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Amazon developing three new sci-fi series: Lazarus, Snow Crash and Ringworld
- ccozan 9y agoLazarus sounds like an echo to the Into the Badlands, which I very much enjoy.
- 2muchcoffeeman 9y agoThe Lazarus comic is excellent. I didn't realise the show was being developed by Amazon. It really deserves the same level of treatment Marvel and Netflix gave Dare Devil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron First and The Defenders. They managed to pull off the Marvel cinematic universe on TV and I think overall they are better than the movies.
- lolwat____ 9y agoI wonder if Amazon will keep the main characters (for ringworld and snow crash) Asian or whitewash them just like every other Tv show
- dllthomas 9y ago> keep the main characters [...] Asian In Hiro's case, half-black, IIRC... It's been too long since I've read Ringworld to have much sense of Louis' race, if it was ever made clear.
- lolwat____ 9y agoAh didn't get that impression from my reading of snow crash but yeah looks like Hiro is intended to be half black and half Asian. I do recall the first chapter of ringworld descrivig Louis Wu as having an East Asian appearance.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoNo, it says that he has to use makeup if he wants to have an East Asian appearance.
- oska 9y agoexcerpt from Chapter 3 of Snow Crash: > Beneath this image, it is impossible to see Hiro's eyes, which look Asian. They are from his mother, who is Korean by way of Nippon. The rest of him looks more like his father, who was African by way of Texas by way of the Army—back in the days before it got split up into a number of competing organizations such as General Jim's Defense System and Admiral Bob's National Security.
- moomin 9y agoFor pretty much any imaginable ethnicity, there's a great actor out there. Just look at Ricky Whittle. (Just don't look at him on Hollyoaks.)
- Turing_Machine 9y agoLouis Wu (from Ringworld) is from ~2600 AD, long after the Earth's races have been thoroughly mixed. Hiro Protagonist is half Korean, half Black. Neither character is "Asian", as that term is generally interpreted in the United States today. Marcus Chong would've made a great Hiro, back in the day, but I'm afraid he's too old for the part now. Actually, he would would have been a good choice for Wu as well. I wonder if Tommy Chong has any grandchildren by now? :-)
- lolwat____ 9y agoTank from Matrix? Hell yeah he would have been a great choice. Just getting more diversity for the male lead would be great in so many ways.
- crooked-v 9y agoNeither character is "Asian", but nor is either is a white guy, which is the point of the comment you're replying to.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoMaking them "Asian" would be exactly as wrong as making them "white guys", no more, no less.
- lolwat____ 9y agoWell why not? Just as a lot of characters have been rewritten to be white, why not rewrite some characters to be non white.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- InternetOfStuff 9y ago> Hiro Protagonist I had read the book twice already, and it took me listening to the audio book and hearing the name said out loud to realise that it was a pun :-) Call me childish, but I still have to giggle every time I remember his name.
- nextstep 9y agoWish it were Netflix or HBO or even Showtime. Amazon has a history of giving showrunners much less creative freedom and I have less faith this will be a satisfying adaptation. :/
- narrator 9y agoMan in the High Castle was a bit of a let down. It didn't have the ambiguities of the book that made the alternate history complex and interesting. The TV show was too much of a comic book with nice sharp moral edges.
- hkmurakami 9y agoNever read the book (been meaning to!) but thought their cinematography was solid, and that the supporting cast puts on a strong performance. Agreed though that the protagonists' arcs are very cliche and flat.
- moomin 9y agoOh seriously, there were 100 great performances in TMITHC, but there were two aching voids where the lead characters should have been.
- rangibaby 9y agoThe book is pretty ...out there. It’s certainly not what I was expecting but it was interesting.
- uptownJimmy 9y agoHa! "Out there" is just par for the course with PKD.... Read "A Scanner Darkly", if you haven't already. That's one of the supreme weird tales.
- e12e 9y agoOr "Martian timeslip". In fact "blade runner" is a pretty poor adaptation of the book (but a great film, imo). I'm not sure most of pkd would benefit too much from a "direct" film adaptation... I loved the man in the high castle for many of the changes and the overall style - but it seems the writers got a bit lost trying to round off the open ended story and fill in some blanks. Small wonder, considering the book.
- davidw 9y agoAs well as Ringworld!
- snowwrestler 9y agoCan't believe no one has made a Cryptonomicon series. It would be way more complex and interesting than Snow Crash, which has crazier visuals but a fairly simple linear story.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoI don't think Cryptonomicon would translate to TV very well. While there are some action sequences, way too much of the plot relies on philosophy, science, math, etc. It's hard to show that stuff on a screen without resorting to lame tricks like voice-overs. Snowcrash is a lot more visual (it was actually originally intended to be a graphic novel).
- snowwrestler 9y agoThat kind of stuff is kind of hot on TV right now--think of Sherlock from the BBC. Lots of crazy graphics overlaying the shot, with narration or voice over. I feel like producers have figured out how to do shows about super geniuses and their weird way of perceiving the world. I mean, you'd have to cut down some verbose stuff, sure. But you could also expand some stuff, or turn narration into visual action.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoI don't think that all that much of Cryptonomicon does. Obviously, half the scenes with Lawrence tend to, but the Imitation Game seemed to do a decent job of portraying someone for whom math was about as important - and the rest of Cryptonomicon is fascinating. World War II! Modern business shenanigans! Family drama! And with Bitcoin and ICOs making headlines in major newspapers, the time has never been better for this. (Nice username, relevant to the discussion.)
- dreamcompiler 9y agoThey both have great characters though. Can't wait to see who plays YT.
- arethuza 9y agoOr the Baroque Cycle which pretty much has everything.... the version that is on Audible is half way to a dramatisation (different actors for for some parts) and is quite splendid and would provide enough material for many many shows...
- ilaksh 9y agoSounds like there could be multiple more really interesting things to watch. It's great to have entertainment choices, but does anyone else get the feeling that there are literally tens of thousands of interesting things to read, watch, look at, or play with, and only time to check out a handful of them? It makes it hard for me to pick because I know I will be ignoring most of this huge pile of amazing stuff. For example, I played The Witcher 3 for a month or two and really enjoyed it. But eventually after seeing 20 or 30 other things pop up that seemed amazing, I decided to check out a few of them. And then there are more and more. But I actually barely started progressing in The Witcher. I have several books that I got really cheap used and I intended to read like Ringworld (which I don't remember if I actually read many years ago or not) and The Engines of God. Plus six more good ones. I got halfway through one of them before realizing I needed to catch up on some Westworld episodes or something. The thing that makes it tough is I do a ton of filtering with metacritic or whatever to ignore everything except the best stuff, then I try to dismiss more things as boring or uninteresting but anytime I actually check them out, they are amazing like the reviews said. But then that means I am going to miss out on thousands of amazing things. I guess I just feel like it's a shame that I have to ignore most of it, until such time as I no longer need to work or spend time on my own creations and can dedicate full time to consumption, and am able to upload my brain and clone it 500 times to start to trim the pile.
- lstyls 9y agoIt sounds like you're complaining about how much quality content there is now that unlimited streaming venues are available and nothing has to fit into a designated time slot. I for one am not wistful for the 90's and 00's monopoly of network and cable TV, which I remember all too well.
- marmaduke 9y ago> feel like it's a shame that I have to ignore most of it, until such time as I no longer need to work or spend time on my own creations That's the thing though: none of those great pieces of entertainment will be things you put effort into. If all the reviews of all the things are five stars, maybe the scale is wrong, no?
- loteck 9y agoWill somebody for the love of god please rescue Hyperion from Syfy before it's too late, and give it a serious treatment?
- fnordian_slip 9y agoI didn't even know that there was an adaptation of Dan Simmons' Hyperion, and now I find out that it apparently isn't worth watching. Kinda sad, but one can still hope. As another comment said, it's nice to see more series that don't use the Star[...] IP that we are used to, but instead focuses on incredible books like Ringworld (or, to a lesser extent, Snow Crash). I'd also love to see more Heinlein and Ursula K Le Guin, but I understand that not everything that makes a great book also makes a great movie / series.
- tallanvor 9y agoThere's no information out about the Hyperion series yet. There aren't even any casting announcements that I've heard of, so it's way too early to decide it won't even be worth watching.
- larrykwg 9y agoIt is a SyFy show. They have a reputation of producing the worst garbage, while simultaneously blocking the option. Thats why they are generally disliked by various fanbases, that would rather see their worlds given proper justice to. Examples are A Wizard of Earthsea and Dune. But honestly, good book adaptions are just crazy rare anyhow.
- daedalus_j 9y agoI would suggest that you watch The Expanse. It's possible that perhaps SyFy may have turned over a new leaf somehow. Yes, definitely some very bad treatments in the past, a terrible reputation that they earned, but something new that breaks from the pattern as well. I'd say it's worth being a tiny bit optimistic about them.
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- mseebach 9y agoI hope they don't end up reveling in the dystopia rather than accepting that it's the backdrop, not the story. I think The Man in the High Castle rather overdid the dystopia-part and suffered for it.
- moomin 9y agoIndeed, the book isn't about Nazis and the show 100% is. Snow Crash is hard to adapt because the author treads a very fine line between the future being a negative judgement on today's values and it being... cool. I imagine they'll go for the cool and leave the eco meta narrative on the cutting room floor.
- mapmap 9y agoAgreed. The Man in the High Castle keeps the main characters going, unlike Game of Thrones, yet each episode leaves me feeling more uncomfortable than GoT's red wedding - which arguably set the modern high water mark for audience distress. Hard to watch.
- puranjay 9y agoI'm surprised HBO or Netflix haven't tried to pick up Dune. Would be a great follow-up to Game of Thrones.
- jsat 9y agoDune is hard to get right... although someone someday will make an excellent TV show out of Dune I think.
- ZenoArrow 9y agoThe Jodorowsky version sounded interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg4OCeSTL08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg4OCeSTL08
- taejo 9y agoYeah, it sounds amazing, but I think it would have been a disaster. Jodorowsky never actually read Dune, and he had the grandiose, completely impractical ideas: Salvador Dalí as the Emperor, his girlfriend with no acting experience as Irulan, Jodorowsky's son who also had no acting experience as Paul (the main character). Jodorowsky saw himself more as a God than a Director, IMO.
- loopbit 9y agoI watched the documentary in a small screening a few years ago and the project sounded incredible... It wasn't Dune, not the Dune we've read, but amazing nonetheless. I definitely recommend watching it (be forewarned, Jodorowsky's english is atrocious). So many interesting stories about that movie: Some of the design work and the people that worked with Jodorowsky actually went into Alien. I mean, Giger, of course, but also Dan O'Bannon a few other people. He actually got Dali and Orson Welles to say yes to the project. Dali wanted to be the most expensive actor in history. The story with his son borders abuse. He basically wanted to convert him into the Kwisatz Haderach and made him go through a very tough training for years. Personally, I did enjoy David Lynch's version and even the tv mini-series they did (back in the late 90's?).
- Animats 9y agoAmazon 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.
- oblio 9y agoYou're probably joking, but, on the off chance - have there been any discussions about a Starcraft movie or TV series? :)
- Ygg2 9y agoGod I hope not. Blizzard sucks balls at making coherent story.
- kazagistar 9y agoAlso, starcraft is pretty dead as an IP right now, so there isn't a lot of profit to it.
- Ygg2 9y agoI don't think it is. They made good money off it. Plus they can use that IP in other projects like Heroes of the Storm.
- megaman22 9y agoIt'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...
- Freak_NL 9y agoTrekWars: 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?
- viraptor 9y ago> “Snow Crash,” ..., is a one-hour science fiction drama ... It sounds like it could be a very cut down version with just Hiro, Metaverse, maybe some sword swinging. I hope they'll go for more than just an extended action sequence in CGI world.
- musha68k 9y agoThis is very “annoying” as I usually am able to dismiss most modern TV shows because of mediocre to bad writing. Each and every show I am able to skip is a huge win in life/time – most good old Star Trek and TV shows of the 80s and 90s let you skip episodes without you losing track of (most of) the story. I digress. I’ve read Snow Crash and Ringworld – for the most part they were genuinely fantastic, let’s hope they don’t over-polish (most new productions don’t have “soul” IMHO) and over-stretch the TV adaptations (mini series ought to be enough in these cases). While they are already at it - time to see a show based on Ursula K. LeGuin’s writings as well.
- arethuza 9y agoI'd dearly love to see something based on the Culture books - though I appreciate that stories about atheistic, space faring, hedonistic, drug taking communists who are more or less kept as pets by god-like AIs might make the pitch a bit tricky to anyone other than the BBC...
- musha68k 9y agoCue the "outrage dollar" but you could be right there... The most far-out sci-fi needs to be read anyhow – so many images today, so little imagination. "Be conservative in what you choose to binge-watch and be more liberal in taking time to read instead."
- arethuza 9y agoI'd rather like to have a snarky SC drone (if that's not a tautology) voiced by Peter Capaldi in a detuned Malcolm Tucker mode. The Scottish accent would, of course, be appropriate...
- mcbain 9y agoI quite like that idea, although I guess in my head the drones were more a cynical Received Pronunciation, like Daniel Craig’s Bond.
- Sniffnoy 9y agoRingworld, huh? When are they going to do Footfall, is what I want to know.
- moomin 9y agoDon't get me wrong, I love Footfall. But its politics are a vastly bad idea in the current environment. (Get someone like Jimmy Carter as president and then do Footfall. Just like Trump makes The Handmaid's Tale apposite.) Also, it's a fundamentally limited story. It'd make a great mini-series but Ringworld could go anywhere. There's not only multiple sequels, but you could junk the lot and explore the world further, take off and expand into Known Space or do backstory with the Man-Kzin Wars. In short, it's got what you want for a long running TV show.
- ghaff 9y agoRingworld and Known Space more broadly provide a really interesting and large canvas. In fact, the flaws of Ringworld as a novel (like a number of Niven's longform works it's a bit of a travelogue) actually makes it a great setting for a somewhat open-ended set of stories.
- greedo 9y ago"like a number of Niven's longform works it's a bit of a travelogue" So it's like GoT in the first five seasons? :)
- camillomiller 9y agoWow, we're living in the Streaming Rinascimento of popular culture. I like it. :)
- paulajohnson 9y agoI don't believe that you can do justice to Snow Crash in just an hour. Its going to be visually great, but with all the complexity and depth stripped out.
- icebraining 9y agoI think they mean each episode is one hour long, not the full show.
- croon 9y agoBut Amazon usually produces pilots for shows before deciding on a full season order. Or has this changed?
- empath75 9y agoSo? I would just be the first episode. You don’t do the whole book in an hour.
- croon 9y agoSo, they need to sell people in that first hour, to get the chance of telling the rest of the story.
- empath75 9y agoSnow crash has one of the best opening chapters of any novel I’ve read. Though the central premise feels somewhat dated now that everybody assumes self driving cars are around the corner.
- CocaKoala 9y agoIsn't the opening of Snow Crash the scene where Hiro is delivering the pizza and he crashes his car and YT comes along and delivers the pizza for him? If you can't sell an audience on the strength of that opening, you shouldn't be making television.
- denisehilton 9y agoI cannot help but be skeptical about these series. Amazon should leave it to the other producers that are popular in this field.
- zimpenfish 9y agoI'm still holding out hope that a Lensman TV series / movie will appear before I die.
- ghaff 9y agoIt would be hard to get the feel right. It's so grounded in old school pulp SF/space opera that it would be a tough balancing act to update it to something palatable while staying true to the spirit of the original.
- falsedan 9y agoThere was a series of films in the late 70s which were an indirect adaptation: Star Wars (have you heard of them? Worth checking out)
- sideshowb 9y ago[011010001 100110000 011111001 001001101] Gotcha. Haha.
- ejosafat 9y agoWorst news I've read in a long time. All series produced by Amazon based on books or comics I love have been a huge disappointment: The man in the high castle, preacher, American Gods... You can watch a whole season and what happened? Basically nothing. They stretch and stretch a couple of plots and that's it. My friends says that's ok, they create a specific atmosphere/mood with that...bullshit, it's just like when you get a present and you're actually more exicited about unwrapping that fancy colourful wrap that in the content. At least HBO (Game of Thrones) or Netflix (The expanse) tend to be more faithful to the content and things happen at a reasonable pace
- SwellJoe 9y agoAmerican Gods is a Starz production, and Preacher is made by AMC. Only Man In The High Castle is Amazon-produced.
- ejosafat 9y agoThanks for the clarification! There might be hope then
- ben-schaaf 9y agoWasn't the expanse made by Syfy and Netflix only bought the rights to it?
- ejosafat 9y agommm....yeah, I think you're right
- matwood 9y agoAs mentioned elsewhere Preacher and American Gods are not Amazon. Additionally, Bosch, which I think is Amazons best show, is based on a series of books.
- brador 9y agoThe goal is to keep you subscribed. Finishing a plot or series goes counter to that aim.
- s_kilk 9y agoI'll take Snow Crash, but wouldn't a TV series of Gibson's "Bridge Trilogy" be sweet?
- e12e 9y agoAnd/or "Diamond Age".
- Dowwie 9y agoSnow Crash deserves a $100 Million production budget
- EvanAnderson 9y agoI remain convinced that any treatment, aside from Anime, won't do Snow Crash justice.
- hprotagonist 9y agothe ghost in the shell OVA or SAC team could probably pull it off. live action will be challenging. i’m not enthusiastic about their success.
- ihuman 9y agoWhich OVA are you talking about, the SAC compilation OVAs, or the Arise series? Both are by Production I.G., but had different directors and writers.
- johan_larson 9y agoSnow Crash and Ringworld are no-fooling classics of SF. Alas, I am too manly to actually squee with delight at this news.
- bandrami 9y agoGood Lord. "Let's make everything; one might be the next GoT"?
- btown 9y agoThis is literally the thesis of the software startup industry as well. Ironically it was Amazon that arguably kicked off the latest wave by leveraging their resources to create AWS... can you blame them for doing the same in media, especially given the wealth of metrics they have about both physical shopping habits and digital media usage by the same people?
- overcast 9y agoI love when books become movies/series. I get to sell off my mint 1st edition hardcovers :D Apparently an unpopular opinion, but Snow Crash was horrendous. I slogged through that "in the present 3rd person point of view" satirical mess. Terrible prose, uneven pacing, painful.
- ajmarsh 9y agoGil the Arm would make such a great detective show. I hope Ringworld is successful so Amazon develops the rest of Larry Niven's known universe properties.
- QAPereo 9y agoA lot of the 'Known Space' short stories could make fantastic episodes of an anthology. Imagine a really faithful retelling of 'The Ethics of Madness'!
- pp19dd 9y agoThe Mote in God's Eye could make an incredible movie.
- Rhinobird 9y agoI thought it would make a good mini-series. Needs like 3 or 4 hour long episodes.
- tmaly 9y agoI really enjoyed reading the Ringworld series. Snow Crash was also good. I would love to see the produce a series on Neuromancer
- nickhalfasleep 9y agoYeah, you know, a monopolist's work is never done. No such thing as a perfect monopoly. Seems like you can never get that last one-tenth of one percent. Chapter 14 (Interview with L. Bob Rife) So Bezos will play the part of L. Bob Rife?
- mixmastamyk 9y agoI wish someone would pick up “Dark Matter.” Came to really enjoy the show on Netflix only to see it cancelled. It was popular too, doesn’t make sense.
- cableshaft 9y agoProbably an unpopular opinion here, but maybe I'll watch Snow Crash now that I won't have to wade through the awful word vomit "let me prove how smart I am" never-ending-sentences that Neal Stephenson used in that book. I've also read Cryptonomicon, and he dials it down a lot more in that one (although it's still present), and I found it a lot more readable.
- undersuit 9y agoI hope Ringworld tries to be a bit funny. It's got a 200 year old playboy, an impossibly lucky female sex symbol, a conniving vegetarian coward, and let's not forget the gruff, cuddly, badass Kzin Speaker-to-Animals; not to mention the tech is godlike, I'd bet on a Known Space fleet beating a Star Trek fleet any day. It should be more like Tripping the Rift, Lexx, or Stargate with Daniel and O'Neil than one of the more serious Sci-Fi shows.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago> not to mention the tech is godlike, I'd bet on a Known Space fleet beating a Star Trek fleet any day. This is not the venue for this discussion, but it's one I'd love to have with you. Known Space has two gimmicks that might throw Starfleet for a loop, but I'd put my money on N.C.C. Anything in just about any fight. (Now, if there's a Protector aboard, then I'd hedge my bets a bit differently...)
- undersuit 9y agoStasis Fields and General Products hulls?
- swasheck 9y agoI am certainly excited about this. However, I am also curious about what happened to Oasis https://www.amazon.com/Oasis/dp/B06W5H33JH https://www.amazon.com/Oasis/dp/B06W5H33JH. The pilot was interesting and engaging. I'd like to see where that story goes, too.
- NedIsakoff 9y agoI really want a TekWars remake ;p
- TheMagicHorsey 9y agoSnowcrash did not age well, in my opinion. I remember it fondly, and it was cool when it came out ... but Neal Stephenson is a great concept artist, but a terrible writer. Diamond Age is so much better.
- Sangermaine 9y agoI think the issue is that most people, especially people reading it today, read it out of context. Most people approach it as a work on its own, and so it can appear odd. What you need to keep in mind is that it's a parody of cyberpunk tropes, as the genre had congealed and become stale by the early 90s and Snow Crash pokes fun at what it became.
- uoaei 9y agoEver since I read Snow Crash, I wondered to myself, why hasn't this been adapted as a screenplay yet? It played in my head like a movie when I first read it. No other book has done that. Neal Stephenson's writing style is really cinematic and I'm glad it's now being adapted for viewing.
- starrychloe 9y agoHow can Jeff Bezos, a globalist, pro-government, socialist possibly do Snow Crash justice?
- pavel_lishin 9y agoHe's not going to be behind the camera, you realize.
- VikingCoder 9y agoI hope they keep doing well. And maybe someday, one of these networks will earn the right to make a miniseries out of Daniel Suarez's "Daemon."