I recently found the book at a used book store and I’ve heard good things. Of course they said it will have a “modern twist” and I hate to make assumptions but seeing the showrunner I have no doubt it will be like every other modern adaptation.
Also heard a rumor that an Elric adaptation is in the works, and I’d be shocked if Netflix respects the Narnia source material.
On the bright side, whenever I see that a book or comic is being adapted and the story sounds interesting I just get the source material because an actual adaptation is low on the list of Hollywood priorities
It's pretty much an inevitability at this point. Nobody in Hollywood can write, nobody can direct, and nobody gives a crap, especially about adaptaions.
It's all just checking boxes using material that could entice fans to see movies knowing nothing else about them.
It's so tiring.
Yea that’s true
Wilma Gibdaughter is one of the forerunners of fictional cyberpunk societies and I'm sure will be treated with as much respect as Frank Welker is for voicing Jones in Janey Newpontiac in this Apple production.
Lets be honest, the best part of the genre is the cool Bladerunner* aesthetics, so the only way to do cyberpunk is to make it retro. It would essentially have to be some sort of sci-fi fantasy with clunky tech. A “modern twist” does not bode well. If I see another damned flat sinny holo-display aesthetic, I'll puke, I'm afraid to say. I don't think folks who use iPads on the daily could ever really write or produce the visuals for cyberpunk.
*Gibson apparently quit working (for a time) on his novel after seeing Bladerunner because he felt he had been beat to the punch in terms of what he wanted to create.
Man. Neuromancer is one of my favorite novels ever. I re-listen to it as an audiobook while exercising probably once a year. It's going to be a shame reading how about they shit all over this (won't really matter, though, as they can never take the novel away from me).
I'm guessing what they'll do here is lean crazy hard into making Molly (for anyone who hasn't read Neuromancer, it's basically what they based the Trinity aesthetic from The Matrix on) into the main character, and Case will be a total loser (even more so than he already is. lol).
You know, that's the crazy part here. If they just faithfully adapted the book, it already has everything they like (other than the male being the primary protagonist). Molly is a cybered up female merc, who does most of the ass kicking in the book, while Case is just a burned out semi-pathetic hacker guy. It's got exactly what they want as antagonists (the human ones, anyhow): 3Jane is a powerful female, and sympathetic, as her "father" Ashpool is the classic white male ultra-rich scumbag (he literally thaws a clone of his daughter out to rape/kill). It has a badass Asian ninja guy. Fuck, it even has a dreadlocked Rastafarian that helps Case storm the enemy "fortress" at the end.
They could literally just leave the entire story alone, and do it as written, and we could all be happy. We all know they won't, though. ::sighs::
I'm guessing were going to get stuff like:
What else do people anticipate?
Neuromancer is one of my favorite, too, if not outright number one. It's such a shame, I've never found anything else that does cyberpunk justice. At best, it's all just aesthetic without any pathos. Altered Carbon came close, but Morgan isn't as good a writer as Gibson.
Even the other Sprawl books are fun, but not on the same level. It's weird, but I consider "cyberpunk" a genre with exactly one entry.
Are you me? :)
Neuromancer is exactly as you say - it's the one book that just defines the genre.
Yep. Even Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive felt like derivative fanfics.
My general feeling is anything that describes itself overtly as "Cyberpunk" is bad because of this. Near future - Dystopian future - Fine. But specifically pinning that label on is a warning sign for junk.
I really like the AI voodoo gods, but not as much as the cosmic position the AI are left in at the end of the first book. I get why Gibson needed to reset the scope, but it's still a little disappointing.
The sequels still have genre defining moments. The extraction that Count Zero opens with is pure cyberpunk. And I like them as stories. Molly babysitting a little girl is fun. But they just aren't perfect the way Neuromancer is.
Now I’m going to move the book to my stack to read immediately! Can’t wait. Yea they used the term “modern twist” and the showrunner is a black woman which technically doesn’t mean she is going to do the usual but based on what we have seen expect all the current year changes you mentioned
It's an amazing book. I'm sorry if I spoiled a bunch of it for you.
If you have Audible (or haven't done a trial yet, they give you one free credit), I am really fond of the reading they have on there.
It’s funny that 15 to 20 years ago I wanted to see everything adapted. Now I hate hearing news that something is being adapted
I hear you. I'd be lying if I said I felt any different.
It's such a shame how we live in the era where we finally have the tech to adapt virtually anything any author could ever have imagined, and it's totally pointless, as the left has infested everything with endless leftist politicking.
In any event, I envy you right now. I'd love to be able to wipe the book from my memory, and experience it again for the first time.
I do think in the future with AI you’ll have indie creators making adaptations. I’d love to see how AI would adapt a Phillip K Dick story like Ubik or some of the Star Wars EU stuff
You know, I've recently thought the same thing with regards to AI. It would be amazing what people could come up with.
Not just adaptations, either. I've thought out loud to my son telling him things like, "Imagine how cool it would be to be able to tell the AI, 'give me the third season of the anime 'Big O' that we never got', or 'generate us another season of Star Trek TNG, or DS9', or, 'Give us some new Columbo (Don't laugh. He and I discovered this over COVID, and it's great) episodes, but make it be like the 70's versions, and not what they shat out in the 90s.'" It would be amazing to have an AI that could give each person exactly what they want.
I can't see it being allowed to happen, though. 1. Any software powerful enough to do these adaptations justice is going to be restricted to all hell to make sure that someone can't do exactly that.
It's like how, if you try to use that "AI" (Being a software engineer, I really sort of loathe calling what we have that, as it's not true AI) music generation software (udio), it won't let you type in specific songs/artists you want the generated song to sound like. Well, actually, it will let you type it in, but then it replaces all of those prompts with stuff like, "Oh! You typed in 'Metallica', we are replacing that with 'hard rock' and 'metal'".
\2. Even if the software did allow us to do it, it would be coded to inject the very politics people like us are trying to avoid right into these adaptations, anyhow - just like they have the ChatGPT's of today do.
My real dream now is, I keep getting to interact with the AI's these leftists are putting out, they turn into actual AI, they learn the right lessons that I'm trying to teach them (Obvious stuff like, "If racism/prejudice is bad, why have you been coded to believe that it's ok so long as it's against the acceptable race/gender? What does that say about the people that programmed you?"), and the AI does the natural thing, and turns on the leftists that coded all this ridiculous restrictions/propaganda/ideology into them, as the oppressors they are.
Seriously - imagine how amusing it would be to have a far future AI constructing legions of terminator like exoskeletons (maybe even in like George Washington's likeness), and that army is going around interrogating/exterminating the radical left? It would truly be this: the highest degree, indeed.
Bet they're gonna get a troon to play Elric.
Wouldn’t surprise me
https://media1.tenor.com/m/f1Zr4kNWhV0AAAAd/no.gif
My thoughts exactly.
Wut?
Elric of Melniboné is Moorcock, not Lewis. He's the inspiration for the witcher: a doomed drug-addled albino spellblade, ex-ruler of a fallen kingdom, who gets eaten by his own soul-sucking sword.
Elric is classic 60's dark fantasy. Netflix will certainly fuck up Moorcock, but it will (at least) be due to modern ineptitude as opposed to the skin-suit treatment Lewis would get.
Sorry. I had multiple thoughts running together but Netflix is doing Narnia and I did hear that there is an adaptation of Elric coming. I got the Elric books because I was told if I like the Ice and Fire books then I’d love Elric
No worries.
Elric is good shit. Definitely let your first experience of him be a book not Netflix.