BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End

Subject: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Wesley S
Date: 14 Dec 15 - 04:26 PM

I might be the last one to hear about the 6 hour miniseries based on Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhoods End starting tonight on the SyFy channel. I sure hope they don't screw it up. A classic novel I haven't read in decades. Anyone know about this? Looking forward to it? I've enjoyed some of the actors in other things so it looks like it had a decent budget.


Link to show

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Charmion
Date: 14 Dec 15 - 04:42 PM

The television critic at The Globe & Mail considers it not great, but worth your time.

"Childhood's End is a sci-fi masterpiece, so-so TV event"

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Dec 15 - 09:57 AM

There are any number of science fiction novel which beg for cinema or TV. "Starship Troopers" is one of them, but it was BOTCHED because the producers wanted to go their own way and Virginia Heinlein withdrew her support. "Glory Road," "Rendezvous With Rama," White's "Galactic General" series, "Tales of the White Hart," the Callahan saloon series, would all make good theater.

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Wesley S
Date: 15 Dec 15 - 11:35 AM

"Rendezvous With Rama" is high on my list too. And I'm surprised that no one had attempted to film "Tunnel in the Sky".

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Dec 15 - 10:31 PM

THAT would be a good one!

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: GUEST,dáithí
Date: 16 Dec 15 - 04:48 AM

...and look what "The Sentinel" turned into! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Dec 15 - 08:46 AM

Shows what a short story can do. How about filming "The Nine Billion Names Of God"?

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 16 Dec 15 - 08:55 AM

Sounds like fun, hadn't heard of it. Loved Rendezvous, who made all stories about us?

I am still waiting for Larry Niven's Tales of Known Space, or the Motie saga, to be made into movies.

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 15 - 12:02 PM

I have always hoped that Roger Zelazny's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" would be done. It is a beautiful story and the perfect length... but I doubt Zelazny would have EVER given Hollywood permission to mess with it.

(I have watched the 1st 2 hours of "Childhood's End", and have mixed feelings so far. Somehow, everyone having cell phones feels like a reversion TO 'childhood'.)

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 15 - 12:09 PM

Mrr...either one of those would take a season-long series to do justice to... but I'd watch 'em!

The moties ...especially the 2nd one... has so much character development and tangled plot lines about bureaucracy and complex cultures, that I doubt it could easily be summarized on film. It would be like filming "War & Peace".

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Dec 15 - 07:02 PM

"War and Peace" has been filmed.

The Sector General series is what I was thinking of.

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Dec 15 - 08:55 PM

Spider Robinson's "Lady Slings The Booze" would be a good movie, especially since I'm mentioned in the thank-you section.

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 15 - 08:58 PM

Ok... saw hours 3 & 4 (recorded to miss LONG tedious commercials)

I'm getting weary of half-stated innuendo & mysterious metaphor accompanied by somber music and random uses of the 'major' characters... with very little that passes for continuity.

I can take 'some' creative expressionism, but this is Fellini mixed with Kurosawa influenced by Beckett & Ionesco... or something.

...and WHY are there about 14 tents and a couple dozen people camped outside that farmhouse?

...and is Christianity being criticized or supported?

Maybe the last 2 hours 'clarifies' something?

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: GUEST,Blandiver (Astray)
Date: 17 Dec 15 - 07:32 AM

Crikey! Thanks for that.

One of my favourites (along with RWR). Here's a bunch of covers:

Childhood's End

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Charmion
Date: 17 Dec 15 - 11:18 AM

The only film of "War and Peace" that half does the job is the stupendous Soviet production that took six years to make, employed an entire division of the Red Army, and goes on for hours and hours and hours. When it was finally over, I staggered out of the theatre as if retreating from Moscow.

Effective.

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Dec 15 - 11:39 AM

I always found Clarke's writing fascinating to read. Yes, his own take on how society will advance reflects his take on life in general. (He assumes vegetarianism as a given and superstition to die out with organised religion) yet in some less naive ways, especially where physics and engineering is concerned, he proposes some interesting ideas.

His work with his mate Stanley gave us 2001 A Space Odyssey. Given a director as visionary as they were, many of his novels and indeed short stories could jump on the sci fi bandwagon where Star Wars has showed that big investment in sci fi can pay off.

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Dec 15 - 08:49 PM

The Apocalypse Troll by David Weber would make a great mini-series.

Subject: RE: BS: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhoods End
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Dec 15 - 10:07 PM

Did anyone besides me watch the whole thing? I played the last 2 hours tonight and have not changed my earlier opinion. There were special effects that made little sense except to push emotional buttons and the aliens had better character development than the poor humans.

It ended with vague references to the "overmind"... and when one human asked if that meant "God", there was no reply.

Oh... and many of the long, tedious commercials seemed to have been constructed to be similar to the production itself. I was fooled several times into stopping as I fast-forwarded, thinking I'd reached another segment. I'm guessing that was the idea.

Bah... I think I'll dig out the book and re-read it to see whether "based on" meant 4.21% or 1.63%