thus she would have had to do the legwork for a lot of this herself, but that's basically how she could have prevented all of this. Bellyaching about it now just seems rather childish and frankly if she was that concerned with the story, she should have not signed the movie rights over.
-=*(CC)*=-
PHIL: "Dear Slashdot, Do I care that much? Do I care at all?"
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
She was open for some changes necessary to adapt the book to the screen. She thought they had a guy who had worked on the LOTR movies on board, but that ended up not being the case. She was probably hoping that her books would get a similar treatment as LOTR.
Le Guin probably saw the LOTR movies, and thought that producers were finally willing to adapt a fantasy book correctly. In LOTR the characters and events are, for the most part, true to the original version. Most fans of the books were pleased with the end results, with only some minor gripes here and there. Only the most hard core fans of the books were up in arms about changes Jackson made.
Unfortunately, it was not to be the case that Earthsea would get a similar treatment. I didn't see the series, but they obviously created something that was not even close to what Le Guin was hoping for or had originally created.
Should she have fought harder for more creative input? I would say that given today's world, yes. In reality, she shouldn't have to. The producers had the luxury othat Le Guin seemed to want to be more active in how this thing would turn out. If I were making a film or series based on a book, and had that luxury, I would want the original author consulting every major decision.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Anyway, after reading what Le Guin wrote on slate I am actually motivated to read the books. I'm glad I decided to check slashdot today =)
Chaos is Divine *
If I were a Hollywood insider, I'd pitch a Man/Kzin Wars *series* to HBO so we could go completely nuts. Do the tales in the books, but hire decent SF authors to do more, maybe about 4 seasons.
Oh, what you could do these days with a fight between a Kzinti and the human soldiers trained specifically to battle Kzin in hand to hand combat. What were they called? I forget. They had a special tattoo on their foreheads. Why do I remember this stuff?
--- Ban humanity.
Apparently my husband and I are the only ones here that liked it. It was an interesting story about learning to face yourself and live with responsibility. It also talked about the capacity for good and evil where you least expect it.
I will be picking up a copy of these books and will probably check out her other works as well. From an author's perspective what could be wrong with that?
As to those comments on Slate the author is completely off. It wouldn't have mattered to me whether the characters were black, white, tibetan or martian. Likeability transends race and gender. I'm female and related more to Ged.
Right on
The teacher liked it so much, she had me type it up and she put included it on the midterm as a sample work for the other students to pick apart. I was an incredibly sloppy student and typing the thing up seemed like a horrible burden, but the idea that I'd ace the test was enough to motivate me. After all, I wrote the dang thing, didn't I?
When test day rolled around, though, she asked things about "what technique is the author using to suspend disbelief?" and "which passages are used to build foreboding for the ending?" In the end I was lucky to pass the thing by the skin of my teeth.
I won't pretend to be their equals, but I have to admit I vaguely know how Tolkien and Le Guin felt.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Yeah, ever since Gutenberg, we've been printing out large works from the internet and calling them books.
Earthsea is among my favorite fantasy worlds. I think I like it better than LoTR, even.
When I heard there was going to be a miniseries I was cautiously optimistic, much as I was about the LoTR movies: I felt like it would be possible for the TV version to "get it right". I'm the last person to complain about plot changes - TV is a different medium and things work differently there, fair enough (not that this doesn't excuse *dumb* plot changes...).
What I was most concerned about is that the mini-series would ruin my mental image of Earthsea, replace it with a new, unworthy aesthetic. (If you wonder what I am talking about, try this: picture Aragorn without picturing Viggo Morgentson. If you read the books before you saw the films, you must have had a mental image of Aragorn, but I'm willing to bet you have a hard time recovering that image from underneith Viggo).
And, from the sounds of things, they mangled it. New Ged is white! White! No thanks.
They want to make that movie for a reason.
The problem is, the author does not understand the reason they want to make the movie.
The author believes that it is because they want to film the story told in the book.
The real reason is to save advertising dollars and link a movie to a book that already has name recognition and a decent fan-base.
A good director can make a good movie that follows the book. And this was a mini-series so they aren't limited to a set number of hours. They can run it up to 10 hours if they want to.
The director did not care about her story. The director just wanted the names (including her's) so they could be used to hype the film. That's all. Pure marketing. Don't waste money or resources trying to follow the book. Go with the stock formula.
The author another set of gripes which she shares with us on Slate.
Slashdot has no business linking to "normal" sites.
It seems as though the author's main complaint is that instead of using native american or other ethnic actors, the producers used almost all white actors. That complaint is fine and good if race plays a role in the story, but her original reason for making diverse characters comes across as pretty shallow ("I didn't see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill"). Sure, it would have been nice to have a diverse cast, and it would have been more realistic, but the author comes across as very whiney in her blog. Perhaps it was the use of "honky" when it was completely inappropriate.
:/
Why does everything have to be about race?
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
When I read Earthsea over 25 years ago at school, the colour of the characters skin was very secondary to the plot. My imagination barely noticed the skin colour amongst the images of pirates, sea wizards, dragons and the isle and school of Roke at the centre of it all.
Even if the series was not all that it should be, Le Guin should accept that the authors imagery is not necessarily going to be that of the reader. Just because she imagined a world of rainbow coloured people doesn't mean that readers are going to do the same.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I haven't seen the show, but judging from LeGuin's side of the story, it sounds like they've butchered her work.
I wonder how she feels about the new readers who will be drawn to her books after having seen the TV series. Their preconceptions of what Earthsea is all about will no doubt heavily influence their experience with the books.
If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out? - Will Rogers
I didn't know you could get Sci-Fi over the airwaves...
Here I've been paying $50 a month for cable.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
There was a rip off done called Meteor. May have been before your time. It was big budget with lots of flash and was godawful so it's been all but forgotten. There was talk of doing Lucifer's Hammer at the time but the studio ripping off the concept killed the project. These days they'd rather do Armageddon than films with actual stories with substance.
Not that I'm against nipples on TV, but it's a pity that they are now the main interest in most TV sci-fi shows.
Haven't seen Firefly yet though, which is apparently a break from the norm.
Sky One paid some of the bills, they already showing the series. With BT there are no borders. BTW it is good. IMHO they're following a Babylon 5 formula. Several sub plots developing and interweaving into the main plot. Check TVTOME.
Fred Hoyle was a great astronomer and mathematician and also a great SF writer. He did not write many SF novels, though. Science kept him busy.
I think Ursula is not bad, either. From your list only Asimov and Efremov are better. Lem and the Strugatskii brothers are not bad, but not as good as Ursula.I HATE David Brin!
Although I am a Frenchman, I have a soft spot for Russian SF writers, on the average they are better than the US SF writers. Our authors are not bad either.
When you aim for mediocrity, you hit mediocrity. Low popularity, etc. The sort of movie that is forgotten as soon as you finish watching it.
To get mass appeal, you have to aim above mediocrity.
They didn't buy the rights to some mediocre novel. They wanted the rights to a series with a big time name recognition and a big fan-base.
She didn't get those by writing mediocre novels about "safe" subjects with stereotypical characters and plots.
You will turn a profit on a mediocre movie if you can keep the hype up and the costs down.
Like I've said, they don't want to break a profitable formula.
But they'll never see mass appeal or profits like The Matrix or The Lord of the Rings.
Mediocre is what people will choose when they don't have anything better. Welcome to the Sci Fi channel.
Okay, I was going to moderate here, but I had to correct this instead.
I first learned about her when I was looking for a good sci fi book to read and came across what I think is the only book to win both the hugo and nebula awards in the same year: Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness."
The Left Hand of Darkness did win both awards, but it was not the only book to do so, and not even the first. In fact, it isn't even the only book by Le Guin to do so.
Information courtesy of Award Web. Dates listed are the year of publication, not the award year.
1965 - Dune - Frank Herbert
1969 - The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
1970 - Ringworld - Larry Niven
1972 - The Gods Themselves - Isaac Asimov
1973 - Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
1974 - The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
1975 - The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
1977 - Gateway - Frederik Pohl
1978 - Dreamsnake - Vonda McIntyre
1979 - The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke
1983 - Startide Rising - David Brin
1984 - Neuromancer - William Gibson
1985 - Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
1986 - Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card
1992 - Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
1997 - Forever Peace - Joe Haldeman
2001 - American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Two things of particular interest:
1. Card, in 1985 and 1986, was the first (and so far only) to sweep the Hugo/Nebula for novels two years in a row.
2. American Gods was the first two win three major speculative fiction awards (Hugo, Nebula, and Stoker)
All of those are worth reading; Orson Scott Card is a particular favorite of mine, but there is not a bad book in the bunch.
As you wish.
It was a joke.
I'm aware of those facts.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
And I always thought authors were to jazzed at seeing their work on the screen (big or small), not to mention the money involved, that they always said nice things about the project. I used to ask them at SF convension panel discussions about how they felt regarding their upcoming movies, and they'd universally say, "Best thing since sliced carbohydrate of your choice." Now I wonder if any of them meant it. <sniff>
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Well, I'm in the USA, and nobody told me about them.
In addition to her site and Slate, she has put up a more detailed chronology at the Agony column called "Earthsea in Clorox". While the second half is a reiteration of the Slate essay, I provide the first half here to prevent slashdotting:
1. Background: my (non)involvement with this production.
For people who wonder why I sold out to Halmi, or let them change the story -- you may find some answers here.
The producers (not yet including Robert Halmi Sr.) approached us with a reasonable offer. My dramatic agency at that time was William Morris. The contract of course gave me only the standard status of consultant -- which means exactly what the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. The agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as if they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film.
As I had scripted the first two books myself, with Michael Powell, years ago, and also worked with another scriptwriter to plan his script of the first book, I was in a position to be useful to them. I knew some of the difficulties in carrying this story over to film. And some of the possibilities that could be fulfilled, too, the things a movie can do that a novel can't. It was an exciting prospect.
They were talking at that time of a large-scale theater movie, although the possibility of a TV miniseries was mentioned. They said that they had already secured Philippa Boyen (who scripted The Lord of the Rings) as principal scriptwriter, and reported that she was eager to work on an Earthsea film. As the script was, to me, all-important, her presence was the key factor in my decision to sell them the option to the film rights.
Time went by. By the time they got backing from the Sci Fi Channel for a miniseries -- and Robert Halmi Sr. had come aboard -- they had lost Boyen.
That was a blow. But I had just seen Mr Halmi's miniseries Dreamkeeper with its stunning Native American cast, so I said to them in a phone conversation, hey, maybe Mr Halmi will cast some of those great actors in Earthsea! -- Oh, no, I was told -- Mr Halmi had found those people impossible to work with.
Well, I said, you do realise that almost everybody in Earthsea is 'those people,' or anyhow not white?
I don't remember what their answer to that was -- it may have used that wonderful weasel word colorblind -- but it wasn't reassuring, because I do remember saying to my husband, oh, gee, I bet they're going to have a honky Ged. . .
This was in the spring of 2004. They moved very fast then, because if they didn't get into production, they would lose their rights to the property. Early in this period they contacted me in a friendly fashion, and I responded in kind; I asked if they'd like to have a list of name pronunciations; and I said that although I knew well that a film must differ greatly from a book, I hoped they were making no unnecessary changes in the plot or to the characters -- a dangerous thing to do, since the books have been known to millions of people for over 30 years. To this they replied that the TV audience is much larger, and entirely different, and changes to a book's story and characters were of no importance to them.
They then sent me several versions of the script -- and told me that shooting had already begun. In other words, I had been absolutely cut out of the process.
I withdrew my offered pronunciation guide (so Ogion, which rhymes with bogy-on, is Oh-jee-on in the film.) Having looked over the script, I realised they had no understanding of what the two books are about, and no interest in finding out. All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic MacMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence. (And fai
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Remember when the SciFi channel was going to do a miniseries about Roger Zelazny's Amber books? Is that still going to happen? Is it going to suck as much as this one (in terms of being true to the books)? That would really made me sad.
The plot changes, I can see complaining. But from her first paragraph: "My protagonist is Ged, a boy with red-brown skin. In the film, he's a petulant white kid."
Sheez. Talk about petulant...reading on, she complains the most about the color of the actors' skin. Who gives a crap...I didn't notice the race of the characters any of the times I read the books. It's a different world, for cripes sake, it's not gonna have the same racial stereotypes anyway. And she acts like using non-white characters in SF/fantasy is avant garde, when it was pioneered by the original Star Trek.
Years later, as an artist, I can honestly say that yes, 85% of the stuff people "read into" my work is totally random and stupid (or optimistic on their part).
I once decided to test this.
As a starving college student, I managed a trip to NY. Went to the Met. I was an engineering student, but looked oddball enough to possibly pass for artist. Early 20's, long hair but balding. Denim jacket, blue jeans, combat boots.
And I wandered around the Met spouting nonsense as I would stand in front of paintings. "I like it - it says a lot by saying a little. It's artistic without being artsy. This is from her introspective period, isn't it? It's amazing how blue you can be and still provide warmth."
And because I had an odd look and was saying odd things, the locals weren't sure if I was an asylum escapee or an unusually gifted artist. So they erred on the side of caution - and continually praised me for my insight as I wandered the museum critiqueing each piece.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
...is that Tolkien set up a number of wonderful theatrical moments that would have been neat to actually see on film which were totally bypassed.
:-)
* Gandalf confronting Saruman at Orthanc, saying "I have not given you leave to go" when Saruman turns to leave, and then formally casting him out of the council. The extended edition covers some of this, yes, but it would have been a wonderful scene as written given the actors that were paying those parts.
* Gandalf waiting at the main gate of Minas Tirith after Grond had shattered it while the Lord of the Nazgul crossed the theshold and mocked, only to have the horns of Rohan come sounding from afar and delay that potential confrontation.
* Eomer seeing the corsairs coming up the Anduin, raising his sword in defiance, and then seeing the sails of the lead ship unfurl to display the arms of the High King of Gondor (sending him from the depths of despair to the heights of elation and hope).
The vision of the three allied forces (Eomer and the Rohirrim from the NW, Aragorn and the Corsairs from the south, and the knights of Dol Amroth and Gondor from the city itself) coming together to form a massive three-way orc cuisinart in the Pelennor Fields. The dead didn't win that battle, the combined strength of humanity did!
Eowyn and Faramir standing on the walls of the Houses of Healing and looking out over the rising darkness in the east, wondering why they suddenly feel so happy, and then the eagle approaches from the east crying out "Sing, all ye people of the Tower of Anor!".
I understand some things (cutting Tom Bombadil, even the cutting of the Scourge of the Shire), but why does the Mouth of Sauron in the Black Gate confrontation have to go "roowwwr!" all the time? So we know he's a bed guy? Isn't that obvious??
Someday I'd love to see LOTR done up as a minseries by the same people who handled Shogun or Roots. Tolkien's written dialog is damned good. Why mess with it?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
You are correct.
I realized after I has submitted my comment that the statement you refer to was imprecise; I should have said "only men perform significant magic" or maybe "only men are wizards". Women as witches perform minor and somewhat ignorant magic, while men as sorcerers are more learned and men as wizards are moreso.
I happen to have the first book next to me-- mostly an influence of the series. The girl you refer to is mentioned as "half a witch already" and as the daughter of an "enchantress". (What the distinction is between a witch and an enchantress is not explained, if there is any.) When he meets her later she has little magic of her own, but is in cahoots with an old sorcerer. She does have the magic to transform herself into a bird, however.
The main difference is that men are allowed to study and learn magic from books and other high wizards, while the women are left to what they can glean from superstition, limited insight, and the less learned sorcerers. Why this distinction is created in the books, I don't think I will ever understand; it seems arbitrary to me, but is a consistent aspect of Earthsea.
--dv
Insert witty saying or aphorism here.
"It's one thing to be low-budget in production (the original Star Trek was about as low budget as Sci Fi comes), but they could at least make an attempt to get decent writers."
5 /qid=1103221545/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-8858713 -8243237)
Actually, you are wrong completely here. The original Star Trek series was one of, if not *the* highest budgeted TV shows per episode for its time. If I recall correctly it cost roughly $180k per episode which was a huge amount of money at the time. They also had scripts written by some well known SF authors of the time - Theodore Sturgeoon comes to mind.
The reason that the show looks like it was low budget is simply that the special effects industry of the time was primitive by modern standards. For its time Star Trek was revolutionary and very cutting edge, hard as that may be to believe now, and as hokey as the episodes can look by modern standards.
If you want to know more about it, look for a book called "The Making of Star Trek" by Stephen Whitfield (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/034531554
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Author unhappy of how her story was portrayed in a different medium!
Fans were also shocked and suprised that the new medium ws as good as they thought the series is.
one such fans has been quoted as saying:
"They should know how I visualized the story in my head and copied that."
Tune in tomorrow when we interviewe people who will be shocked when the next star wars movie sucks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
At one point she was speaking with an odd accent in interviews which I guess she thought sounded cool and Argentinian but it sounded dumb.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
I don't care who has the best series on TV, as long as they get some decent acting in them. The first hour of the earthsea series was so bad, that it was hard to get into the story and enjoy it. The high priestess and the blacksmith father were particularly horrible. By the time Danny Glover showed up, I said "finally here's someone who might teach these people how to act!!!" Either the acting got better as the show went on, or the art/drama part of my brain has calluses from the abuse.
Boy and sidekick find Boy's Love interest.
Boy and sidekick lose Boy's Love interest to Bad Guy.
Boy and sidekick go to rescue Love interest.
On the way to save Love interest, Boy must save Sidekick because Sidekick is clumsy / dumb / cowardly.
Boy battles Bad Guy.
Love interest helps Boy at critical moment to defeat Bad Guy.
All laugh.
Fade to black.
Roll credits.We've been seeing that in the teen-slasher flix for years. All that's been changing is the FX tech to make it look more realistic (or even more realistic than reality).
Pushing the envelope would be a story when "good" and "evil" are not clearly defined. Where each side has their own goals and the audience can sympathize with both sides.
Or where the hero's sacrifice does NOT lead to redemption or success.
Or where loss is loss. You learn that life isn't always sweet and nice and sometimes you lose but it isn't the end of the world.
Even in LotR, at the end, Frodo left. He didn't get the girl and live happily ever after. He saved the world, but in saving it, he changed and couldn't be a part of it anymore.
THAT is pushing the envelope.
Whenever I hear "based on the..." used in the ad blurb, I know it's going to suck. So I didn't watch it. Sorry, Sci-Fi channel. You should have used the Peter Jackson play book, and stayed true to the original story.
BTW: There's a similar rule for Tom Clancy novels: If it has an apostrophe in the title, it's gonna suck (Tom Clancy's Net Force, anyone?)
Chip H.
"You read the book and the book reads you."
"There is NO real character or plot development."
It's just like the books.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
it would be a mediocre McMagic movie, as a representation of Earthsea it is a travesty. This is exactly what sucks about Hollywood. At least they tried to do it right with Dune. This movie just plain sucks. The only good that can come of it is that more people will read Earthsea and learn what a good story really is. I can't believe sci-fi thinks that their viewers have not read Earthsea. We should send them letters that indicate otherwise.
Just to be a little nitpicky, this could work fine in a movie. The people in Earthsea all have their true names which they rarely reveal to anyone else (and which give other people power over them, a trope that LeGuin popularized and Vernor Vinge later adapted into his early cyberpunk story "True Names"), but they go by monikers that other people refer to them by. For instance the main character's true name is Ged, but he goes by Sparrowhawk, so most of the dialog in the book has people calling him that.
So you wouldn't really have to sit through a whole movie with all the characters refering to "that guy who we met earlier" or "hey, you."
I'd personally love to see something like Ender's Game, Lord of Light, or The Flying Sorcerors made into a (good) movie, but I don't see any of those happening... :-(
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Le Guinn's "I Hate White People. White People are bad" rant in slate is a pretty typical Portland, Oregon (Le Guinn's home) attitude. The irony of this self-righteousness is that Portland is the whitest place I have ever lived. One of the reasons Portlander's can sit around and brag about their never-ending "tolerance" is that they are all the same.
"Latte Town" was coined a few years back and is the most appropriate term for the City of Portland that I have ever heard. A Latte town consists of mostly white, educated baby boomers and young single people. The inhabitants of the town are usually newcomers who have priced out all the original inhabitants. These towns are usually expensive, pretentious, abound in natural fibers and are laid back on the surface. Latte towns like Portland pride themselves on their most cherished concepts of diversity and inclusiveness. Most Portlanders accept this myth as Gospel but upon close examination Portland's dirty little secret is revealed. Portland is an overwhelmingly white, non-ethnic city. It is as vanilla as it gets so it makes one wonder what all the celebrating of diversity is all about. Drive through any neighborhood surrounding the downtown area and the impression that you get is that Portland is nothing more than a series of elitist ghettos compromised of rich white homosexuals, rich white yuppies, rich white hippies, rich white trust funders, and rich white kids from the suburbs pretending to be street people. Where's the diversity? Well it doesn't exist but the average Portlander likes the concept and in their eyes the different shades of rich whites all constituent diversity. In a series of articles I will attempt to breakdown and explain these subtle distinctions between the various factions of lily white, latte people that make Portland what it is.
I think it is highly hypocritical of Le Guinn to go on and on about how much she hates the racial changes in her novels, "her world," when in the real world she intentionally moved to an "all" white town.
> I'm aware of those facts.
Yes, you're very smart. Now shut up.
"Who cares what they did to a 30 year old story??
"assclown"
Let me guess: You're under 30, possibly under 20. 'nuff said.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
you're off by 5 percent. it's sturgeon's law.
Le Guin is the author of the books.
And she is pissed!
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
If the script was all that important, then you should have written it yourself. Telling a story in script form is different than novel form to be sure, but if it mattered to you that much, then learn!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That explains why Luke Skywalk....er, I mean Ged acted like that.
That they would wanted to water down her story is something she should have assumed as matter of principle -- has she been to any movies lately? In particular, she should not have assumed that they'd carry over the racial ideas of her stories intact. Except for shows and movies specially targetted at non-whites, it's pretty unusual to have to have a hero that "the audience can't identify with".
I notice that her moral outrage didn't stop her from recording an "exlusive interview with the author" for SciFi.com. In which she doesn't, of course, mention any of her misgivings about the miniseries.
Pretty much the consensus seems to be that the adaptation is as bad as she claims, but she did sign the rights away. No matter what she may have thought was going to happen, if it's not in the contract, it's not going to happen.
As soon as the line was crossed from not involving her to putting words in her mouth, though, she's got every right to complain as loudly as possible about what was done to her work. To her credit, she stayed quiet out of an honorable respect for the contract, and only began publicly making her feelings known once ideas and motives were attributed to her that weren't hers.
As sour grapes as her last salvo might come across, it's important to bear in mind that it was only caused by the producers clearly stepping over the line. They opened the floodgates, she's simply providing the water. Also note that she does not claim that the producers were under any legal obligation to stay true to her books, she simply claims that the books were better, and what the producers put onscreen is essentially unrelated to what she wrote.
*Yes, this is a shameless plug.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Harlan Ellison has multiple good stories about the TV industry, at least one of which discusses his experiences with it during the production of The Starlost, which was mangled into unrecognizability during its (short) run on TV. While Ellison received a writing award for the best script of the year for the opener, he had to avoid attempts by the studios to suborn him into scabbing. The story also describes the experiences of other authors who have had their work shredded on the gears of TV production (since Ellison might be viewed as cantankerous by people, he discusses others who might be considered more reasonable).
As Stephen King said in a summary of Ellison's The Glass Teat, TV is a teat, but one that exudes poisoned milk. While King intended the summary to refer to the viewers, it may refer well to those who try to write for TV. In the movies, very few books remain unscathed; often the conversion involves someting like body-snatching where the soul of the book is removed but the form remains. while at other times the movies aren't so kind. The list of writings smeared into gelatin by Hollywood in legion, and LeGuin probably should have known of them. Money is nice, and perhaps the hope of a wider audience for your works, but the latter is probably only a hope.
If you sell your books for money (I didn't RTA, so I don't know what her relationship to the miniseries was), experience should indicate that what they make will probably not be your work. If the money is good enough, that's OK, but don't expect integrity out of the production.
I had a prof a couple years ago give us this interesting quote (sorry, don't know the source)
"If Shakespear was alive today, he'd just be another critic"
In other words, it doesn't really matter what the author intended, what matters is what the reader gets out of it. If the author meant X, but I read it as Y, it is still Y to me.
There is hard SF (dealing with technology and attempting to keep everything scientifically accurate) and soft SF (dealing with the effects of tech on people and peoples usage of technology).
You only need science degrees if you are attempting to explain the technology. For Hard SF, Hal Clement is one of the best.
For character development, plot, pacing, and story telling, many scientific writers suck. There are lots of great SF writers (Ellison, Le Guin, Zelazny) who know little of hard science but can tell a great story.
Of Le Guin's, I like "The Word of World is Forest", the best. As I was reading it, I saw that she was a great writer. Her more famous books (Dispossed, Left Hand of Darkness) can be a little hard to follow. I think Earthsea is some of her weakest work.
When he meets her later she has little magic of her own
I don't have to book in front of me, but I think I remember her running hot lead into the bones of some guards. That sounds fairly significant. Anyway, I certainly did not get a clear view of the difference in magic for men and women in the first few books. It is strongly implied that they did not attend the school at Roke. The later books also drew some strong divisions between men and women, but it has been a long time. I seem to recall at the time thinking that they seemed rather femi-nazi and wondered if Miss LeGuin had just gone through a break up. Of course I think I was about 12 at the time, so I could be way off. She deals with gender issues in some of her other works as well. I have not yet decided whether or not to watch the TV series. After reading the reviews here, I am inclined to delete it.
I've never read any of her books, but I had always meant to get around to it. After reading her whiny rant about race on Slate, I no longer have any desire to read anything by her. If things like that are what she considers the "important" parts of her books, I can't see them being good.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
If there is one thing people need to learn about the scifi channel it that they CANNOT be allowed to comission their own movies under ANY circumstance. There are very very few instances where such an event has produce anything close to a desirable series, and more likely than not, you get something along the lines of "Aracnaphobids 4", the 4 spider movie in a long and hallowed series of really BAD spider movies. Wing Commander Galactica comes to mind.
From day one of their brainwashing advertisement blitz (they might as well have put a black and white spiralling swirl on the TV while they advertised it) it was super obvious that this was another of SCiFi's well abused formulas-- Rip it from the Big Screen and make it SUCK. In this case, Lord of the Rings was the obvious target, with a few other franchises mashed in for good measure. They should have just saved the money they spent licensing the the EarthSea name and spent it on a better script or something, because you could see it from day one: Suckage.
That, and anybody else notice their fondness of polar opposite movie titles? Dark light? Earth Sea? There's a few more, but it's getting to be as silly as Steven Segal's prepositional phrase movies...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
there are those who complain, and those who do
it's very easy to complain
it's actually very hard to actually do something in this world
so we wind up with a world where a bunch of lazy useless losers sit around whining about everything, and every time someone actually tries to do something positive, they get by all the whiny overcritcal losers, and so nothing ever gets done
for most who complain i say this: shut the fark up, and actually do something instead
otherwise, in my book, you are completely useless and contemptible
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I love the "dangerous" thing, though. Oh, no, run and hide SciFi execs! Earthsea fans with pitchforks and torches!
What do you expect when you sell the rights to your book to a channel that made Boa vs. Python?
Says it all.
Toto, something tells me Earthsea isn't Iraq.
LeGuin maintains her high standard for entertaining rants. I wonder if this is a conscious or unconscious reference to From Elfland to Poughkeepsie.
Wouldn't be the first time directors (critics, professors, other writers, students, readers in general) saw things in an author's work the author themself didn't realize/intend/understand.
And it wouldn't be the first time they were equally right either.
Some authors handle this more gracefully than others.
Remember the apocryphal story of the incident where a famous author (the author differs depending on who tells it) attended a college discussion of one of his (or her) works incognito? After listening to a long and involved discussion about many hidden meanings in the story he (or she) approaches the professor afterwards and says it was a nice lecture, but he (or she) really hadn't had any of those thoughts or ideas in mind when writing that story. The priceless reply is: What do you know about it? You're only the author.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You must be new here.
Since when do we mod up a post about moderators? If you complain about moderation, you will get modded down for off topic. There is nothing more off topic for any story than a comment to the moderators. This post belongs under a story about slashdot moderation.
If I had the points right now, I would have modded you down for the use of your "colorful metaphor" without a second thought. Pray, learn to speak unlike a heathen. Moderation is first and foremost about separating the noise from the signal. The parent post is creating noise.
-1, Flamebait
-1, Off-Topic
-1, Off-Topic
---
Beer me...
Is it just me or did it seem like every 10 minutes they would have 5 minutes of commericals.
TruePunk | Games
Than this mini-series.
Acting and story telling were below the average Xena/Hercules episode.
Standard fantasy plot that would fit on the back of a napkin, terribly simplistic story telling, with cookie cutter evil villans. No depth whatsoever.
IMO it was really quite a useless mess. I recommend if you haven't seen it, don't. I can't think of a redeeming feature.
1. Loved the books. In fact, I just went back and re-read them, and realized I had forgotten how good they are.
2. LeGuin's loony, left-wing rant on Slate surprised me. Someone who hadn't read the books, but read the essay, would come away thinking the Earthsea books are tedious, race-obsessed stories of white imperialist subjugation. This is emphatically not the case. As a few others here have noted, there is simply no scene in the books where race comes significantly into play. Sure, she mentions at some point that the protagonist has "red-brown" skin, and the barbarians, the Karg, are pointed out to have "fair" skin, but honestly, that's it.
"As an anthropologist's daughter," LeGuin writes, "I am intensely conscious of the risk of cultural or ethnic imperialism [you don't say! -ed.] --- a white writer speaking for nonwhite people, co-opting their voice, an act of extreme arrogance. In a totally invented fantasy world, or in a far-future science fiction setting, in the rainbow world we can imagine, this risk is mitigated. That's the beauty of science fiction and fantasy--freedom of invention."
So outside of the fantasy setting, a white writer cannot use characters (or at least main characters) who are not white? Writers who are not sci-fi or fantasy writers do not have this "freedom of invention"? That's too bad: Huckleberry Finn isn't going to make much sense if we have to go in and make Jim white.
Great books from a pretty screwy author.
- Alaska Jack
Hugh Grant...we're not judging.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Bitch wants to have her cake and eat it too.
Guess what, this is what happens to your lifes work when you sell out.
Anyone who expects Sci Fi to ever produce anything worth watching is a moron.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Looking through the comments, I'm struck by the number of people who either seem to think that she should have known this was coming and has no right to complain, and the race thing is no big deal anyhow.
The first complaint seems unfairly harsh. I have a lot of sympathy for her optimism that they would come up with an adaptation that was reasonably true to the work. To me, the recent Lord of the Rings movies served as a sign that good book adaptations were possible. I might feel hopeful in her case, too.
And for the second criticism: this is a writer who approaches her work like an anthropologist or sociologist, one who is most interested in the human aspects of her stories. To white-wash the characters, and on top of that, flatten her story out until it resembled generic European fantasy material, is an insult to her ongoing attempts to write about more diverse worlds. Part of what makes her best writing stand out for me, is that the people and cultures are never generic. It's a shame the producers of the miniseries couldn't see that.
I had to turn the website off temporarily. 90% of you were getting errors, anyway. Sorry, but we're a little hosting company, and a single Slashdot mention can swamp our connection.
Please get the article from Google's cache, or any of the mirrors mentioned in this thread.
I'll bring www.ursulakleguin.com back up later.
Jeffry Dwight
Ursula's Administrator (among other chores)
Keith Gordon as Jason Melon: You got a major paper coming up on Kurt Vonnegut and you haven't read any of the books.
... "Hi, I'm Kurt Vonnegut."
Thornton Melon: I tried (someone knocking on door) I don't understand a word of it"
Jason Melon: So how are you gonna write the paper then, huh?" Kurt Vonnegut Jr. as Himself
Thortons Melon's teacher gives him an 'F' on the paper.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
SciFi series writers are hacks. They would make Othello be about two black people and have them living happily ever after on planet Rawndesia.
What can you expect. You start with a fairly decent book and by the time the accountants are through with product placement you have something that you can only wipe your butt with.
The days of Rod Serling or Harlan Ellison are 'way' over.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I loved Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy, read them many years ago and loved every second of it. In fact, I think it was my first exposure to a fantasy genre book. I would have to say they are comparible to LOTR as well - my only wish is that they were longer (the books themselves), I would have loved to read more about Ged's adventures.
One of the things I love about Le Guin's fantasy world is that is there is significant character development (over longer periods of time), it's more of a long-term biography almost, than just a story about a particular quest. You can see how Ged ages, matures and learns new things. I also enjoy her approach to magic - most fantasy-style worlds (books/games/etc) prevent wizards and such from learning too powerful spells until they are able to - you can't learn it until you are advanced enough. In her world, any magic-user can cast almost any spell - allowing for the possibility for things to get out of control (ie: when Ged summons the gebbeth). I know it's a minor detail, but to me this seems more believable; I can envision a more realistic world based upon those rules.
I was talking about Earthsea with my friend, and he mentioned a fantasy author by the name of Terry Brooks, can anyone suggest any of his books to start out on?
However, I did watch the miniseries. I "walked" into it expecting it to be significantly altered, which it was. I watched it just trying to enjoy being able to see parts of the story on film, not actually attempting to take in the whole story from the film. I think I was pretty successful - I definately picked up on small things that I did not focus much on from the story, but then again I also noticed things that were completely different. All-in-all I don't think it was too bad, having read the books previously. I would recommend anyone to read the books first before watching the miniseries however.
# fuser -v
#
they aren't interested in Science Fiction. They want the tech-fantasy crap.
The stuff that will be guaranteed to appeal to the 12 - 24 year old male audience.
Is this the same industry that's worried they're losing their viewers to the Internet and Video games? Falling ratings on guys 18-34?
I'm in that demographic, and I don't mind saying that that the bullsh** LeGuin describes is exactly why I continue to simply read books rather than turn on the tube.
Note to producers: I know, I'm in the semi-intelligent demographic, which you've written off, but seriously, could it hurt to try?
Tweet, tweet.
There's a yiddish world for Asimov's "self-described arrogance": Shtick.
The wacky, oversexed doctor who so vain he was beyond any form of embarassment, seems to me to be a persona, and one which was basically self-deprecating in intent. He was almost painfully self-effacing in any kind of "serious" situation (see Terry Gross's excellent Fresh Air interview over at NPR.ORG).
I think I'm going to pick up his memoirs, but it makes me wish that a really good bigoraphy written by an independent third party existed. If anyone knows of one, I'd like to here. Clearly, the man was no Einstein, but he had a mind of great breadth as well as tremendous energy. He had to be pretty damned intimidating to most people.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Insightful
I think the biggest mistake the W brothers made in Reloaded was to cram all of the important information into a single scene with a man whose face was more interesting than his droning voice, i.e. the Architect.
That scene is the single most important scene in the entire movie. If you weren't paying attention, you missed it.
First, there was no implication of matrices within matrices. The architect spoke of five previous matrices. Each time there was an anomaly that caused the matrix to implode (The anomaly was the dual creation of Neo-One/Smith-virus). Each time, the Architect had presented the One the choice of immediately merging with the Virus and in gratitude, the machines will spare 17 women and 6 men (sound familiar? Morpheus speaks in M1 of the 23 founders of Zion) of his choosing, or he can reject the offer and everybody dies.
In every previous Matrix, the One chose to save the twenty-three of his choosing and face/merge with the Virus. Until Neo. Sure, you can really get deep and discuss the Oracle's manipulations of the whole situation, but that's for another discussion. Neo, told the Architect, the Machines and everyone else to fuck off and go save his girlfriend. At this point, from the POV of the machines, the wheels fell off the cart. Because, the machines need Neo to stop Smith. They couldn't. They never could. They were screwed.
Because Neo rejected their offer, he was now in a position to dictate terms. Of course, it takes him a while to figure that out ("Not too smart, though."), which is most of Revolutions. I don't think Neo really understood his own decision when meeting with the Architect beyond saving Trinity. I don't think it occurred to him until much later that he could be dooming both the humans and machines into extinction by making the choice he did.
When it came down to it, Neo chose the chance for peace and coexistence. That's a resolution. And a damn fine one at that. The whole matrix within a matrix just perpetuates the endless loop and IMHO is a cop-out ending.
Yes, I agree, most people don't pay attention to plot anymore.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic McMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence.
Maybe they ruined her story (I'd agree that the show was generic and boring), but I think the author is sensationalizing. The only "sex" I remember is a bit of kissing in the first scene and one kiss at the very end. I certainly wouldn't call that a sexual movie. Also there was some violence, but it certainly wasn't that prevalent considering the plot was about conflict. Did the book have zero violence or something?
It's on cable and satellite, which means you have to pay for it, and get a bunch of other channels you DON'T want in the package.
:-|
You're paying for the channel, and the channel's getting paid by advertisers. You're paying for the privelege of getting ads rammed up your ass.
This is, in part, why shows like The Sopranos are so popular- not only is it a solid drama, it's COMMERCIAL FREE.
Ouch, sure told me. You find a need to point out the irrelevant. Now shut up.
I guess people are allowed to post information when they think someone didn't get a joke, but posting back that you actually did understand the joke isn't allowed. That makes as much sense as your post.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
Once again, you are correct.
One problem I have always had with LeGuin's works, is that she says so much with so few words. It is easy for me to miss the impact of what has just occurred in the story, and that is what happened for me here.
So at the risk of showing my ignorance again, I will state that she is the exception for most women in the series. I can think of no other woman who had such high power that was not also that weird dragon/human hybrid type like the scarred dragon/girl Therru or the mysterious Irian (the Dragonfly story).
--dv
Insert witty saying or aphorism here.
Sorry... I guess my quote was a little too obscure.
--------------
GRANDFATHER
(off-screen)
(still reading)
It was ten days till the wedding. The King still lived, but Buttercup's nightmares were growing steadily worse.
THE KID
(off-screen)
See? Didn't I tell you she'd never marry that rotten Humperdinck?
GRANDFATHER
(off-screen)
-- yes, you're very smart. Shut-Up.
--------
I just thought it made a zingy comeback to your "I'm aware of those facts." No offense meant...
Read her blog and it's clear she sold out and hoped for the best. If you are going to whore for the suits don't bitch about the out come.
After reading the article and watching the movie I realised that the author and the movie made many serious mistakes.
1) when any scifi book is trying to prove a racial point for a racial sake, it has missed the boat all together. Sci fi is not about elevating one race over another its about creating an environment where you can explore a certain idea or social trait.
2) I don't care what colour the main character is I want a good intelligent character who can really engage my imagination.
3) this movie is horrible. As I was watching it, I kept thinking that this is the abortion of some brain dead coked out movie producer who thought a) harry potter made allot of money b) LOTR made allot of money so if I make a movie that combines the two I will make a shit load of money " coke whores for everyone. I've got a great idea, now wheres my jew banker. !!!!"
She should be happy they did as good as they did with her books.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Every writer worth his beans knows that the experience of reading changes the work from being a individual effort into a collaborative effort between the writer and the reader.
The Slate article describes a perfect example of this. Le Guin said that most white readers don't even notice the racial/skin tone elements, whereas many minorities have praised her for those elements.
So, the meaning of the book for a typical white reader is different than the meaning for a minority.
We all, as readers, bring our own history, ideas, opinions, and feelings to everything we read. Whatever you believe a passage means is exactly what it means.
That's not to say traditional literature are not valuable. By telling you that the river in Huck Finn represents life, the teacher is trying to give you insight into the book.
Now, if you don't agree with that insight, don't agree, but at least you've thought about it, and maybe you've learned something about the book or about yourself.
Do you sometimes have to write something that you don't agree with to pass? Sure. Welcome to the real world. You'll always, unless you run your own business, have to take other people's positions to be successful in your job.
To bring this back full circle, it sounds like Le Guin is upset that the producers changed the basic elements of the story rather then presenting their own perspective on the story. Some of that, as she understood, is neccessary for an adaptation of the books, but she thinks they went too far. There will always be tension there, and I think producers including the author (if living) or a representative of the author in the creation process can minimize that tension. It's a shame that the producers of this mini-series didn't do that.
And there's nothing "upcoming" about it- it's being run on SkyOne in the UK as we speak.
:-)
It's easily the best television sci-fi I've seen in years, though I'm starting to wish they'd give their resource acquisition problems more than the coursory lip service of the first and second episodes- BSG is almost entirely sociopolitical drama at this point, and if the characters weren't so well-written and well-acted, it would suck. The fact that it doesn't is kind of a fluke- one I'm enjoying a great deal.
One book series that would be great to bring to Sci-Fi would Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's "Death Gate" series......
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
You certainly can't do Roots with an all-white cast.... and if you did an adaptation of The Dark Tower with a white Susanna Dean who had all of her legs, you'd be missing the point entirely.
Conversely, Avery Brooks would make a fucking AWESOME Lex Luthor. The guy can do the no-hair thing and exudes barely-repressed evil-rage at the drop of a hat. It rocks.
Hollywood has always pandered to the audience- hence the profusion of tits and massive changes in character racial background. Some of that's actor availability... if you've read the Dune books, you know that the Fremen weren't exactly white.... yet they've been about as honky as you can get in every visual adaptation to hit the screen.
And she complains about race? Methinks the lady is a wee bit too race conscious. Shouldn't she be more offended about changing the intent and meaning of the story, rather than messing with skin color?
Then she concocts charged insinuations of racism ("But I had endless trouble with cover art...Not on the great cover of the first edition...but all too often.") but can only mention a single instance where the skin color of the character was changed on the cover art, and then only the *first* version!
Personally, I read the Earthsea series in college. It was entertaining but I didn't think it was all that great or memorable. I only happened to read it because a girl I knew and liked really liked the Tenar character to the point of adopting it as a nickname within my group of friends.
YHBT HAND
Even though the miniseries was not great it was at least watchable. The books are unreadable. There's not much out there that's worse than a Ursula K. Le Guin book. In fact I don't think I can think of a single thing off the top of my head.
I keep reading posts along the lines of "she signed away her rights so tough luck" when what she doesn't seem to be upset about changes the producers made. She's upset that they made those changes AND claim they're being true to the books. I'd like to just say RTFA, but people appear to be reading it and misinterpreting it. Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!
Having Read The Fine Article and seeing her admit she knew the difference between writing a novel and writing a script (though I don't recall her saying she wrote any herself), she didn't have to sell it to SciFi Channel under these, or any other, conditions.
Having decided to do so, and cash the check that came with it, she should quit griping about her own bad decision that didn't include retaining enough control over her property to keep her happy.
(Actually as I've heard it, UKL is difficult to keep happy under the best of circumstances anyway, so I take her gripes less seriously than otherwise.)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I would feel more sympathetic to Le Guin if she hadn't already wrecked the Earthsea universe with non-canonical books of her own.
I figured Ms. Le Guin had been left out of this production while I was watching it. I really looked forward to a hopefully well-done Earthsea movie. As I watched it, and wondered what happened to the Nameless One, and where the Amulet came from, and where this sisterhood of goodness and light came from... etc, etc, I was more and more disappointed. Ms. Le Guin, I bow to your talent. The Sci-Fi Channel is failing to live up to it's potential. They have the potential to make millions of very loyal sf/f fans deleriously happy and loyal fans of their channel. But this sort of thing only plays to the uninformed masses. Oh, yes, I suppose there are more of those people to sell things too... I wonder if Peter Jackson likes Earthsea?
While I completely sympathize with Ursula Le Guin, and am horrified that the people behind the miniseries didn't see fit to work with her on the project, I do have an interesting story to relate that puts perhaps a different light on this.
My daughter is the world's greatest young artist. Well, in the top ten, anyway. It's been years since she had an art teacher that she had much respect for. So, this year, she gets to high school, and on the first day she waltzes into her new art teacher's office and says "I think all those people who analyze artist's paintings for meaning and symbolism are full of shit! The artists are just painting pictures! People who say otherwise are just making stuff up!"
Her new teacher says "OK, give me your sketchbook". My daughter carries it religiously everywhere, and hands it over. The teacher proceeds to tell my daughter everything about every detail of the drawings. The teacher explains in embarrassing detail my daughter's relationship toward each of the subjects -- things like "Hmmm -- you really like this person, but you just had a big fight with them." The teacher describes exactly what my daughter was thinking as she drew each part of each of the drawings. My daughter is, of course, thunderstruck -- the teacher got everything exactly right -- and my daughter had absolutely no idea that it would have been possible.
With that kind of an introduction, perhaps it is surprising that they have a truly wonderful student-teacher relationship now, but they do. I expect great things.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Amen to that! I hired the first part (of three) from my local videostore, and thought it was OK. Then I hired the second part, and my brother and I were forced to turn it off after about an hour - it was some of the worst TV I have ever seen (and that includes "Passions"). The sand dunes in this were quite clearly large slopes of chipboard with some sand on them - TERRIBLE.
Don't watch it!
P.S. I love Hercules (it is truly entertaining TV that doesn't try to be what it's not)
No, she didn't compare herself to Tolkien at all. You have a strange way of reading things, if you think that's the case. She drew parallels between the abuse of her story and a well-known ending to another well-known story. That's all.
As for relinquishing control: she's a Taoist, and maintaining firm control is quite possibly against her beliefs. She's likely to have hoped for the best and been prepared for the worst, and accepted it. She's not complaining or blaming anyone either, just pointing out what she perceives to be the truth of the situation.
One line I was looking for was where Vetch's sister asks why they are packing food on the boat when they could just say 'meatpie' and have something to eat. Ged explains that they'd just be eating their words and then goes on to some details on how magic works in their world (been a few years since reading it). Nothing. Magic was just used as a plot conveiance, with scarely more meaning than in the Harry Potter books.
I guess it's all through pop culture now, where nothing has any real moral challenges anymore. Why should I expect pop SF/Fantasy to be different. Only the dead live lives of fearlessness. Why are we trying to drain life out of our culture?
I drank what? -- Socrates
I read those books when I was a kid.
I loved them.
Apparently the author was trying to make some kind of grand statement about race. And according to the author, the fact that I missed some important racial commentary in the book(s) is because "i'm white and can afford to be racially blind" (my paraphrasing)
I'm having a hard time taking that as anything other than a big $#@! you from the author.
I still love the books. And have just become pretty disillusioned about the author.
i do though, have some sympathy for her book getting mauled by the show makers.
i guess im still pretty blind because i REALLY dont understand how the book would be any different if, when describing the color of the characters skin, the author had chosen a different color.
IT WAS THE THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS OF HER CHARACTERS THAT MADE IT A GREAT BOOK, NOT THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN.
I used to live in a black neighborhood in the States, then I moved to a Latino neighborhood, where I was the minority as an American of European descent, in both areas. If you think racism is not something whites have to deal with you clearly have never had the misfortune to live in a black neighborhood. Just try to make friends when you are one of the few whites kid in a black neighborhood. It is cool to dislike whites there. Remember that movie(I think it was Boyz 'n the Hood) which contained a very brief scene where some little black kids were playing touch football in the street and some older high school negroes came up and asked them to throw them the ball. Of course when they throwed the football to them they just kept it and walked off. I doubt a jerkoff pretending with "a little extra thinking what it is like to be black"(like Le Guin) can remember this scene, unless they have actually lived in a black neighborhood and seen how prevalent such behavior is there. Since I have lived that experience I can remember that scene even if I am unsure of the name of the movie, it brought back a past I wanted to forget. Sometimes they will ask you to throw the football and one of their friends who is with them will put out his hands for a pass, when he catches the ball he will throw it back to the little kids(alas a few nigga hoodrats are decent humans in spite of it all), knowing that his friend would have walked off stealing the football from much younger and smaller children. Regardless(a good percentage of the times they did take the football) I cannot remember how many times I lost a football in such a manner, and the terror I felt everytime as I was intimidated by one of these highschool or college age hoodrats asking me when I was in gradeschool to pass to them. I wanted to tell them "fuck you" but since they were bigger and faster they could have taken it from me anyway if they lacked scruples. When I moved to a white neighborhood(at least it used to be back then) of Boonton, NJ I was moving into a different world. Things like constantly preying on grade school kids as a supply of nerf footballs was not a hobby for Boonton teens.
It is easy to fetishize being black, until you live in a black neighborhood. I wonder why Mrs. Le Guin does not move to Hempstead, New York on Long Island instead of white bread Portland Oregon, I guess it is ok for things to be black in her books, NOT HER NEIGHBORHOOD . Unlike her, for whom a rhetorical wonder why would be needed, I have lived in a black neighborhood, I do not have to wonder why she does not want to move to such a neighborhood and instead flagellate from afar. I guess a being black is good enough for me to experience while being in a black dominated community, but for her it is some fetish for her novels and to rant about in Slate, while she lives in the Midwest(we all know how White the Midwest is). I used to be a leftist/anarchist, then I turned 21. They harp too much about bullshit like: "As an anthropologist's daughter, I am intensely conscious of the risk of cultural or ethnic imperialisma white writer speaking for nonwhite people, co-opting their voice, an act of extreme arrogance.."(from her website tirade) I can say to Le Guin that the joy those letters brought are not equal to the joy I felt when leaving a once quaint neighborhood destroyed by the immigration of hoodrats from Hempstead. If she wants a real experience of the stuff she lionizes she can always move from the Midwest. Alas, she is but a paper polticially correct warrior. She does not hear police sirens I bet every night like I used to.
I do not know how many minorities are so called. They are the actual majorities in their local area. It does not matter if you are "demographically oppressed"(terminology not above the use of anarchist jerk offs) nationally and whining about that when you are the local majority. For me what good is it if whites are the majority black when I was in a black hood? The latinos(not west coast barrio dicks) are not bad at all, from my experience. I interact wit
That's not particularly important to making a good film, honestly, whether it's science fiction or some other genre. They need really good directors. I can think of a few films that had really good science fiction authors but still didn't accomplish much. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102800/
The director controls almost everything during the making of a film, in any genre. The writer just gives a little fuel, the director isn't obligated to follow the screenplay. There are instances where the author and director work very closely together, like 2001, and the result can be pretty good. It's not a guarantee, though.
One thing this incident brought to mind even before I read your comment: Ursula LeGuin bitching in her (awful) Norton Science Fiction anthology that Blade Runner "travestied" the book 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' Blade Runner, one of the widely-recognized classics of adult science fiction.
Philip Dick, unlike LeGuin, was pretty graceful about the fact that the film was very different than his book, and supposedly liked the movie.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
In lieu of having any mod points, just let me say I like your comment. Civil but pointed. Once her site recovers from the slashdotting it's taking right now, you ought to put that question in an EMAIL for her. She seems like a reasonable sort - I wouldn't be the slightest surprised if she answered it on her site.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I never though LeGuin was that great of a writer. If I could have gotten past her pretentious, stodgy writing style, perhaps I would have enjoyed her books more.
The mini series was ok, not great but ok. To digress, a two part movie is NOT, at least to me, a mini series. But anyways...
Any writer that's had their material made into a movie or television has experienced the changes that happen. The writer has to be willing to let go. Ms. LeGuin has yet to learn that. Most of her complaints were pointless whining about changes that made no difference to viewers.
I'm sure if she keeps bitching and whining that fewer of her books will be adapted in the future.
" A lot of them don't read, a lot of them don't read English, and a lot of them can't read."
-- Terry Pratchett, on why his books do not sell well in the United States
It stands for KROEBER. She's Dr. Alfred Kroeber's daughter. Remember Ishi, last of the Yahi?
Do a google search if you don't track science or history.
It makes one wonder, if producers aren't going to respect the written work, why produce a film version of it at all? If the target isn't the readership, then why bother introducing a title to those who are "unlikely to care about changes to the books' story and characters"?
It's almost like they took the success of "The Lord of The Rings film for granted, and didn't pay heed to the incredible fidelity Jackson and crew kept with the original work. Earthsea deserved better, and so did its fans. Le Guin is partly to blame. We can only hope that authors are more serious about retaining final say about changes in a film version of their work in the future.
= 9J =
There are a number of other web cartoonists out there who have gone full time, but they also make money by selling licensed products and web site memberships - so you could bicker about whether they could (I think they do, because you can still read their stuff for free, but whatever). Randy's an example where it purely worked through free-and-clear contributions.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
So even when an author says "I didn't mean to represent X as Y", it doesn't make it any less true that X is represented as Y
I disagree. Witness:
The author of parent represents writing, in particular that of Ursula K. LeGuin, as a russian space opera in which elephants control an interstellar parliament whose primary concern is the equitable distribution of custard.
See, it's all well and good to note that commentary and criticism can carry content despite the author's conscious intentions. That taken in stride, that does no magically validate everything such commentary or criticism has to say.
Frankly, if you'd read the books, I would think the scriptwriter's and director's statements would seem rather more absurd than my custard example. The anger in Ursula's voice is not unwarranted, and the closing comment about Frodo and the ring in my opinion is rather an understatement; given what I believe is the total butchering of the books in the form of this miniseries, I would suggest that Ursula could have gone quite a bit further in her exposition of what is essentially a mockery of her work.
I feel for Ursula: she doesn't get the recognition she deserves (before someone points out all the awards, two words: Anne Mc-fuckingCaffery,) and yet when a TV channel finally stumbles across one of the most painfully obvious targets for conversion to miniseries in history, they screw it up to a degree whch would make Soviet Communist censors uncomfortable.
What Kubrick did to 2001 was one thing; he added and created, yet destroyed none of the original content. What was done to Earthsea is, in my opinion, nothing short of criminal.
But of course, 85% of the theories are still utter crap.
#include <boost/statistics>
template<MadeUp&> float GetPercentage(const statistic& NumberOnSlashdot) { return 0.931; }
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Number 1, the first comment she put out was on her site, and still is, and in fact talks about the bastardizing of her books.
Number 2, she later makes another comment almost a month later, where she further expands on the idea of skin color which foreign to the movie.
So, there you have it, she in 2 seperate articles says two different messages. God forbid, the average human being be forced to comprehend more than 1 idea at once. I believe only politicians are forced to stick to one idea, less they be accused of being flip-floppers.
Now let's get out and stop them queers from getting married and go murder us some abortion doctors.
haha, that's actually hilarious. I got pissed that you were making a joke from the same movie I was joking that I was aware of, but apparently not familiar enough with...
:)
Funny joke
-- Joke Comeback
-- -- Joke Comeback pointing out movie origin
-- -- -- Joke Comeback pointing out I know the origin
-- -- -- -- Joke Comeback originating from the same movie
-- -- -- -- -- Angry Comback misinterpretting the previous joke
This could go on forever
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
In a sense she wasn't as much griping about the show itself, but about the statement from the producers. Then she had to provide context and explanation as to why it wesn't true to her work.
Perhaps she figured she was had sold the Earthsea idea to them, but not the right for them to represent her endorsement of what they wound up with.
I doubt the producers care. Controversy = Good Publicity, ya' know.
Mind you, the ratings didn't scream skyward like a rocket (so to speak), and so it was pretty-much a one-time experiment.
The observation has been made that the SciFi channel is essentaially a B movie studio subsidising its production costs by running a cable channel.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Next time just round out to 20% is outright correct or something that rings very true.
Anything less than or equal to 20% can use the 80-20 Rule
Quote:
The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 Rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that for many phenomena 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes. Moreover, among those "top 20" it is also the case that 80% of consequences result from 20% of causes, and so on. Thus, for example, 20% of 20% of 20% is 0.008, or 0.8%, i.e., eight-tenths of one percent, and 80% of 80% of 80% is 51.2%, so 51.2% of consequences come from eight-tenths of one percent of causes.
The principle was suggested by management thinker Joseph M. Juran. It was named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 80% of property in Italy was owned by 20% of the Italian population. It is often applied to data such as sales figures (20% of clients are responsible for 80% of sales volume) or organizational productivity applied via aircraft bodies whereby 20% of an aircraft structure provides 80% of the lift (in turn would apply to 20% of individuals in an organization perform 80% of the work).
It your case 80% of what people take away is junk and 20% understand or gain insight.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
"When I sold the rights to Earthsea a few years ago, my contract gave me the standard status of "consultant"--which means whatever the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. My agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as though they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film."
Is Ursula K. Le Guin that niave? More likely She is just trying to do a little image control with her own fans. The film and television industries have a long history of trashing literature for the sake of market share. If she could not get guarantees in the contract why did she sign? Obviously she was greedy and deserves whet she gets.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
If Ursula were dead, she'd be spinning in her grave. I wonder how much energy could be generated by dead authors turning in their graves by Hollywood destroying their works. Asimov (I Robot), Heinlein (The Puppet Masters), Dick (Total Recall), Herbert (Dune miniseries) could probably generate enough energy to power a small city. Maybe Hollywood could reduce our dependence on foreign oil by churning out more awful adaptations of great novels by dead authors. We'll never run out of dead authors nor Hollywood's perverse zeal for trashing great works.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
She has an extensive background in Anthropology you insensitive clod.
NMG
After sacrificing my own countless hours to "Sci-Fi Originals", I've come to the conclusion that it's not the actors, per se. Sure, they put out lackluster and sometime horrible performances, but I've seen some very talented actors do just as crappy a job as the "no-names".
It's not the actors. It's the director. The director doesn't (or didn't) have the ability to pull the best performance out of the actors. Having a script that no one takes seriously doesn't help, either. But, then again, that ultimately is also the director's responsibility.
I find it frustrating to watch a scene fall flat on its face and all the while knowing what the director should have told the actor to get them to understand the scene and where they needed to be emotionally. Which is probably why filmmaking is a hobby of mine.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I read the books like everyone else. Through my cultural glasses, I changed the appearance of a few of the characters to make me feel more comfortable. Hey, I wanted to imagine naughty things with some of the females and I was in my early teens anyway, so of course I did this.
But Ms. LeGuin is right. I watched the miniseries and, though it was enjoyable, much was missing or changed from the book. After all, a wise director would have been working with her as much as humanly possible. That obviously wasn't the case here.
Now, for you people who say she isn't right in complaining about the color of the actors' skin, you are plain wrong. Why? It obviously was a concious choice of hers to set up her books with multiple "races." It made getting into the story a challenge at time for the young me but I did it anyway. She has every right to complain as she did.
Hopefully, someone will make a better adaptation of the story in future years. One that is true to the original story.
Some of Crichton's SF transitions smoothly... largely because his SF is even a best workmanlike but uninspired.
Steven King's Firestarter did all right, but I attribute that in part to Drew Barrymore being talented even then (not to mention cute as a button). Several people without my Barrymore fixation have told me the movie is a turkey, so I may be reaching here.
So, even reaching, I can name maybe three novels that did well in the transition. (Crichton wrote more than one? You obviously haven't read them closely.) If we add in the TV version of Dune and Children Of Dune, you might get one more author.
Face it: "the intellectual capacity of an artichoke" is a normal state for a studio head.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Let me 'splain...
:)
> Funny joke
> -- Joke Comeback
> -- -- Joke Comeback pointing out movie origin
> -- -- -- Joke Comeback pointing out I know the origin
> -- -- -- -- Joke Comeback originating from the same movie
> -- -- -- -- -- Angry Comback misinterpretting the previous joke
No... is too much. Let me sum up.
> This could go on forever
Her physics stinks. Her anthropology, on the other hand, is brilliant enough that her novels have been used in undergraduate anthropology classes.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Still, though, what I find more interesting is Le Guin's attitude towards Caucasians. Just reading through the article I see phrases such as "petulant white kid", "honky", "lily-like", "whites...have the privilege of not caring". It's almost as though Le Guin is defensive about her own ethnicity.
I guess I take offense at being lumped into the generalizations that Le Guin makes. For example, when I read novels I do indeed tend to overlook the ethnicity of the protagonists, unless it is considered a major pushing point of the novel. When I enjoy well written novels, I enjoy the plot and the development of the character's personalities, and the motivations for their actions. I could care less whether the main characters are Caucasian, African-American, Native-American, Asianiac, and so forth. I was taught as a child by my family that a person's ethnicity should not give or take away from their value as a person - it is the quality of their character that is the important element in their person.
That's why I bristled a little when I read her reaction. I came away thinking that she put too much emphasis in the ethnicity of her characters. It's her prerogative, of course, and by her own admission it is a basis for her novels. In that sense, I imagine, she should be upset by how the story was changed. Of course, I seem to recall someone in a class I took once in creative writing telling the class that a sign of good writing was when you could take the characters and change their race, gender, ethnicity, etc, and the story would still be compelling and engaging. The point then was that you should focus on writing a strong story first, and use your characters to drive the story, not the other way around.
In any case, I'm more disturbed by how Le Guin "gets away" with using the term "honky", which is a derogatory term. (Ironically, it is a derogatory term that is likely derived from the African Wolof term honq) Although I haven't read every single response here on /., I don't notice anyone taking offense to her language. I guess I'm personally irritated by the double standard in society where a person of one ethnicity can be punished for using an ethnic slur against another race, but you can get away with saying a slur against your own race. (IE, it's alright for African-Americans to say "n****r", but not okay for anyone else, and it's alright for Le Guin to say "honky")
Oh, and in case anyone feels this is too off-topic, let me make one final observation. By Le Guin's own admission, one of the key factors in her decision to sell the group the option to the film rights was knowing Philippa Boyens was onboard as primary script writer. If that were true, she should have had it written into the contract that the rights were contingent upon Boyens' participation in the project. I've seen that happen many times, where an author won't let anyone but a certain script writer handle their stories. If you care about your stories that much, you will take that sort of care.
Londovir
Right on, man! Raise your fist, or something. 'Cause you, dude, know what you be talkin' bout!
I'm not sure which is sadder - to have this gentlewoman's masterpeice turned into such a schlock-ful soap opera, or to watch know-nothing, artless twits like yourself braying your vocabulary-challenged criticisms of things you know nothing about.
What a lousy show - I love scifi but this was a dog - couldn't make all tha way through.
3rd grade after reading the autobiography of Fredrick Douglas, I decided to do an essay on Abraham Lincoln and abolishment of slavery. I called Lincoln a self-centered egomaniac who was more concerned with preserving the Union, then the freedom of men. And said had the South not seceded I would probably be a slave today.
Well, being in a predominately white school from a predominately white/jewish town, I don't think it went over so well. I believe they wanted to send me to remedial classes after that one. Atleast my mom new better.
they are not de-facto censored. sheesh.
Bottom line: Author wants to try and kame a million doaars from there work quickly, then they exchange there rights for that chance.
If an author wants to take more time and do more leg work, then they can seek other means of distribution that take longer.
Why any author who has become successfull continues to use the system set up by publishers is a mystery to me. Use it beyond the normal contracted anout of books, that is.
This women is has a huge following, if she started the ULG publishing house, and only published her books, she could still sell a hell of a lot of books, and her costs would be less..no publisher commision.
If she was so inclined, she could look at unknown authors and give them a better deal. say less money for the author, but the ability to retain there rights.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Intruder alert, intruder alert. Slashdot has been breached by AOL. Prepare photon torpedos.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The problem here is that the producers did over step the boundries by "putting words in her mouth" in lieu of her silence. I think that pissed her off, and in order to save face ([1] for letting Holywood change the races of most of her characters and [2] being disappointed in the overall final product) she is now crying 'foul'.
Basically, she wasn't happy, but when they pissed her off for the last time she decides to play the victim. In my opinion, she may actually have felt this way all along, but obviously bit her tounge until the hate mail started pouring in. She's certainly not winning any points with me for not having the foresigt to anticipate such a disaster or (if she did know) for not doing anything to prevent it from the 'get-go'.
listen, if the people creating these works would stop signing these contracts, they would change.
It would be nice if well know authors would try to help new Authors by informing them of how they will be screwed.
If we could get Authors to stop signing those contracts for 1 year, the contracts would become for more beneficial for the author.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Guess what, this is what happens to your lifes work when you sell out. Well said.
". I actually start to tear when I recall the last stand of Syrio Forell,"
perhaps a spoier warning?
Yes I know, you can't mention any ofthe book without giving away a piece of some plot.
There is the tragic scene in the first book that made me toss the book down. I almost drove to the persons house that lent me the book to return it right then, but it was very late.
The next day I relized that no author had ever had me that emotionally attached to any character before. I finshed the book, and all the books since then. Man, Great stuff. He managed to make fanatsy new to me.
The worse part of the series was, hands down, when I finish the third book and relized it wasn't a trilogy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's somewhat unfortunate that LeGuin's primary concern in her response about the miniseries was regarding the skin colour of the characters. As much as LeGuin is a good writer, it seems a shame that her article shallowly focusses almost completely on casting.
She also entirely avoids her responsibility for having the story rights sold with so little care to ensure that it wouldn't be ruined:
"When I sold the rights to Earthsea a few years ago, my contract gave me the standard status of "consultant"--which means whatever the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. My agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as though they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film."
Unfortunately, it's not enough to feign surprise and indignation when one sells one's soul to the Devil to find that they have been cheated because they didn't read the fine print. If she could not get a satisfactory agreement, then it was plainly evident that it would not change at some time in the future. She attempts to absolve hereself of responsibility by claiming that she felt that they had the best of intentions, so at the very least, she was extrememly naive. Regardless, the onus to protect the integrity of her writing is upon her. Noone else is responsible for the travesty because she took the money, wished for the best and signed away.
"All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic McMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence."
Surely a writer should speak with more substance around interpretations of their work. Aside from ethnicity, I would have liked to see a more meaningful apraisal however bad it might have been. Some good could have come from the miniseries had she had written an thorough rebuttal.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Battlestar Galactica was already a series. Doing it again is "status quo".
PK Wars was a sequel to Farscape. Unless you believe "Return to Gilligan's Island" was "pushing the envelope" that is pure "status quo".
Remakes and sequels are the status quo.Perhaps you should watch the mini-series under discussion, then.
Strange how something could be broken 9 years ago, yet still be the recurring theme in their productions.
Hopefully, Ender's Game won't get shafted too badly in the screenplay.
That reminds me: did you hear they're going to final do a movie adaption Elric of Melnibone? It's going to star Wesley Snipes as Elric.
The cake is a pie
...i was trying to read the nice old ladies website and it was down... you rascals! *G*
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Le Guinn's "I Hate White People. White People are bad" rant in slate is a pretty typical Portland, Oregon (Le Guinn's home) attitude. The irony of this self-righteousness is that Portland is the whitest place I have ever lived. One of the reasons Portlander's can sit around and brag about their never-ending "tolerance" is that they are all the same.
"Latte Town" was coined a few years back and is the most appropriate term for the City of Portland that I have ever heard. A Latte town consists of mostly white, educated baby boomers and young single people. The inhabitants of the town are usually newcomers who have priced out all the original inhabitants. These towns are usually expensive, pretentious, abound in natural fibers and are laid back on the surface. Latte towns like Portland pride themselves on their most cherished concepts of diversity and inclusiveness. Most Portlanders accept this myth as Gospel but upon close examination Portland's dirty little secret is revealed. Portland is an overwhelmingly white, non-ethnic city. It is as vanilla as it gets so it makes one wonder what all the celebrating of diversity is all about. Drive through any neighborhood surrounding the downtown area and the impression that you get is that Portland is nothing more than a series of elitist ghettos compromised of rich white homosexuals, rich white yuppies, rich white hippies, rich white trust funders, and rich white kids from the suburbs pretending to be street people. Where's the diversity? Well it doesn't exist but the average Portlander likes the concept and in their eyes the different shades of rich whites all constituent diversity.
I think it is highly hypocritical of Le Guinn to go on and on about how much she hates the racial changes in her novels, "her world," when in the real world she intentionally moved to an "all" white town.
You said it. I rented it on DVD and stopped, incredulous, after 45 minutes. It made me wonder whether they'd actually read the book. And that mannequin they dressed up like William Hurt and trundled around on a handtruck... I dunno.
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
So by your reasoning, Asimov's PhD in biochemistry qualified him to create the "science of psychohistory" and write some of the most highly-regarded SF books of the second millenium--books which contain, surprisingly, relatively few references to chemistry.
Are you saying that Asimov's The Gods Themselves is a great story because of Asimov's understanding of the underlying constants of our physical universe and the atomic properties of tungsten? I think it succeeds because he shows realistic and understandable human characters in a tense situation, then likewise shows completely fantastic and alien characters in a tense situation and makes them realistic and understandable.
The primary qualification for an SF writer--like any other kind of fiction author--is to be able to tell a hell of a good tale, and make you care about it. Larry Niven, for instance, is widely known as a "hard science" writer, but Ringworld depends heavily on highly imaginative superstrong materials and hyperdrive scarcely distinguishable from space opera. Ringworld succeeds as a story not because of Niven's (admittedly quite clever) central invention, but because he tells a tale that captivates and entertains the reader.
That said, I'm sure Miss Le Guin's stories have been improved by her background in anthropology, but such a background does not automatically make her an imaginative or entertaining storyteller. The Lathe of Heaven has been on my short shelf almost since I discovered it, and not because of its several theoretical social structures.
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
What is that supposed to mean?
It means:
Racism is the sole property of my political party (the Democrats). You whites are not allowed to play that race card. I have a double standard and I am making sure you are not going to challenge me on it.
This is my stick. Only I can use it. Only you can be beaten with it. It is my Honkey-Hatin' Stick. Don't try to use it against me.
That's "The Word for World is Forest", although a Google search for your "The Word of World is Forest" comes up with a hit (evidently a typo).
This is the Constitution.This is the Constitution under the Bush administration. Any questions?
Battlestar Galactica the new version (currently showing in the UK because Sky co founded it on the condition they could show it first - starts in january over there), includes radical concepts as:
;)
* Story arc(essentially its one long story)
* Sensible continuity (for instance, a pilot gets hurt in one episode, is in the sickbay in the next episode and walks on crutches in the following eps)
* People who need to work together even though they may not like each other and sometimes even hate each other.
* The rare kid (very rare) who is rude and not a super genius (sorry will
* Non reset buttons
* Stories which do not tell you everything but leaves room for questions, ambiguity and the pondering of what will happen next.
So in all likelyhood it'll be cancled after 3 episodes..
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
... an opinion. A work stands by itself, on in the company of other co-joined works. The rest is what YOU bring to it, and how you choose to share what you experienced with others. Then the work grows in complexity.
In general authors add very little to this mix. You can hear what they understand and what they intended. But their intent has little to do with what your own mind does with the material.
This is part of the great strength of art: your own experience informs the work.
It's good for high school students to learn this essential fact.
I've wasted six minutes of my life reading the fucking comments by Le Guin only to find out her only complaint is that Earthsea is not the second Matrix, full of black and asian actors. That's surely a relief - I was afraid that the miniseries' creators butchered the book or something...
I mean, I can certainly understand that some people care about the skin colour of characters in fantasy books, but I am not among them. I don't think I ever paid attention to the skin colours when reading Earthsea or, frankly, any other book.
Really, I don't know what else to say. Haven't we had enough of this shit with Star Wars being racist to Yamaicans, Jews and Asians, Lord of the Rings being racist to everyone else, GTA being racist to Haitans and so on. I wonder why noone seems to care about all movies where blue eyed blondes are being cast as dimwits, villains and so on...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
"My color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn't see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn't see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and why all the leading women had "violet eyes"). It didn't even make sense. Whites are a minority on Earth now?why wouldn't they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future?
.... very gradually publishers may be beginning to lose their blind fear of putting a nonwhite face on the cover of a book. "Hurts sales, hurts sales" is the mantra. Yeah, so?"
Welcome to reality, where people care about money, and although I agree the majority of the world is not of european descent, I still say the majority of the world is white, asian descent. And what science fiction books is she reading with names like bob and joe?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Second, I've never read Earthsea (And I call myself a geek, bleh) but my room mate had, and was so pissed off by the cheap production and deviations from the storyline that she turned it off after 10 minutes.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
For those of us who haven't read the book "Earthsea", is it worth reading? I hear it's good, but the mini-series kinda killed it for me. I liked the premise, but I think it was horribly executed.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
The ekumen mailing list has been discussing possible adaptations of other Le Guin books:
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
I lost track of Ursula Le Guin when she "paraphrased" -- not to be remotely confused with actual translation of living, i.e., not remotely dead, languages like Chinese -- the Tao Te Ching, but I have to say the Sci Fi channel has kind of lost the mandate of Heaven on this one. Do the pop growl moguls who give you Fear Factor and Crossing Over in the same brown and lumpy output stream as Earthsea even understand the stuff they purvey? Futurama, yes, Cowboy Bebop, yes, GITS, yes, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, maybe, but Earthsea? No. No. No.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
we wrote to you, michael, pointing out leguin hated the series.
but you act like you just figured that out on your own.
i know i shouldnt expect more from you, knowing slashdot. but know this: i come here because its the lesser of the evils, not because it is good
... to someone who had to read through miles of anthropological literature, it was obvious where much of the story derives from. Le Guin grew up the daughter of one of the single most influential anthropologists in North America and it shows. She was exposed to story, myth, ritual and material cultures from all over the world as child. The feeling for much of the story, especially Gont, is similar to myths and stories from the Northwest Coast culture area in North America, and also to Polynesia.
I know that when I read the stories, my impression was that the "race" card was just background colour (no pun intended) to provide texture. The only strong cultural differences were between the pale, piratical, sea raiding Karg and the rest of Earthsea, and also the raft-dwelling society, and those differences are cultural, though they correlate with "racial" differences in the story. I thought her complaints were pretty self conscious, but perhaps she a better writer than a complainer.
The real book-to-movie complaint to end complaints, especially if you are worried about race and cultural shifts is the transformation of Rico, in Henlein's Starship Troopers from a Tagalog-speaking Phillipino into Dolph Lundgren! That must have had Heinlein spinning.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
bigot
"Gee, well they trashed my story, but WTF, I made out like a bandit... woot! woot!"
To begin with, we must first understand the what SciFi channel is and what it delivers. SciFi is a channel dedicated to Science Fiction and the occasional early morning info-mercial (to pay the bills). SciFi channel has brought us some great original series and miniseries (Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, Farscape, and the soon-to-come Battlestar Galactica); however, SciFi only has a relatively small viewer-base and small budget. Due to these two major limiting factors, SciFi fills its weekends with class B films. They don't advertise these weekend films as the next Lord of the Rings - they are what they are: class B films. With that said, it's understandable that when SciFi begins to advertise a new miniseries months in advance, you had better listen up.
:-)
Enter Earthsea.
I saw the first Earthsea advertisement over two months ago. Sporting a cast of Danny Glover, Isabella Rosellini, and Kristen Kruek, Earthsea was poised for greatness. After seing the tenth commercial for Earthsea in a single day, I decided that I get on the bandwagon and visit my local Half Price Books to read Ursela K. LeGuin's books. I found the books lacking a lot of detail; however, they were captivating reads. After reading the books, I was finally ready for the Earthsea miniseries.
Monday night came and went. After watching the first hour of Earthsea, I was so incredibly disappointed in the lack of honor it did to the original book series. To name a few things, the series changed people's names, the foundation of magic within Earthsea, and the histories and personalities of several major characters. In addition to the perverted storyline, the producers must have spent all of their budget on the main characters because all supporting actors and acrtesses were piss-poor.
In other words, the first hour of Earthsea was just as bad as one of the Saturday afternoon SciFi class B movies. The only difference is that SciFi channel hyped Earthsea like it was a new Stargate movie.
Someday, I may finish watching the remaining three hours, but I'd rather be spending my weekend cutting my toenails.
Finally, I'm disappointed in SciFi. Whomever decided that this Earthsea script was SciFi channel worthy should be severly punished - even fired. SciFi is still a great channel, but I'll think harder next time before wasting my hopes on their next miniseries (except Battlestar Galactica
Kubrick and Clarke wrote 2001 together based on an earlier Clarke short story, and then Clarke went and turned the movie into a novel. Kubrick was as much responsible for the "original content" as Clarke was.
The cake is a pie
From what Miss LeGuin has said of her publishing contracts she has a slightly better deal then current writers get today. Her publishing houses picked her up before they really had any credit to their name so she probably didn't get quite a screwed. She may have signed publishing rights away but you don't neccessarily sign away ALL your rights to a book to get them published. Especially the potential film rights.
The original poster didn't say that all readings of a work are created equal. Some obviously make no sense.
Nevertheless, it is sometimes the case that a reader interprets a work in a way that the original author didn't intend (and might not even agree with), but that is nevertheless insightful.
--Bruce Fields
Isaac Asimov had a PhD in Biochemistry
:) Nope. He had a PhD in Chemistry. He got a job teaching biochemistry, a subject in which he actually was not expert. In his autobiography, he explains that he read six chapters ahead in the textbook, and winged it.
I'm always amused when authors start bitching about how their work was screwed over by the movie. If you don't want them pissing on it, don't sell the rights. Or demand an ironclad contract that gives you final script/director approval. Anything less, and you're signaling that you'd rather have the dough than maintain your work's integrity.
Several other posts have mentioned Le Guin's other great works, beside the Earthsea series -- the Dispossessed, the Left Hand of Darkness, the Lathe of Heaven -- but the story that most clearly defines her literary motivation is The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
Le Guin is fascinated by the concept of Utopia. In the Dispossessed, she conjectures "If anarchism / communism could work, what would it look like?". The Lathe of Heaven explicitly deals with the theme of Utopia, and how one person's utopia is another's hell.
Omelas is more than a story: it's a thought experiment. What is most disturbing and haunting about it is how the utopian society of Omelas only becomes real and believable once Le Guin reveals the dark, horrible bargain that the denizens of Omelas made to have their perfect world. To paraphrase Mr. Smith in the Matrix, it's as if humans need suffering and evil in order to believe in existence.
On topic, Earthsea is fascinating because she attempts to weave a mythology as different from the Tolkien motif as she could get. Tehanu, written 25 years after the original trilogy, is Le Guin's revisiting of Earthsea, after she embraced feminism.
Le Guin is also notable in that she views science fiction with an anthropologist's eye, not a technologist. She is interested in the sociological impact of science and technology. Nevertheless, her stories are well grounded in scientific principles.
No faster-than-light warp drives or hyperspace; her characters have to make do with near lightspeed. And because of relativity, even though it takes a spacefarer one night to go to another star system, 100 years pass by on her homeworld. In the 1960's, Le Guin also invented the concept of the ansible, which was inspired by the principle of quantum entanglement (she called it the "Principle of Simultaneity" because the term "quantum entanglement" hadn't been coined yet).
Excellent point. I'm sure the Tolkein estate saw a similar phenomenon, although they've always been *very* savvy, as evidenced by their actions against TSR's D&D and their own RPG licencee Iron Crown Enterprises (for those who don't know the tale, they basically forced ICE into recievership by demanding a specific royalty payment when the movies began production, allowing them to rebid the RPG licence [not that I can blame them - ICE probably couldn't represent them the way they needed after the movie]. I have a friend who actually had the oportunity to buy ICE out in the auction, but got outbid)
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Look at the history of book-film conversions. 95% of them suck. allways. Yet, she was happy to accept the money they paid her for the rights to use earthsea.
I first read her books when I was in 7th grade, and have read them many times since. I was sort of surprised to find that she conciously makes her characters non-white. I thought the 3 Earthsea books were good, but I never did read anything else she wrote.
I just don't think she should be complaining. If you wanted a movie or mini-series to follow her story, she needs to produce it herself. But she didn't, she sold someone else the rights to it, and wasn't even smart enough to give her self more control in the decision makings. Wonder what they paid her for it?
Be seeing you...
The strong gender divides and politics don't arise until book 4. There is some suggestion that they exist before that, but they aren't essential to the story -- you could make Roke coed and Ogion a woman, and the books would hang together just fine.
:-)
Book 4 was written 20 years after book 3, and contains a number of other continuity problems (eg, characters that were alive that are dead with no explanation); Le Guin tried, fairly transparently, to paper these over in later books. My understanding is that she became involved in feminist politics in the interim, and that's part of the reason for the change in how gender is treated. (can anyone corroborate/deny?)
Personally, I just treat all the later books (Tehanu onwards) as existing in a separate universe from Earthsea, and the question of women and magic as being essentially unanswered in the original Earthsea universe. It's the only way I could appreciate them at all.
As for the TV series: I thought it was actually fun...as long as you realize that it's there to make fun of. Throw popcorn at the screen or something every time something painfully stupid happens.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Le Guin is also a linguist. The Earthsea series is, among other things, a metalinguistic treatise on the relationship between language, perception, and reality. The Left Hand of Darkness could easily be called a book about a single word, it's place in the language and it's complex meaning.
One of my favorite and most reputable professors teaches a linguistics class which examines and evaluates the linguistic theories in LeGuin's writing. So yeah, even though I know nothing about actual degrees she holds, I can say she's a linguist at least as much as Tolkien was.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
Most of the posts seem to be about LeGuin's reaction to the ethnic bleaching of her work, but what about the complete bastardization of her story? Earthsea is a classic because it is provactive, intelligent, and insightful story telling. Frankly I'm surprised that the sci-fi channel, which one would hope would be a bastion of smart entertainment, gave the thumbs up to the bullshit hollywoodization of a classic sci-fi/fantasy story. That seems like a formula for disaster rather than success. I mean, if it's mindless entertainment people want, they'll watch pro wrestling or nascar instead of science fiction. LeGuin's term 'McMagic' is particularly apt.
Obviously, if the reader is initially distracted by the character's skin tone, that is likely to interfere with the reader's ability to identify with the character. The strategy of letting the reader discoverer a character's differences (which may be as subtle as race or as extreme as species) later on in the story has long been used successfully in SF. Heinlein also used this device for a nonwhite character.
I think this is a fine approach.
But in these particular cases, the strategy is to narrate from a perspective that race is not considered important. Only gradually and incidentally do we learn from the narrator that Ged has dark skin, or that Juan Rico is Filipino-American (rather than Latino as many assume.
So it seems quite hypocritical for Ms. Le Guin first to imply in her stories "oh, by the way, Ged's black, but you know, that doesn't really matter to the story," and then later to get all pissed off when some people actually take this seriously and visualize a Ged who isn't black.
If she really thinks it's important for Ged to be black, then she really ought to have race somehow relevant to the story, rather than a trivial detail.
Well, I'm in Russia (*strange* things with copyrights here), but I've heard about Dostoevsky who had to sign a "slavery" contract because of gambling.
Why can't the Copyright laws be fixed? Like this:
* No one can sign a copyright away. You can share it, not get rid of it.
It BTW can be applied to patents (Buying patents away to stop unwanted innovations? No, impossible.)
* The only exception is deliberately releasing *your* work to public domain, one must be proven author to do so.
* Inexistent works have nothing to do with copyright law.
I understand noone is going to be sponsored by PHBs for voting for such things, but seriously -- does it get the legal system into trouble?
WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
Heinlein did the same thing in Starship Troopers as Ursula Le Guin did in Earthsea - introduce the character first, and then mention that they might not be white. Right at the end (blink and you might miss it) he reveals that Rico's native language is Tagalog.
No comment on whether the film version was faithful to that book...!
And what is the cause for this newly-found belief? Battlestar Galactica. They took a well-thought-of series I barely remembered from my childhood, changed various elements of the story and cast, and made it into something interesting and current. The first two pilot episodes -- the mini-movies -- struck the same chord in me as the pilot of Stargate SG-1: the acting was good, the plotline was interesting, and the characters each had something that drew me to them, because they didn't feel like something sprung from a can.
I stand corrected. I can't wait to check out the new episodes.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
-cmh
I loved Asimov's short story The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline. It's a great spoof on the turgid style of scientific publications. IIR he wrote it before defending his doctoral thesis, and one of his professors asked a question on it at the end.
Apparently, writing Science Fiction was something for a "real" scientist to be ashamed of back in 1948. I wonder if that attitude still holds today in academia.
Interesting theory. Complete bollocks, of course, but interesting. The Smith-virus thing never happened before. If you actually pay attention to what Smith says, this is perfectly clear. The Architect scene doesn't contain ALL the exposition.
I think all you Matrix fanboys now have the exact same problem that religious adherents have had throughout the ages. You're having to ignore some bits and invent other bits just to turn it into a coherent narrative, whereas your time would be better served if you just accepted that it makes no fucking sense and bought the Animatrix DVD, which has some cool shit on it.
fish and pipes
Dude, that's like asking the village idiot where babies come from. Smith may not be aware of all the details of what happened previously, and more importantly doesn't care. Smith is bugfuck crazy. He will filter out any data that doesn't agree with his psychosis.
I find it interesting that you insist that the movie "makes no fucking sense" and then tell me to look at the pretty pictures on the Animatrix DVD. You could almost call it... crazy. And yes, I have seen The Animatrix. More than once.
The story wasn't meant to be an avant-garde college film project filled with nonesense for nonesense sake and bitchin' F/X. It has a tight, cohesive plot and important themes. Just because you didn't get it (and refuse understand it further) doesn't mean it ain't there. Calculus looks like garbage if all you know is Algebra.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Agent Smith: It's all happening exactly as before...
Agent Smith Clone: Well, not exactly...
It would be fair to comment as a counterpoint that this is not actually consistent with the events of the first movie.
Interesting theory. I've got another one: Smith is a mindless automaton, who does whatever the plot requires him to do, even if it bears no relation whatsoever to the character established in the original movie.Actually, the best way to explain it may be that Agent Smith isn't the character from the original movie. He's something else, masquerading as Smith.
My point is simple: there is still value to be had in the Matrix films as eye candy. But the first few minutes of The Matrix Reloaded confirmed that the original film was just a happy accident. Those of us, myself included, who saw something more in it, were mistaken.fish and pipes
The unhappiness fans of Earthsea feel about this miniseries is probably about a variety of divergences the miniseries has from the books.
SPOILER ALERT (of both book and miniseries)!
Here are the differences I can see from just watching the first 20 min or so (I couldn't stomach more in one sitting):
These comparisons are based on my recollections of Wizard of Earthsea, since I lent the book out and haven't got it back yet.
This is from only the first 20 min... I'm sure if Ursula K. Leguin wanted to be fully and more thoroughly critical of the miniseries she would need multiple blogs.
The character of the books seems completely perverted by the miniseries.
From what I can tell, the Earthsea miniseries is turning out to be a stark counter-example to the Lord of the Rings movies and how not to adapt books to television or film.
Oh well...
- Fandyllic
That's all I have to say.