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Comment by mathewsanders | Hacker News Reader

You could argue that Star Trek is an 'space soap opera' haha ;)

But I agree, there are some pretty bad films being made under the science fiction genre. I want movies referencing hard science fiction (was wondering the other day what an adaption of 'The Three-Body Problem' might be like) and space operas too (Culture series is dying for a film adaption).

But in terms of science fiction, I think it's great seeing non-space material being made too. Stuff like 'Dark Mirror', 'The Man from Earth', and 'Safety Not Guaranteed' are pretty good indicators to me that good science fiction has gone mainstream.

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> ...(Culture series is dying for a film adaption).

There was a recent discussion in /r/TheCulture about who Culture fans would like to see direct a movie adaptation of one of the books [1]. I'm dubious a live action film could be successful and at the same time live up to one of the books; it would take some mighty fine screenwriting to not slip into excessive expository minutiae about The Culture, and so much of the attraction of the books to many fans was the reader wasn't repeatedly hit over the head with explanations of the setting.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCulture/comments/62g6mk/if_you_c...

I could see Use of Weapons or The Player of Games work. Most of the rest of the books are too... weird to get right in a 2-hour movie format.

I suspect all of the books are too weird for mainstream audiences at this time, though I would love to be proven wrong. Glanded designer drugs, gender changes by thought, AGI at millions to billions multiple of a human intellect, Grid energy,... As the list goes on, it would be too easy to veer into fantasy-like depictions, because to date there have been no major successful science fiction movies set in a post-scarcity environment. And Banks' Culture is unabashedly, raucously, bawdily post-scarcity.

Any movie treatment of The Culture runs the constant risk of only getting the glossing highlights reel version that Dune received, and I'd be concerned that the mechanics of the story setting, neat as they are, in a movie would get in the way of telling the real story of Banks' more interesting themes via his incisive commentary delivered by holding up The Culture mirror-like, comparing to our own civilization.

> it would be too easy to veer into fantasy-like depictions, because to date there have been no major successful science fiction movies set in a post-scarcity environment.

The earliest science fiction I recall set in a post-scarcity environment is "Star Trek: TNG". Granted, the socio-economic impact of replicators is not a focus of the series or the movies, replicators are more of background/world-building device ("Tea, Earl Grey, hot")

Sorry, I should have phrased it as a positive-outcome post-Singularity environment. Mainstream audiences might not grasp the nuance between post-scarcity and post-Singularity, but when I read the series for the first time, the Mind-level AGI figured prominently in setting The Culture apart from Star Trek. Around that axle, Banks wound into his setting near-unlimited, near-free energy (the Grid), galaxy-spanning capable FTL (1-200,000+ X speed of light), carefully-orchestrated anarchy as a practical and efficient "government", and all the other accoutrements. It is amazing Banks didn't readily yield to the temptation to use the Minds as a deus ex machina, and instead showed how they would also grapple with their own limitations, frustrations, doubts, etc.

Even more important than the sheer existence of the Minds was their egalitarian disposition and relationship to their pan-human co-citizens, and interesting tangentials like the Minds' polite yet firm declination to Sublime. I will sorely miss Banks' weaving of the tales of the proto-Culture, and how the early Minds came about to that position.

> Sorry, I should have phrased it as a positive-outcome post-Singularity environment. Mainstream audiences might not grasp the nuance between post-scarcity and post-Singularity

Post-scarcity and post-singularity are orthogonal - The Culture is both, Star Trek TNG is post-scarcity only, Rapture of the Nerds[1] (Stross & Doctorow) is post-singularity only.

1. http://craphound.com/rotn/Cory_Doctorow_and_Charles_Stross_-...

I'm pretty sure Banks said that he'd like Consider Phlebas to be made into a movie - he even offered to rewrite the ending to make it more upbeat.

I do think Use of Weapons could make a splendid movie - but it might be tricky hiding the basis for the twist at the end?

Consider Phlebas is what comes to mind right away. As I recall, Banks said that the book came about when he saw Star Wars and thought "I can do better," and it's already a movie-ish story.

Use of Weapons might work too. I can't see Player of Games translating to the big screen well, though. So much of it is about the game itself and the protagonist's thinking around it. And I do think the rest would be hopeless.

How, exactly, would you handle the ending of Use of Weapons?

Nice! I've never seen that subreddit before, will dive into that thread.

After posting that comment I spent a while wondering which novel would be best to jump start that sort of franchise and agree it's tricky to condense a novel into a movie. A lot of science fiction probably works better as a mini series or full TV series (could be interesting to have Culture take an approach like American Horror Story where each season is a self-contained story)

> A lot of science fiction probably works better as a mini series or full TV series...

If only animation automation got sufficiently good and economical enough that long-form (40+ hours) video storytelling was practical for more stories. I sometimes wonder if there is a Sapir-Whorf-style equivalent hypothesis for how we exchange our stories, where the storytelling modality (starting with just the time length our formats allow, but going much further afield with complexity management/expectations, formulation of models, etc.) shapes how our aggregate civilization thinks.

I find it criminal that "Rendevous with Rama" hasn't found a film adaptation yet.

And Dune hasn't been remade either. I want them to do that one as dark and crazy as the books.

You should check out Jodoorowsky's Dune if you haven't - a documentary about an unsuccessful attempt to make a Dune movie in the 1970s.

Dune has been butchered too often for another rewind. There's even a horrendous mini-series with very silly hats and extremely poor acting.

The Sci-Fi Dune miniseries was actually pretty good, I think, but you have to understand it as a filmed theatrical production rather than a "television show". I think this is in the abstract a decent choice since theater language is probably more appropriate to a Dune adaptation on the given budget than a "television show" adaptation, but it does mean you have to go into it with a substantially different mindset than you may have expected. And I don't expect everyone to like it even if they do go in that way because that may not be what they are looking for.

It's how they deal with not having the budget to actually put people in a desert so it's rather visibly a desert backdrop at some points, it's why the lighting is often so strong and monochromatic like a theater's lighting, it's why the acting is with all the characters projecting as if they are speaking to an audience rather than in a TV production. At one point they even use a very theatrical special effect based on backlighting through a thin cloth representing a tent to show Paul's hallucinations/thoughts, rather than even a simple bluescreen or conventional image compositing effect.

The effort is interesting, but I'd have to call it ultimately a failure (even if I personally ultimately enjoyed it) as it almost completely failed to speak to its audience. I also think you can't really follow it if you didn't read the books, which I consider a major flaw of an adaptation.

I agree with you in general. It's truer to the source material than the movie, but still has some deep flaws.

That's why I think it could still be done right. In a world where Riddick was big, Dune can sell. They're both compelling for similar reasons.

Really? It's a decent enough book--and I like Clarke in general--but it's one of those novels that is a travelogue as much as anything else. I expect you'd have to add to it considerably to create more conflict or whatever for it to be a good film.

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