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I'm still waiting for something to happen with Joe Haldeman's The Forever War. It's over forty years old, but a truly stellar novel, nonetheless. Every time somebody's poised to adapt it, the project gets derailed.
From Wikipedia:
Film[edit]
In October 2008, Ridley Scott announced that, after a 25-year wait for the rights to become available, he was making a return to science fiction with a film adaptation of The Forever War.[10] In March 2009, Scott stated that the film would be in 3D, citing James Cameron's Avatar as an inspiration for doing so.[11][12] In the summer of 2010, Scott revealed that State of Play writer Matthew Michael Carnahan was currently on the fourth draft of a screenplay originally written by David Peoples.[13][14] As of May 2014, author Joe Haldeman stated he believed the project was on its seventh draft of the script.[15] In May 2015, Warner Bros. won the rights to the novel and will develop the project with writer Jon Spaihts and Channing Tatum attached to star.
It's okay. Definitely very well designed science fiction. Good acting. Good dialogue. I haven't winced at anything terrible yet. That said ...
The story just isn't all that gripping. I was interested while watching, but as soon as the second episode ended my wife said, "You want to watch the next one?" And I didn't.
It's okay. Definitely very well designed science fiction. Good acting. Good dialogue. I haven't winced at anything terrible yet. That said ...
The story just isn't all that gripping. I was interested while watching, but as soon as the second episode ended my wife said, "You want to watch the next one?" And I didn't.
It's not bad. But it hasn't grabbed me yet.
The first episode we watched was the fourth, which definitely got us interested, so we're going back to catch the first three.
I think the difference between SyFy and FOX is the time given for background. I'm still learning names but the background which reminds me of a harder science Merchater's Luck kept me until the forth Christmas break episode which really got the show rolling.
If you don't get the channel, where can you watch it? Something with more hard core SF to it sounds very refreshing. I like it where you get time to know the characters before they get launched into the story too, since all too often you get robots or stock clones of a standard sort.
So the first season has ended, and it's been pretty darned good SF....
...and some of the best SF has really been the realistic adaptation of more conventional plot (that is, human interaction) concepts affected by scientific advances.
So we have a political thriller, a hard-boiled detective mystery, and a military drama in one series. They start out as very disparate stories: People-types we would recognize today placed in a strange but recognizable and realistic extrapolation of our time.
Take the OPA, for instance. They could be the IRA, HAMAS, or even the Sioux, and very much Boer. We know who these people are, but here they are the Belters misused by both Earth and Mars. I liked the OPA leader ("underground" yet not underground, like the leadership of the IRA in the 70s) telling the detective, in so many words, "You're one of us--you just don't realize it yet. But when you've lost everything, you will." And then in the finale, having lost everything--including apparently his life--he effectively does become one of them in order to escape.
The ironic thing of that scene is that he's garbed as what he is--an enforcer of the Establishment (he had made a choice years before, "be either an ass or the boot")--yet when he launches into the patois of his childhood to start a riot, they all turn and see him in the garb of their oppressors and yet totally accept in a flash that he has suddenly "realized he is one of them" because they all believe it as much as their leader: When it gets down to the nitty-gritty, all Belters will unite. It all works together, brilliant foreshadowing and writing.
I loved the shading of Amos. He understands his own limitations, how he's come to decide that survival for as long as possible is the very best thing he can accomplish. He astutely makes instantaneous character evaluations of different people in terms of who might be the best leader that will keep him alive, and once found, he's completely loyal to that person. He had been re-evaluating that situation over the last three episodes before coming back to his original conclusion.
Season 1 of The Expanse is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
Season 1 of The Expanse is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
The best SF on television that everyone has missed.
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Season 1 of The Expanse is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
