I've read most of Crichton's books and only now realize that they are Sci-Fi. There's a special brand of it that happens right now, but in away that the story is kept secret from the world. But anyway, I sometimes enjoy the times where Crichton goes and wanders of on an obscure subject in his book that doesn't have much to do with the plot, because, he does it so well that you wish there was a book written about that one idea. Anyway, my fav Crichton books are Terminal Man, Sphere, and Eaters of the Dead(I read Jurassic Park when I was 9 and it doesn't hold the same allure now as it did then).Yecchh... I read the first few chapters of KJA's Star Wars novel Darksaber and it read like a fucking Golden Book. Utterly idiotic. He couldn't let a mention of a movie character go past without throwing in a handful of trademarked words (no TM symbols in the actual text, but I bet they were tempted). You read shit like, "Luke Skywalker, the young, blonde Jedi Knight, stepped from the back of the bantha, followed by Han Solo, his rugged but charming roguish friend..." Revolting prose - had it not been a library book, I would have thrown it away.
The problem is he also likes to push him self into other people's work. The new dune series? Brian Herbert & Kevin J. He seems to like a lot of joint works when his style can't fill out a novel like the do in Star Wars(where he throws together a lot of elements from the lore, a plot, and a lot of boring syntax). He also does this with other people- I read a novel called Ill Wind, which was ok, but was a joint work of Beason and Anderson, and that made it less than it could have been.
Another thing- I just read that Anderson has written 25 bestsellers, and was
nominated for the Nebula, Bram Stoker, and the SFX Reader's Choice Award.
There are a few different "clubs" in the Book Was Better party. There are those who think that a movie version of their favourite book somehow pollutes it. These guys are completely irrational -
do not argue with them! Then there are those who don't hate the idea of a movie, but want it to be exactly as they see it in their heads. When the pictures on the screen clash with their knowledge of the book, they get angry. I fit into the third group - change it if you need to, change it if it makes it better, but for God's sake, don't change it because you felt like it, and never change it to the detriment of the whole.
I enjoyed the first Harry Potter movie. I felt it could have been done better, but it was still a top-class effort from a director who really seemed to want to do the right thing (and didn't want to get crucified). Changes were made, things were omitted, and I understand that. The same will happen with The Fellowship of the Ring - characters wil be merged or entirely deleted, plotlines will simplify or vanish, dialogue will be made more concise. However, I know Peter Jackson is a man of deep integrity and a great fan of Tolkien's works, so I trust him to do the best job possible.
Compare this to Jurassic Park. I adored the book, and apparently scriptwriter David Koepp liked it too, which is why he decided to keep three scenes from it and write the rest from scratch. Most of his changes did not improve the film, and many of them made it much worse. JP1 was a bad film, but its best moments were, predictably, those parts retained from the novel. Apparently it wasn't so bad as source material after all, though - both sequels have taken liberally from the first novel. tLW:JP had more of the first book in it than the second.
The problem with adapting a book to the screen is that there are
thousands of subtle nuances that cannot be shown to a movie audience(or even understood by half of them). Try Dune. I never saw the film, but from what I heard--it was bad right?-- anyway, the book contains dozens upon dozens of small details that fill out a story and make it very engrossing. When you put this in a movie with a budget, most of it will disappear. Even certain kinds of dialogue(like you'd see in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) would be omitted for clarity. Also, when a writer sits down(like Crichton), all the time, energy and finances that he wants to put into this novel is completely at his discretion. When a scriptwriter/storywriter/directory sits down to make a story/script/storyboards, they must adhere to the factors that the movie studio has provided them with- the movie can be this long, we can spend this much money on it, and you can/can't do this/that.
Given all that, I don't see how you could ever get a movie to be exactly like the book, much less complain about it.
So goes the grisly state of scifi today...
But there's hope! I'm off to the library to get Greg Egan, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Norman Spinrad, Rudy Rucker, Matt Ruff, Neal Stephenson, and John Shirley, and if im lucky, maybe I can find a way to order a pulp!
