There is the general spoiler page for general questions.
I’m making this set of pages for more specific questions.
The rule is: do not ask or comment about a book until it has been at least a month in issue. I think that will make everybody happy re spoilers.
How cool is my avatar? 🙂 Excellent!
Curious – I find that many of the situations in Cyteen are great theater. Has there been any movement or interest in either film or television? The confrontation where Ari II propositions Justin is high theater.
Never has been. It’s a large book. Most movies are really short stories.
It would have to be a series on HBO to accommodate time and content rating (see Game of Thrones). Though Caprica shows hardcore scifi that doesn’t involve aliens and space battles isn’t the easiest to sell on tv even if it is good. (still missing my scientist espionage/Eric Stoltz show.)
One could argue that shows like Bones and NCIS push the technological envelope enough to qualify as (at least) border-line stf. The hard sell is an intelligent show that doesn’t have a dead body or a cool explosion very quarter-hour.
I like Bones (and it’s cousin Castle) too with their variations on forensic/procedural fiction, but the tone of the shows are definitely key in keeping the mainstream fans on board. That and the relationships of course. I got my parents into them because I dangled not-so-vague Remington Steel references at them. People really go for that kind of stuff and that’s the realm I’d put Bones in over scifi even though it does give more than the occasional nod to us. They tend to show some warmth to the fandom subcultures than the CBS varieties.
I’m also fond of Fringe. The guy who plays the dual role of the Leader and the brain-damaged scientist absolutely deserves an Emmy—one of the best actors on television, and was imho snobbily passed over for an Emmy because his show is sf. Kudos also to the female agent, who now is channelling Leonard Nimoy, [literally] and doing a pretty good job of it. This show is brilliant.
Other shows we like: House; Hell’s Kitchen; Who Do You Think You Are?; and Lie to Me. If you get that we have a pattern of obnoxious heroes, this is probably true. We’re also very fond of Anime, notably Bleach, Saiyuki, Kyo Kara Maoh, Gravvy and Descendents of Darkness; and lately we’ve been charmed by the very soppy cutesy teen-romance DNAngel, which actually has a good story in its hearts and flowers and bunny wabbit. We started watching because Netflix sent it, we groaned at the bunny wabbit, and then—by golly, there’s plot in here! Now we think the wabbit is rather delightful.
I love Fringe! It is my favorite show of any kind right now, especially this season with Anna Torv playing around five different roles without flaw. What are we up to now? Olivia as herself, Olivia thinking she is Fauxlivia, Fauxlivia pretending to be Olivia, Fauxlivia as herself, and Bellivia now (I normally hate name-mashing but I think it is called for in this situation). She should have gotten best actress and supporting actress if the world made any sense. Which I know isn’t the case since John Noble doesn’t win either.
Normally with tv (outside of HBO and that sort) I have expectations I set aside because I doubt the show will actually go there, but Fringe goes there and beyond I find. I feel spoiled. I think what I like the most is that we have an legitimately evil scientist who is on a humbling redemption storyline, the leading male character who gets the traditional fairy princess storyline, and the leading female character who gets the superhero storyline. Other shows would reset the genders and maybe be about one of those things while Fringe takes them all on and does them better than in recent memory. Now if they could only get Astrid field tested already…
I’ve been watching less anime than usual, but what I am watching is pretty new. I like Level E which is a scifi comedy sorta like a funny version of Twilight Zone where most of the cast changes out each episode. xxxHolic is like a modern cautionary tale that uses Japanese mythology rather than western. It is lighthearted on the surface but any good tale has to have darkness in it and xxxHolic has a range of extreme consequences. Eden of the East is the most polished of the bunch. It is deeper scifi that reminds me a bit of Fringe in how it deals with the alt ‘verse. That one is pretty short. More of a mini series.
What I have been into lately is Korean live action drama. It started off with Coffee Prince on hulu which is a genderbending/romance/comedy/drama (there needs to be a word for that…) and moved on to Princess Hours/Goong which is about a fictional, modern democratic monarchy in crisis and a commoner who gets sucked up into it their crazy, restrictive lifestyle. It is part drama, part romance, and part lesson in karma. Right now I am watching Lady Castle/My Fair Lady. I swear I am not a completely sap normally, but they do these so well. I love how they avoid the traditional villain by having rivals or grey characters who can be reconciled with through understanding their headspace them rather than simple bad people vs good people. The conflicts are much more interesting to me.
We got to know Korean drama through Dai Jo Yeong, and if anybody ever finds the DVDs of this show, we’d sure like to know.
Links appreciated. We love knowing about new (or old) good ones.
I don’t think they get a lot get official R1 releases. You can find sketchy looking region free versions, but those are not official either. Might as well make your own at that point. At least you could be sure the translation is good then. Still, all of this is better than fansubbing VHS rings of the 1990s.
Oh, looks like Princes Hours did get an official release. That was mega popular when it came out though. So tempting…
Pooh on anime – although I too like to watch some – while a single movie would not do for Cyteen, a 26 episode series on the sci-fi channel might work. Or perhaps a long running Manga or comic book?
I have just finished listening to Cyteen – what a well written book even if I deplore the AZI. I await the next volume on disk – I have it in hardcover but I enjoy listening to Ms. Cherry’s books. Good Stuff.
I think that any filmed version of Cyteen would have to be a miniseries at the least, and between Cyteen and Regenesis, there’s quite the storyline. I could see all sorts of scenes building and playing out with each other – and all the side stories that our minds gloss over to follow Ariane through everything.
I can just see the machinations of Corain, Jordan, et al, and the whole first Act, really making for a great two to six hour series by themselves, culminating in a beautiful baby Ariane being birthed from a womb tank, kicking off the next miniseries segment.
I would LOVE to see some of our esteemed author’s work brought to screen and a wider audience. I don’t know how you feel, but I can guess, estimable CJ, and so it may well not happen, sad though it is to me.
I’m not sure I’d want to see any of CJ’s books made into film. So much of the key exposition takes place in the lead characters’ heads. I’ve actually spent a lot of time thinking about this. Imho, the best candidate for film would be the Heavy Time/Hellburner story, or some of the smaller Alliance-Union books (Rimrunners comes to mind, probably because I’m re-reading it right now, worn-out cover, falling-out pages and all.) I think the Chanur series could be wonderful on film, but again, so much of Pyanfar’s character comes through her internal dialogue. And I cringe at the thought of what Hollywood might do to the Atevi or the Hani. My reluctant conclusion is that the stories stand alone so well, and anything that might take away from their general excellence would diminish them. The poignancy that I love so much probably wouldn’t come through on screen.
All that said, wouldn’t Matthew McConnaughy make an excellent Tully?
As much as I love the idea of Rimrunners as a film, I think there’s too much unspoken history attached to Bet’s character and the story itself. Trying to explain the Company Wars, the Mazianni and in particular the spacer mindset to a new audience would be pretty tricky and would probably be dropped in favour of some gross simplification.
The same applies to the other A/U books too, especially Merchanter’s Luck. Let’s be honest, Sandor’s behaviour is a bit irrational by normal standards.
Hey, I resemble that remark!
😉
Spiderdavon’s comment about unspoken history make’s me think when my shock as a reader – and of the terror of the unfortunate (but wholly deserving) man who Bet tells that her shipname was “Africa”, right before she takes her time killing him. To me a large part of the book is built on our knowledge of the company wars, and of the reputation of The Fleet in general. That’s not a criticism, far from it, but it does mean that it might make it hard to present it as a short story (a film), to hint at all the richness and complexity we know is there without taking emphasis away from the focus of the story.
One of my favourite bits of the book, just so you know 🙂
…
Y’know, now I’m thinking about how to stage that.
Start with a short synopsis of the war in print, a la ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…’ as per Star Wars, over a starfield. Yeah, it’s Tell, not Show, but it’s also fast. Then: action scenes: ships shooting, stuff blowing up, Bet getting out of her suit and scrambling away?
Next scenes: Time compression! Instead of it being months and months later, make it days, at most. Bet is trying to blend in. There have been damaged ships come in, lots of refugees, lots of chaos… begging at station doors, same getting slammed in her face. Maybe have the station cops rough her up, getting her out of an office. Ritterman moves in on her, and, desperate, Bet says yes. (Or: have LOKI and Alliance hunting Bet and/or other Marines through the station, she takes up Ritterman’s offer as a means of eluding them. That compresses things to hours.)
Scene in Ritterman’s flat: up the ante. He’s not just a sleaze, he’s out-and-out psycho, gorging himself on abusive violence because he finally can. Except… “What ship?” “Africa.” Which we know from the synopsis is Bad News for the non-professional bad guy. 1, 2, 3… he’s down, Bet smiles, fade.
Next scene: she finishes taping the vents. No clear shot of him, but red everywhere. She cleans off his station cards, tosses the rag in through the door, closes it…
…And not running to LOKI. Getting press-ganged onto her. With NG?
It could be done. You’d have to chop the story down a lot (which is a pity) but it is a different medium. They did all right with LotR.
I think Rimrunners would be a good introduction to A-U on film. Secondary to Downbelow Station, maybe, but that’s a very complex and dark story. I like the idea of the first p.o.v. being from the Fleet’s side. I think if you start to tell any part of A-U, Q on Pell would be a good place to start to tell the whole story, just like it was written (wasn’t Downbelow pretty much first? I should know that). I think the brief timeline of events from when Bet joins Loki until the end would allow for a lot of the back story from Downbelow Station to be presented as most of the first part of the film.
I’m still ambiguous about filming any of Ms. Cherry’s work, but if it were to happen I just think Rimrunners would be a simpler story to tell–although Heavytime would be the real jumping off point, right? Maybe the first p.o.v. should be the belt miners, after all? Or Earth’s, anyway. One of the best things for me about Alliance-Union is getting the story from so many angles.
Angel With A Sword would make a wonderful movie, too. It was my first Cherryh read and it was so different from anything else I’d ever read. I’ve always pictured Angelica Huston and Lori Petty as Retribution and Altair Jones, respectively. (You can tell I’m not one of the gifted who can discuss the dimensions of station docks or the exact capabilities of FTLs right down to the galley specs!)
Ruadhan – that doesn’t work for me I’m afraid. Rimrunners is all about the spacer mindset – why a woman would choose starving to death in a toilet rather than give up an almost non-existent chance of a crew slot on a starship, and why her loyalties would shift so dramatically.
Now, Angel with the Sword – that would work. You can get the whole Scouring bit out of the way in a blaze of CGI then cut to tatty old Merovingen rotting away in the mist. Not sure about Lori though – she looks way to old for Altair. How about Hannah Spearitt? I like Huston as Retribution. She’s dead of course, but pops up in Altair’s internal dialogues and would be a great way to fill in the back story.
@rollingstone: Rimrunners is simpler, yes. I think it could be worked up as an action-thriller, which the movies do very well. Downbelow Station, however, has much bigger dollops of suspense, which the movies do not do as well (suspense depends on what the audience does not know; action-thriller depends on what the audience can see. Since movies are so visual…)
I think Downbelow Station would do better as a mini-series, with a definite arc to it. If it were done as a movie, I think it would have to be a very pared-down version of ‘Mallory comes to Downbelow Station’, which really doesn’t do the book justice.
As for Heavy Time, that’s another action-thriller, with a story arc for Paul Dekker that goes from ‘last survivor’ to ‘hell on wheels pilot’, which Hollywood understands very well.
Mind, what Hollywood ‘understands’ and what it really, truly understands are two different things. Look at what they’ve done with Marvel’s Punisher character: he’s had, what, three movies so far? Four? And they still haven’t figured out the guy is trying to commit suicide by bad guy, but keeps failing!
@Spiderdavon: I disagree. I think Rimrunners is about Bet’s relationship with her ship, first AFRICA, then LOKI. She doesn’t want to be rooted, the way a stationer is; she wants a ship, and she’s willing to kill (Ritterman) or die (the toilet) for a chance at one.
I also think that this feeds into her attraction for NG. She knows crew, and what it takes to meld into one. Not only does she look at him and say to herself, “I like that, WANT,” she looks at him and says to herself, “He’s doing it wrong, FIX.” (This is about as maternal as she gets, which amuses me no end.)
Ultimately, Bet knows what she wants and why, and won’t take second-best; she’ll work to get things going the way she likes them. It’s what drives her character through the whole story.
@both of you re: Angel With A Sword: I have no clue about casting — I’ll leave that up to people who pay attention to actors. But otherwise, I’ve never really seen it as a movie — a TV series, though, yes. Or maybe I just hate thinking of Angel With A Sword being a standalone, without all the other stories in the Merovingian Nights tagging along with it!
(But no cat-whales. Srsly.)
Yah – but surely that is the spacer mindset? Ship = home/nation, crew = family? It was having her press-ganged I objected to.
On Angel, the catwhales I can take (just) – it’s Rat n Rif the singing eco-terrorists I took real exception to. And Dirty Harry Callaghan – oops sorry, Black Cal Halloran.
I agree about the press-gang–they’d better hit Bet hard and from behind! And about the Merovingian Nights stories–there were some cringe-worthy moments, true. Which is probably why I didn’t go with the mini-series idea. And yes, Lori Petty is too old now. She wasn’t when I first read the book, tho’. Likewise Angelica Huston. I just picture them that way. Must have been a casting director in a former life.
Not sure what you mean, Ruadhan, about an “arc” unless you mean a storyline or the middle of a storyline or what. The story is what it is with the characters it has. It’s how or whether a particularly story would or should be told on film and, yes, who might play different characters, and how each reader sees these things differently and why, that make the discussion worth having. I could say that my girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend looks like a perfect Mondragon (he does), but it wouldn’t be much of a reference. How much fun is it to pretend-film a book if you can’t pretend-cast the film?
I think Bet is a very motherly person, rather a lioness, actually. This last read the most compelling scenes to me were the interrogations and what it cost her to betray the Fleet, even tho’ they were a lost cause by then. She’s loyal and protective unto death, also responsible, and adherent to her own code of honor (survival), and of course fierce and deadly. I associate all of these things with motherhood. 🙂
Of the three books we’ve mentioned, Angel With A Sword would be the least likely to be termed “action thriller” and yet there’s plenty of action in that book–in fact, it’s almost constant. My whole objection to the Hollywood thing IS the genre labels and simplification that would most certainly mangle that which I hold dear. The whole “action thriller” slant bothers me tremendously because, although the action is always grand, it’s never the point of the story.
I don’t know if it’s spacer mindset or Bet mindset: she just really likes the ‘sense of belonging’ she gets in the Marines, and in general quarters when she arrived on LOKI. It’s comfortable to her, in a way that the station isn’t. I suspect that it may be the structure of a ship, vs. a station — very heirarchal, and you KNOW YOUR PLACE, etc. So much so, that she can look at NG and analyse just what he’s doing wrong and how to fix it so that he fits, too. After all, he’s pretty and she likes the pretty.
(And face it, NG desperately needed someone like Bet to show up and get him pointed in the right direction.)
You object to the press-ganging? I don’t think Bet would, since it would get her what she wants — onto a ship. Better yet, onto a non-civilian ship. In movie terms, it would be exciting to watch. In Bet terms, it would be convenient.
As for Angel: Rat ‘n Rif were flaky, fun, and forgettable, not necessarily in that order. I liked Black Cal — except in his last appearance, where I have to wonder who spiked his drink, and with what. I will admit the characters were all stock — but considering their creator, this isn’t unexpected.
@rollingstone re: arc: What I mean by that is the series of events that pertain to the growth of a particular character or set of characters. A visceral sense that not only are things happening, but that they matter, and they’re intensifying. Storytelling is supposed to do this anyway, but a typical series does this episodically (each arc begins and ends within the same episode). Contrast this to a series where you have the episodes are only portions of the whole story (or at least contain pieces of a larger story.) Think LOST, or BSG, for examples on television.
Downbelow Station, if filmed properly, would need lots of episodes and that feeling that everything is coming to a head. So it would be more like BSG than, say, CSI.
I know that people love pretend-casting films, but I’ll admit, I suck at it. I just don’t pay that much attention to who the actor is — unless, of course, they’re stellar. 😉
I could see Bet as a lioness! … Of course now I’m also imagining Rimrunners as a furry Anime, with Musa as a bear, NG as a puppy, and Mallory as a Siberian tiger. 😀
I would agree with you re: the genre labels. However, the best stories — movies or otherwise — aren’t limited by their labels. They define them, instead. 😉
I’m really liking the press-gang idea. Rimrunners II, anyone? Re-Running the Rim? Seems like the whole cast is set up now, and we could have some great action. Now that I’ve read it again-again-again, I’d love to see Bet in action. Again.
Okay, I’ll start. Loki’s in port, Bet’s on shore leave and gets press-ganged by the Fleet. GO!
I bring up the subject of film, or television, or manga, or comics for Ms. Cherryh’s works both because I think that they will work. Also because it would expand her audience and perhaps even her income.
Comics or manga could work because they’d let you do POV narrative and exposition in the caption boxes. Cyteen strikes me as almost impossible to film- at the very least you’d have to dramatically restructure the story.
Even something like Rimrunners would be hard because even though the story is more contained it’s so dependent on the rest of the AU world-building, and everyone is so closed off that they’re not going to just walk around expositing at one another in the beginning. And that sense of isolation is a key part of the book, so tinkering with it would cause problems.
Chanur could work very well, though- the world-building is a lot more visual, and the cerebral elements only come in towards the end and stem from events and manifest in Pyanfar’s actions, instead of hundreds of pages of Ari II thinking. Plus the hook of having the human as the alien is both immediately comprehensible and by Hollywood standards an incredibly clever inversion (it was clever anyway, but for Hollywood this is Nobel Prize level insight).
Or Voyager in Night? The central idea there with the multiple instantiations of the protagonists is interesting and simple enough to do in a single movie.
The Chanur books and Downbelow Station were my first introduction to CJ’s books. One of the things I liked was how easy it was to visualize the story taking place, and how much was told through dialogue rather than narrative/exposition. Some things, like internal monologues, would be difficult to achieve on video, but there could be ways. I think anime and CGI could really help, and such as with the Chanur books, it would be necessary to get the aliens right. Of course, I also think humans and aliens alike need the realism an actor alone can provide, but recent movies have shown how effective CGI combined with real actors can be. Gollum and Dobby spring to mind. I think anime might be a nice fit for CJ’s books. I agree, they’d need a miniseries or full series or several movies, not just a single movie per books. I also agree, it would be hard to fit things in from the books. CJ would likely need to adapt her work (or work with someone else) to adapt her work from books to a video presentation.
I enjoy Firefly and Farscape and various other series, and in anime, I have really liked Cowboy Bebop and a few others. I like Bleach, but there are things about it that I don’t care for too. The original .//hack-sign anime, I really ilked. (The ending took me by surprise. What? The character was really…?) Good anime has given me an appreciation for it beyond Saturday cartoons, more along the lines of the great Disney films and the old Warner Bros. and Looney Tunes type cartoons. Anime’s good.