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Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age" To Be Miniseries
fmackay writes "Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age is to be adapted for a Sci Fi Channel miniseries. George Clooney is producing and Stephenson will write the screenplay — the first time he has written for television."
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Great News!
But, ummm....
Why is this posted to IT?
I can't help but wonder what the casting is going to be like.
Chow-Yun Fat should play Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw.
This isn't going to end well..
I can't wait! Also, I am curious how they will treat the "Drummers" part, for example the way Hackworth "acquired" certain information, he ended up carrying in his body ;-)
Surely you mean an MMORPG of Snow Crash
I'll pass on the miniseries, thanks. I'm waiting for the ractive.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
This will give Stephenson a chance to write the ending he accidentally forgot to write for the novel!
Excellent.
Never mind the book's prophetic predictions about the impact of nanotechnology. Far more important, I think, is its identification of the "subversive" worldview. If only all parents and children were exposed to a book like Diamond Age, or anything similar, which gives a real defense of the subversive mindset. Perhaps then, more children might be rescued from becoming another generation of social ballast.
Diamond Age won a coveted spot in my "Thou shalt read and discuss" box of books for my sons. :)
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
I realize I'll probably be labeled a heretic by some of you, but the Diamond Age is probably my favorite Stephenson book (Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash come in a close second and third, though). It'll be interesting to see how this whole thing pans out. Thankfully, even if it sucks, the book will still be amazing. However, with Neal handling the screenplay, there's a decent chance that he'll adapt it well. Then it'll all be up to Clooney to make it good...
This guy's the limit!
The book has the Primer being commissioned for a granddaughter and the engineer pirates a copy for his own daughter. And then there's the quarter million of them for the other girls. I wonder what else is going to be left out? The Fists? Harv and Tequila? This is why I so dread them 'adapting' the books I like.
means it's got a chance of actually making it through a season before being canceled (after viewers invest their time into the storyline)
Just play Second Life. Except for teleportation and the two dimensionality of the "Street", you're 95% there.
Well, at least he can't possibly fsck it up as much as he fscked up Solaris... I hope.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Yes, watch the screen closely. You'll like this next bit...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Snow Crash would make for an awful movie. There's far too much expositionary material regarding namshubs and so forth that would be interminable on the screen and couldn't be cut without rendering much of the story incomprehensible. It (largely) works in book form, but its density would make it impossible to bring to the screen.
Zodiac, whilst perhaps not as good a novel, would make for a far better screen translation than Snow Crash.
Am I the only one afraid this thing will come off being too trippy? I have some hope since he is writing the screenplay himself, but there were some moments I was pretty sure he was typing under the influence just reading it, so I have trouble envisioning anything coherent coming out of those portions in a visual sense. Primarily the performance on the boat and the drummer sessions.
Anyway kudos to sci-fi channel, and my fingers are crossed that "Accelerando" or "Fire upon the deep" is next.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
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I love Neal Stephenson, but for crying out loud, can't he hire someone to keep his website current? For a self-proclaimed hacker, he has absolutely horrid net presence. I would like to at least know that he is alive. Knowing what kind of thing he is working on might be nice, too.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
'The Diamond Age' is Neal Stephenson's best ending. Anyone who says he can't write endings should be immediately pointed in this direction. Of course, this ending is probably detractors' biggest criticism, but I don't think any further denoument was necessary, and would probably have even greatly detracted from the emotional and powerful ending there was.
Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash could have used some [denoument], to the point where their endings even gave a bit of an impression of a "fuck it" or a deadline rush, so abruptly departing from the wonderful depth of the preceeding several hundred pages of those books. But the abrupt end here was utterly perfect and perfectly excecuted, and left me euphorically dazed for hours after reading it. I haven't been brought so close to tears by literature since Of Mice And Men, or maybe Charlotte's Web. This ending, in my opinion, truly solidified Neal Stephenson as a great Author of Literature, and not just brilliant, witty Geek.
Sure it leaves open ends (Hackworth, especially), but even with, perhaps even partially because of, that, it works. People hate it because it breaks the traditional form -- doesn't tie up every little loose, nitpicky plot end -- but seem to overlook the fact that, in this case, it was far more literarily effective than structural orthodoxy. It has /character/. A lot of people, many Geeks especially, don't seem to understand that novels, as art and beauty, are not a perfect and coherent system. Sometimes it's more meaningful and important to make that master stroke than fill in all the details.
I'll also go out on a limb and say The Diamond Age was not about Hackworth, at any point. It was about Neal's intricate thematic and philosophic exploration on Confucianism and Victorianism, and it was also a mother-daughter story about Nell and Miranda. Hackworth moved these things along, but to close his personal story neatly would have felt tacked on and barely emotionally or thematically relevant, and probably /ruined/ the ending.
Of course, Neal Stephenson reads Slashdot, and will definately read a story about his own work, and he'd probably be insulted by my dumb interpretation, so please mod me into unread oblivion.
I also have no fucking clue why he's disowned The Big U, which was a wonderful novel.
Since this is the SciFi Channel it will contain one badly CGd monster and an aging cast member of a much better science fiction franchise, and ultimately put me to sleep. Or it will be brilliant. Seriously, I just hope Stephenson is able to tighten up his writing and just tell the damn story. The 'Captain Crunch' scene 'The Cryptonomicon' just about put me off the rest of the novel, and did keep me away from his books written since then. Are there no editors left inthe publishing industry?
+1 to that.
Zodiac is probably the best Neal Stephenson novel for translation into film. It's got everything Hollywood needs - helicopters, guns, explosions, sex, biological terrorism, an asshole protagonist, and sweeping views of Boston Harbor. Plus it's around the right scope (read: it's short and simple enough) for a 90-minute film.
Zodiac? Perhaps, although it's political enough that I worry they might mess it up to get it made.
What I'd really like to see is The Big U on the big screen. It'd be like Real Genius, only with railguns, computer worms, neon signs, pipe organs, and radioactive rats instead of a mere laser for the mcguffin.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Thank god somebody finally said it. Upon reflecting upon the criticism that Stephenson and several other writers with similar style have received (about endings, exposition, etc) I've realized something. A lot of geeks don't want a novel, they want a mythology. They want a complete, well-fleshed out, extensive universe for a setting. As a result, they want to know what happens to every character, start to finish. Think about it-- star wars, star trek, and LoTR all have extensive backstory. It is basically posible to know what happens to every character, and every legendary sword/ship from birth to death. Tolkien, for example, had notebooks and notebooks of unpublished stories to flesh out his universe and even invented languages.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
intricate thematic and philosophic exploration on Confucianism and Victorianism, and it was also a mother-daughter story about Nell and Miranda.
;)
Don't forget the rather insightful look at the weaknesses and strengths of The Seed and The Feed, which you can look at as distributed anything versus anything with a fixed monolithic source. It's valid for more than comparisons to distributed computing
Scifi has a baaad history of hacking up books, cf. Dune and Earthsea. The only thing that could be worse is if they were given the rights to film the Hobbit.
Oh, so you saw A Wizard of Earthsea too? or was it Dune, or or even Grendel ?
I hope theat this show will be great, but given what TV does to complex material to make things "accessible", I know I will be left disappointed.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Well, I was going to mention that Herbert wasn't involved in the Sci-Fi channel screenplay, but then I remembered that I really didn't like anything Herbert wrote after the original Dune, so maybe it would have actually been worse if he'd been involved...
Though, I'll admit I'm not sure how anything could be worse than a) the stupid "look, the Guild spokesmen make stupid poses when they talk" and b) the whole "look, the Imperial Princess wanders around on her own without a couple thousand sardukar bodyguards" crap.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
This will be fascinating. I've always wondered whether Stephenson's books would be filmable or not. How to handle the drummers (feral undersea tunnel dwellers who burn up when used as human information processors)? The army naked of teenage girls that lock their bodies to create a human amphibian landing craft to rebel against their creator? The sea of intelligent defensive and move with an auto-correct for the wind? I think a huge budget or great CGI is required to give merit to Stephenson's WFT elements, else they may become lame/silly or simply omitted. The touching story of the voice actress of the original Primer I think would make a great story for TV if well acted and written.
Snow Crash was a wonderfully flawed book. There were problems with it all over place. Thing was, there were also such delightful concepts thrown so fast, that you forgave the flaws, and just enjoyed it.
Lends a different meaning to, "to Reason with someone."
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Sci Fi channel can take a perfectly classical story and turn it into total shit. Witness Dune. Witness Earthsea. They can have great stuff made for them. farscape and BSG come to mind. Whether the adaptation sucks or is great it'll be laden with CGI.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
True! My favorite was the bit where "let's develop really really detailed faces for online avatars so we can conduct business online in virtual reality. That way my facial expressions can by read by the other party...which won't be a disadvantage in negotiations at all!"
That and "okay, I'm swinging my real samurai sword around in a 20x30 at the UStorIt by the airport, but I'm wearing my VR goggles and somehow don't kill anyone or crash into anything."
Super fun book though. Love the SmartWheels and anything from Ng Security Industries, especially the SemiAutonomous Guard Units.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
I was rather of the impression he wasn't so much an attorney as a whack-job on the hunt who had some legal qualifications. And that he'd been ON the hunt for a while. He was originally an outdoorsman and wildman type who'd become briefly domesticated.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
I agree completely. I remember getting a book from the library when I was in 3rd grade about Mars colonists in some rocket-based was against their rightful earth government. Halfway through the book I realized the colonists were getting screwed by the government edicts and SHOULD rebel. And today, over 35 years later, I can still see when the powers-that-be are drowning us in bullshit other people seem oblivious to.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
my favorite part of the book is probably different than everyone else's
it is a mini essay on how moral relativism has led to the elevation of hypocrisy as the chief sin above all others
it really hit me and coalesced several thoughts that had been running around in my head, it was like 'yes! that's exactly what has happened'
"So they were morally superior to the Victorians-" Major Napier said, still a bit snowed under. "-even though-in fact, because-they had no morals at all."
--start excerpt--
"You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices," Finkle-McGraw said. "It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticise others-after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism?"
Finkle-McGraw paused, knowing that he had the full attention of his audience, and began to withdraw a calabash pipe and various related supplies and implements from his pockets. As he continued, he charged the calabash with a blend of leather-brown tobacco so redolent that it made Hackworth's mouth water. He was tempted to spoon some of it into his mouth.
"Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticise others' shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticise another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behaviour-you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy.
"You wouldn't believe the things they said about the original Victorians. Calling someone a Victorian in those days was almost like calling them a fascist or a Nazi."
Both Hackworth and Major Napier were dumbfounded. "Your Grace!" Napier exdaimed. "I was naturally aware that their moral stance was radically different from ours- but I am astonished to be informed that they actually condemned the first Victorians."
"Of course they did," Finkle-McGraw said.
"Because the first Victorians were hypocrites," Hackworth said, getting it.
Finkle-McGraw beamed upon Hackworth like a master upon his favored pupil. "As you can see, Major Napier, my estimate of Mr. Hackworth's mental acuity was not ill-founded."
"While I would never have supposed otherwise, Your Grace," Major Napier said, "it is nonetheless gratifying to have seen a demonstration." Napier raised his glass in Hackworth's direction.
"Because they were hypocrites," Finkle-McGraw said, after igniting his calabash and shooting a few tremendous fountains of smoke into the air, "the Victorians were despised in the late twentieth century. Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefandous conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves-they took no moral stances and lived by none."
"So they were morally superior to the Victorians-" Major Napier said, still a bit snowed under.
"-even though-in fact, because-they had no morals at all." There was a moment of silent, bewildered head-shaking around the copper table.
"We take a somewhat different view of hypocrisy," Finkle-McGraw continued. "In the late-twentieth-century Weltanschauung, a hypocrite was someone who espoused high moral views as part of a planned campaign of deception-he never held these beliefs sincerely and routinely violated them in privacy. Of course, most hypocrites are not like that. Most of the time it's a spirit-is-willing, flesh-is-weak sort of thing."
"That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code," Majo
Your comments are particularly funny, because (according to the commentaries from Trey & Matt on the DVD) they were all pissed about when entertainers get political. But they themselves are entertainers. And the whole movie is predicated on the idea that people in the entertainment business shouldn't try to make the world a better place, but should just keep their own opinions quiet and "Just Sing" or whatever. But they ignore the idea that people who OWN show businesses (Rupert Murdock owns Fox TV for example) do all KINDS of bullshit to mislead the public. Also, it implies actors are stupid and easily misled. They're typically somewhat intelligent, since they have to be to get jobs in showbiz. And since they're well off, they don't have to spend their evenings glued to the boob tube, sucking down the bullshit Rupert Murdock is foisting on America.
Watch "Outfoxed! Rupert Murdoch's War on Modern Journalism". It's fascinating.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Having a large complex universe is totally at odds with knowing everything about it.
Toner wars > Clone wars
Bring it on!
I'm not very optimistic about this miniseries, though, even with Stephenson in the credits, seeing how Gibson wrote the screenplay for the piss-poor movie adaption of Johnny Mnemonic. The potential is there, though, because Diamond Age really created a unique world, both in the nanotechnology and in the vision of culture in a world where nations have become obsolete, and a world that might make a better transition to live action film than cyberspace or the metaverse.
...will screw this up, count on it. They don't make sci fi so much as soap operas with laser guns.
Right. It's much like Lord of the Rings in that way.
It could never work.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Does the Primer (The "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer") remind anyone else of the OLPC XO machine?
That was the first thing I thought of when I read about the OLPC project anyway.
Certainly both the XO and The Primer meet are a interactive "books" to educate children!
The XO is destined to have an entire schoolings worth of textbooks on it in PDF format.
The XO is more of a Primer prototype I suppose, but the similarity in purpose is striking.
Every man for himself, all in favour say "I"
... yet? I have to say, the Baroque Cycle is my favorite Stephenson book, slightly pipping The Diamond Age. Why? Well, as someone pointed out above, a large backstory makes a book truly epic, and Quicksilver et al are based on history, the biggest, and most fantastic (in both meanings of the word) backstory ever.
If ever the BBC wanted to try something other than Pride and Prejudice (for the umpteenth time), The Baroque Cycle would make a great series!
I loved the Captain Crunch sequence, myself. I thought it said more about Randy's obsessive attention to detail, bordering on full-blown OCD, than simply telling us he has it.
We see the same with Lawrence, obviously, but unlike Randy he doesn't have the social capability to tone that down in public.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Earthsea was so boring (the book) it deserved to be hacked up.
I've never read dune, so as a person who hasn't enjoyed the books, watching the miniseries was quite enjoyable. (I generally don't enjoy reading sci-fi but love watching movies/tv shows)
Have any of your watched Merlin? I really enjoyed that one. While the special effects weren't really all that "special" it was still a well told story that I've watched more than a couple times. I always seem to miss the very beginning though.
I read "diamond age". I enjoyed it but only the parts about the girl and her book and anything that had to do specifically with that. If the movie is just about her, her book, her life and the army at the end, I think it'll do just fine if there's any quality to it.
I think Cryptonomicon would result in a wonderful movie. Parts of it take place in breath-taking locations and it's full of history trivia and important facts.
Also, the story is thrilling and more in touch with a regular audience, since it connects more cleanly with reality.
Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!
Yeah, we all should know how well great sci-fi authors works translate to the big (or little in this case) screen.... William Gibson for example.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel...
That's okay... Second Life isn't really a game.
Not to mention a proper ending...
- chrish
Whatever happened to the Golden Age of scifi, where what happened "afterwards" was left to the imagination more often than not?
. But the abrupt end here was utterly perfect and perfectly excecuted, and left me euphorically dazed for hours after reading it. I haven't been brought so close to tears by literature since Of Mice And Men, or maybe Charlotte's Web. This ending, in my opinion, truly solidified Neal Stephenson as a great Author of Literature, and not just brilliant, witty Geek.
I was brought to tears after finding out that it was a one off single book by the author. Sorry, I'm used to reading David Weber, I actually liked most of the Wheel of Time, or my most liked universe that I read the disc world. I'd love to read an entire series of books set in the Diamond Age universe. It saddened me to find that was it.
It really felt like an intro/prehistory for the next big set. I was all ready to read another 4-5 books and well nothing.
Think about it-- star wars, star trek, and LoTR all have extensive backstory. It is basically posible to know what happens to every character, and every legendary sword/ship from birth to death. Tolkien, for example, had notebooks and notebooks of unpublished stories to flesh out his universe and even invented languages.
I never really got the whole LoTR bit. I've read and like the four books, but I hate the poems/songs. I view all of the author's unpublished info as not really part of the known universe. LoTR may have a huge backstory that only Tolkien and his family knew about, but he didn't publish it so it's not part of my LoTR experience. Star Wars and Star Trek are very different. They have entire series of books and backstory so you can find out everything if you want to buy all the books. My main dislike about Diamond Age is that it stands as an extremely well intro into the universe and then stops. I wanted to read more stories about a different set of characters set there or I wanted to see them struggle to make a new social unit. I could easily see every one of those Chinese girls not wanting a tradional Chinese male and then all those girls will be going after the men that they find desirable. I'm happy that everything wasn't tied up, but unhappy that's it. I wanted to find out so much more about the world. I wanted to see how different social blocks would react to the book raised girls and their Queen. I wanted to see the next generation and want the books would show.
The Artifex Created The Primer
There are Many Copies
They Have a Plan
kulakovich
Oh, bull! People just want a good ending, period. You know, I read books, I've read thousands of novels and seen all kinds of endings, from the crappy to the great (The Carpet Makers had a great ending. Go read it, magnificent book). NS is among my favorite authors (snowcrash, diamond age and cryptonomicon are all fantastic books) but his endings kinda suck. That's just the way it is, there is no genius to them we cannot comprehend. They're just not good.
Snow Crash would make for an awful movie.
I couldn't disagree more. Most of the book proceeds at a blistering pace, and is written in a very visual style which would be easy to adapt to the big screen. Yes, undoubtedly there would have to be one fairly long (10 min tops) and somewhat painful scene where the history is explained. Recall that in the book many such scenes were required as Hiro slowly figured it all out. It would just have to be dumped on him at some point in the movie. Anyways, perhaps the miniseries format could work for Snow Crash as well.
Snow Crash or The Diamond age could be great movies but only if allowed to be as long as needed and if they don't chop out the interesting hard to film bits like your namshubs. A mini series is probably the right format for such movies as I can easily see them needing to be several hours long.
The Diamond Age is my favorite book so I can't wait to see it. I hope they don't wreck it. I think it'll be harder to translate to film than Snow Crash because you have to explain nanotech, computing, etc so much. If they can pull it off though it'll be awesome.
I can see Snow Crash being a very cool movie with all the interaction of VR (please don't make it cheesy!), swords, motorcycles, gun fights, pizza deliver by mob owned tanks, skateboarders, freelance spys, drugs, evil corporations, hackers, etc.
Bruce Sterling's Distraction would also make a cool mini series. Science, politics, nomads, a crazy governor, a genetic mutant consultant, and a mock war against the Dutch. Sounds like good tv to me.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I hope this one gets better treatment than the Earthsea series did.
I, too, winced the first time I read the dust-jacket and saw the names there (Enoch Root and Qwghlm are there, too), but I'm about halfway through The Confusion and enjoying it immensely. There is certainly some self-referential stuff in there, but it's not much. It's just enough, IMO, so that fans of the other books have a common thread to tease out, but it doesn't significantly impact the Baroque Cycle as a standalone work.
Just to make a comparison to another geek favorite, I'd liken the relationship between Marathon canon and Halo. Fans can, if they wish, view the plot as continuous (via a certain amount of suspended disbelief of certain things), while others can enjoy them just as much while treating them completely separate, and many may not even be aware of the few self-referential links tossed in for the benefit of fans.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
They should make a movie about his career delivering pizzas (which basically ends in the opening of the book). I.e. the Snow Crash plot might have trouble in translation. However, the Snow Crash setting would be incredible.
Ok, I admit it. I just want a chance to win the Deliverator's car.
I thought it was just a natural escalation of timing. Slow beginning leading to fast paced finish. Different tastes I suppose.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Snow Crash would make for an awful movie. There's far too much expositionary material regarding namshubs and so forth that would be interminable on the screen and couldn't be cut without rendering much of the story incomprehensible.
Just use the Library to fill in the gaps, which is pretty much what the book does. What is there to know besides the idea that there was a deeply ingrained base language at some point that got turned off, and that a virus can re-enable it? Movies necessarily have less depth, because you can't just flip back a few pages for things to make sense.