Amazon is "currently in preproduction, production or post on 67 TV series and 20 movies around the world." That's more than the old networks.
So finally, a video version of "Snow Crash". That should be fun. Bringing the scope of Ringworld to the screen will be very tough. Good that they're trying.
Finally, we're getting past Star [Trek|Wars|Gate|Craft] and the Marvel Recycled Universe, into better SF.
_Snow Crash_ is one of Neal Stephenson's best, including the cinematic ending.
The novel's depiction of different tribes and factions is done with care and respect, so that the cultural melange of ethnicities, customs, and technologies is convincing and compelling.
Given Stephenson's sensibilities in _Snow Crash_, I wonder if Amazon will have the forthrightness and integrity to cast Hiro Protagonist as mixed-race black and Korean. [0]
> His father was a sergeant major, his mother was a Korean
> woman whose people had been mine slaves in Nippon, and Hiro
> didn't know whether he was black or Asian or just plain
> Army, whether he was rich or poor, educated or ignorant,
> talented or lucky.
I do agree it's good, though I personally prefer Diamond Age, but I also think it has the Standard Stephenson Ending Problem. The ending really is a great action sequence, and resolves the immediate problem that the action sequence was about -- Snow Crash is disarmed -- but it's also more a stopping-point than an actual ending to the plot. There's a lot of "what happened next?" both with the overarching stuff and with the specifics of what happened to all the major characters, so there's not much closure.
There's a certain amount of circumstantial evidence that Diamond Age is set in the same universe decades later, which probably answers at least a bit of that, particularly if you assume a certain character is Y.T. based on one reference. But still, that's not much of a save for Snow Crash viewed as a complete story in itself.
Everyone fawns about it and it sounds like an awesome novel, but I've tried reading it three times and every time I can't get past the fact that the hero (the protagonist, if you will) is literally named Hiro Protagonist. I know it's supposed to be funny, but after my eyes see those words five or six times, I can't do it anymore. Maybe Neal was the first, maybe he does it best, but I've read too much shitty sci-fi where heavy-handed slaps to the face like that are far too common, and it really ruins any plot the book gets going for me. I have a hard time reading the book when I'm imagining the author's shit-eating grin as he wrote it.
I'm sure it's an awesome book, but I really need a copy where someone did a find-and-replace and changed the hero's name to something other than Hiro.
Your problem with a book that begins with high speed pizza delivery by a coder-ninja into a fortified corporate suburb on behalf of a mafioso pizza company... is that the protagonist is named Hiro Protagonist?
I would have expected suspension of disbelief to have been broken somewhat earlier, if that's an issue.
Very true. I read the Mistborn series and absolutely loved every minute of it, so I picked up The Way of Kings thinking I like Brandon Sanderson and it's a popular book of his. I didn't make it past the second chapter because the story demands I memorize dozens of ridiculous names, made-up words, magical objects, and fictional cities right off the bat.
Suspending disbelief is not the problem. The problem is when the author writes something so unbelievable that there's never a chance to suspend. It's all disbelief, all the time.
Again maybe I'm ruined by years of reading bad sci-fi and fantasy, maybe I would have been better off if I read it 20 years ago. But Snowcrash and The Way of Kings both start their story with all of the hallmarks of every awful book I've ever read.
I'm sure the durian fruit tastes great, but unfortunately I've smelled a dumpster before and now durian is ruined to me forever.
> I didn't make it past the second chapter because the story demands I memorize dozens of ridiculous names, made-up words, magical objects, and fictional cities right off the bat.
Is that a requirement for that book? Stephenson's Anathem starts off with a word-dump full of vocabulary that you as the reader will not know, but everything slowly becomes clearer.
On the other hand, I gave up on Stephenson's Baroque Cycle for much the same reason you mention.
It might not be a requirement to memorize all of the words, but then again it's hard to tell which ones will still be important later on. It does add a significant mental load not only trying to pronounce the words, but try to remember them and then try to recall those memories when the word is referenced later in the story.
I had a hard time with Game of Thrones for the first few seasons too, because of the absolutely massive cast of characters. It became easier when most of them died off. It's one of the reasons I don't read a whole lot of fantasy novels, every author considers themselves a Tolkien and has to show off how much work they put into world-building.
I was excited by Snowcrash (the first chapter is awesome) but the plot kind of dissolves into a lukewarm mush by the end. AFAIK, people tend to love Snowcrash for the ideas and the world building rather than the plot.
Granted. And I certainly think Stephenson is the weaker of the names I'm about to mention.
But I don't exactly remember stellar plots from Gibson (earlier works) or Ridley Scott either. The cyberpunk-influenced genre is essentially defined by everyday troubles, draped with techno-decoration.
Personally, that's one of the reasons I like it. The fusion of slice-of-life pedestrianism w/ in medias res pacing always came across as more believable than any grand opera.
Statistically, significantly rare interesting events are far more likely to happen to a janitor than the King / Queen of the Universe.
IIRC, the reason the first chapter is so much better is that it started out as a comic book. After that peters out, he sorta falls back into long exposition with librarian AIs. Perhaps some day, story boarding will be a required part of Stephensen's novel writing process.
I read it when it came out and I enjoyed it then. It had some neat ideas (about online communities and how people would use them; CIC Earth; etc) but really it's just a book and it's okay to not like it for any reason. Also, it's 25 years old now, and some of it hasn't aged well.
I do remember disliking the hyperbole of exaggeration (In a few of his early books) - the fractal heatsink, the sharpness of the obsidian blade, the politeness of the tea, etc.
It's meta - breaking the 4th wall - breaking your suspension of disbelief. Rick & Morty do it all the time. Kind of cheesy, but not a big problem, especially on audio book. I hope they rename the character too.
Yeah, and make him a white guy. YT can age 10 years and become a romantic interest. Change Raven into a Chinese character, add in a subplot about Bitcoin, remove the motorcycle stuff, maybe move the setting of the Raft to something easier to film - like outskirts of LA...
Chloë Grace Moretz ("Hit Girl") would make a great YT. She's convincing as a snarky tough girl.
The Raft would be quite do-able. After all, there was Waterworld. (I met the guy who did the Softimage water shader for that. It worked out much better for him when he did the water shader for Titanic.) Worn-out ships are easily available. Chase scenes in open water are easier than ones near land, and you can add all the background ships in CGI.
There are ways to get the cost down. Watch this trailer for the Blade Runner remake.[1] Nothing expensive there, except old Harrison Ford. A smoke and fog world brings the costs down.
I'm being sarcastic at someone's suggestion that Hiro's name ought to be changed. I'm not actually suggesting any of this happen; it would be a travesty.
The ethnicity of Hiro and Raven are rather relevant to the plot (as well as other considerations within the novel - many Burbclaves are ethnically-divided), and given the amount of whitewashing Hollywood is prone to, it's a legitimate concern.
If Hiro ends up being played by a blonde Norwegian, it wouldn't be the end of the world, but it also wouldn't be Snow Crash. At that point, why make him a swordsman? Does YT have to be so much younger than him that the possibility of a romance is excluded? Can we tighten up the plot by ditching all the boring religious stuff? Is there any way we can work in a Transformer? etc., etc.
I don't see anything which indicates this would be the commenter's chief criterion in judging the work....
Of course there's a lot more to literature and cinema than just racial questions. There's so much that you can't possibly cover everything. Why is it that only racial questions get these "you should consider other things too" responses?
TrekWars: GateCraft actually sounds plausible and potentially fun.
Does anyone else share that ambiguous feeling of pleasure at the overdue broader recognition of good SciFi works mixed with the dread of potentially disappointing TV-adaptations of them?
A number of the books (Use of Weapons, Surface Detail for example) would make fantastic series by themselves. The grander ones like The Algebraist are begging for a mega budget treatment with a brave, independent minded and intelligent director.
For the books to work, the director and the writer must be able to depict "greater than human" intelligence, thinking a step ahead of the viewer and not hobbling the human heroes to make a weak plot work (since SC are supposed to be the best of humanity). Too simplistic a depiction of the characters is my greatest fear in a Banks adaptation.
Much as I thought American Gods (the series) was badly written in terms of weaving the story together cohesively and of timing (it was fine as a visualisation of the book for people who have read it), many of the characters were well depicted in their full ambiguity and their evolution had the sense of direction otherwise lacking from the series itself.
Rather than strictly utopian or dystopian, I just want to see more nuanced sci-fi. Where's the sci-fi counterpart to The Wire, following socially and economically diverse groups of characters in realistically complex, interconnected stories? (Actually, The Expanse isn't that far off from this.)
All the recent Star Trek films and TV shows have been lazy prequels or rehashes of the early Federation days. I'd like to see some new Trek, such as transition to a post-scarcity society between ST:TOS and ST:TNG or something a thousand years in the future. I want to see the speculative fiction that Geordi La Forge reads. :)
I always thought that Consider Phlebas would make a great movie. Although it has enough going on (including the history of the war) that it could easily work as a series too.
Any kind of upopian sci-fi would be great. Like many, I do have a soft spot for dystopia, but what $people seem to be lacking lately seems to be some positive [outlook|vision] for the future.
I find it interesting that most of the discussion about Snow Crash is "how about that other amazing book/series"?
AFAIK no one has tried the High House trilogy or Mythago Wood series or the classic sci fi book Heavy Weather.
Heavy Weather as a setting would seem well matched to soap operic writing which we'll probably be subjected to regardless of what we want, then finally spring the tornado on them in the last episode of the last season.
I couldn't get past the first episode, partly because I knew exactly what would happen as I read it recently, but partly because the belters aren't different enough.
I can totally understand why they aren't as the costs would have been astronomical, but it's such a huge part of the books it's a little jarring.
For those not in the know, Belters are people who were born/grown up in space and look very different as a result:
Humans born to the Belt are taller and thinner than those on Earth and Mars because of the decreased gravity. As a result of these physical differences, Belters are dehumanized by many Earth and Mars residents because they superficially seem to be a deviation from the species norms of humans. - http://expanse.wikia.com/wiki/Belter
I wish more people could attempt anime adaptations of these sorts of works. The medium is just so much more high concept friendly; making strange alien characters and settings has a similar cost profile to storys about human characters and normal settings.
Alas, most of that artistic movement is very limited to adapting source material from its own unique cultural direction. However, a growing interest from western studios and growing understanding that non-comedy adult animation can be a thing makes me optimisic.
Also, my personal favorite for adaptation would be Hyperion Cantos. It has a lovely episodic feel at the start, as the pilgrims, tell their respective stories, and slowly piece togeather the true story. They seek a horrible, mysterious machine god on a distant colony pLanet, which is said to grant 1 wish for any appropriately sized band of pilgrims, at the cost of the rest of their lives.
Coming from a reader of the whole series: the second season has much better writing and budget, and the actors have also worked together long enough to gel well. Aside from the casting of a certain Martian girl (someone should introduce the director to some real Marines), I think they avoided major errors and everyone in the house is eagerly awaiting the next season.
She was not exactly Bobbie, as depicted in the books. But unless you find the Maori sister of the guy who played Gregor Clegane in GOT, nobody would be.
This can be the problem with adaptations. If you've read and enjoyed the books, you not only possibly know whats going to happen but you have specific expectations. Personally, I haven't read The Expanse and have enjoyed the series.
Yeah, I was drawn in pretty much immediately. I was only able to catch the first 3 episodes while waiting for a flight in Taiwan (they seem to have the same Netflix library as the States, whereas here in Canada, the Expanse is unavailable), but I found it mesmerising.
In the first episode the Belter they arrested was supposedly 7ft tall, frail and thin. They tortured him by hanging him from his torso until his heart collapsed due to gravity. The belters have only been in space a few hundred(?) years so physiologically they wouldn't look that different from earthers.
It'll never happen, but a sequel to the WarCraft movie would be nice. Might be nostalgia for playing so many hours of War.exe, and rereading the manual over and over again as a kid, but I thought it wasn't half bad. I'll take it over another Transformers movie...
So finally, a video version of "Snow Crash". That should be fun. Bringing the scope of Ringworld to the screen will be very tough. Good that they're trying.
Finally, we're getting past Star [Trek|Wars|Gate|Craft] and the Marvel Recycled Universe, into better SF.