Tag: review

28AUG2025 – Country Song for the Morning – Cody Jinks – In MY Blood

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Yesterday was a very long day.  I had to take a series of eight on-line course exams and then a qualifying exam for all of them for a job requirement. But it turned out they were all due this week so a very long and boring day.

No time for a post.  But a good friend whose a country musician said this was a very good song by Jinks so i gave it a listen.  I haven’t made up my mind on it but I figured I’d put it up here for everyone to hear.

One piece of good news for the week, I finished my book.  Now I just have to figure out how to publish and market it.

The Honeymooners – Complete Series Review – Episode 5 – A Matter of Life and Death

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This episode is basically a comedy of errors.  The same week that Ralph goes for a physical examination at his doctor, Alice’s mother’s dog Ginger is brought to the vet by Alice.  Alice hides the vet visit from Ralph because it cost ten dollars and she knows Ralph will resent the expense.  When the vet’s report is delivered to the house Ralph assumes it’s his diagnosis.  The report says the patient has only six months to live due to a condition called arterial monochromia.  His symptoms will be loss of hair and blue tongue.  It is recommended that he be kept comfortable on the floor near the stove for warmth and given a daily pill with a saucer of milk.

After lamenting his fate he decides that he must provide for Alice by selling his sad story to the newspapers, thus providing her with $5,000 in her bereavement.

And unbelievably he is successful in his plan although the newspaper warns him that if he doesn’t die in six months they will prosecute him for fraud.  Eventually Alice gets wind of the plan and when she reads the vet’s report she starts laughing hysterically and tells him it’s the dog’s diagnosis and that arterial monochromia is called by excessive scratching at fleas..

Ralph is at first ebullient when he finds he’s not dying but immediately panics when he realizes he may be sent to prison for fraud.  Of course he immediately comes up with another scheme.  With Norton dressed in a checked jacket, wearing glasses and carrying a doctor’s bag the boys head for the newspaper office where they inform them that a miraculous therapy will cure Ralph.  He returns the check and heads for the door.  But the editor raves that this story is even better than the old one and begins pumping “Dr. Norton” for details of his medical history.  Of course disaster ensues and finally Ralph has to admit that he mistook the report from a veterinarian for his own diagnosis.

All turns out well when the paper realizes that a story making fun of Ralph’s stupidity will be more entertaining than the original story.

I believe the highlight of the episode is Norton finding Ralph fainted upon the floor and believing him to have died suddenly.  He starts mourning for the poor little fat kid who’ll never wear his little hat or his little socks and finally he picks up a pair of Ralph’s pants and says. “He’ll never wear these little pants again” as he spreads out the huge pants across the screen.

Definitely a good episode all around.  And I believe Doctor Norton may have been the inspiration for Cosmo Kramer’s Dr Van Nostrand.

A Window into Death

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This morning when I woke up the house was noticeably cooler than it’s been in a month.  It was sixty degrees or thereabouts.  So, Fall is making its entrance felt.  Lots of leaves under the maple tree and the grass is drying out.  The raspberry canes are still producing tons of berries but the lower leaves are all turning yellow.  Well, the kids go back to school on Monday and so this is the end of summer by decree and by degree.  So be it.

Well, it was a terrific summer weatherwise and we did most of the things we wanted to.  And we had a big party at the end.  So now it’s time to anticipate the good stuff that comes with Fall.  Well?  I guess the only thing about Fall that’s good is the long evenings allow us to watch old movies and plan for the holidays.  Certainly, there’s more to do than that.  Fall is when you’re supposed to do the repairs and weatherproofing that prevents winter from doing a lot of damage.  And I do plan to do that stuff.  But let’s be honest here.  I hate that stuff.  I’ve been talking about getting some tarps to cover over the woodwork on the balconies and the outside staircase for about ten years and I haven’t gotten any closer to doing it yet.  I’m just an immensely lazy man whose strong suit is dithering, waffling, vacillating and procrastination.  Of course I blame Camera Girl.  If she were half as good at nagging as she is at cooking, I’d be a model husband.  But it’s the cross I bear.

So, a couple of nights ago TCM had “Psycho” on and Camera Girl was watching it.  Well, I was busy but I noted her choice in passing.  And while I was working in the dining room, I could hear snatches of music and dialog.  And I could tell it was getting toward Marion Crane’s (Janet Leigh’s) fateful arrival at the Bates Motel.  So, I dropped what I was doing and sat through Marion’s supper with Norman and all the way through her murder and subsequent deposition in the “swamp.”  By the way, how much of Southern California actually has any swampland?

Now I’ve seen Psycho dozens of times.  And the murder scene has always struck me as well done.  It’s well staged and well shot.  And having seen it so many times allowed me to watch it this time analytically.  And I thought that the critical snatch of film is when Marion is luxuriating in the shower and the camera shifts to the room through the shower curtain and you see the door open and a silhouette appear in the doorway.

That is the moment when death has entered the frame.  The actual killing with the blood and piercing, screaming “music” is almost an anticlimax.

And then I watched Marion Crane die from loss of blood.  And it was remarkably well acted and achingly sad.  Here was a young woman whose impatience to be with the man she loved had driven her to steal an enormous amount of money.  But just as she’s figured out what she needs to do to escape from the trap she’s gotten herself into, fate steps in and feeds her into a buzz saw of insanity.

The rest of the movie is a murder mystery and a psychological horror show.  But the end of the murder scene is a tiny window into an intensely poignant moment; the death of a human being and specifically the death of a beautiful young woman.  Janet Leigh’s face conveys the reality that Marion Crane’s brain is shutting down from lack of blood and her world has shrunk down to just trying to grasp the shower curtain with her hand.  And then she dies and her body lies crumpled on the floor and her unfocussed eye stares into space.  That’s the best acting in the movie.

So, despite the spectacle from then on, the interesting part of the movie is the first forty minutes that record Marion Crane’s date with destiny.  And I’ll include her conversation with Norman.  He does communicate his pathetic version of what he thinks the world is about.  And in some sense, he provides a sounding board to allow her to think about what to do about her own private trap.

Well, anyway, it’s Fall and old movies are the thing to do.

Long, Long Ago in a Studio Far, Far Away

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As the tent-pole summer movies of July fade into August obscurity and dinosaurs, Superman and lesser Marvel superheroes get rated and dissected by the movie critics I think it has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt that the failure of Hollywood to replicate the billion-dollar paydays from earlier versions of Star Wars and the Avengers franchises can now be definitively explained.  They forgot that a superhero movie (or even just a plain hero movie) requires a hero.  And the requirements of a hero (whether in book or on a screen) include that we like the hero.

And that seems to be where Hollywood has gone off the rails.  They’ve managed to make a bunch of movies where the heroes are unlikeable.  For the most part these unlikeable heroes have tended to be of the type currently known as the “girl-boss.”  The prime example of this category is Rey, played by Daisy Ridley in the Star Wars movies.  The type includes the following traits:

  • Although small and thin she is completely capable of defeating men many times her size.
  • She hectors male characters about their obvious shortcomings compared to her.
  • Completely humorless.
  • Has no flaws.
  • Has no setbacks.

Now, this sort of character fits perfectly into the social messaging of all modern Hollywood films.  It allows older franchises with male protagonists to be replaced with the girl-boss.  Examples include Rey in Star Wars replacing Luke Skywalker, Helena Shaw replacing Indiana Jones and Captain Marvel basically replacing all the Avengers.

The problem with these replacements is that the producers think that just saying that their new characters are just as good as the originals (if not better) is enough.  For some reason they didn’t think it would be necessary to hire good writers and directors to make the movies exciting and entertaining.  But as it turns out they are extremely important if you don’t want your movies to be unwatchable crap.  And that is the thing that all these movies share.  They’re awful.  And unfortunately for Disney they’ve been making these “better” movies and television series in the Star Wars and Marvel series for about ten years and they’ve completely dissipated the enthusiasm and good will of their legacy audiences that paid billions of dollars to see the older movies that actually were well written, exciting and entertaining.

Over the last six months it has finally dawned on Disney (and the other studios) that they’ve killed the goose that lays the golden eggs.  They’ve alienated about 70% of their audience and destroyed a machine that printed cash.  From what I’ve read, the most recent Marvel movie “Fantastic Four” went to lengths to not go down the girl-boss lane and even had a decent script that could be enjoyed as an adventure movie.  The problem is that most of their old audience didn’t bother to give it a try and so the movie while not a complete bomb is struggling to become profitable.

Regardless of whether “Fantastic Four” makes money I think we may be at a turning point in the fantasy-adventure genre.  It has finally dawned on the studios that social messaging for the woke agenda is box office poison that has a tiny audience.  As the recent purchase of Paramount by Skydance Media demonstrates, entertainment that doesn’t make money ends up on the auction block and then the chopping block where the unentertaining and unprofitable components get sliced off and thrown in the garbage.  And similar things are happening all over the media and entertainment world.  CNN, MSNBC and CBS are all finding out that woke ideology doesn’t equal profitability and if they can’t adapt to a world that isn’t amused by it, they’ll be out of work.  I guess I’m an eternal optimist but maybe, just maybe, in a year or two decent fantasy adventure may be produced in Hollywood again.  At least it could happen!

When I Was Your Age Television Was Called Books

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When I was a kid, I was a science fiction fanatic.  I went to the local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library and pored over the shelves.  I read everything they had and then I went to the next closest library and found what they had that was different.  And so on and so forth.  Until I reached the main branch; “Grand Army Plaza.”  And then there was no more.  So, all that was left until a new book made its way to the shelves was the monthly edition of Analog; the science fiction magazine where new stuff was to be found.  Sometimes there was a novel serialization by some well-known author like Heinlein or Frederik Pohl or Joe Haldeman or Gordon Dickson.  But more often there were short stories by anyone and everyone.  Not all of them were great or even good but they were still fun to read.  I had my own subscription for a number of years.  Then I found Camera Girl and I had too much to do with work and school to read anything but textbooks.  But I still saw the Analog covers at the local magazine rack down by the local El stop of the NYC subway.

But once I left New York, I confess I completely lost track of Analog.  I guess I just assumed that it (and its competitors; Asimov’s and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) were still out there chugging along even without me.

Turns out I was wrong.  Apparently, they’re all dead or dying.  The market for short science fiction has completely dried up.  Even the anthologies that used to collect these stories and sell them as books have stopped making money.

I guess none of this is surprising to folks who understand how the mass marketing of entertainment has changed.  I guess it only makes sense that the same generations that refuse to buy music and refuse to buy movies would also refuse to buy books and magazines.

Apparently, what they will buy are video games.  Now that reminds me of an old joke from an old movie.  There’s a scene at the beginning of the movie “The Princess Bride” where the grandfather played by Peter Falk is trying to read a story to his grandson who is playing a video game and objecting that instead of a book he wants to watch television so Falk says, “When I was your age television was called books!”

So, I’m at least two generations too late to imagine Americans reading short stories.  Now isn’t that amazing.  Or is it just paying for books that’s obsolete?  I think it must be the latter.  I understand there are free websites where authors provide their stories to consumers and they support these writers somewhat indirectly through Patreon or other means.  I guess this could be the new economy.  It seems as improbable as the world of the “Matrix” where human beings acting as bio-batteries power the cyber world they dream through.

Maybe I’d better find one of these sites and see if I can get these penniless zoomers to read my stuff.  I think I might see if I can play this three-penny opera thing that’s growing up in this brave new world.

Lost Histories

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Lots of fantasy and science fiction authors have used the rediscovered history theme.  I think maybe Robert Howard used it for Conan and maybe some of his other sword and sorcery stuff.  Tolkien sort of used it for the Lord of the Rings.  The Red Book of Westmarch is supposed to be the source from which he wrote his books.

So, the conceit is usually a scholar is searching through old manuscripts and suddenly finds stories that somehow no one has ever read before.  I guess maybe a case could be made that an existing manuscript might have a palimpsest layer that couldn’t previously be seen or read and now because of advances in sensing techniques it can.

But usually, this kind of text underneath text is limited to at most a few pages of written language.  But as anyone who has been a religious reader of this site knows, the Roman papyri from the ruins of Herculaneum are slowly and painfully being deciphered using a form of x-ray tomography.  These charred and unopenable papyrus scrolls are being read right through the other layers of charred plant material by an artificial intelligence that can scan the three-dimensional surface of the scroll in its rolled up and damaged condition.

Currently the progress is glacially slow.  And this is even though a million-dollar prize has been announced for the tech genius who can take the scans and turn it into text.  Currently the part of the library being examined contains the works of an obscure stoic philosopher which has extremely limited popular appeal.  But there have been claims made that the total library was an extensive collection of Graeco-Roman literature and history.

If this turns out to be true and the scanning technology becomes robust, there may be many lost masterpieces of ancient writing to be found.  Lost plays by Sophocles and histories of ancient peoples like the Etruscans.  Every classical scholar has a wish list of what would be wonderful to recover.

But what comes to my mind is what a perfect place to find some lost history with fantasy or science fiction elements.  Now exactly what they would be is something that will require careful thought.  As I said there have been a lot of stories somewhat in this vein.  The trick would be to allow this history to tie into the present day in some way.  There could be detailed information of something that’s been buried and could be retrieved.  Or maybe it’s something that’s hidden in plain sight and possibly still operating in the present day.

So, this is the vaguest of outlines and needs lots of thought but while I was out watering the vegetable patch and photographing half-grown preying mantids it occurred to me.  And since I never have an undocumented thought, lo and behold; here it is.  It occurs to me I’ve never written a horror story.  Mostly I just make fun of H.P. Lovecraft but a two-thousand-year-old Etruscan demon might be something I could get interested in.  And since we know next to nothing about the Etruscans, I could make up anything I wanted and no one could definitively call me out on any of it.  What could be lazier?

2025 Summer Movies

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I’ve been listening to some of the movie reviewers about the crop of summer movies.  I guess the first “tentpole” film is whatever they’re calling the latest sequel to Jurassic Park.  I think the consensus is that it’s a tired derivative rehash of the original concept.  It’s also making a ton of money.  So, from the studio’s point of view, a success!  From an actual sentient movie watcher’s point of view not so much.  But as a grandfather of a dinosaur super-enthusiast, it does check a lot of the boxes as a way to bond with said enthusiast.  So not a total loss.

Then there are the latest comic book superhero movies.  So, they’ve given the Avengers the summer off and instead they’re taking another crack at “The Fantastic Four.”  Now this has always been a sort of oddball franchise.  They’re superpowers are “odd.”  One is a guy who can stretch his body.  Huh?  Then there’s a guy who can fly and shoot fire at stuff; well, pretty good, I guess.  Then there’s a girl who can become invisible and also has a force field.  This is actually the most powerful superpower amongst them.  And then there’s a guy who looks like he’s made of rock and is somewhat strong.  None of these “heroes” is going to compete with Superman or even Thor.  They’re powers kind of suck and they’re relegated to protecting Manhattan from intergalactic troublemakers like Dr. Doom, Galactus or Annihilus.  So, if you have a villain that can devour planetary system how does a stretchy guy and a rock stop you?  Even forcefield girl and “flame on” boy aren’t that much use.  On top of all that apparently the powers that be have decided that forcefield girl will be the girl boss of the movie and there will be much female empowerment on display.  Yay?  Well, I guess I can skip that one for my grandsons.

And then there’s another reboot of Superman coming out.  Initial reviews hint at the importance of Superman’s “immigrant” status.  Also, there’s been a lot of talk about “inclusion.”  Well, that doesn’t bode well in my book.  Worst case Superman is protecting cartel gangbangers against Trump’s ICE agents.  Best case Superman will be propagandizing the kids about how great it is to be an illegal alien from Krypton.  I could be wrong but I’m not seeing a Superman movie in my summer lineup.

Alright, let’s review.  Stupid dinosaur sequel is my best bet.  Check.  You know what?  I think I’ll assemble a sci-fi and fantasy film festival of my own.  That’s what I’ll do.  I’ll arrange a schedule and invite the grandkids over.

Let’s see; Them, Destination: Moon, The Thing from Another World, Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, Terminator, Blade Runner, Independence Day and The Martian.  I’ll have to split it up to allow for the ages of the viewers.  And then we’ll end on a fantasy note; original Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings.  Okay, that’s a starting point.  And think of the money I’ll save on tickets and popcorn!  photog, you’re a bloody genius!

The Wise of Heart: A Modern-Day Re-Imagining of the Scopes Monkey Trial by Hans G. Schantz – A Book Review

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“Inherit the Wind” was a famous fictionalized account of the Scope’s Monkey Trial of the early twentieth century.  It centered on a young school teacher who was arrested and put on trial for teaching the theory of evolution in the Bible Belt where laws had been passed to forbid it.

Dr. Schantz has managed to swap out transgender orthodoxy for fundamentalist creationism in his story and crafted a courtroom drama that captures all of the nuances of our present-day retreat from reality that calls sexually mutilating adolescents, “gender-affirming therapy” and allows grade school teachers to conspire with social workers to perform these procedures on minors despite parents’ horrified resistance.  A high school biology teacher is accused of teaching the biological facts of human sexuality and this throws him in conflict with a state law that forbids a teacher from challenging a student’s “selected gender identity.”

For those familiar with the movie version of “Inherit the Wind,” some of the plot twists will reappear in a new analog.  But this isn’t a rehash of the old story.  This is a very in-depth look at the illogic and fallacies of the transgender narrative and the way different parts of the government, the medical profession, media and academia pander to the delusions of confused children and frighten their parents into allowing terrible things to be done to their children.

The story is inhabited by a cast of characters that interlock at multiple points.  Small town politics and society mesh with national political figures who have their own agendas but seize upon the trial as the perfect battlefield to win a victory for their side.  Both sides are portrayed believably.  The woke activists aren’t just straw men but sound quite close to what their real counterparts sound like in news clips.  The details of the trial sound extremely close to what the transcript of a trial would consist of.

So, what did I think of the story?  I think the story takes a while to get going.  There is a set-up needed to get all the pieces in position for the trial.  During this period the reader will have to be patient.  Once the trial gets going the story finds its stride and becomes a courtroom drama.  And I found the ending satisfying without being overdone.  As with its predecessor it doesn’t attempt to write a conclusion to the clash going on in the story but rather capture the flavor of the two opposing sides and show how each side attempts to paint itself and its opponents using the weapons that each prefers.  The Left fixates on emotions and idealism while the Right points to logic and reality.

Who is this book for?  Well, first off, people of the woke persuasion will not be amused.  Despite being reasonably accurate in his portrayal of the woke side they don’t come off as sympathetic characters.  So, this leaves moderates and people on the Right.  Also, this book is a courtroom drama and folks who read these are its intended audience.  Personally, I liked the book.  I liked the defense attorney and I despised the prosecutor.  This made the courtroom battle satisfying for me.  But you’ll have to make up your mind based on what I’ve described whether this is your kind of story.

But Which Story?

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The previous post (“Have I Got a Story for You”) produced some stimulating comments and feedback (below in bold print):

I think it just proves there’s a ready market for good science fiction out there.  Larry Niven’s Known Space; David Weber’s Honor Harrington stories; Niven and Pournelle with “Footfall” “The Mote in God’s Eye” and “Lucifer’s Hammer.”  The stories are already there.  But apparently the powers that be want a different kind of story but for an audience that doesn’t like science fiction!

For adults all of the below comments give ideas that should easily be translatable to cinema or television series productions.  The technical problems have long ago been conquered with computer generated imagery.  The only problems are lack of imagination and ideological blindness.

And the people who want the good stories are both young and old.  I’d love to be able to bring my grandkids to see age-appropriate science fiction that isn’t just poorly disguised gender and racial grievance propaganda but actually tells a good story about people they can relate to.

In the spirit of selecting something I could bring my grandchildren to (and enjoy myself!) I figure I’ll throw out a couple of safe but entertaining choices.

My first choice has some problems.  The story premise has become dated based on the current state of the art in computing and thinking machines.  It’s Heinlein’s “Starman Jones.”  Max Jones’s unusual rise through the ranks from stable boy to astrogator was predicated on his “eidetic” memory and abilities as a lightning calculator.  Well, that would seem to be a kind of silly plotline today.  Even the most phenomenal human mind cannot hope to compare with the speed and precision of a modern computer.  So, some other skill will be needed to distinguish the young hero.  The FTL process could be changed so that sensing the space warp is an individualistic skill that he happens to possess to an extreme degree.  Or some other skill, whatever.

But the rest of the storyline works fine for a book or a movie concept.  Max and his mentor Sam can show their qualities on some lost planet in a star system far, far away.  I think it would make a billion bucks.

And even more apt Heinlein juvenile would be “Have Spacesuit Will Travel.”  The protagonist Kip Russell goes through a collection of adventures that are ready made for the big screen.  He’s accidentally drawn into an interstellar police action between a galaxy-spanning civilization and a race of evil predators that have invaded our solar system with the intent of conquering humanity and using them as food.

It’s got FTL space travel, time travel and high adventure.  It even has humanity put on trial in front of a galactic court to determine whether they deserve to exist.  What’s not to love.

And of course, the Heinlein juveniles include at least a half dozen more stories that are highly qualified to be considered for the big screen.  All it would take would be a director with a decent ear for dialog and a script writer who isn’t totally woke.

So, any of you guys aware of any recent science fiction that would be appropriate for adolescents and young adults?  It’s a bit more of a specialist niche but I’m sure it exists out there.  All that has to be done is look.

 

Ed Brault

I would love to see Larry Niven’s Known Space stories and novels brought to the screen. Big, sweeping arcs like Ringworld Series, The Fleet of Worlds, or the epic Man-Kzin Wars; or smaller sets like the Gil Hamilton organlegger detective stories, or the individual novels that help flesh out the Known Space Universe: Becalmed in Hell, the Coldest Place, World of Ptaavs, A Gift from Earth, and especially, Protector, and the related Peace Corben novellas. These would probably be best done like The Expanse; a multi-year episodic TV drama.

The biggest problem would be preventing the studio suits from doing a Disney on the stories. I would consider that an Organ-Bank-worthy crime!

 

Abraham

David Weber’s Honor Harrington series would work well, even with a woman hero.

 

Tregonsee314

I think Ringworld has been in development a couple times, most recently with Amazon/MGM. It is Tough to get a large audience for it (especially as you move into Ringworld Engineers and later) as it wanders into hard R territory though one COULD limit that somewhat. It also would probably push limits of even current special effects for Kzin and Puppeteers. I love Protector it has the advantage that it sticks with a couple characters across its story. It probably would want to be a limited miniseries as it is a smidge too long (at 218 PG) to make a single two-hour movie, though you could perhaps time compress some parts and maybe get there. My own favorite for a series (or maybe 2 movie pair like the recent Dune) would be Niven and Pournelle’s Footfall, if for no other reason than the final battle using Project Archangel.

 

TomD

Reply to  Tregonsee314

It’s been decades since I read Footfall, I really would like to reread that. Niven alone

Niven and Pournelle put out so much. I still think Lucifer’s Hammer was the absolute best of the type.

Ahhh, but Ringworld made “real” and the Mote in Gods Eye—–

 

Ed Brault

Lucifer’s Hammer: The surfer dude riding the tidal wave would be worth the price of admission!

 

Tregonsee314

So many attempts and so little success. Looking for successes I think the latest incarnation of Dune, although flawed in some aspects, was probably the most successful of the 3 (4 if you count the aborted Jodorowsky attempt). I think the Jackson Lord of the Rings was very good even without certain sections (sorry Tom Bombadil, you just aren’t central to the plot). The Expanse did middling well, though I lost track of it mid-2nd season.

The failures are more plentiful. Jacksons Hobbit was a mess with unnecessary additional characters and subplots, even though the acting (Bilbo and Thorin especially) was superb. The Foundation series by Apple mangles the timeline (mostly because with the longer timeline there is no character continuity but for the shade of Hari Seldon) and adds wokish subplots all over the place. Effects were nice and Asimov having ONLY humans in Foundation/ Robots universe simplifies that. All in all, it was a disappointment and I bailed after 3-4 episodes. I think it fell flat for the public because many of its ideas seemed like retreads (E.g. Trantor as a planet covered with civilization feels like warmed over Coruscant even though Trantor predates Coruscant by 20+ years and likely inspired Lucas). And Rings of Power? Mauling the lore of Tolkien to pander to a variety of subgroups combined with puerile 4th-grade fanboy scripts produced an utter catastrophe.

Almost anything Sci-fi that Hollywood has done without a sci-fi novel or story at the heart is a mess. Hollywood seems to want to revert to the pre–Star Wars Sci-fi where all is Dystopia and nuclear hellscape. That things might work out is anathema. Even the vaunted Federation of Star Trek has been being mauled with its hidden perfidy in Discovery and Picard. Not to say dark is bad. Babylon 5 was amazing (especially given the limitations of cost and mid 1990’s special effects).

What seems to matter most is that the primary vision for converting the Sci Fi to the screen needs to LOVE the material. JMS wrote much of B5 and was its director, Peter Jackson Adored Lord of The Rings and co-wrote the script, Denis Villeneuve is a Dune/Herbert fanboi. Each loved the story in its original form and tried very hard to leave the original plot beats and characterizations in place, not bend them to tell their own story like Rings of Power or Foundation did.

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 27MAY2025 – Niven’s “Known Space” on Screen

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I would love to see Larry Niven’s Known Space stories and novels brought to the screen. Big, sweeping arcs like Ringworld Series, The Fleet of Worlds, or the epic Man-Kzin Wars; or smaller sets like the Gil Hamilton organlegger detective stories, or the individual novels that help flesh out the Known Space Universe: Becalmed in Hell, the Coldest Place, World of Ptaavs, A Gift from Earth, and especially, Protector, and the related Peace Corben novellas. These would probably be best done like The Expanse; a multi-year episodic TV drama.
The biggest problem would be preventing the studio suits from doing a Disney on the stories. I would consider that an Organ-Bank-worthy crime!