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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."
This isn't going to end well..
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
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.
'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.
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.
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Crudely Drawn Games
For that matter, witness how much they fsck'd up battlestar gallactica. I haven't seen their version of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files yet, but from the promos it looks like they decided to fsck up that too (I should probably withold judgement since I haven't seen it, though). Sci-fi channel didn't do it, but look at how Eragon was absolutely destroyed.
I always wondered how the visual medium could be so obviously run by a group of illiterates with no respect for authorship. It's intensely bizarre. What puzzles me even more are the large number of people who just seem to accept it as a usual practice. Even when their favorite character/scene/plotline/etc is missing or replaced by something entirely different - for no reason the bears any resemblance to a valid purpose- they don't seem to mind. A vapid "oh, well you shouldn't get upset- it's a different medium after all" is the closest you'll get from them to an acknowledgement of the change. Where's the rage, people?
There have been notable exceptions. The Princess Bride was the best adaptation of a novel as I've ever seen. The screenplay was written by the author of the novel, who had previous screenplay writing experience. That probably explains why it was so well done. The Disney version of A Wrinkle In Time came close too- but proved that some books aren't suited for movies no matter HOW good they are. I'm sure others can name many more.
We want to be optimistic. We love the written works so much that we long to see them come to life. Sci-fi fans are like Charlie Brown, earnestly hoping for someone in Hollywood to hold that football down just long enough for us to get a kickoff. And the studio execs are like Sally- teasing us endlessly with the possibility of something that won't suck shiat and pulling the ball away at the last moment.
/Sorry- done now.
//Goes to the meds closet to get a dose of Myranta.