Man Conquers Space (filim in production)
- Thread starter Mysterion
- Start date
Roger that...As a little kid in the 60's I literally lived and breathed the space program. Seeing those children in the trailer running to the window to watch the earthrise from their space station with the Firebird chords in the background is breathtaking, and sadly, it's how, at the time I imagined it would be for my children...It looks awesome. Non-sf fans don't understand why some of us are so frakking impatient... this could be a way to get it across to them.
It's two-thousand-god-damned-eleven and there's no one on the Moon, no one in geosynch, no space vacations, no Mars mission... WTF??? If you'd told me it would end up this way when I was watching Apollo launches in elementary school I'd have jumped out the frakking window.
No, to say that either Ringworld or its series as a whole has the same degree of intellectual depth as the Foundation Trilogy/Series would be more than laughable.
Spoilers about the Ringworld Series:
However, the idea that the Birthright Lotteries could be manipulated to produce lucky people is intriguing, since regardless of whether you believe the idea is plausible, there is a functional test stated that can support or refute the idea experimentally. The reduction of a paranormal concept to a specific experimental functionality, thus rendering the concept in fact scientific, and the abstractable mode in which the reduction was accomplished, is of intellectual interest.
The application of Bussard ramjets in the resolution of The Ringworld Engineers is brilliant. It is interesting that Niven was able to devise a single narrative that both dealt with, in retcon, the orbital instability in the Ringworld structure, which he was evidently made aware of by fans after publishing the first book, and suggested a tragic way of restabilizing it.
I could see the idea, that the Ringworld became unstable after the attitude control system was cannibalized for its ramjets, being totally absent from a film adaptation, thereby missing out on the green-is-good metaphor. I could also easily see Teela Brown not being regarded by Louis Wu with the appropriate level of incredulity. Furthermore, I can see that the screenwriters would have a hard time scripting someone who had never been hurt. And for that matter, I would think finding the right actress to portray the first pain would be quite a challenge. Far simpler to just gloss right over all these nuances, which to me unfortunately significantly help make the story interesting to the degree that it is interesting at all.
However, the idea that the Birthright Lotteries could be manipulated to produce lucky people is intriguing, since regardless of whether you believe the idea is plausible, there is a functional test stated that can support or refute the idea experimentally. The reduction of a paranormal concept to a specific experimental functionality, thus rendering the concept in fact scientific, and the abstractable mode in which the reduction was accomplished, is of intellectual interest.
The application of Bussard ramjets in the resolution of The Ringworld Engineers is brilliant. It is interesting that Niven was able to devise a single narrative that both dealt with, in retcon, the orbital instability in the Ringworld structure, which he was evidently made aware of by fans after publishing the first book, and suggested a tragic way of restabilizing it.
I could see the idea, that the Ringworld became unstable after the attitude control system was cannibalized for its ramjets, being totally absent from a film adaptation, thereby missing out on the green-is-good metaphor. I could also easily see Teela Brown not being regarded by Louis Wu with the appropriate level of incredulity. Furthermore, I can see that the screenwriters would have a hard time scripting someone who had never been hurt. And for that matter, I would think finding the right actress to portray the first pain would be quite a challenge. Far simpler to just gloss right over all these nuances, which to me unfortunately significantly help make the story interesting to the degree that it is interesting at all.
