"The Problem of Pain": Adaptation To Screen

"The Problem of Pain." 

If adapting Poul Anderson's Technic History, each short story should be the equivalent of a single TV series episode. Each longer story or novel should be serialized. There should be no "feature film"-length dramatizations. (In my opinion.) No scene or dialogue should be omitted.

"The Problem of Pain" should start with Hloch's introduction: voiceover with scenes illustrating the founding of the Solar Commonwealth, the discovery of Avalon, Rennhi researching in the University of Fleurville etc. Next, we should see the unnamed narrator and Peter Berg on the planet Lucifer. Some of Berg's dialogue, like his descriptions of Ythrians in flight and of the arrival of the expedition on the planet provisionally called "Gray," should be dramatized.

Eventually, Berg says:

"'A hurricane. Unpredicted; we knew very little about that planet. Given the higher solar energy input and, especially, the rapid rotation, the storm was more violent than would've been possible on Earth. We could only run before it and pray.

"'At least, I prayed, and imagined that Enherrian did.'" (p. 117)

After a double space between paragraphs, the scene shifts to a third person account of the hurricane:

"Wind shrieked..." (ibid.)

This is the point at which, on screen, the scene should shift fully from Lucifer to "Gray."

Berg asks God to protect them from the hurricane but also submits himself to God's will and imagines that the Ythrian does something similar. We project our own assumptions onto others. Meanwhile, Enherrian honours God the Hunter by striving against the hurricane.