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Now we'll see what I can do with this planet. [Red Mars]
Butler
89 episodes or bustRegistered User regular
89 episodes or bustRegistered User regular
It seems my favourite book series that I am reading right now is getting adapted for TV by Babylon 5's J. Michael Straczynski, with GoT's Vince Gerardis producing.
I want to be excited but I'm scared of getting hurt. Those are two fantastic names to have attached though.
If you haven't read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, you should really give it a go. It's the very hardest of hard science fiction, concerning near-future humanity's colonisation and terraformation of Mars over a timescale of centuries, but it's as much a political and philosophical exploration of how living on an alien world changes us as human beings - or fails to do so. Most of the focus is on the first hundred colonists and their relationships and activities, and they're all really three-dimensional, interesting, flawed people. That includes the female characters, who get just as much page-time as the guys, and if anything are even better-written.
Details about the TV show are thin on the ground at the moment but we can use this thread to talk about the books too. Don't forget spoiler tags!
I want to be excited but I'm scared of getting hurt. Those are two fantastic names to have attached though.
If you haven't read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, you should really give it a go. It's the very hardest of hard science fiction, concerning near-future humanity's colonisation and terraformation of Mars over a timescale of centuries, but it's as much a political and philosophical exploration of how living on an alien world changes us as human beings - or fails to do so. Most of the focus is on the first hundred colonists and their relationships and activities, and they're all really three-dimensional, interesting, flawed people. That includes the female characters, who get just as much page-time as the guys, and if anything are even better-written.
Details about the TV show are thin on the ground at the moment but we can use this thread to talk about the books too. Don't forget spoiler tags!
Butler on
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Dennis Quaid as John Boone
Alfred Molina as Frank Chalmers
Well some of the biology stuff gets a bit sketchy towards the end if I recall correctly. Still loved the books and the themes of deciding how we want to live and evil international capital should resonate pretty well in today's climate.
I wonder:
a) How they're going to do the landscape shots? Could be pretty easy to do it all in the american west and recolour the sky. I hope there is a big diversity in landscape though, exploring Mars was such a big deal in the books.
b) How they're going to deal with modern Russia not being 80's Russia, or the change in the relative power of Japan and China you get in a lot near future stuff written in the 80s.
c) How they're going to deal with the multi-decade timescales the book happened over.
d) Michael Emerson as Sax Russell?
a) Uh I dunno. Something something computers?
b) I think they could rejig the political background pretty easily. As long as they keep the basic idea of powerful nations gradually being superseded by powerful corporations, the details of who is from where won't matter too much.
c) Well the (Red Mars spoilers)
I'm never completely sure why I stop, I just do.
Might be time for another run at them...
Also I'd be onboard with your dream cast, Butler, though add in Damian Lewis somewhere and I'd just throw money at it all day long.
Spike has ordered 10 episodes of "Red Mars" straight-to-series, which means a full season is getting made without waiting to see how the pilot does. JMS and Vince Gerardis are still attached.
Crossing my fingers that this doesn't end up as another "We really liked the title" adaptations.
I'd better hurry up and finish them though, cause I'm so watching that.
Did the first book deal with venture capitalists mining asteroids,
with the following book dealing with a nanobot contaminated Mars?
There are certainly some major character deaths that just come out of nowhere in the books. It doesn't really have a "red wedding" equivalent though.