SF and Fantasy wot I ave been reeding

[Alberon]

Some novelisations are greater than others. Often they got knocked out as quick as a Terrance Dicks Doctor Who tie-in.

I've got a few by Alan Dean Foster - Alien, Aliens, The Black Hole, The Last Starfighter and probably a few others.

Other times far more effort was put in. Orson Scott Card's version of The Abyss is a proper full length novel, I believe he was also involved in fleshing out the character's back stories to help the actors during filming.

[Famous Mortimer]

So what's the deal here.  Do they want to get a book out ASAP to tie in with the film release so an early draft of the screenplay is given to a ghost writer to turn into a book??

I was reading an article about them recently, and (I think) Alan Dean Foster said, when you take a bunch of words out of a book and turn it into a screenplay, you're called a genius, but when you add a bunch of words to a screenplay and turn it into a book, you're called a hack. Or words to that effect.

[touchingcloth]

Are there any examples besides 2001 where the book and screenplay were written essentially at the same time and by the same team, so that neither version of the story can be said to be the definitive one?

[Dayraven]

George Lucas was credited as the writer of Star Wars (episode 4 but before it was labelled as such) and Gene Roddenberry was credited with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I believe both were actually written by Alan Dean Foster.

Alan Dean Foster has said the Star Trek one really wasn't him, and it has some weird quirks that suggest Roddenberry's own work.

[Alberon]

The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie The end of the second 'First Law' trilogy and the ninth novel overall. This one is basically the French Revolution arriving in the capital city of The Union.

The crippled Leo Dan Brock and his wife, Savine, are unexpectedly released as King Orso is taken prisoner while up in the north Rikke is doing her level best to hold onto power and her life. The ending isn't as remorselessly downbeat as the first trilogy, but it isn't far off. Abercrombie is very good at making you care for some characters, even when they do some extremely shitty things.

Despite expecting this to be the end of the whole series it clearly isn't, though, right at the end it does offer a preview of what might be the conclusion.

At the moment Abercrombie is working on a new unrelated series, but I'm sure there's more to come from the First Law world. The problem is that after reading a decade's worth of work in under a year I now will have to wait quite some time for the next installment.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Ok, I've finished reading Close Encounters of The Third Kind now.  Main differences from the film were an extra scene fairly early on where the people on a passenger plane had witnessed a UFO and the plane landed and FBI-types had come aboard and were confiscating cameras and tape recorders.

A bizarre Chapter 5 that's just half a page saying that Stevie Wonder had lent a moog synthesizer to someone but first it was being sent back to the designers for modification.  That must have come as a total non sequitur to anyone reading the book in 1977/78 who hadn't seen the film yet.

Most surprising difference was in the finale.  Firstly the writing wasn't as good, some descriptions were just long lists that you could tell had been copied from the screenplay but hadn't been polished like the rest of the book had, almost like the ghostwriter was under great pressure to get this book out very soon.  One bit near the very end has been left out of the film, which is probably for the best. I'll spoiler it because anyone planning on reading the book might want to read it for them themselves, it really is quite bizarre and made me laugh.

Spoiler alert

When the aliens come out of the ship, just before Neary goes in, the film has the scene where the aliens are standing there against the bright light so you can't see them too clearly.  In the book the aliens long arms are extendable and their arms get longer and longer and start groping the humans, touching them up, touching cocks and arses, some people back away but some think it's amusing and there's a massive gropefest, and someone sees a crate of cans of Coke and opens them and passes them around and the aliens drink coke through their hands and it makes them "pop up and down like a ping pong ball".  I know it looks like I made this up for lols but I swear I haven't.

[close]

[surreal]

I'll spoiler it because anyone planning on reading the book might want to read it for them themselves, it really is quite bizarre and made me laugh.

Spoiler alert

When the aliens come out of the ship, just before Neary goes in, the film has the scene where the aliens are standing there against the bright light so you can't see them too clearly.  In the book the aliens long arms are extendable and their arms get longer and longer and start groping the humans, touching them up, touching cocks and arses, some people back away but some think it's amusing and there's a massive gropefest, and someone sees a crate of cans of Coke and opens them and passes them around and the aliens drink coke through their hands and it makes them "pop up and down like a ping pong ball".  I know it looks like I made this up for lols but I swear I haven't.

[close]

[mothman]

No, he's not making it up - I read the novelisation about 40 years ago and that bit is in there.

[JesusAndYourBush]

I knew someone wouldn't believe me!  Here's copies of the relevant pages.  It needs to be seen - It's odd, and maybe lets the rest of the book down!

Spoiler alert

[close]

[touchingcloth]

I think you imagined it in a dream.

[willbo]

Man in the Maze by Robert Silverberg. It's a doozie.

[Alberon]

Quantum of Nightmares by Charles Stross As covered in Mothman's review it's the second of the spin-off of the main Laundry series.

I struggled with this one and really didn't enjoy it. The sequence as a whole seems to have started having problems when it moved away from 'Bob Howard' as the narrator. This book felt, at least at times, like Bob was telling this story, which really didn't help the flow of the story. The series seems to lose its focus when someone isn't telling their story and only seems to fire on all cylinders when it's Bob. Though that could just because he's telling the story in the early books.

I live in hope that there is some twist in the final Laundry proper books. Those will be set before this spin-off which appears to show Bob and his friends ultimately lost. Or maybe there will be more set after.

Beyond some fun with Zentai suits this ultimately feels like a retread of previous themes - yet another dark cult for instance. The characters are largely two dimensional and I couldn't shake the feeling I was just watching the author moving them around the board.

Like the last few books this feels like a series stretched out way beyond it's natural length and I can't shake the feeling Stross is stuck with this series when he'd rather be doing something else.

[mothman]

That's a fair assessment. He's been open in his blog and on Twitter that he's been dealing with the death of his parents and the assorted ways that recent (as in the past five or six years) political happenings have made it very difficult to write a conclusion that works. Which may explain why he's gone down the New Management route. Or maybe it's just his disdain for British (read: English) politics - he supports Scottish independence, but note that's incidental and not in itself a blocker to feeling disdain for English politics!

I also think he's said there's maybe two books left in the main sequence once he gets through these spin-offs? And yet it's hard to imagine what's going to happen in them, whether events or resolution, if the New Management persists. What about events in the US? I don't think either spin-off mentions anything.

Basically, given the apparent trajectory of the series, even if there isn't a "happy" ending I was expecting something a bit more, well, apocalyptic than "all the goodies die and Britain becomes a miserable shithole in a way that's an allegory for the way Britain's become a miserable shithole."

[13 schoolyards]

I find it hard to tell with Stross whether he's prolific because that's just how he writes, or he's punching out three books every two years because he has to if he wants to maintain his income and position. He hasn't done anything stand alone for a few years now which is a bit of a worry.

There's been a few of his more recent books that have felt very first draft in some of the plotting, and while they're almost always propulsive reads it's still a bit dissatisfying to get to the end and realise some plot points were just ignored or hand waved away.

I do think Stross has an audience who see him as someone with a dark satirical take on England, and to some extent the Laundry books have become a vehicle for that. It always felt like the Laundry series was heading towards some florid Lovecraftian apocalypse, but it seems commercial realities have overtaken the story a little.

Especially as there was a post on his blog years back where he was saying "near future science fiction is dead, it doesn't even work as metaphor, I'm going to make the shift to writing urban fantasy because that's where the action is" and then he said in the comments to one of his later posts that he'd said as much to one of his editors (or publishers?) and been told he was 100% wrong, urban fantasy as a genre was already dying, best to stick to what he did best. Guess he got there in the end.

[mothman]

Found the blog post from last August: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2021/07/crib-sheet-dead-lies-dreaming.html

... the New Management books are not about the government agency known to its staff as the Laundry. Nor do any Laundry Files characters—with the significant exception of His Dread Majesty, the Prime Minister—show up in the first two books of the new series. As the first Amazon reader reviews predictably complained about the lack of Bob, Mo, and the Laundry, I want to make it quite clear: Dead Lies Dreaming is set some time (six months to two years) after the end of the final, not-yet-written (or titled) Laundry Files novel. Spoiler: the Black Pharaoh, N'yar Lat-Hotep, is still Prime Minister of the UK, and CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is ongoing (if not actually getting any worse). There may or may not be survivors and revenants from SOE Q-Division and Continuity Operations. We will get to briefly see Persephone Hazard again in book 3. But that's not relevant ot the plot of this book, which kicks off a whole new series.

So DLD and QoN are the first two books in what is technically called the New Management series; Stross just announced today he finished (the first draft of?) book 3, currently called Season of Skulls (as the blog post explains, the publishers and their marketing department have a LOT of input into and veto over what these books are called). And there will be ONE more main-sequence Laundry Files novel.

[Alberon]

I'm sure he's talked about more main sequence Laundry novels. In the quote above it could be said he's just talking about the New Management trilogy being set after the last in that sequence.

[mothman]

I'm sure he says somewhere else there is just one Laundry Files novel still to come - I'll try and find it.

EDIT: Ah, here

As you might have guessed already, this isn't the last New Management book. (The next one, Season of Skulls, is mostly written and will probably be published in January of 2023. After that, it's probably back to the main Laundry series for at least one book: but hopefully the New Management will persist, even after Bob and co-workers have sailed off into the sunset.)

OK, "at least one more." I thought it was more certain than that. And it possibly doesn't exclude him writing some non-Laundry, non-New Management book(s) after which continue or conclude the tale...

[13 schoolyards]

I think he's said there's one more Laundry story to come, but as it has to wrap up a lot of storylines and characters it might end up being spread over two books.

I can't tell if it's canny marketing or a scheduling stuff-up to be two books into a sequel series coming off a long-running series that hasn't wrapped up yet

[Alberon]

I think he started writing this spin-off as he got writer's block on what he was supposed to be doing.

On the bright side he has a new proper space opera series starting this year. The first book is called 'Ghost Engine'

Two thirds of a million years in the future, humanity has fissioned into numerous subspecies and expanded to occupy the Local Group of galaxies, largely through the agencies of a shadowy organization known as the Authority which holds a monopoly on the creation of artificial wormholes – the only practical mechanism for faster than light travel – and enforce it ruthlessly. The Authority are secretive, paranoid, and fabulously wealthy: needless to say, lots of sapients and AIs dislike this situation and want to change it...

[Catalogue of ills]

Has anyone managed to finish A River Called Time by Courttia Newland? I wanted to like this, but there was a tired central trope (exclusive, hard to get into affluent centre in post apocalyptic urban landscape), some choices of adjectives that were reminiscent of young fiction, and just too many words which tended to make it much harder work than it had a right to be, I thought.

[mothman]

I think he started writing this spin-off as he got writer's block on what he was supposed to be doing.

On the bright side he has a new proper space opera series starting this year. The first book is called 'Ghost Engine'

There's something about posthuman fiction that always leaves me cold, but I might check this out...

[samadriel]

I think he started writing this spin-off as he got writer's block on what he was supposed to be doing.

On the bright side he has a new proper space opera series starting this year. The first book is called 'Ghost Engine'

Hey, great; sounds similar to Accelerando, which I've banged on about here before. I'll check that out.

[touchingcloth]

Just finished Leviathan Wakes, which I think I came across in this thread. I enjoyed it a lot, but I gave it 4 rather than 5 stars on Goodreads because it didn't leave a particularly huge impression on me.

I think others here have continued on with The Expanse - how do novels two and onwards compare with the opener?

[mothman]

I read the first two or three and they were fine, but then whichever I read last left me cold and I never bothered  keeping up afterwards. It was so long ago now that at the time the book in question could have been the most recent release, I can't remember.

[surreal]

Just finished Leviathan Wakes, which I think I came across in this thread. I enjoyed it a lot, but I gave it 4 rather than 5 stars on Goodreads because it didn't leave a particularly huge impression on me.

I think others here have continued on with The Expanse - how do novels two and onwards compare with the opener?

You should keep going IMHO - the trilogies are all different in that the first one is almost inspired by film noir, with the hard-boiled detective.  I can definitely say you need to meet Avasarala and Bobbie on the page at least - there is no interaction with Earth in the first one I recall, just mostly Holden and Miller?  Ends with all the Eros stuff?  I read the whole lot last year, just finished the final one and it ends well enough without resorting to a McGuffin or Deus Ex Machina to resolve things.

If you have not watched the TV show you should keep going as it goes in unexpected directions.  If you have watched the TV show it is mixed up enough with characters that you will see differences in the books

[touchingcloth]

You should keep going IMHO - the trilogies are all different in that the first one is almost inspired by film noir, with the hard-boiled detective.  I can definitely say you need to meet Avasarala and Bobbie on the page at least - there is no interaction with Earth in the first one I recall, just mostly Holden and Miller?  Ends with all the Eros stuff?  I read the whole lot last year, just finished the final one and it ends well enough without resorting to a McGuffin or Deus Ex Machina to resolve things.

If you have not watched the TV show you should keep going as it goes in unexpected directions.  If you have watched the TV show it is mixed up enough with characters that you will see differences in the books

There's no action on planet Earth in the first novel, it's all Miller and Holden on Ceres, Eros and spaceships/stations. Earth and Mars are there, but only really in brief Messages and allusions.

I haven't watched the TV series. The fist book did well on the McGuffin / Deus ex machine stuff, though what happened with Julia and Eros was sort of a massive but unspoken McGuffin.

I might start reading the second, but the first didn't grab me in the way that Three Body Problem did. Still, I'm seriously considering reading on in a way which I didn't with Mortal Engines.

[Alberon]

The Quantum Magician by Derek Künsken I have a bit of an aversion to SF books with Infinity or Quantum in the titles; always seems too generic and lazy to me.

Anyway, there's this one which is - all together now - the first of a trilogy. Belisarius is a Homo Quantus, genetically engineered to be able to enter a fugue state and act as a sort of human quantum computer.

But the main thrust of the book is that he's a con man and this is a sort of intergalactic episode of Hustle. He is hired to get a fleet of warships through a heavily guarded wormhole. To do this he, of course, hires a diverse group of specialists. Then there's the usual betrayals, cons within cons and so on. This isn't breaking any new ground in either SF or con-job fiction.

It's okay, though I do get a feeling that a lot of what was set up for the con was irrelevant and the science around the quantum world and entanglement is extremely iffy at best. His setup of the extremely weird offshoot of humanity called Puppets (because they're all under a metre tall) is at times funny and also quite bleak.

The book held my interest enough to try the second part at some point.

[surreal]

Just got hold of Memory's Legion, which is the collection of novellas from in between The Expanse books, including a new one for the final book.  Not read any of these so far so looking forward to dropping into that universe again.

[Norton Canes]

Was thinking of getting Dan Simmons' Hyperion as holilday reading for an upcoming week away. Is it anything like Iain M. Banks' novels? 

[Famous Mortimer]

I realise from reading the summary on Wikipedia that I've read the first "Hyperion" book, presumably a good number of years ago. I'm not sure he's all that similar to Iain M Banks, but I've enjoyed everything I've read of his (especially "The Terror").