I didn’t read this series when I was a kid, but I finally got around to reading Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber.
Given it’s an older series, I wasn’t sure how much I’d like it (some of those older series age horribly), but it was actually REALLY good still, and the few minor things that’d aged too much wouldn’t be hard to update for a modern audience.
But the concept of Amber is fantastic, Corwin’s behavior and arc perfect, and I think a TV series could do it justice nowadays. Man, some CGI artists could do some beautiful work depicting a hellride through shadow.
I also would really, really love to see Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern adapted…but there’s a few parts that have aged pretty badly, so it’d need careful handling of things like Lessa and F’lar’s relationship and such. And maybe, you know, keep Jaxom the hell away from Corana.
But I think the whole idea of threadfall, and Impressing dragons, could be done beautifully on the screen. I think a run from Dragonflight to All The Weyrs of Pern (including the Harper Hall Trilogy) could be done. (Then leave the later books out, they don’t really add much, lol.)
The series would need a top-notch composer scoring it, though. I’d vote for Natalie Holt. She did wonderfully with Loki, and it’d be a nice touch having a woman score the series that’d have the Harper Hall Trilogy included in it.
As Arthur C. Clarke famously said:
“You have reached the end of your free trial subscription to ArthurCClarkeQuotes.com”“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”A lot of Sci-Fi stuff is just fantasy with a different coat of paint. Any universe where the technology is just acting as a stand-in for magic qualifies. There are even many settings that blur the line between the two, like Warhammer 40K.
“Hard” Sci Fi is another beast entirely. That would be more like OG Star Trek or even something like The Twilight Zone. Something where the “magic” exists to explore thoughtful/philosophical “What if?” questions rather than simply as a system of magic to serve the fantasy.
I lol’d
Approach is different. If they treat magic as given without trying to understand it - fantasy. If they treat it as advanced tech - sci fi.
But why does it matter? In Dune characters are able use mindfulness to control their body so finely that they can manipulate molecules. So there’s a “scientific explanation” but for all intents and purposes it’s magic.
I don’t understand the need to draw hard lines, the fantasy/sci Fi distinction has always just been a way to describe the setting moreso than the genre. Many fantasy novels read like a typical sci-fi and vice versa.