Scifi Books that should be movies.

We all know the famous Book series Dune and others that just had to be made and rehashed in movie form.
Im enjoying the Uplift series by David Brin at the moment.What other series would you like to see made into film?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_Universe

Dan Simmon's 'Hyperion', and 'Fall of Hyperion'. Never read a science fiction book in remotely the same class.

I think most of Jack McDevitt’s novels would make great movies.

If the scifi book is way too complex and has many complex characters, I think it would be much better served by being made into a multiple-episode miniseries than being made into a film.



And let's be honest here, the great majority of "hard" scifi is not popular with mainstream audiences so turning a book into a limited series on either cable tv or a streaming service like Netflix makes a LOT more sense than making a theatrical release film.

the Stainless steel Rat series - infact begging to be made into a series..

The RIngworld is an obvious candidate for a series but would burn CGI money like crazy.
A World out of Time would have great potential as a film, though.
The Mote in God's Eye, maybe, or Lucifer's Hammer so we have at least one comet impact film that isn't total bollocks.

Agreed, as well as Joe Haldeman's Forever War

Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld - into a GOOD movie, not the crappy SyFy garbage

Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama

Neil Stephenson - Snow Crash

Morgan Freeman and David Fincher tried for several years to get the funding to make it but it didn't work out.

"Helliconia" might make an interesting setting. Game of Thrones without fourth wall, so to speak.

Ooohh I vote second for the Rama Trilogy..

Yes, I think that would be a great one (especially now with Special Effects being as good as they are.) I would also throw in Future History by Jerry Pournelle and a personal old favourite of mine, Space Viking by H Beam Piper.

That could be great if done properly. I always loved how the early characters became the legends of the later ones. Danger is it could be seen as derivative (ironically) as they both (Helliconia & GoT) have long year cycles with one race preferring winter and the other flourishing during summer.

Me too, but it will never happen as the plot is all exploration and no action.

A better bet is Greg Bear's Eon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eon_(novel)

This has the exploration aspects of 'Rendevous with Rama', but with fighting.

Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss,although Helliconia would be a great choice.

I think Iain M. Banks' Culture series could make for good viewing. It has action, it has humour. Better as a series than a movie though.

Hyperion. Gods I hate that book. Great buildup, then *blink* WHERE THE #%&*$# IS THE REST OF THE BOOK?!?!?!?!? It was half-a-book. Turned me off the author for life.

If you want action, turning Warhammer 40K into a TV-show would have rocked

Elisabeth Moon's "Vatta" series, or "Serrano" series could make good movies.

How good was the Warhammer movie that came out a couple years ago? I assume you saw it?

edit: Oops, that was Warcraft, NOT Warhammer.

Loved Eon. The downside is, it's rather strongly tied to the (late) Cold War frame. But I suppose that could be replaced with a new Cold War; nevertheless, it requires a more or less duopolistic power structure on Earth.

Yepp, but I enjoyed it. It was great for a Warcraft fan

Warhammer 40k series will rock if they do the Heresy series (Battle for the Abyss for one).But its a loooong list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Warhammer_40,000_novels#THE_HORUS_HERESY

S M Stirling, The Sky People and In the Court of the Crimson King.

Hyperion in particular would be a good one. I love Simmons' books Illium and Olympos even more, but those are a little TOO grand to put in a movie properly.

Anyone else read the Bobiverse books? Really good scifi without being dry and slow to read. Filled with pop culture references and good humor. If you like 4x space strategy games, you'd LOVE it. 3 books that would be excellent as a movie or three. Solid, original scifi but with humor that would give it broad appeal.
We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
For We Are Many
All These Worlds

https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B06X15BL54

I just finished We Are Legion, haven't yet started the others. The basic premise is very similar to that of Niven's "A World Out Of Time" but Taylor throws in enough new ideas to make it something original. Had an evening to kill, almost managed to read it in one evening (save the last two chapters), so I had to be lying through my teeth if I wouldn't call it entertaining.

Have to say though, I found the density of pop culture reference a bit too much tailored to the reading audience, occasionally reaching almost fan fiction levels.

Lucifer's Hammer by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, it would be more of a disaster movie, but I always liked that book.

Or do some Heinlein like:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Have Spacesuit Will Travel
Red Planet

Or if you're looking for some cheesy action movie fodder try anything from David Drake's Hammers Slammers.

Yes Ive read a lot of Sci Fi Books.
"The Forge of God is a 1987 science fiction novel by American writer Greg Bear. Earth faces destruction when an inscrutable and overwhelming alien form of life attacks.
The Forge of God was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1987, and was also nominated for the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1988."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forge_of_God

hmm thinking about this more... I'll add

The Warlock inspite of himself by Christopher Stacheff

and if you could get R/18 movies made,

the Necroscope saga by Brian Lumley

Greg Bear seems to come up a lot in this thread

As such, maybe Darwin's Radio + the sequel Darwin's Children could make for an interesting TV series. It's more sociological than sci-fi I guess but the core of the idea is sci-fi. Speculative science let's say

Just read the second book to Greg Bears Forge of God..
Anvil of Stars...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_of_Stars

I would have liked to see someone like Christopher Nolan have a go at The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.

They'd never get the time effects right.

Dauntless by Jack Campbell

Im surprised no ones mentioned Honor Harrington.

Each book as a movie would mean what, 12 or 13 movies just in the HH series alone? Then you have the spinoffs. It’d really have to be serialized, and then it’d have a run longer than Lawrence Welk and The Simpsons put together LOL

I’d definitely pay to see big-budget HH movies IF they were faithful to the books.

Only the good ones

I suppose they could distill several books into one movie, such as leaving out all the ground action in “On Basilisk Station,” make Grayson an existing ally and delete all the diplomatic stuff from “The Honor of the Queen,” and combine this with “The Short Victorious War” as one movie. But it’d be more action than DW wrote.

The problem with HH is that once you jmake one movie, you have basically made them all...

They are extremely formulatic.

I don't know, I read that first Honor book and it just didn't do much for me. Probably need to get further into the series to give it a better chance. I know it's got a ton of books and very popular.
I just finished my first book in Neal Asher's Polity series. I started with the first book, chronologically, Prador Moon. This was friggin AWESOME. For me, it hits on a lot: space battles and it's fairly cyber punk as well, with a very interesting society. It touches on at a lot of things that I look forward to being developed as I get further in the books. It would make a great Netflix series since he seems to write much of these as independent trilogies, that could be used as seasons.

The problem with that is you end up with a movie like Master and Commander where half the fans of the series like it, the other half hate what was cut or changed, and nobody else gives a rat's ass.

Long ago I heard the phrase "Hornblower in Space" to describe the HH series.."Honor amongst Ememies" I enjoyed the most.

That is true, but apparently it’s a formula people like! The books are just BEGGING to be made into CGI-heavy movies, if done exactly as DW writes them the battles would be spectacular. Can you imagine seeing 2 divisions of superdreadnoughts and their screens launching double broadsides of missiles at each other as they close? Countermissiles vaporizing them by the score and still they come, decoys and EW pulling even more off track and the remainder streak onward into the point defense clusters. Bomb-pumped laser warheads going off, with some hitting impenetrable wedges while others blast through the sidewalls or straight down the open ends of wedges. This is where they’d have to deviate slightly from DW and use visible lasers instead of his invisible X-ray lasers. And then getting to energy range and really tearing into one another!

Cant forget the Nukes as well :)The ship designs are pretty different as well.
http://www.star-ranger.com/SITS.htm

Nicholas Meyer used the same template for his approach to directing Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan.

These should definitely be made by Netflix or some other online streaming service. Why? Space-based sci-fi is a VERY tough sell to the movieplex mainstream audiences. If it's not Star Wars or Star Trek, it usually flops at the box office.

A lot of the most successful sci-fi films follow the "hero's journey" formula, that's been around for a couple thousand years, at least. Even the Martian follows the formula, somewhat. In fact, the formula is so ingrained in popular fiction, if a story does not follow it, most mainstream readers and viewers will think the story or film is "odd" or off, or something's wrong and they can't figure out why. This is why "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" is regarded poorly by general audiences, but "The Wrath of Khan" is fingered as the best trek film.

I've not read any of the HH novels, though, so have no input there.

Greg Bears Eon anyone?

These would be amazing on screen or on TV:

- the serie "eternal war" Joe Haldeman
- Planet of Adventure Jack Vance
- Wasp - Franck Eric Russell
- Vorkosigan saga Lois McMaster Bujold

Engines of God by Jack McDevitt..Or National Treasure in Space I call it...

I think McDevitt’s “Coming Home” would be a good one because it has all the qualities that make a good story - characters you can relate to, adventure, intrigue, heroism, selfless sacrifice, and a happy ending.

I was going to suggest Nightfall by Isaac Asimov, but it looks like it's had a few failed attempts already. So instead, I'll go with Caves of Steel. A murder mystery in a future Earth with an android. It should be doable.


And for yet another big space ship combat series there's Dauntless by Jack Campbell.
Here's the wiki article on it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Fleet:_Dauntless

Which brings up the attempt to bring his Foundation series to film, not heard much about it.

The last I read is that a series based on the Foundation books is being worked on for the Apple streaming service. The film project that was being shopped around by Roland Emmerich is DOA.

Correct, Apple has greenlighted a 10 episode season of Foundation. It's being developed by Skydance Television who also made Altered Carbon, Jack Ryan (the Amazon series, not the movie) amongst other things.

Caves of Steel is part of the Foundation series. I nearly threw the book at the wall when reading Foundation and Earth and the big reveal of who the main protagonist is I think I must have cursed Asimov upside down and sideways for about 5 minutes before continuing to read the book.

Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet series is a bit better than the HH series and better than Raymond Weil's "Lost Fleet" too though in both "lost fleet" series they use the same trope: hero in suspended animation comes back to save the day.

Other ones that could be good are:

Steven Sweeney's Battle for the Solar System trilogy
EE 'Doc' Smith's Family d'Alembert series, I found it to be a bit better in the Space Opera genre than his better known Lensman series.
Joshua Dalzelle's Omega Force series for a bit of light hearted mercenaries in space, or his Black Fleet trilogy starting with Warship
Again Joshua Dalzelle's Blueshift, a bit different from your usual run of the mill Sci Fi https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BKQM48L