If I Were King Of The Forest (Movie Edition)

…or if I were Serpentor.

Mi amigo Jim MacQuarrie posted a fun article a couple of three years back about Movies They Will Never Make… But Should! in which he listed several sci-fi and fantasy novels / series / comics that would make good movies.

Well, two can play that game, Jim, so here’s my list of books & stories that are long overdue for cinematic adaptation.

Harry Harrison’s Deathworld (the first book in the trilogy).  A nice little moralistic sci-fi fable set on a planet where flora and fauna live in harmony, becoming dangerous only in response to violent thoughts...such as those of the new human colonists.  (This would have made a great Ray Harryhausen monster flick back in the day.)

H. Beam Piper’s The Cosmic Computer a.k.a. Junkyard Planet a.k.a. The Graveyard Of Dreams.  In the aftermath of a galactic war, a cargo cult planet begins a quixotic search for the ultimate computer that can solve every problem (I'm convinced Douglas Adams read this before coming up with Deep Thought and the search for the meaning of life, the universe, and everything).  Piper plays it straight, however, and in the end it's the search itself that provides meaning and purpose, not obtaining the impossible goal.

Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination (UK title:  Tyger!  Tyger!).  What a dazzling, pyrotechnic / psychedelic novel, filled with such unique and vivid characters (and perfect for casting multi-ethnic actors across the board)!  Bester's sci-fi take on The Count Of Monte Cristo, this is arguably the greatest science fiction novel ever written (I certainly think so!). [Serialized in Galaxy Science Fiction 1 - 2 - 3 - 4.]

Samuel R. Delany's Nova.  Probably his most conventional science fiction novel insofar as it falls quite squarely in the space opera sub-genre but a marvelous book.

Jack Vance's The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle.  Two novellas that while not formally set in the same universe serve as companion pieces to one another.  (I'd suggest doing it as a double-bill the way Death Proof and Movie! Movie! were passed off as faux double-bills).

Roger Zelazny's short stories “A Rose For Ecclesiastes” and “The Doors Of his Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth”.  These would also make a great faux double-bill, the first a Bradburyesque story of human explorers encountering the dying Martian race, the second a Planet Stories-style extravaganza where Hemingwayesque sports fishermen of the future use themselves as bait to catch the sea monsters of Venus.

Roger Zelazny's Roadmarks.  Sticking with the Z-man for a bit, this would also make a great movie, an alternate history / time travel story where time is literally a highway that can be traveled by those in the know (f’r instance, a wild animal park in the future finances a supersonic jet car to go back to the dinosaur era to bring back a t-rex; the trip takes them a subjective month).  Doc Savage and Adolf Hitler make cameo appearances, and Zelazny came up with the concept of notebook computers long before the actual computer industry did.

J.G. Ballard's short story, “The Cloud Sculptors Of Coral D”.  Perfect for animation or a film with extensive CGI atmospheric effects since it's literally about sculpting clouds into huge works of art.

J.G. Ballard's novel Concrete Island.  A modern day Robinson Crusoe tale in which the survivor of an auto accident, thrown clear on impact, wakes up on a traffic island in the middle of a vast interchange of ultra-highspeed freeways with no way to safely cross them to the city they run through and is forced to come up with ingenious methods of finding food and water while trying to signal for help.

And I trust this doesn't come across as disrespectful, but now that Harlan Ellison has passed on, maybe the Kilimanjaro Corporation could license Dangerous Visions as an anthology program…and maybe even adapt the stories set aside for the legendary unpublished third volume in the series.

Finally, not really sci-fi or fantasy, more like weird crime, but A. Merritt's Seven Footprints To Satan done right, not that gawdawful silent era travesty but the grim, terrifying paranoid crime / cult / conspiracy novel it is.

© Buzz Dixon