Blogging Challenge: Books That Should Be Made Into A Movie

Right, so, the usual bit of context: Weekly Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews. Hit their homepage to see the current week's responses, and add a link to your own if you're so inclined.

This week's challenge is "Books that should be made into a movie, and why."

...Where to even start???

...Especially after Amazon Prime finally came through with Good Omens?

...Apparently I'm not going to focus on individual books so much as Authors That I Wish Producers Would Look At. Yeah.

Okay, first up: Martha Wells has recently gotten some (extremely overdue) attention and awards for The Murderbot Diaries (four novellas and a novel that's due out in 2020), about a cybernetic Security Unit trying to find/make its way in the world. I've spent about the last year recommending this series to anybody who wanders into shouting range, but because of the way it's laid out I think it would actually make a better series than it would a movie.

But the Murderbot Diaries aren't the only possibilities in Martha Wells' writing. Her Ile-Rien books, and in particular Death of the Necromancer, would make excellent movies. (Death of the Necromancer is a sort of reverse Sherlock Holmes story with magic. Just read it, you'll see what I mean.)

Then she has several stand-alone books. City of Bones was the book that got me interested in her work, and would make an excellent movie all by itself.

But the one I really want to see? The Books of the Raksura. Five books and two story collections, so there's plenty of material for a series, and it's set in a fantasy world that's based more in Nature Channel documentaries than, say, medieval Europe. It's sword and sorcery with a matriarchal society of were-dragons and nary a human to be found.

Next up is someone I (also) consider one of the great underrated writers of modern science fiction and fantasy: Walter Jon Williams. He's probably best known for the cyberpunk novel Hardwired, and honestly that would make a great movie. (High-speed armored hovercraft battles, come on!) The other logical choice would be the Metropolitan books, which I'd classify as Science Fantasy; the basic idea is that if magic were a natural resource, then it would be measured and monitored and taxed and there'd be a whole bureaucracy surrounding its use. This is the story of what happens when somebody sets out to upend those power structures.

But the one I'd really like to see on the screen is Aristoi, set in a far future where nanotechnology has created technological systems that border on magic and the Aristoi are carefully selected to guard its design and development (after an early mistake went viral and the nanites devoured Earth). It's a careful balance, until one of the Aristoi discovers evidence of a conspiracy to subvert it.

The third one I'm going to recommend is Lilith Saithcrow, and in particular the Bannon and Claire books. Give me an Elizabethan setting where the power of the empire is sustained by a balance between sorcerers and mentats (essentially mad scientists), and then force a sorceress and her half-feral guardian to work with one of the mentats (who gets twitchy around too much magic) to solve various mysteries and find solutions for various disasters. Also, if this ever gets made into a show, or a series of movies, then maybe I'll finally get to read the other novels that would have been written if the series had done better. (But I'm Not Bitter.)

But okay, maybe Elizabethan Urban Fantasy Adventure sounds like too much of a niche? (It wouldn't be. Done right, it would establish its own genre. But for the sake of argument...) Maybe you just want a classic genre topic, like zombies? Welcome to Road Trip Z. Want more of a classic fantasy? Try Steelflower (and the sequels) for a sword-fighting elvish anti-heroine and her unlikely contingent of found family and friends. Want a stand-alone cyberpunk for an intriguing movie? She-Wolf and Cub. And these are not the only possibilities.

And that's passing over a huge number of things that informed my childhood... just to offer a couple of examples, let's do a series (either movies, or a show) based on Barbara Hambly's Darwath series, which blends Tolkien-esque fantasy and Lovecraftian horror. (Or her vampire novels, beginning with Those Who Hunt The Night.) Or any of several Roger Zelazny items that colored my youthful imagination.

But I really need to stop here, because otherwise I'll be thinking of new things to add right up through Wednesday morning, and that way madness lies...

Music: Used to the Darkness

Des Rocs:

Darkness and Enlightenment

Ruin sat cross-legged on the floor, holding the medallion up in front of him. The thing was fascinating.

He still wasn't certain of its purpose. It seemed tutelary, and surely his mother would have warned him if it was dangerous. But its ultimate purpose? He had no idea.

Each time he touched it, it showed him some new environment and helped him explore it. He could trace the connections between the cacti in the desert, reach through the sand to touch the small lives that huddled beneath, waiting for the time when the rainstorms finally came. He could follow the path of the lizards across the surface of the sands, or touch the cold, patient minds of the snakes that waited to ambush them.

He'd always meant to travel, but not like this. The visions that the amulet conferred made him want to visit these places, test his understanding. Traveling to new cities and now a tiny borough within Duendewood really didn't measure up. He wished he could have met with the Dwarves; that, at least, would have been a new and strange environment. Still, for all that the visions left him frustrated and wanting more, they were a good way to pass the time while the human cleric slept in the next room.

I'll need to know more of the world and its layout, Ruin decided, as he lowered the amulet again. It pained him to admit that his father might have been right on that point, but if he was going to depend entirely on educating himself then he would need to be able to admit when he'd been wrong. And knowledge of the larger world could hardly be a bad thing to have...

Summer Schedule Implosion and Pushing Too Hard

Well, we're there again: the point in the boys' summer vacation where they're thoroughly off their schedules, and we don't have enough scheduled activities lined up for them, and Beautiful Wife and I are both too busy with work and too tired to really keep them on schedule.

Ugh.

Add to that a lot of trying to keep the house clean and some dental work yesterday morning, and I just... ran out. Headache, mild nausea, exhaustion... I called in to work from the dentist's office, went home, and didn't do much of anything for the rest of the day.

Ugh.

Beautiful Wife has looked up some more camps we can put the boys in, which would be great -- without something like that, they just keep gradually staying up later and later, which makes it harder and harder for us to get anything done in the evening. After the Washington DC trip at the beginning of the summer we can't really afford summer camps, but we really can't afford not to have the boys in something like that. And while having them in the house has been fine so far (they're old enough to take care of themselves, if necessary, which means that Beautiful Wife can make a run to her office when she needs to), we really need to get them out of the house more. And back on schedule -- did I mention back on schedule?

Ugh.

So, the first order of business is get our stuff back under control (including, apparently, my health). Next up after that is figuring out how to handle the boys for the rest of the summer.

Not much here

So, owing to what we're going to call "trying to write something that I can actually publish this year", I really don't have much of anything for today. So instead of the deeper wisdom, timely opinions, or Dungeons and Dragons, y'all just get some of the music that I've been listening to lately. Here's The Republic Of Wolves with The Canyon, because it's hard work having a soul:

Blogging Challenge: Humorous Book Titles

Right, so, the usual bit of context: Weekly Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews. (If you're just joining up, swing by their homepage and add your response to the current post each Wednesday.)

This week's prompt is "humorous book titles" and... well..

Ye gods, y'all.

Okay, so: this is an ongoing game in my house. We have a standing contest to come up with the worst book title ever: the one that nobody would ever, ever buy. And it was inspired by my wife reading this article (go ahead and skim it, I'll wait) so frequently we do them in series:

1. The Dark Maw Of Puberty
2. Return to the Dark Maw of Puberty
3. Tae Kwon Do in The Dark Maw of Puberty

It's kind of like the "That would make a great band name!" game, except also kind of horrible.

That first example is actually my wife's. I've come up with some good ones, but because the game is so situational I honestly can't remember any of them off the top of my head. And sometimes they only work if you add a subtitle, e.g. Poosplosion -- an erotic thriller (or possibly a neurotic thriller instead) or I Stupidly Left My Umbrella At Work: A Memoir.

I believe Firstborn (age thirteen) is currently leading the game with his hypothetical upcoming first novel, It Came With A Fury -- And Half Off Your Next Purchase.

But yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing what everybody does with this prompt. List real books? Make up their own? It's funny because it's bad? It's legitimately funny?

It's going to be fun.

Further explorations, giant scorpions, and poop

This week's game was... unfocused. Still fun, of course, but the players kept getting sidetracked. (Also, we did a system check, and it looks like we will be able to have people play by Skype when they're out of town. How that will work in terms of human interactions, I'm not quite so sure though.)

So they honestly didn't get that much done. They continued down the passage, discovering a pit-trap along the way and finding that the bottom was not only full of spikes, but also seemed to be serving as a combination of cesspool and garbage bin. Beyond the pit, they found a long passage with a number of doors, and decided to explore down it rather than start opening doors. (So far, all the monsters they've encountered have been inside rooms, prompting the monk's player to observe: "I feel like we're exploring a hotel.") Checking the hallway would allow them to confirm the cleric's theory that the corridor would connect back up with an area that they'd already explored, making the central passage through this dungeon level a sort of large rectangle connecting most of the rooms.

In the event, this proved to be true -- but as they neared the end of the corridor, they heard something moving. Just as they were deciding how to respond, an orc came around the corner carrying a large and foul-smelling bucket. The orc won initiative, and flung the bucket at the halfling rogue. It didn't cause much damage, but the contents of the buckets were... three days worth of chamber pots. The rogue got drenched, the sorcerer and the cleric got splashed, and the monk wasn't touched at all.

The monk was the first to react, and of course he attacked; the orc was injured, but not killed. The dark elf rogue followed up immediately and finished him off, leaving the halfling rogue absolutely furious at not being able to take revenge for being drenched. But since the orc was dead and nothing else was visible, they decided to go ahead and complete their circuit of the dungeon - after stripping the hide armor off the orc, and handing its great-axe to the barbarian, who slung it over her back. She's sticking with battle-axe and shield for now.

Since the corridor did indeed connect up, they were able to re-enter the room where they'd fought the kobolds, and the room beyond where they killed the kobold corcerer and found the statue. There was no sign of the other adventuring party, but they experimented with the large statue of the woman, the statue of the cat (still purring) and the gem until they finally concluded that bringing them together really doesn't do anything. So, finally, they moved on through the main corridor.

That brought them back around past the entrance, past the cesspit, and to one of the doors. Disdaining subtlety, they opened it and went inside, and found themselves facing off against three scorpions roughly the size of large dogs. The battle began!

...Unfortunately, the battle also got interrupted before they could really finish the scorpions. We ran out of time.

Still, it's been quite a fight so far. The Monk took a minor hit from a claw, and the cleric got struck by a tail and failed their poison save; fortunately, that particular scorpion went down and the sorcerer was able to pour a healing potion down their throat. (Owing to some OOC confusion around the fact that the cleric is -- or originally was -- a mousefolk boy played by a human girl, the player has decided that Aspen is gender-neutral and uses they/them pronouns.) So the cleric is at 7 HP, the monk is lightly wounded, and the halfling rogue is still slightly injured from being hit by a wooden bucket.

The barbarian, meanwhile, has engaged one of the other scorpions, and Shadow (the drow rogue) has been picking away at the third with some small success. Neither of them has been injured, at least not yet, and the barbarian hasn't bothered to rage.

By my count the party has a shared treasure of 161 GP. They also have:
-Six daggers (from a few games back)
-Two Javelins (ditto)
-A Bronze Shortsword (spider room, claimed by the Barbarian)
-five shortswords (earlier game, the kobolds)
-five more javelins (ditto)
-another 38 GP (kobolds)
-another 45 GP (kobold sorcerer)
-a silver dagger, which they're keeping for equipment - currently held by the Dwarf.
-a small bag of herbs which smell delicious (also kobold sorcerer)
-A ruby worth 150 GP which they have tied around the neck of the cat statue using the sorcerer's handkerchief because they think it's part of some sort of puzzle.
-a Greataxe, currently in use by the barbarian
-hide armor (from the orc)