And now for something light

[rhu]

OK, let's get a good discussion going here. :-)

The other night, introverte and I were discussing film adapations of science fiction stories that originally appeared in print. We were unable to come up with a single example of a story that meets all these criteria:

• Science fiction (not fantasy) (excluding, for example, The Lord of the Rings and The Wizard of Oz)
• First appeared in print (excluding, for example, 2001: A Space Odyssey)
• Movie adaptation remains essentially faithful to the print story (excluding, for example, We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I, Robot, etc.)
• Both the original print story and the movie adaptation are generally accepted as great (excluding, for example, well, most others).

The closest I could come up with was Farenheit 451 but I'm not sure the movie really qualifies as great. But I figure that if there exists a true example, you, gentle readers, will let me know.

Comments

[clauclauclaudia]

I know some people find the Dune movie craptastic, so it probably fails on the fourth point, but I think it's pretty awesome myself.

(Also here via mabfan

War of the Worlds (not the Cruise-fest)?

The IMDB lists Manchurian Candidate as sci-fi, but that's at least stretching a point. Solaris?

In the I have no idea how faithful they are category: The Thing? The Invisible Man?

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

War of the Worlds is a possible candidate. Perhaps The Invisible Man as well.... which would lead to the next question, What made HGW's stories more amenable to adaptation than others?

Perhaps the new Manchurian Candidate is SF (I haven't seen it, although if I recall from the reviews they went into fictional biotech) but I don't think I'd categorize the original as SF.

HGW

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

They were short? Part of the problem as others have mentioned is that nothing longer than a novella will translate to the big screen.

Re: HGW

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Sure, but there are plenty of great short stories and novellae. Where are their great adaptations?

Re: HGW

[cheshyre]

Look at the anthology TV series, like Twilight Zone or Amazing Stories.

I believe "Cold Equations" was filmed both for one of those shows *and* as a SciFi channel TV movie.

[tablesaw]

What made HGW's stories more amenable to adaptation than others?

Presumably it links to the time that they were written, before the sf got its pulp veneer from Gernsback et al. Nobody's mentioned Verne, but I'm certain there's some combination of stories and movies that fits this category. Around the World in 80 Days probably isn't sf-y enough for you, but 20,000 Leagues under the Sea might work.

And many have hopes for A Scanner Darkly.