From Geek Tyrant: “The SyFy Channel has picked up the rights to the Robert Heinlein’s 1961 sci-fi classic novel Stranger in a Strange Land, and they are adapting it as a TV series. ”
Well.
OK.
That is certainly… certainly something that is happening.
:pause:
I certainly wish them well in this endeavor. And perhaps Syfy will indeed take this opportunity to shed their former form and display their new one to the world, as a butterfly emerges from its chrysalis. …Or a shark, from its tornado.
They have done well on the Expanse and The Magicians… let’s not mention the elephant (Earthsea) in the room…
Why don’t they try something fun from Heinlein, like And He Built A Crooked House?
I still have not forgiven Sy-Fy for cancelling Farscape (The greatest original science fiction show of the modern era.)
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So when they decided to go full carnival barker with the Sharknados and Sharkbats and whatnot, I did not care. This might be an insult to carnival barkers, though. Do they still have carnival barkers the way we think of them? Bearded lady and what not?
Eh.
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Okay, look, I get that “Stranger…” is an *important* book in the SciFi canon .. I even get that it’s a good book.
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I didn’t find it to be all that others did.
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Of course, I say the same about LeGuin’s ‘Earthsea’ stuff .. the world-build is good, but the characters .. leave me unenthusiastic.
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Mew
LeGuin has such a detached way of writing that it’s hard to get emotionally involved. I liked “The Tombs of Atuan” the best of the Earthsea trilogy, but none of the characters are as compelling as, say, Thorby and Baslim in “Citizen of the Galaxy”. Which would make a good miniseries.
I agree about Earthsea. I thought “The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas” was excellent. But I wasn’t that thrilled with Earthsea.
Don’t get me started on Omelas. 😉
I read that Tom Hanks tried to get this one made for years and could never get it off the ground.
Recently just reread Heinlein’s story If This Goes On- about the overthrow of a religious theocracy that had taken over the United States.
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Besides bearing some obvious earmarks of an inexperienced author, the parts that deal explicitly with religion are particularly cringe-worthy.
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I haven’t read Stranger in a Strange Land in decades, but I don’t remember being particularly impressed with it when I first read it, and a glance at the Wikipedia summary makes it sounds like he really didn’t get any better at dealing with religious issues in the 20 years following If This Goes On-.
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(I also remember reading his 1984 book Job: A Comedy of Justice and thinking it might’ve been more aptly titled Heinlein Versus His Religious Strawman.)
Not that implausible in terms of personalities, I think.
Nehemiah Scudder = Elmer Gantry + Jim Jones + Huey Long + Adolf Hitler
… and Jim Jones did his thing after Heinlein wrote “If This Goes On …”/Revolt in 2100.
I’m thinking HBO would have been more appropriate. The word “gratuitous” seems almost mandatory in the description.
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Heinlein wrote some really good stuff.
But his various excursions into religious criticism range from bad to awful.
I think I’ve mentioned this previously … but what the heck, here it is again:
In one chapter of a collection of essays by various authors on writing SF, Harlan Ellison presented an anecdote about meeting a Hollywood producer who held the option on Stranger in a Strange Land, back in the Seventies. It turned out that the guy hadn’t actually read the novel … but his girlfriend had, and she had some REALLY NEAT IDEAS on how to “improve” it. Harlan had to leave the room to prevent himself from inflicting grievous bodily harm upon the twit.