Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End is coming to TV

[Colonel Sanders]

And why is it always so awful when utopia is actually created? To this day I'm still confused about why the Alduous Huxley's Brave New World was such a bad place. Satisfying work, complete security, excellent health, great sex, happiness, good drugs?

Yeah. Count me out of that shit.

Because such societies stagnate. They don't create or build or advance because everyone is getting stoned after work. Wash, rinse and repeat. No better than a herd of milk cows, standing there chewing cud while getting milked.

I don't think that's necessarily true, but even if it is, it still doesn't explain why what we have today is better. That's what I'm getting at. In Brave New World, they'd achieved the desired end game.

Anyway, the series was solid. I never read the book so I have nothing to compare it to. My only major complaint is that the last episode spent gads of time on the Mediator's completely-unnecessary-to-the-story thing about his ex. There was a stretch of almost 20 straight minutes of air time devoted to what was by far the least interesting aspect of the show, and another healthy portion of it interweaved before that. After a while I just fast forwarded through it.

But overall, I liked the way it was done, and hopefully it augurs well for the future of SyFy.

 

[lpetrich]

And why is it always so awful when utopia is actually created? To this day I'm still confused about why the Alduous Huxley's Brave New World was such a bad place. Satisfying work, complete security, excellent health, great sex, happiness, good drugs?

Yeah. Count me out of that shit.

Interesting analysis: Aldous Huxley : Brave New World
Also,  Brave New World
A techno-utopia gone wrong, where people are drugged into accepting a druggy consumeristic lifestyle.

But it does raise the interesting question of what people would do all day if technology is good enough to enable people to live an upper-middle-class lifestyle without having to do much work to sustain it. A Star Trek sort of future.

 

[Potoooooooo]

Any other good sci-fi books that could be adapted this way?

I know people had tried to make Childhood's End into a Hollywood movie, but it never worked out. A miniseries on SyFy was the right choice for a book like that. What other sci-fi novels would be good choices for this kind of adaptation.
Fire upon the Deep and it's sequel might be good choices. Some of the concepts would be hard to get across, but the tines and their world would not be too hard and I think audiences would love the tines.I don't think it would be too hard to do on a tv network budget. Their cities are pretty low tech and would not be that hard to recreate with props. There are not a whole lot of species that are signifigant to the story. For most crowd scenes with tines they could film trained dogs and alter them with cgi after filming

 

[spikepipsqueak]

I would like to see City, which I think was written by Clifford Simak, on the screen. Its span of years would lend itself to the mini series format.

 

[DBT]

I don't think I've read a bad Clifford Simak novel.

 

[Potoooooooo]

I would like to see City, which I think was written by Clifford Simak, on the screen. Its span of years would lend itself to the mini series format.

That is an incredibly good choice

 

[ZiprHead]

I've been waiting for more than thirty years for someone to do a Rendezvous With Rama film. I remember being fascinated by that book. There's some very good fan films on YT.

 

[Underseer]

I've been waiting for more than thirty years for someone to do a Rendezvous With Rama film. I remember being fascinated by that book. There's some very good fan films on YT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_with_Rama#Movie

 

[Underseer]

Bleah.

I forgot how little I liked Arthur C Clarke. Bad science, giant plot holes, and a vague ending. The production values were good.

 

[Underseer]

Speaking of plot holes:

Show

Why was it necessary to wipe out mankind? The whole goal of that project was to extract a generation of children to join the Overmind. Great. So why not leave the rest of the Earth the fuck alone and let them go about their business? Why make everyone sterile and then destroy the planet?

 

[Colonel Sanders]

Speaking of plot holes:

Show

Why was it necessary to wipe out mankind? The whole goal of that project was to extract a generation of children to join the Overmind. Great. So why not leave the rest of the Earth the fuck alone and let them go about their business? Why make everyone sterile and then destroy the planet?

Wasn't there something about how humanity had served its purpose--maybe something akin to the cassette tape going the way of the dinosaur following the invention of the CD?

We just weren't useful anymore... or something. Hell, I don't know.

 

[RavenSky]

Speaking of plot holes:

Show

Why was it necessary to wipe out mankind? The whole goal of that project was to extract a generation of children to join the Overmind. Great. So why not leave the rest of the Earth the fuck alone and let them go about their business? Why make everyone sterile and then destroy the planet?

If I remember the book correctly, it was set just as humans were beginning space travel (to the moon). The alien concern was unevolved humans exporting themselves into the universe.

 

[Potoooooooo]

I don't think I've read a bad Clifford Simak novel.

Indeed, this book of his is one of my all time favorite novels

I can't think of any other work of fiction that combines :The Inquisition,faeries,neanderthals,demons,robots, and giants.and he manged to pull it off

 

[Underseer]

Speaking of plot holes:

Show

Why was it necessary to wipe out mankind? The whole goal of that project was to extract a generation of children to join the Overmind. Great. So why not leave the rest of the Earth the fuck alone and let them go about their business? Why make everyone sterile and then destroy the planet?

If I remember the book correctly, it was set just as humans were beginning space travel (to the moon). The alien concern was unevolved humans exporting themselves into the universe.

That's a pretty shitty excuse for xenocide.

 

[jab]

Love the book. My DVD is set! However, the early reviews aren't great.......

Just be safe and assume it's going to be awful because it's a SyFy production. It's the same network that's brought us Ice Spiders, Piranhaconda, Mansquito, Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda, Chupacabra, Chupacabra: Dark Seas, and the inevitable, Chupacabra vs. The Alamo. There have also been the various and sundry Bigfoot and Yeti efforts, and of course, the fabled Sharknado franchise.

That said, I'll put on my Sucker For Alien Shit cap and record this one too.

ETA: Okay, so the trailers look nothing like the above named classics. Maybe it actually will be worth watching.

Watched all three installments, went from kind of good, to mediocre, to kind of pretentious/ kind of bad. Not awful, though.

 

[credoconsolans]

If I remember the book correctly, it was set just as humans were beginning space travel (to the moon). The alien concern was unevolved humans exporting themselves into the universe.

That's a pretty shitty excuse for xenocide.

They're god-like aliens playing god.

"Meh, you're not good enough to go into outer space like the rest of us, even though you accomplished it in spite of yourselves, but we don't value that so we're going to wipe you out."

Yep. Assholes.

 

[Underseer]

That's a pretty shitty excuse for xenocide.

They're god-like aliens playing god.

"Meh, you're not good enough to go into outer space like the rest of us, even though you accomplished it in spite of yourselves, but we don't value that so we're going to wipe you out."

Yep. Assholes.

The Overlords were merely doing the bidding of the gestalt mind, and it was the gestalt mind that made the decision.

Once they had all those human children added to their consciousness, they got what they wanted. I still see no purpose in wiping out the remaining humans.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Speaking of plot holes:

Show

Why was it necessary to wipe out mankind? The whole goal of that project was to extract a generation of children to join the Overmind. Great. So why not leave the rest of the Earth the fuck alone and let them go about their business? Why make everyone sterile and then destroy the planet?

Yeah, in the book they don't destroy the planet. There's no reason for that, especially no reason for the girl to stick around 80 years and then blow the planet just after he lands. I'm used to Hollywood adaptions chopping out a lot but this one added a lot of nonsense and needlessly omitted closing some holes. (For example, why do they look like evil incarnate? The book addresses this very easily--there was a prior contact in the dawn of history that went badly.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

They're god-like aliens playing god.

"Meh, you're not good enough to go into outer space like the rest of us, even though you accomplished it in spite of yourselves, but we don't value that so we're going to wipe you out."

Yep. Assholes.

The Overlords were merely doing the bidding of the gestalt mind, and it was the gestalt mind that made the decision.

Once they had all those human children added to their consciousness, they got what they wanted. I still see no purpose in wiping out the remaining humans.

It's been a long time since I read the book but my recollection is that in the book there was no sterility, just that any more children born would be of the new type, not human.

 

[Underseer]

Speaking of plot holes:

Show

Why was it necessary to wipe out mankind? The whole goal of that project was to extract a generation of children to join the Overmind. Great. So why not leave the rest of the Earth the fuck alone and let them go about their business? Why make everyone sterile and then destroy the planet?

Yeah, in the book they don't destroy the planet. There's no reason for that, especially no reason for the girl to stick around 80 years and then blow the planet just after he lands. I'm used to Hollywood adaptions chopping out a lot but this one added a lot of nonsense and needlessly omitted closing some holes. (For example, why do they look like evil incarnate? The book addresses this very easily--there was a prior contact in the dawn of history that went badly.)

No, but in the book, they made everyone sterile so that the human race would die out. Pretty much the same thing.