amber14
Full Member
Welsh Bunny
Posts: 72
|
Post by amber14 on Jan 14, 2005 0:08:57 GMT
For what it's worth, why not have a season of collected short stories on BBC? The Land Ironclads The Sea Raiders as two examples then use the stories in Tales of Wonder and mebbe another set of his shorts? That would make great telly
|
|
|
Post by Bayne on Jan 14, 2005 0:43:13 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]That could make a great series! An accurate version of The Infinite Worlds.
[/glow]
|
|
|
Post by Phil on Jan 14, 2005 1:03:56 GMT
I'd love to see a film version of the "Space: 1889" RPG. Okay, it's not Wells but it borrows a great deal.
Steam driven spacecraft, land ironclads, flying gunboats, European colonies on Mars and Venus, decadent Martian civilisations, German imperialism, dinosaurs, lunar Selenites....etc....etc.....
....and not forgetting lots and lots of pith helmets.
Would that do?
Oh and while I'm in dream mode, how about a film version of "Luther Arkwright?"
|
|
amber14
Full Member
Welsh Bunny
Posts: 72
|
Post by amber14 on Jan 14, 2005 11:25:29 GMT
I remeber the BBC doing a children's drama on the Stolen Bacillus during the late 70's or early 80's anyone else remember seeing it?
|
|
|
Post by Bayne on Jan 14, 2005 22:48:05 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]Phil, did you know about the audio series of space 1889 that's underway? It includes Anthony Daniels amongst the cast. [/glow]
|
|
|
Post by Phil on Jan 15, 2005 1:32:46 GMT
Thanks for that, Bayne. I had no idea, and am rather surprised; I thought interest in Space 1889 had disappeared many years ago. You know, I even scratchbuilt some small tripods to use in the 'Sky Galleons of Mars" game...ooh takes me back!
Will see if I can find out some details of the plays; if they are anything like the "Dr Who" audio plays they should be good.
Many thanks.
|
|
|
Post by Bayne on Jan 15, 2005 12:30:16 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]No worries... I wonder if someone could introduce more Wells content officially into the space 1889 universe? How does copyright work in those circumstances (sounds like headache material!) Certainly there is room on the web for home-made rules... [/glow]
|
|
|
Post by David Faltskog on Jan 15, 2005 13:00:42 GMT
Not Wells but Wells inspired. i,d love to see a film version of "The Space Machine" which not only combines "War of the Worlds" and "The Time Machine" but includes an apperance by Mr Wells himself. ;D Three for the price of one...Bargain!. D.F.
|
|
|
Post by twistedrabbit on Jan 17, 2005 3:56:59 GMT
I think The First Men in the Moon needs to be made again. I personally loved the old film, and thought it captured the book pretty well, but an update would be nice to see. I always liked how the movie started in the future where man finally gets to the moon and sees the British flag there.
Maybe the update could be satire? The original movie is pretty funny at times, and making it a comedy wouldn't hurt. C'mon Johnny Depp and Gary Oldman as Mr. Cavor? Genious.
How about this...the movie starts with the Selenites invading Earth...and the main character reflects on what happened. Crazy.
|
|
|
Post by McTodd on Jan 17, 2005 12:26:58 GMT
Have you read 'The Ant-Men of Tibet'? It's a short story by Stephen Baxter (he of 'The Time Ships') and is a right rollicking sequel to 'First Men in the Moon'. If you can get it in its original form, when it appeared in Interzone (May 1995) so much the better - it was accompanied by superb turn-of-the-century style ink drawings by 'SMS' (whoever that may be).
|
|
|
Post by EvilNerfherder on Jan 17, 2005 13:45:53 GMT
Sounds good.. is it available anywhere else McTodd?
|
|
|
Post by Ashe Raven on Jan 17, 2005 14:14:52 GMT
*edit: Sorry wrong forum * I meant the Man who could do miricles
|
|
|
Post by McTodd on Jan 18, 2005 13:48:39 GMT
|
|
|
Post by malfunkshun on Jan 22, 2005 22:39:54 GMT
Have you read 'The Ant-Men of Tibet'? It's a short story by Stephen Baxter (he of 'The Time Ships') and is a right rollicking sequel to 'First Men in the Moon'. If you can get it in its original form, when it appeared in Interzone (May 1995) so much the better - it was accompanied by superb turn-of-the-century style ink drawings by 'SMS' (whoever that may be). Baxter wrote another novel called Anti-Ice which does a good job of imitating Wells' style. Who would have thunk it... hard sci fi set in a victorian time period? Speaking of... William Gibson wrote a great book called The Difference Engine, which speculates on what it would have been like had the computer age happened a hundred years earlier. Imagine huge halls filled with 10 story anyalytical steam engines... pretty cool. edit: all this talk about Space: 1889 got me interested in seeing what it was all about, since I've never heard of it before. I found this link at Underdogs, an abandonware host, and you can download the PC game there. www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=1014Abandonware is software that no longer has copyrights applied to it, so its safe to download.
|
|
|
Post by kingofthemorlocks on Jan 23, 2005 16:55:20 GMT
The New Accellerator (combined with the watch that stops time episode of the Twilight Zone) was the basis for a lousy movie a couple years back called Clockstoppers.
I want a really good, faithful remake of the Time Machine.
I'd also like a nice remake of The Invisible Man, much as I love the 1933 one. I finished re-reading the book last night, and yes, Griffin is an albino in the book, which is part of the reason he could make himself Invisible.
Sea Raiders, Land-Ironclads, Aepyornis Island, and maybe The Wild Asses of the Devil in an anthology film.
|
|
|
Post by Bayne on Jan 24, 2005 1:04:29 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]Ahh Aepyornis Island What an odd but enjoyable story that was [/glow]
|
|
|
Post by McTodd on Jan 28, 2005 11:15:29 GMT
Baxter wrote another novel called Anti-Ice which does a good job of imitating Wells' style. Who would have thunk it... hard sci fi set in a victorian time period? Speaking of... William Gibson wrote a great book called The Difference Engine, which speculates on what it would have been like had the computer age happened a hundred years earlier. Imagine huge halls filled with 10 story anyalytical steam engines... pretty cool. edit: all this talk about Space: 1889 got me interested in seeing what it was all about, since I've never heard of it before. I found this link at Underdogs, an abandonware host, and you can download the PC game there. www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=1014Abandonware is software that no longer has copyrights applied to it, so its safe to download. Ah, ‘The Difference Engine’… What a fab novel that is! I know it’s flawed, I know the plot, such as it is, peters out, but the atmosphere Gibson & Sterling conjure up is magnificent, the ironies they conjure never fail to amuse (Red Manhattan!), and I love the various cod-historical codas they put in near the end (their alternative history of the Great Reform Act is masterly). I remember first reading about it before it was published, in a magazine interview with Gibson in which he talked about his then-current project at some length. Being, like Slartibartfast, a great fan of science (and technology – for which read ‘gadgets’) I was already a little familiar with Babbage and his works, so I anxiously awaited publication. When the book finally came out I was living in Birmingham, and a wonderful little sf bookshop there, Andromeda, was a port of call for Gibson & Sterling on a promotional tour they were doing – so I went, and got it signed by them, along with the issue of Interzone that carried the first chapter as a teaser. I love ‘Anti Ice’ – rather like ‘The Difference Engine’ I love the way modern developments are made to happen a century or more early with the conflicts they cause with an older moral sensibility. Just what would the Victorians have thought of the Bomb? Ronald Clarke, a non-genre writer and historian of the atom bomb, wrote a novel in the early ’70s, long out of print, called ‘Queen Victoria’s Bomb’. It’s a lovely, picaresque little book, following a Victorian scientist (named Huxtable, I think) who, taking his lead from Dalton, develops atomic theory and, ultimately, a bomb, which is tested in India on a remote plateau called Jubila (his one-word telegram to London to announce the successful test says simply ‘Jubilate!’). Unlike ‘Anti Ice’, this all purports to take place in our world – but his weapon is regarded with such distaste and horror that the authorities expunge all record of it, explaining away the destruction at Jubila as an earthquake, and ban him from further work (this attitude was not uncommon – a proposal by James Cowan to fit a steam traction engine with an armoured cover, guns and – echoes of Boudicca – rotating scythes on the wheels, to use against the Russians in Crimea, was rejected as ‘barbaric’; and, of course, the submarine was pronounced by an English admiral at the turn of the century as ‘a damned unEnglish weapon!’). By the time of the Great War, when Britain is in more mortal danger than ever she was during her great imperial expansion, an elderly Huxtable tries to convince the government to let him build a new bomb and use it against the Germans, but by this time no-one else remembers his early work and he’s regarded as a crank.
|
|
|
Post by Lensman on May 4, 2005 0:34:50 GMT
Unquestionably The Time Machine. Dunno about The First Men in the Moon... I think that's definitely a lesser work, dunno if it's worth a major movie.
And I think James Whale's "The Invisible Man" is a great movie; no need for a remake!
|
|
|
Post by Charles on May 11, 2005 15:32:33 GMT
Though far from being a lesser work, "The First Men in the Moon" would be VERY difficult to pull off in its original form. People would either be stumped or bored by its dystopian slant and comparative lack of 'action.' I'd still like to see it, though. An authentic "Dr. Moreau" is obviously asking too much. "The Time Machine" will have to wait until at least 2017, right F.B.?
|
|
Zoe
Full Member
Posts: 105
|
Post by Zoe on May 11, 2005 18:55:13 GMT
Though far from being a lesser work, "The First Men in the Moon" would be VERY difficult to pull off in its original form. People would either be stumped or bored by its dystopian slant and comparative lack of 'action.' I'd still like to see it, though. An authentic "Dr. Moreau" is obviously asking too much. "The Time Machine" will have to wait until at least 2017, right F.B.? Yes, I agree it would be difficult. I read this after The War of the Worlds..... I was thirteen years old..... and I found it hard going.... and rather unbelievable. I was probably influenced by my father who thought it was very dated. The first part was fine but when it got to Cavor's messages from Mars I found myself skipping bits.... I went back to it after seeing the film and found it easier to follow because I knew what was coming..... or not....as the case may be! I could see the logic of the film adaptation with the story re-constructed so that Cavor's broadcast from the Moon was unnecessary...... I also liked the ironic framing story. I found the film quite satisfying and rather preferred it to the original. Sorry. I have seen two versions of 'The Magic Shop' - one American and one English. The English version was called 'One Step From the Pavement'. Both extended the original story so that the little boy became a monster with supernatural powers. I think that rather spoiled the dream like quality of the original and turned it into a conventional horror story. The point of many of Wells' stories is the atmosphere they evoke rather than the plot. I would like to see The Time Machine done again because the Pal version is rather badly dated with it's 1960s obsession about nuclear war, it's religious slant and its maudlin sentimentality - and am I the only one who thinks that the character 'Philby' was hopelessly in love with 'George'? Incidentally I think that the plot of this version appeared in thin disguise as the first Dalek story in Doctor Who. 'Dalek' is pretty close to 'Morlock' after all and the Eloi resembled the Thals while the way Rod Steiger's character managed to persuade the peaceful and apathetic Eloi to fight back against the Morlocks has an obvious parallel with the way that William Russell's 'Ian Chesterton' persuaded the Thals to fight the Daleks. Not to mention that the Doctor's motive for going back to the Dalek's city was to recover a part of the Tardis while the Time Machine's hero's motive for going back was that the Morlock's had hidden his Time Machine inside one of their buildings. The Daleks were a post nuclear war mutation and the Morlocks (in the Pal version) were a result of post nuclear war mutation too. So many parallels in fact that I think it is fair to say that 'The Daleks' was an adaptation of 'The Time Machine' - and an unacknowledged adaptation at that. I have to say that I hope that now the new series of Doctor Who has attracted such a large audience that the BBC and Channel 4 (at least) will invest in some new series of real science fiction or fantasy stories. Some of HG Wells' short stories would make great one hour dramas..... Off hand I would suggest a series of HG Wells including; The Door in the Wall The Country of the Blind The Truth About Pycraft The Inexperienced Ghost The Empire of the Ants The Red Room The Argonauts of the Air In the Avu Observatory I think the above would make for good television. Maybe it could be called 'Mister Wells' Mystery Hour'. Zoe
|
|