Great Science Fiction Books That Shouldn't Be Movies

There are a lot of very popular science fiction books which people talk about making into movies. And I can certainly understand the desire to see your favorite book as a movie. I too love Foundation, Ender’s Game and many other books on these lists, but the truth is that the idea of turning many of these into movie’s worry me.

An Ender’s Game movie for example sounds like a good idea, but there are a few problems. The first is that this is a movie that would require a large number of child actors and many of them would have to be good. This creates two problems, the first is finding that many kid actors which is not going to be easy. The other is that there are a lot of rules about how much child actors can work and other problems. In addition to this while it is a brilliant story in order to make it a movie you’re going to end up with the actual games they played through most of the book being mostly ignored or done in flashes. A TV miniseries might be able to overcome that. In addition to that you have other, important, parts of the book, such as the virtual reality game and most of Ender’s siblings which would likely be cut completely. A good director might convince me otherwise, but in large part I’m just not convinced that this book can really fit into a 2 hour movie and keep the same feel.

Even harder for me to imagine being made into a good movie is Foundation by Isaac Asimov. The problem with  Foundation as a movie is that Foundation is not a single story and the single stories that are in this are largely unconnected and have very few similar characters. On top of that many of the events of Foundation happen to people who are not actually shown. This leads to an epic story with brilliant ideas, but one that is not going to fit into a single Foundation movie. It covers too much time, too many people is too broad and is generally not an easy story to tell at all. So while I will watch a Foundation movie if it comes out I suspect it will be an Isaac Asimov story in the same way that I, Robot was, using some of the ideas but none of the basic plot.

While most good science fiction could be made into movies, some of the best books are good because they are able to cover much more than any movie could and while special effects and computer graphics have dramatically improved the possibilities of movies that doesn’t change the fact that some books are simply not going to fit into the format of a movie, no matter how good the book is.  

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Great Science Fiction Books That Shouldn't Be Movies
Great Science Fiction Books That Shouldn't Be Movies
Recommendations for Your First Science Fiction Book
Recommendations for Your First Science Fiction Book
Examining the top 5 science fiction books
Some time ago I found I found a sight called Sci-fi Lists which has the top 100 science fiction books of all time. I decided to attempt to read everything on that list. I'm still working on it but the first 5 were easy as two of my favorite books were in that number. What strikes me the most about the list is the variety of books. I suspect that in most genres if you gave a list of the top 100 you would find authors on the list more and being becoming similar. For today I thought i would share the first five of these books and my opinions on them. 1. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card This book is sometimes by favorite and sometimes second favorite book but I'm still surprised that it is number 1. This is a book about a young boy being trained to be a general in a war against an alien race. There has been some controversy surrounding this book. The Essay Ender and Hitler and the essay "Creating the Innocent Killer" both try to explain this. I suspect most of this simply exists because of the popularity of the book. Don't let either of these scare you away from this book. It is a great deal of fun and one of the best science fiction books available. 2. Dune by Frank Herbert What is there to say about Dune. I have read dune twice, the second time to confirm what I found the first time. I don't like Frank Herbert's writing style. He creates a deeply detailed world and interesting story and I recommend this book to anyone who likes stories with a lot of detail. Dune is the story of Paul Atreides, a son of a noble forced to move to the planet Dune which is inhospitable but the only place to get spice. The name Dune is approprate because the story really is about this one world. 3. Foundation by Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov is science fiction master and this is considered his best work. In this book Asimov discusses the technology of psycho-history. The ability to predict the way events with large groups will turn out.  The creator of this science discovered the empire was going to collapse and so created two foundations that would shorten that collapse from 30,000 years to a thousand. Fantastic book, Asimov eventually tried to connect this with his robot series. I never really liked that idea all that much but it does not harm the book any. In addition some of the books after the original trilogy are not as good, but reading this is well worth your time. 4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams Typically I am not enamored with science fiction humor. I'm not sure why, but Hitchhiker's guide is the exception to that. Along with Ender's game this vies for my favorite book. What is odd is that the two couldn't be less alike, and neither could the authors. Beginning with the destruction of earth to make way for a bypass this is a satire about Arthur Dent who is the last human saved off earth, which is a computer designed to discover the ultimate question of life the universe and everything. (the answer has already been discovered and is 42). Because the earth was so close to discovering it, it is suspected he may know the question. As a radio play, a TV series, a movie and a book this is always fun and always a bit different from previous incantations but any of them are worth seeing. Just don't judge the others by any version. 5. 1984 by George Orwell It is fitting that a political work should appear in the top 5 of science fiction books as it is one of the things that science fiction does well is illuminate things that we are often too close to see. I read this in high school. My teacher had a list of genres and you had to read at least one book from each. I managed to fit science fiction and fantasy stories into 4 of the 5 categories. This was my classic and it is. This book is often used as a metaphor, most commonly used as big brother, but what strikes me is how similar spam is to the books in this book which were created by computers. In many ways these books couldn't be less like each other, and neither could the authors. From Mormons to athiests and trageties to comedies the science fiction genre is not one that lacks in tradition or personality. i would recommend any of these books to anyone whethere they think they like science ficiton or not.
Random Stuff, Science Fiction ReviewsElton GahrEnder's Game movie, Foundation Movie, isaac asimov, orson scott cardComment