Science fiction for a miniseries in television? Who among HBO, Showtime, Amazon Prime, Apple TV and other streaming networks will make the great scifi epics in the near future? An epic Scifi with great storytelling and captures the imagination, in a miniseries format.
Which one will become the Game of Thrones for Science Fiction? Have a look at some familiar favorites and well known authors. Any of them can make great SciFi with the right script, producer, director.
3,500 years have passed since Paul Atreides had become the messiah of the Fremen and the Emperor of the known universe at the end of the novel Dune. His son, Leto Atreides II, sees the path that his father Muad'Dib had also seen, a future that secures the continuation of human life throughout the universe. That future, however, requires an aberrant act of selflessness: becoming a hybrid of man and sandworm. At the end of Children of Dune, Leto II accepts this mantle of godhood from the Fremen and transforms himself into a monster of the desert, a sandworm, that will dominate the ecology of the planet Arrakis (known as Dune) for millennia.
Way Station is a 1963 science fiction novel by Clifford D. Simak, originally published as Here Gather the Stars in two parts in Galaxy Magazine in June and August 1963. Way Station won the 1964 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Enoch Wallace, an American Civil War veteran, is chosen by an alien called Ulysses to administer a way station for interplanetary travel. Wallace is the only human being who knows of the existence of these aliens, until almost a hundred years later, when the US government becomes aware of and suspicious about his failure to age or die.
CITY
Composite built around seven shorts published in Astounding 1944 – 1951, tales that have become the legends of sentient dogs to whom ‘Man’ is a myth. Tales that centre on generations of the Webster family, showing the failure of the cities, the eventual fate of mankind and of life on Earth itself. The one constant is Jenkins, the robot who serves successive generations of the Websters and beyond. This fascinating and imaginative book won the International Fantasy Award.
The novel describes a legend consisting of eight tales the pastoral and pacifist Dogs recite as they pass down an oral legend of a creature known as Man. Each tale is preceded by doggish notes and learned discussion.
An editor's preface notes that after each telling of the legend the pups ask many questions:
- "What is Man?" they'll ask.
- Or perhaps: "What is a city?"
- Or: "What is a war?
- There is no positive answer to any of these questions."
Generations ago, a secret, unauthorized experiment by the Gowachins was carried out with the help of a contract with the Calebans. They isolated the planet Dosadi behind an impenetrable barrier called "The God Wall". On the planet were placed humans and Gowachin, with an odd mix of modern and old technology. The planet itself is massively poisonous except for a narrow valley, containing the city "Chu", into which nearly 89 million humans and Gowachin are crowded under terrible conditions. It is ruled by a dictator, many other forms of government having been tried previously, but without the ability to remove such things as the DemoPol, a computer system used to manipulate populaces without their consent or knowledge. The culture of ordinary day-to-day power in Dosadi is very violent. Among other tools, addictive psychotropes are used for handling power among hierarchies in organisations.
Is Buddy Satvan the creator of the cartoon superhero Diamond Sutro? Or is Sutro the creator of Buddy Satvan, the mightiest crusader in the universe? Are these two men, or six? Are they real, or figments of someone’s imagination? A challenging journey to the other side of reality that adds up to a triple-play powerhouse of time, telepathy, and extrasensory shock!
Altered Carbon is a hardboiled cyberpunk science fiction novel by Richard K. Morgan. Set some five hundred years in the future in a universe in which the United Nations Protectorate oversees a number of extrasolar planets settled by human beings, it features protagonist Takeshi Kovacs. Kovacs is a former United Nations Envoy and a native of Harlan's World, a planet settled by a Japanese keiretsu with Eastern European labour.
The first season is based on Richard Morgan's 2002 novel Altered Carbon. While most of the major plot points in the book are retained, the adaptation featured several major changes for characters and organizations. In the novel, the Envoys are elite soldiers of the United Nations Protectorate based on Earth, quite the opposite of the freedom-fighting rebels of the show, originating from Harlan's World, where Kovacs was born.
In the book, Kovacs was imprisoned for his freelance work after leaving the Envoys, while in the show, Kovacs is a captured rebel. The character of Reileen Kawahara in the novel was merely Kovacs' ruthless underworld boss and had no blood relation with him, in contrast to their sibling relationship in the show. The Envoy who trained Kovacs in the book was Virginia Vidaura. The show's Vidaura is only a minor character. Instead, his trainer is given the name and backstory of Quellcrist Falconer, who in book three is the historical messiah-like figure. Falconer's rebellion occurred not during Kovacs' training, as in the show, but long before Kovacs was born in the books.
The Hendrix is an AI character in the novel; it runs the hotel and takes the form of Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix's estate declined to license his image for the television series because of its violence. Instead, showrunner Kalogridis chose the likeness of Edgar Allan Poe and a Victorian era hotel for the replacement Poe character and said it would juxtapose well with the futuristic Bay City.
Netflix ordered the series in January 2016, fifteen years after Laeta Kalogridis optioned the novel with the intent of making a feature film. According to Kalogridis, the complex nature of the novel and its R-rated material meant that it was a tough sell for studios before Netflix ordered the series. The show was one of a number of dramas ordered in short order by Netflix, which had committed to spending $5 billion on original content.
Kalogridis wrote the script and served as executive producer and showrunner. Steve Blackman served as co-showrunner. David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross of Skydance Television also served as producers, as well as Brad Fischer and James Vanderbilt of Kalogridis' Mythology Entertainment. Miguel Sapochnik directed the pilot episode. Morgan served as a consultant during the show's production.
The Vorkosigan Saga is a series of science fiction novels and short stories set in a common fictional universe by American author Lois McMaster Bujold. The first of these was published in 1986 and the most recent in 2012. Works in the series have received numerous awards and nominations, including winning four Hugo awards.
Bujold’s approach varies, sometimes crossing genres. All the novels include humor and comedy, sometimes very black and juxtaposed with tragic deaths or losses. She mixes military adventure, political thriller, romance, and the whodunit in various proportions.
The point of view characters include women (Cordelia in Shards of Honor, Barrayar; Ekaterin in Komarr and A Civil Campaign), a homosexual (Ethan of Athos), and a pair of brothers, one of whom is disabled and the other a clone (Miles and Mark Vorkosigan), together with some less well educated characters (e.g., the bodyguard Roic and the runaway lad Jin).
Reading Order
Bibliography
The Vorkosigan Companion
James Bolivar DiGriz, alias "Slippery Jim" and "The Stainless Steel Rat", is a fictional character and the protagonist of a series of comic science fiction novels written by Harry Harrison.
The Stainless Steel Rat is James Bolivar diGriz, who goes by many aliases, including "Slippery Jim" and "The Stainless Steel Rat". He is a futuristic con man, thief, and all-round rascal. He is charming and quick-witted. He is also a master of disguise and martial arts, an accomplished bank robber, a criminal mastermind, an expert on breaking and entering, and (perhaps most usefully) a skilled liar. Master of self-rationalization, the Rat frequently justifies his crimes by arguing that he is providing society with entertainment; and besides which, he only steals from institutions which have insurance coverage.
Rendezvous with Rama is a hard science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1972. Set in the 22nd century, the story involves a 50-kilometre (31 mi) cylindrical alien starship that enters Earth's solar system. The story is told from the point of view of a group of human explorers who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries. This novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards upon its release, and is regarded as one of the cornerstones in Clarke's bibliography.
The premise of the series is that the mathematician Hari Seldon spent his life developing a branch of mathematics known as psychohistory, a concept of mathematical sociology (analogous to mathematical physics). Using the laws of mass action, it can predict the future, but only on a large scale; it is error-prone on a small scale. It works on the principle that the behaviour of a mass of people is predictable if the quantity of this mass is very large (equal to the population of the galaxy, which has a population of quadrillions of humans, inhabiting millions of star systems). The larger the number, the more predictable is the future.
On June 27, 2017, it was reported that Skydance Television was developing a television series adaptation of Isaac Asimov's science fiction book series Foundation with David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman serving as the production's writers. At the time of the report, the production company was in the midst of closing a deal with Asimov's estate for the rights to the book series. On April 10, 2018, it was announced that Apple, through their Worldwide Video Unit, had bought the series and put it into development with the potential for straight-to-series order. It was further announced that Goyer and Friedman were also expected to serve as executive producers and showrunners. Other executive producers announced included David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Marcy Ross.
On August 23, 2018, it was announced that Apple had given the production a series order for a first season consisting of ten episodes. It was also announced that Asimov's daughter, Robyn Asimov, would serve as an executive producer. On April 18, 2019, Josh Friedman left as co-writer and co-showrunner. On July 28, 2019, it was revealed that Troy Studios in Limerick, Ireland, would host production of the show. Troy Studios previously hosted productions of the Syfy series NightFlyers. According to Screen Ireland the series would create more than 500 production jobs at the studio. Wiki
A Deepness in_the Sky is a Hugo Award–winning science fiction novel by Vernor Vinge. Published in 1999, The plot begins with the discovery of an intelligent alien species on a planet orbiting an anomalous star, dubbed On/Off because for 215 of every 250 years it is dormant, releasing almost no energy. During this period, the planet freezes and its fauna go into hibernation. The planet's inhabitants, called "Spiders" by the humans for their resemblance to arachnids, have reached a stage of technological development very similar to that of Earth's humans in the early 20th century, although humans believe that they may once have been capable of space travel. ebook
When the young son of Elizabeth Lindstrom, the autocratic president of Starflight, falls to his death, Vance Garamond, a flickerwing commander, is the obvious target for Elizabeth's grief and anger. Which, since Elizabeth is not a forgiving employer, leaves Garamond little choice but to flee. And fleeing Elizabeth¿s wrath means leaving the Solar System far behind, for ever, and hiding somewhere in deep space. Pursued remorselessly by Earth's space fleet, the somewhere that Garamond finds is an unimaginably vast, alien-built, spherical structure which could just change the destiny of the human race...
The Mote in God's Eye is a science fiction novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, first published in 1974. The story is set in the distant future of Pournelle's CoDominium universe, and charts the first contact between humanity and an alien species. The title of the novel is a wordplay on Luke 6:41–42 and Matthew 7:3–5, which names a star as seen from a newly settled planet.
Childhood's End is a 1953 science fiction novel by the British author Arthur C. Clarke. The story follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.
Many previous unsuccessful attempts to produce a film or TV series based on the novel were made over the decades since its publication. Stanley Kubrick approached novelist Arthur C. Clarke with thought to adapting the novel in the 1960s. Unfortunately, the rights were elsewhere at the time and the pair went on to do 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) instead. Abraham Polonsky and Howard Koch bought unmade screenplays while Philip DeGuere scripted it as TV miniseries in the late 1970s. In the early 2000s, plans were made for a film to be directed by Kimberly Peirce. IMDB
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