Author Topic: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books That Should Be Movies  (Read 13360 times)

Offline warzoneD

  • Member Emeritus
  • *****
  • Posts: 1206
  • Karma: +73/-0
  • Ad Astra Per Aspera
Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books That Should Be Movies
« on: April 10, 2013, 07:01:15 PM »
My buddies and I were just talking about what great Sci-Fi/Fantasy books never got turned into movies.  Wanted to throw it to the group--

We all said Elric was high on our list.  (though rumor has it someone has  been working on this for a while).

We also thought Heinlein's "Friday" could be cool.

Thoughts?


Offline Horned Owl

  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 368
  • Karma: +15/-0
  • Hoot!
Re: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books That Should Be Movies
« Reply #1 on: April 11, 2013, 07:22:53 AM »
I´d love to see James White´s Orbit Hospital made into a TV series. It´s Star Trek AND House.

Basically, the proposition is that in a federation of the most diverse sentients – breathing water, methane, fluorine, or oxygen, living in environments from near vacuum to high pressure and radiation, from near 0° Kelvin to heat that boils metal – the governments have jointly funded a hospital in space where members of every species (and the occasional unidentified new first contact) can be treated and their native environment simulated. To visit their patients, doctors and nurses often have to don environmental suits.

Doctors who need information on a particular species temporarily imprint personality records of that species´ doctors on their own brains. With the knowledge, they also take on cultural quirks, fears and basic instincts, which may clash violently in a person with multiple records slotted in their brain. This is what makes up a lot of the side action; getting a lunch at the cafeteria can be an adventure in itself if you have both an exclusively carnivorous and a vegetarian record spooking your taste buds. (Not to mention finding a suitable chair at rush hours, one that will not break your back or spike your bottom. Too much to hope finding an unoccupied one that was actually made for your species.)

And witness Dr Conway slotting a crustacean mind and getting bouts of panic at night before realising that, of course, anyone with a flat carapace will panic if lying on their back. Afterwards, when operating on his patient, he is distracted by the lovely sexy pattern on the crustacean nurse´s pincers to the point of being unable to perform the surgery properly.

"How was I supposed to know he was an unarmed man? His back was to me."

Offline MadBrad

  • Member Emeritus
  • *****
  • Posts: 1128
  • Karma: +52/-0
Re: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books That Should Be Movies
« Reply #2 on: April 11, 2013, 04:23:53 PM »
Michael Resnick's Santiago could be made into a spectacular film.  The setting reminds me, a lot, of Firefly.   Kind of a space as the Wild West setting, full of larger than life personalities.   

Magnificent book, superb potential as a movie. 
Cybertronic - Superior by design

E-Bay Handle: bradthemad

Offline Topkick

  • Board Member
  • Administrator
  • Member Emeritus
  • *****
  • Posts: 3052
  • Karma: +222/-22
  • Former Crusader Coordinator - Midwest Region
Re: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books That Should Be Movies
« Reply #3 on: April 13, 2013, 06:26:32 PM »
Forever War for Sci-Fi and The Dracula Tape for Horror
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss (1904 - 1991)

Homebase:  South Central Wisconsin
E-Bay Handle: Topkick-890

Offline Horned Owl

  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 368
  • Karma: +15/-0
  • Hoot!
Re: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books That Should Be Movies
« Reply #4 on: April 15, 2013, 10:03:33 AM »
Heinlein tends to get messed up on the screen. Witness Starship Troopers  :-\ Philip K. Dick, on the other hand, has enjoyed a lot of actually really good movies made out of is books. (Bearing only superficial resemblance to the books, but good movies nevertheless.)
"How was I supposed to know he was an unarmed man? His back was to me."

Offline Seamus

  • Full Member
  • **
  • Posts: 240
  • Karma: +31/-0
    • Branch Incentives
Re: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books That Should Be Movies
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2013, 03:28:30 PM »
I agree that Starship Troopers was messed up however I would still love to see Friday done on the big screen.  Even more so, I would like to see Stranger in a Strange Land done on film and a series of film based on the Lazarus Long stories.
Seamus Muadhen
eBay: branchenterprisesinternational
email: dkidd23 AT yahoo DOT com

There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity.
General Douglas MacArthur
US WWII general & war hero (1880 - 1964)

Offline Horned Owl

  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 368
  • Karma: +15/-0
  • Hoot!
Re: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books That Should Be Movies
« Reply #6 on: September 02, 2013, 07:45:53 AM »
Ah! Stranger should have been made film in the 70s. They would have been able to do it authentically.
"How was I supposed to know he was an unarmed man? His back was to me."

Offline Petru5

  • Hero Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 733
  • Karma: +31/-0
  • Keeping eastern KC an UWZ!!!
    • Conn-Man Games blog
Re: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books That Should Be Movies
« Reply #7 on: September 06, 2013, 07:31:38 PM »
Considering Frederick Pohl just died, how about Gateway?
"Game over, man! Game over!"
-Private Hudson