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'Stranger In a Strange Land' Coming To TV (ew.com)
HughPickens.com writes: EW reports that Paramount TV and Universal Cable Productions are teaming up to develop Robert A. Heinlein's classic 'Stranger in a Strange Land' into a TV series on Syfy. The 1961 sci-fi book, set in the aftermath of a third world war, centers on Valentine Michael Smith, a human born on Mars and raised by Martians, who, as a young adult, has returned to Earth. The true driving forces of the novel are religion and sex, which Heinlein's publisher at the time wanted him to cut out. But as the author noted to his literary agent, if religion and sex were removed from the text, what remained would be the equivalent of a "nonalcoholic martini." "From my point of view, Stranger in a Strange Land isn't just a science fiction masterpiece [...] it also happens to be one of my favorite books ever!" says NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Chairman Bonnie Hammer. "The story is timeless and resonates more than ever in today's world. As a fan, I can't wait to see it come to life as a world-class television event." A previous attempt at adapting Heinlein's novel came in 1995, when Batman Returns' Dan Waters penned a script designed for Tom Hanks and Sean Connery.
Stranger in a Strange Land is really like two novels. The first part is good, classical Heinlein. The second part is some kind of rambling political pamphlet that always manages to bore me. I read somewhere that they were written with several years difference, and it shows.
I hope they base it in the first part, really. Well, probably, if it's a typical TV product, they will take the basic idea and massacre all else, so why do I care?
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I'm going to assume this is going to be a "Based On The Novel By" kind of thing, where they basically have a couple of plot elements from the book and nothing more. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the book, nor that it's not an important book in science fiction history, but I'm not really sure the story holds up for the 21st century. Some of the themes that were controversial at the time, and which I'm sure Heinlein thought that by now would be the norm, kind of went the other direction, too.
It's one of those times where they should just call it something else rather than name it after a famous work.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Think of the films made of Puppet Masters and Starship Troopers. Perhaps TV will be kinder. Never Thirst.
I'd probably agree, but it's the SyFy channel, so I'm not very optimistic. On the other hand, I thought Predestination was really well done. It's been at least 25 years since I read All You Zombies, but the way they set it in a Heinlin parallel universe seems as close as we're ever going to see to staying true to one of his stories.
Never got Stranger. For me it is possibly not the worst Heinlein novel, but it far from being worth the read and has the biggest hype to quality ratio.
Other than it being edgy for its time, I cannot see any reason to enjoy it. Personally, I think it was more of a big F*** Y** to his past editors for censoring him than an actual novel.
And I do not see how you will adapt it to the screen. Like Heinlein said the novel is just religion and sex. You could adapt it to a porn film, but there is just not really a storyline. The biggest drama is a legal battle and the only choice any of the characters ever make is "Will I have sex with everyone, or nah?" and spoiler alert they all have sex with everyone.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
...they grok it rightly. SyFy can do justice to classic SF, if their Dune miniseries, which was surprisingly good, is any indicator. I remember reading twenty years ago, in alt.fan.heinlein, may it rest in peace along with the rest of USENET, that Tom Hanks had acquired the rights to both SiaSL and TMiaHM. Several current and future members of the board of the Heinlein Foundation were regulars in the group, along with Heinlein's wife Virginia, Heinlein's biographer Bill Patterson, and Heinlein's chief fan and fellow SF author Spider Robinson, who all independently confirmed the transfer of rights. The rumors never reached the level of casting a movie, though one thread was devoted to endless speculation about potential actors and actresses. I hope like hell SyFy repeats Dune's success with SiaSL; I think their decision with Dune to go with unknowns in the major roles (less money for acting => more money for writing, directing, costumes and scenery) was spot on and I hope they follow a similar decision process with SiaSL.
If you cut the sex, it's going to be a really short series. If you cut the trademark Heinlein sophomore political commentary as well then there's nothing left other than introducing the word 'grok'. Which is probably for the best.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Surprised to see all the hate (or lukewarm meh-ness) for Stranger in a Strange Land on here. Maybe it's younger folks that never understood the social shifts and conflicts occurring at the time, I don't know. But the novel actually had a major affect on culture when it came out. I found it to be incredibly insightful.
Updating it for current times might be a good idea for the series. Someone from Mars with no contact with human culture comes to earth. Religion has taken a backseat and sex has exploded into polyamorous and fluid gender orgies, with more labels than species of frogs. And group politics has divided humans into pools vying for elevated victimhood status while countries with world-ending nuclear arsenals fight proxy wars over energy pipelines. Could be quite entertaining.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
That's funny because at one time the same thing was said about flying. The engineering was too tough and there is no way humans would ever fly.
That's a bogus comparison; there were already things flying, we just needed to figure out how to emulate them. There no things living on Mars that we can emulate.
"Hollywood to completely rewrite Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land because they don't like most of the ideas put forth by the original author."
There, fixed that headline for you.
Friday would be a much better TV adaptation.
Promiscuous hot chick with super powers goes on secret missions for a vague private agency in a balkanized USA. And it resonate with a really divided country and current affairs - California was its own country in the book!
I'm not sure why this is modded down, but it is 100% correct. Most Space Nutters get their "knowledge" from scifi, not reality. The reality is that engineering is tough, very tough. I am not talking about programming either. Anyone who has engineered anything even moderately complex knows we are not going to be living on Mars.
There is no breakthrough technology needed to put a colony of humans on Mars. And I've been heavily involved in a lot of engineering. The questions are method, cost, and will to do it, not inventing new things.
This might be thought of as submarine level technology, not so much on the details, but on the concept of keeping humans alive and healthy in a hostile environment. In fact much of putting people long term on a planet like Mars is in many respects easier.
Questions of "should we?" are valid, and always worth discussing. Questions of "could we" have already been answered. We can.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
However, most of Heinlein's fiction could best be classified as "Young adult" fiction. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was also good. His last books, like The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, were kind of incoherent, and apparently finished by someone else.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
because you mentally turned yourself off after seeing moral/philosophical points that you disagree with. It's okay, this happens.
I know some people who are quite intelligent and big SF fans who never got why Dune is so popular. Precisely for the same reason.
Personally, I hated the movie District 9. I thought it was very shallow, just a not-so-subtle vehicle for the writer/director to push his leftist views. Super intelligent alien beings that have interstellar spaceships and artificial gravity, and yet act like idiots? Really? Aside from their high-tech stuff, their behavior is exactly like that of prison inmates with an IQ of around 80. Ruins the story for me, the whole time I was watching it I was thinking, "Why don't these aliens just do _____?"
However in retrospect, it is possible that District 9 is not entirely worthless, it may contain some good parts that I overlooked due to my disagreement with the parts that were stupid.
Stranger in a Strange Land on the other hand is a masterpiece -- a towering achievement that stands out even among the greats of science fiction -- because it's so original.
Then you're not much of an engineer.
You've decided to stop making sense? What technology needs to happen that does not exist already?
This isn't even a concept that we shouldn't incorporate new technology as it happens, merely that the whole thing could be accomplished today, without any new inventions.
Imagine the work that had to happen to create say, the F1 engine. This was applied science, but a lot of new things had to happen to pump out that much power from a single engine. And we've built on that since then.
So we can get into orbit and leave Earth's gravity well. We can build structures in space that can maintain human life indefinitely. We can move those structures. We can get to Mars, We can land things on Mars. Questions remain about growing food, but no deal breakers are seen so far. All with present day technology.
And as new technology is learned/developed, it can only get easier.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You're wasting your time. To the GP, the only technological development that will ever matter to achieving space has already happened; the only engineering that will ever matter to achieving space has already been done. It's wholly loony, but it's not uncommon.
Eventually, we'll be all over the solar system. The available space, energy, manufacturing conditions and natural resources all better (and in some cases, dwarf) those we can achieve on earth. Market forces will make this happen. Assuming we don't get hit by a comet or an asteroid, or the ecology doesn't collapse, or we don't nuke each other into glowing dust, of course.
The tech to get into space is known. The tech to live in space is known too, although it is true that the engineering has yet to be done.
The "space nutters" are actually the ones that claim we'll be indefinitely planet-bound. It's a pretty clueless assertion.
Chemical rockets can bootstrap this, though the cost is high; something like a space elevator would change the entire picture, but we're still working on the material science for that, and again, no engineering has been done (because no materials as yet.)
Anyway, fear not the nay-sayers. They know not of what they speak. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The technology that allows humans to survive in radiation fields that exist outside the Van Allen belts for more than a few days does not exist. The fact is that the combination of adequate shielding and power to boost ratio for moving that amount of mass is beyond what we can now accomplish with existing technology. Putting a structure in low earth orbit, where it is protected from the balance of solar radiation and moving that same structure outside the protective fields provided by the Earth's magnetic fields is not trivial. Nor do we know how to do the technology yet that will allow us to do so. A two week trip to the moon gave Apollo 14 astronauts 1.4 rem in 2 weeks. Exposure getting to Mars would be 15 times the allowed exposure, provided there were no unforeseen radiation events, such as a solar flare. On the planet itself perhaps we could build underground to prevent excess exposure, but that would still mean severely limiting time on the surface, perhaps so much so that little actual work could get done.
So no we don't have all of the know how we need to do Mars yet.
" What technology needs to happen that does not exist already? "
Since we have not sent even a rat to Mars, the answer to your asinine question is: EVERYTHING. Until you've BUILT and DONE it, all you have is WISHFUL THINKING.
I can easily build a lot of things in my garage, I have a mill, lathe, and the materials needed. If I decide to build a steam engine - already existing technology, I can do that, and it will work. No wishing needed, just doing.
Make certain to type your reply to me in all caps. That shows that you know what you are talking about, and really turns the ladies on.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I think that the radiation problem, that is, how to lift how much shielding is going to be a big one.
Radiation will be a big problem, especially if there is a solar storm during transit. Mass helps, but not as much as most of us think. Water would be helpful, since we obviously need a good bit, but then there is a plastic named RXF1. It shows a lot of promise. This is a link from 2005. https://science.nasa.gov/scien...
It has 3X the tensile strength of Aluminum, yet around a third of the weight. Bring polyethylene based, it is good protection against radiation - I don't know if NASA's product is borated or not, but the nuc industry is already using borated polyethylene. http://www.radiationproducts.c....
Regardless, most people like AC think that you need something like lead as shielding. Problem is, lead makes for a lot of secondary radiation when it is hit, so it isn't as good as people think.
It's amusing, but a bigger concern is making the poly based shielding fireproof. And a bonus is it is a ballistic shield - always a really good thing in space.
So while people like AC are busy calling this stuff a pipe dream or fantasy, We have a lot of stuff happening. Things like Orion and the Ares Rocket are parts that are pretty well known. the BEAM expandable modules are another. Wonder what that's made of, eh? https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def...
Looking at the mass of the thing, it's almost ridiculously doable. Don't even need a big expensive Ares rocket to boost it to orbit.
Shit got real everyone, not a bit of wishful thinking needed. We got the tools, and we have the talent.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The movie is a left wing cartoon. The book is only considered fascist by people who don't believe that citizens have a responsibility to serve their country and the common good. It is quite obvious that no one involved with the movie have any idea of what it is like to be in a military organization, how armies actually fight, what kind of tactics a real military uses, or any of that. TO them a military is basically a bunch of people running around in a mob doing violent things.
Like I said a left wing cartoon.