I always thought that, out of the Clarke novels, “Songs of Distant Earth” would make a good movie adaptation.

Rama may turn out unrecognizable after the Hollywood script jockeys have been through with it, as happened to Foundation. (I actually like the Apple TV version, but it’s definitely its own thing.)

For sci-fi takes on truly alien first contacts, Lem’s “Solaris” still holds its own, and the Tarkovsky movie is its own standalone classic (again something very different from the book).

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the_biot 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As much as I love "Songs of Distant Earth", I suspect a Hollywood version of it would amount to "giant lobsters vs space marines", whereas in the book they're a minor sideshow.

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cal_dent 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I tend to agree. I've always thought it would work well as a TV show in the more heady days of streaming (let's say 2012 - 2020) when networks and studios where it still felt like they had some room to take more risk. It's more towards the end of the last TV "golden age" but an adaptation like something like Apple's take on "Tales from the Loop". Not brash or loud or too formulaic but somehow still got made

	▲	eszed an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I loved "Tales From the Loop", and wished they'd made more. It has a kind of atmospheric sensibility that sticks (with me, at least) long after the details of the plot are forgotten. That's appropriate, I guess, for something based on a portfolio of paintings. It's a hidden gem that I enjoy recommending.

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ChrisMarshallNY 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I actually like the Apple TV version, but it’s definitely its own thing.

I do, too, but I had to accept that the books basically gave us names; and that's about it.

The books would have been a complete snooze-fest, if they had been accurately rendered.

	▲	Apocryphon 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Foundation as a series is already somewhat uneven and less than “pure.” Asimov pulled a Lucas and cluttered it with sequels and prequels that muddled it with connections to his robot novels. Then there’s the additional books by other writers. And if you want to get real picky, Second Foundation gets real pseudoscientific with the pseudo-psionics compared to the first two books.

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zem 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"a fall of moondust" would translate extremely well to screen, and "the martian" has shown that it's the kind of movie that would do well enough in terms of reception.

	▲	teamonkey 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The first Clarke I read as a kid and still one of my favourites. It hasn’t aged well, not least because it was written before we landed on the moon and now know its surface isn’t like that.

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dbspin 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Counterpoint, I very much enjoyed the sequels (all but the last). They added three dimensional characters, especially women and explored a variety of aspects of first contact. They're a believable examination of how humans recreate the same social ills over and over, given the opportunity for utopia.

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an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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dexwiz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd all the Southern Reach trilogy (quadrilogy? now) to this list. It's more on the cosmic/eldritch side, but similar sense of unknowable.

SPOILER WARNING

My interruption is that Area X/The Crawler is a probe built to study and build a bridge back to its creator. Area X is expanding because it's the inside of a wormhole. But whatever is on the other side is long dead, and the probe is acting on instinct.

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nradov 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The latest episode of Rick Rubin's Tetragrammaton podcast has an interview with Eric Roth who adapted the screenplay for Rendezvous with Rama.

https://www.tetragrammaton.com/content/eric-roth

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shiroiuma 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>as happened to Foundation. (I actually like the Apple TV version, but it’s definitely its own thing.)

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Others have noted that a faithful adaptation would have been a snooze-fest and inconsistent at best. There's lots of cases where a movie/TV version departed greatly from the source material, and was better for it.

>Rama may turn out unrecognizable after the Hollywood script jockeys have been through with it

It's being helmed by Denis Villeneuve, the guy who did Blade Runner 2049, Arrival, and the new Dune movies. If anyone can do a good job with it, he can.

>For sci-fi takes on truly alien first contacts,

Don't forget Villeneuve's "Arrival".

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poisonarena 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

back in 1994, when I was 9 years old, one of my favorite albums that got me into electronic music as a young boy was the concept album "Songs of Distant Earth" by Mike Oldfield.. Also the remixes by Jam&Spoon.. I think he released some kind of weird software about it too.. I think its time to finally read the book.

https://youtu.be/gRivMEEZZE8?si=S1ZCDAg9Sl37jwoX full album