This story abounds in vivid visuals. Flandry has borrowed a space yacht with a clear plastic bubble for a saloon. When he switches off the lights, he and his guest are surrounded by black space and wintry stars with Jupiter swelling before them and illuminating the yacht's interior so that Lady Diana's jewels glitter like raindrops. This has to be filmed in detail.
They arrive at a clear-walled artificial Jovian satellite, the Crystal Moon, with planar gravity fields holding giant synthetic jewels in orbit around a central minaret and a zero-gravity outer conservatory containing mutant ferns and orchids. With Jupiter, the Milky Way and the constellations all visible, they walk between yacht and satellite along a transparent tube to be greeted by the Merseian, Ruethen, standing before an iridescent sliding ramp. And that is just CHAPTER I.
6 comments:
That is extremely vivid. And in a very SFnal way!
Kaor, Paul!
Ditto, what Stirling said! HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE deserves to be accurately filmed. I am so tired of the stale rehashes of STAR TREK, STAR WARS, and Indiana Jones.
I loved how you found the magazine illustration for the beginning of the story, showing Flandry and Lady Diana arriving at the Crystal Moon (with Aycharaych lurking in the distant background).
Ad astra! Sean
Anderson was very capable of describing a "setting," for his readers, along with action, dialogue, etc.
One wonders if he had avoided SF and gone for more literary (or even popular) types of writing how he'd have done.
Given the current interest in space opera for television/streaming, I'd imagine someone has picked up options for the Anderson-verse, and there may even be some scripts floating around, even if nothing has been greenlit yet.
Kaor, Dave!
Considering how boring I think most "mainstream" lit is, I'm glad he did not go down that road!
Anderson did try his hand at writing mysteries, such as the three Yamamura novels. Truth to say, while competently written, his SF and fantasies were better. But I did like MURDER IN BLACK LETTER.
I hope somebody is taking an interest in filming some of the van Rijn and Flandry stories!
Ad astra! Sean
Science fiction (and fantasy) have come to dominate popular culture.
This comment is both general and personal: I just signed an option contract on my ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME trilogy. The producers want to make it a TV series, tho' it's very early days yet.
In Poul's day, SF was still in the ghetto.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Congratulations! And I hope that ISLAND project actually comes to be made and succeeds.
Still, I wonder, wouldn't trying to film or make a TV series of one of your singleton works be better, due to that being more manageable? I mean stand alone novels like THE PESHAWAR LANCERS and CONQUISTADOR.
Ad astra! Sean
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