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Consider Phlebas coming to the small screen!

Unless they pour a lot of monies into this it will be pants, the scope and sheer vision of the books are epic in scale enough as a read, the best bet might be to do it as a manga lol.
 
I want to be enthusiastic. I can almost manage it. Then I remember what's happened to almost every one of the books I've loved when someone's tried to put them on the small screen.

It could almost be the name of a GSV: Caught Between Hope and Despair.

Agree, but The Expanse series has been done very well. So will wait and see.
 
I'd have started with Use of Weapons, then The Player of Games before Consider Phlebas. I actually got my mum reading the whole series by starting her off with Inversions then PoG and UoW as CP was a bit much to start off with for someone who wasn't a natural SF reader. (Although she surprised me by saying Excession was her favourite because of all the twists and backstabbing by the Minds). She passed away before Matter, Surface Detail and The Hydrogen Sonata were published. Matter I think is the weakest of the series although some may disagree.

Feersum Endjinn would be a good one to have a go at as well.
 
It does, of course, bring with it the advantage that I’d finally get to see what an Idiran looks like, so I’ll take that. It’d be interesting to see how close the the wind they sail on some of the grislier bits, too.

I believe Banks himself said that Utopia is boring...hence why his main characters, by birth or inclination, tend not to be of the Culture.
Yes indeed it's back to that old sic fi problem of "How do tripeds walk?" the problem of animating them can be blamed on HG Wells.
The other related problem is that the vast majority of this sort of thing will have to be CGI.

On a related non Culture note, I always thought "Against a Dark Background" would make a stonkingly good series. I believe Banks said it was written with that half mind.
 
I'd have gone with Excession if they wanted to bring in the non-Bankists: plenty of sexy ROUs, effector duels and the Affront.

Tentatively looking forward to CP though.
 
Has at least three mistakes. And WTF is 'the Mind'? Do they possibly mean 'Minds', or in this case 'a' Mind, who are standalone intelligence's?
And mankind has definitely NOT become detached from it's humanity!
The story of the 1987 novel, Consider Phlebas, centres on Horza, a shapeshifting mercenary who’s immersed in an intergalactic conflagration of civilisations between the Culture – a technology-dependent A.I.-driven utopia that has become detached from its humanity – and the Idiran Empire – a spiritually-driven, warlike, domination-driven society. Horza, working on behalf of the Idiran, is tasked with recovering a crucial missing A.I. component of the Culture, called 'the Mind,' which, wielding an immense power, has the potential to destroy the Culture completely. However, the task itself is deeply immersed in the fog of war, raising ambiguities about the means and methods of each side.

OK. I’ll give it a go.
  1. Horza is not a shapeshifter. He is a genetically altered Changer. Big difference.
  2. He is not a mercenary. He is a secret agent.
  3. I’m with you on “the Mind”. It’s not an AI component (something that would piss it off greatly). It is a machine sentience.
  4. It does not have any real power, let alone an immense one, until it is embedded in something.
  5. There is no way on errh, um, Earth that the Mind on Schars World could destroy the Culture. IIRC it was also in a pretty bad way
Yours in fraternal spoddery,
Sol-Earther Ted Tedsson Day dam’Woodlands
 
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Can’t wait to see how they do:
- drones & knife missles
- Diziet Sma
- the dental implant (necklace?) that turns into an assault rifle
- gravity belts only work against mass...
- laser battle against monks ina reflective temple
 
Can’t wait to see how they do:
- drones & knife missles
- Diziet Sma
- the dental implant (necklace?) that turns into an assault rifle
- gravity belts only work against mass...
- laser battle against monks ina reflective temple

  1. Drones and KMs are easy CGI.
  2. Diz should be no problem as she obviously passes for Earth human.
  3. Simple CGI.
  4. AG belts shouldn’t be problematic
  5. CGI.
Done.

I would be more concerned about how they show the tripedal Mooslamics Idirans.
(Actually I just tried to model tripedal walking using my fingers. There are loads of different ways to do it. Be fun seeing what they come up with).
I just hope that they capture the spirit and the immense scale of CP, especially when it comes to trashing the Vavatch Orbital.
 
I meant to add this in the previous post.

Anyone who likes SF films has a busy year ahead of them.



Includes Star Wars, Predator, Jurassic Park.

And a quick scan of the CGI will show that CP should not be too shabby.
 
Player of Games would be a great opener for me as it's a relatively simple storyline and gives plenty of opportunity to establish The Culture's universe.

Regardless, I'm pleased this is on the table but expectations will be extremely high, Game of Thrones type high.
 
I'd have gone with Excession if they wanted to bring in the non-Bankists: plenty of sexy ROUs, effector duels and the Affront.

Tentatively looking forward to CP though.


How do you effectively convey the speed and distance involved though? You've got engagements lasting fractions of a second taking place at significant fractions of a light year, easy in narrative but a bugger on screen. The relatively pedestrian engagements of the Harrington series have apparently put off production companies due to scale issues.
 
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