Philip Dick's Man in the High Castle coming to Syfy

[RAMA]

http://io9.com/man-in-the-high-castle/

Wow...I cant believe it in the first place and I cant believe it's on Syfy...I mean this is a science fiction novel!!

[Allyn Gibson]

RAMA wrote:

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http://io9.com/man-in-the-high-castle/

Wow...I cant believe it in the first place and I cant believe it's on Syfy...I mean this is a science fiction novel!!

This sounds like the project he had in development with the BBC a few years ago. I'm not clear if the BBC pulled out of the project and he had to find new backers or if it's still the BBC project but now with cofunding agreements in place.

[Admiral Buzzkill]

This is the kind of story that can be done well for television with a reasonable budget, if the writing is good.

BBC would be about perfect, in fact.

[Temis the Vorta]

Exciting news!

NY Times.

Deadline.

Looks like the BBC is out, SyFy is in, which doesn't automatically curse the project or ensure giant tarantula-octupus hybrids will be introduced into the story.

[Mr. Adventure]

They should have The Asylum do the Saturday night version High Castle Man.

[Klaus]

I'm simultaneously thrilled and horrified... I can't believe that Siffy won't frak it up.

I'd love to see a good version, but it's sad to say that there is absolutely no reason to believe they can carry it off.

[CorporalCaptain]

Well, I'm going to watch it.

[Klaus]

Oh I will too, unless they do to it what they did to Riverworld...

[Mr. Adventure]

I consider it a good sign at this point that the Halmis don't appear involved with this one.

[Owain Taggart]

This looks right up my alley. I haven't read the novel, but I'm putting it on my "to read" list.

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I would have thought that much of MITHC would be pretty difficult to translate to screen. If one ditched the fine details of PKD's philosophical musings, the I Ching, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy book-within-a-book, Japanese aesthetics, and so on it would leave merely an alternate history fantasy as a stunted revenant. Yes, I also recall how Riverworld was butchered in its adaptation, as was Earthsea.

[Mistral]

Owain Taggart wrote:

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This looks right up my alley. I haven't read the novel, but I'm putting it on my "to read" list.

Its considered a classic. That said, and as an alt-hist reader, I found it "meh" at best. There are better stories out there. The Coming of the Quantum Cats springs to mind, as does Alternities and the work of Paul McAuley.

As for Skiffy doing a mini-series from MITHC, well, its Skiffy

[Temis the Vorta]

Mr. Adventure wrote:

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They should have The Asylum do the Saturday night version High Castle Man.

I'd like to see what The Asylum would do to that material. Could be interesting.

[Allyn Gibson]

Mistral wrote:

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It's considered a classic. That said, and as an alt-hist reader, I found it "meh" at best. There are better stories out there.

If you read The Man in the High Castle as an alternate history, you're going to be disappointed because, as an alt-history, it's horrible. PKD wasn't an historian, he doesn't try to justify how his world got this way. It simply is.

What I get out of the book is character and mood. If you drop a group of people into the worst "present" you can imagine, what would they do? I think the book makes more sense as one of Dick's mainstream works, albeit one that's set in a North America that's divided between the Germans and the Japanese.

What I don't get out of the book is a satisfying plot. There are plots in the book, but most of them are not particularly exciting, and the titular plot (Juliana's trip to meet the "man in the high castle") has a dull conclusion. It's the plot that concerns me with a television adaptation.

And yet, I really do like the book and I've read it several times. It's not my favorite PKD, but it's in my top five.

[The Mirrorball Man]

It's a very melancholic novel, I really can't imagine how this adaptation could turn out to be good. The Man in the High Castle needs a director with a vision.