Can you grok this?

[TheRealJoeFish]

I demand a $999 million+ 5-to-7 season production of the Foundation Trilogy and nothing else will suffice until that happens

[Rev. Rye]

I've read the book twice, and, I've recently heard of this news. And while I'm well aware of Syfy's reputation (they've fallen far from the days when I would watch Twilight Zone marathons on it), I am willing to defer judgment until they at least start filming, especially since potential film adaptations of classic books start up and die stillborn far more often that one might think; people have tried and failed to adapt it many times (needless to say, the group sex may make a faithful adaptation difficult.) Hell, they did a damn fine adaptation of Dune... even if it was in 2000.

I've even read a script of a planned adaptation in 1995 written by Heathers' Daniel Waters as a potential vehicle for Tom Hanks (who would almost certainly have been too old to play Michael and too young to play Jubal) and focuses far too heavily on the more philosophical first half, with the more story-driven later half starting 4/5 of the way through.

Read more here.

Apparently, Waters couldn't finish the book, and apparently decided to do the Dixon Steele in In a Lonely Place method of having a friend read it and explain the plot to him. This may be a good idea for, say, a Mickey Spillane book with bugger-all in the way of literary merit, particularly in an era where in-name-only adaptations of such novels were the norm, but for a book with such a big fandom decades later, covering lots of intelligent themes in an era where audiences are more likely to be bothered by that is disgraceful.

Of course, however, I recently saw a trailer for another film that, for the first minute or so, I was sure was a bastardised adaptation of Stranger in a Strange Land.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73-573aWfs

Fortunately, it was not. Let's hope Syfy's version sticks truer to the novel than either that trailer or Daniel Waters' screenplay. And hopefully, they actually put more effort in this than they did for Sharknado.

[vorlon13]

and the reboot of The Prisoner !!

OMFG, did that thing REEK !!

[chimp3]

I grok . I will withhold judgement until Scfy proves it does.

[PETE_ROSE]

The Forever War is what people usually get introduced to him with.  

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PI184XG/ref...TF8&btkr=1

And there's a sequel to that. Also, John Steakley's Armor. 

However, if you like The Forever War then Starship Troopers would be of interest, I think.

Actually read Armor twice over 20 years ago. Thought Starship Troopers was loosely based on it.

[Rev. Rye]

And there's a sequel to that. Also, John Steakley's Armor. 

However, if you like The Forever War then Starship Troopers would be of interest, I think.

Actually read Armor twice over 20 years ago. Thought Starship Troopers was loosely based on it.

Starship Troopers was written almost three decades before Armor. Although I wouldn't be surprised if Paul Verehoven put a little bit of Armor into his film version, from what little I've read about it (as in I only heard about it just now and decided to look up their Wikipedia and TVTropes pages), Armor and the film version of Starship Troopers seem to take their critiques of the military in very different directions, with Armor focusing on the traumatic nature of warfare, and Paul Verehoven (if Michael Ironside is any indication) saying that "If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn't work, no one will listen to me. So I'm going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships, but it's only good for killing fucking bugs!," which sums up his approach very well; create a shiny, seemingly utopian vision, but letting the cracks in the insanity of the whole situation show through.

And, of course, Heinlein's novel is a very different beast altogether. One would have expected Hollywood to take a War is Hell novel, dress it up so they're not likely to lose contracts with the Department of Defense for more lucrative projects and gussy it up so it makes the whole enterprise seem more glorious. With Starship Troopers, they did the exact opposite.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

SyFy did "Stranger Things", which gives me hope for this.

And VerHooven should have read the book, not just the back cover. Dickhead.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Heinlein should have sued Haldeman over 'Forever War'. I like both authors, but 'FW' was simply a dirtier version of 'Starship Troopers'.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Heinlein should have sued Haldeman over 'Forever War'.  I like both authors, but 'FW' was simply a dirtier version of 'Starship Troopers'.

Boru

Actually, not so much. RAH was, in part, looking at one possible political paradigm, one where citizens earned the franchise through labor that ensured the survival of the society. I found that book useful in training new petty officers when I was active duty. If they "got it" then that was a plus for them. I didn't tell them that overtly, of course, they would have passed it along. 


The Forever War was a Vietnam allegory.