I there any J here? Or is it just TANJ one more bleep time?
May 15, 2020 8:08 AM   Subscribe

Akiva Goldsman (Batman and Robin, Lost in Space, The DaVinci Code) is writing a pilot for Ringworld to be directed by Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World, Terminator Genisys).

Ringworld is a 1970 novel by Larry Niven set in his "Known Space" universe. In it, a motley set of explorers recruited by Nessus, a member of the mysterious alien "Puppeteer" species, journey to the eponymous object in deep space, whereupon hijink ensue and exposition is exposited.

The ringworld is single enormous ring-shaped habitat surrounding a star, a million miles wide and having the inhabitable area of millions of planets, spinning to induce apparent gravity to the inhabitants. ALTERNATELY, a ringworld is something a race builds when they're too dumb to think up Orbitals, which are better in every way but I digress.

Ringworld joins many other SF/F projects that might be best described as "in long-term development hell." There's an extensive list here from Tor. Obviously most prominent there is the Consider Phlebas adaptation, but other works where more has happened than just the option being bought include: The Three-Body Problem, The Wheel of Time, Artemis, Autonomous, Children of Time, another Dark Tower, Lilith's Brood, The Fifth Season, Foundation, Neuromancer, The Peripheral, Robopocalypse, Seveneves, Station Eleven, and another The Stand.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace (74 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ideally, an adaption would lean haaaaard into it being a product of the late 60s and early 70s and present it as the glorious trash that it is.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:10 AM on May 15, 2020 [19 favorites]


yikes
posted by Bwentman at 8:17 AM on May 15, 2020 [7 favorites]


As a TV series I think the Beowulf Schaeffer stories might work better as a jumping-off point. They're certainly more episodic. Turning Ringworld itself into a TV series is probably going to degenerate into "what wacky part of the ring will our plucky adventurers explore this time?", which is just a Star Trek planet-of-the-week except everything is happening in the same solar system.

Also, the writers are probably going to find it hard to resist using Teela's ability (?) and stasis boxes as a constant source of plot armor and dei ex machinae, respectively. God knows Niven couldn't.
posted by jedicus at 8:22 AM on May 15, 2020 [11 favorites]


The Star Lost rides again?

It's not worth it if they don't have silver jumpsuits.
posted by bonehead at 8:29 AM on May 15, 2020 [5 favorites]


I don’t have time right now to delve into IMDb right now but if those are the credits Goldsman and Taylor are leading with, well...

I greatly enjoyed all of Niven’s Ringworld stuff as a kid, but it wasn’t until I got older that I learned what I was too naive to glean from the text, that Niven was a right-wing Randian. Here’s a “favorite“ bit of mine:

In 2008, Niven told a DHS conference that “The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” and then suggested spreading rumors in the Spanish Latino community that hospitals were killing patients to harvest their organs.

Amazon’s The Boys did a good job of updating the book’s shitty politics, and HBO’s Watchmen did a good job of using the book as a jumping-off point for issues relevant to today. Here’s hoping Goldsman and Taylor take the same opportunity.
posted by ejs at 8:31 AM on May 15, 2020 [14 favorites]


Someone needs to contact Peter F. Hamilton. I really need a Night's Dawn adaptation, southern gothic space vampires and sentient flying ship whales and all.
posted by Fizz at 8:33 AM on May 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


14 year old me would have been overjoyed at this but Niven's a right-wing ass and Goldsman's record is spotty at best.
posted by octothorpe at 8:37 AM on May 15, 2020 [9 favorites]


I thought the link said Riverworld and I got a little excited.
posted by Catblack at 8:41 AM on May 15, 2020 [10 favorites]


I don’t have time right now to delve into IMDb right now but if those are the credits Goldsman and Taylor are leading with

They emphatically are not, but I'm trying to set my own expectations for this.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:43 AM on May 15, 2020 [4 favorites]


I actually just finished re-reading Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers a few weeks ago. As an adult, they sure carry some problematic themes I didn't pick up on as a kid, but it's still just such a cool concept I would hope someone could do something exciting with it.

And hopefully they choose to veer off after the first novel before he got all fixated on rishathra...
posted by Zargon X at 8:44 AM on May 15, 2020 [5 favorites]


oh, sure, but not literally ANYTHING by NK Jemisin fuck this timeline
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:45 AM on May 15, 2020 [17 favorites]


The Ringworld is unstable! The Ringworld is unstable!
posted by tclark at 8:46 AM on May 15, 2020 [22 favorites]


14 year old me would have been overjoyed at this but Niven's a right-wing ass and Goldsman's record is spotty at best

One of the things I would do if I had Bezos money is make an adaptation of Lucifer's Hammer but where the gang of cannibals are all magahat losers.

oh, sure, but not literally ANYTHING by NK Jemisin fuck this timeline

Fifth Season is also in development hell
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:48 AM on May 15, 2020 [5 favorites]


I thought the link said Riverworld and I got a little excited.

SciFi Channel tried that twice and fucked it up both times.
posted by octothorpe at 8:53 AM on May 15, 2020 [5 favorites]


Meanwhile, Goldsman is also going to EP the just-announced Pike-Spock Trek spinoff
posted by briank at 9:05 AM on May 15, 2020 [3 favorites]


I think I got lucky and stumbled on Fallen Angels early enough to realize that Niven had issues. I still appreciate the earlier Ringworld and Beowulf stories for what they are, but hooo-ee he started getting high on his own supply.

And it could be interesting, but yeah, either it's Trek-onna-Ring or it's going to get unfavorably compared to Halo. And the parts that always fascinated me as a younger reader (the ancient cities, crumbling and decrepit) probably wouldn't work well in production since so much of it boiled down to selling *cough* favors for strips of superconductor fabric.
posted by Kyol at 9:06 AM on May 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


If it is any consolation, the main human protagonist is non-white in the books.
posted by alasdair at 9:07 AM on May 15, 2020


Who is going to play the big furry guy, and will he get all his fur burned off and just walk around naked. Here's hoping.
posted by blakewest at 9:13 AM on May 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


I finally got around to reading Ringworld about 10 years ago; I remember it as by far the most obnoxiously sexist scifi classic I've encountered. That it was written in 1970 and not 1950 is...yow.
posted by mediareport at 9:15 AM on May 15, 2020 [7 favorites]


I've been torn for a while about doing a re-read, but probably remain clueless enough that it'd still be a good romp.

Actually the biggest problem is that if they do it right (the world), it'd really be best served on the hugest screens. And that is kinda up in the air, will there be big screens...
posted by sammyo at 9:16 AM on May 15, 2020


Ringworld joins many other SF/F projects that might be best described as "in long-term development hell."

*sheds single tear for Logan's Run remake*
posted by thelonius at 9:24 AM on May 15, 2020


This will be as faithful an adaption as Starship Troopers.
posted by Mitheral at 9:25 AM on May 15, 2020 [5 favorites]


This will be as faithful an adaption as Starship Troopers.

We can only hope.
posted by octothorpe at 9:29 AM on May 15, 2020 [19 favorites]


^^ that. Although I have to assume that was the joke.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:30 AM on May 15, 2020


Starship Troopers style adaptations -- technically pretty faithful to the moral and political core, but treating that core as something despicable -- is exactly the way to do Niven / NivenPournelle adaptations.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:30 AM on May 15, 2020 [19 favorites]


I greatly enjoyed all of Niven’s Ringworld stuff as a kid, but it wasn’t until I got older that I learned what I was too naive to glean from the text, that Niven was a right-wing Randian.

Yeah. I also used to wonder at the sheer number of collaborators he has had. Perhaps I am naive, but it wasn’t until a friend and one-time housemate of mine became a collaborator that I learned how that worked. This is how it was explained to me:

Say I am a budding sf author. I finish my manuscript and somehow I am put in touch with Niven. Niven offers me a deal: he will give me a few notes and thus I can become a collaborator with him — the book will be credited as “By Larry Niven and Ricochet Biscuit” and will of course generate much higher sales off his name than off mine. I can thus choose to sell n copies of my book under my name alone and get all the royalties and such I am eligible for, or sell it under both our names and sell 20 or 30n copies and get half the author’s cut. The aforementioned ex-housemate has never met Niven in person, last I heard, but is credited as a co-author with him on one or more books.

As I say, it’s possible I am terribly naive about the realities of publishing, but when I look at the long list of co-authors he has had, I wonder how many are in the same boat.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:00 AM on May 15, 2020 [3 favorites]


I'd give this about a 20% chance of shooting a single frame. There's very little confidence that 50-year old books that (checks) rank in the 20,000s on Amazon are commercially viable source material for a series that would cost $25 million a season to produce. The Expanse sells 10x the copies and couldn't last other than a (basically) a fan project for Jeff Bezos where he also got three prior seasons to stream on which SyFy had already lost a bundle.

That said - if it is produced, boy will it be faithful. Whatever market there is for faithful Niven, it is much larger than the market for subverted Niven, even if that weren't a bad idea to begin.

(It should make everyone happy that the China market will ensure that Niven's progressive-for-the-60s "casting" of Louis Wu as lead character won't be redone for the screen as Louis Wilson...)
posted by MattD at 10:07 AM on May 15, 2020 [5 favorites]


I don't remember the moral core of this particular Niven book being dubious, just the incidentals?
posted by atoxyl at 10:09 AM on May 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


Starship Troopers style adaptations

But haven't they made like at least three direct-toDVD sequels that service the fans who hated the subversion of fascism in the film?
posted by thelonius at 10:17 AM on May 15, 2020


...spreading rumors in the Spanish Latino community that hospitals were killing patients to harvest their organs

Beowulf Shaeffer *is* from one of the organ runner crime families trying for respectability. It only makes sense. There's few other explanations for how his family made their money.
posted by bonehead at 10:39 AM on May 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


The problem with Starship Troopers wasn't the politics which was as mostly fine in the movie (for a movie) but rather the _complete_ _lack_ of _power_ _armour_. Beside the ring being visible in outdoor backgrounds I bet if this happens none of the other tech/setting makes it.

Also the puppeteers will be wicked expensive to have as a main character in a TV series.
posted by Mitheral at 10:47 AM on May 15, 2020 [3 favorites]


There are better Niven properties to adapt that aren't crawling with rishathra. I think a lot of the comments here about a Verhoeven-style update are a better option, but there are also decades of SF that don't come with Niven/Pournelle's baggage.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:02 AM on May 15, 2020


Is there any sci-fi from the 60s and 70s by white men that hasn't gotten a visit from the suck fairy? Maybe some Clarke and Bradbury. But of all the white make greats (and not so get, but well known writers) from the pulp and post-pulp days, I can't think of any others. (This is to say that of course anything by a white dude from that era is going to need to be heavily subverted if you want to avoid a huge amount of sexist/racist shit. I really hope they do so for this one, is the only way to save it.)
posted by Hactar at 11:35 AM on May 15, 2020


Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Man series would be amazing and dense, but maybe just for an audience of me.

I remember H Beam Piper's stuff also being good, there was a recent Scalzi treatment of the Little Fuzzy series that I would love to see on film.

But yeah, there's a lot of that stuff that is just problematic AF now.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:44 AM on May 15, 2020 [6 favorites]


Zelazny. Brunner. Cordwainer Smith.

60s' writing is full of unconscious sexism and racism, but some were better at looking inward than others.
posted by bonehead at 11:45 AM on May 15, 2020 [6 favorites]


Bester or Miller, maybe?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:55 AM on May 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


It's a shame there are only three science fiction screenwriters in Hollywood.
posted by bowline at 11:59 AM on May 15, 2020 [8 favorites]


Akiva Goldsman (Batman and Robin, Lost in Space, The DaVinci Code) is writing a pilot for Ringworld to be directed by Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World, Terminator Genisys).

None of the films you mention really recommend the gentlemen in question. Was that intentional?
posted by Grangousier at 12:19 PM on May 15, 2020


A serious problem with adapting Ringworld is that it originally served as a kind of a "capstone" novel to the Known Space universe as it existed at the time. Part of the payoff for the reader was recognizing the existing elements and plot threads from earlier stories: teleportation booths, stasis fields, Nessus and the puppeteers, the Kzinti, the Outsiders, General Products, Q1 and Q2 hyperdrives and the Long Shot, the Core explosion, and so on. I read Ringworld before I read any of the other Known Space stories and I had this odd feeling the whole time that I was missing something—was I supposed to be recognizing these characters and situations? Turns out I was.
posted by The Tensor at 12:23 PM on May 15, 2020 [12 favorites]


None of the films you mention really recommend the gentlemen in question. Was that intentional?

yarp.gif

Not opposed to it, just don't have high expectations
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:27 PM on May 15, 2020


None of the films you mention really recommend the gentlemen in question. Was that intentional?

Well, he also wrote I am Legend, Transformers: The Last Knight, and The Dark Tower.
posted by octothorpe at 12:51 PM on May 15, 2020 [7 favorites]


The Ringworld is unstable! The Ringworld is unstable!

I came in here to chant that with anybody else who came in here to chant that.

The Ringworld is unstable! The Ringworld is unstable!
posted by straight at 2:05 PM on May 15, 2020 [5 favorites]


(It should make everyone happy that the China market will ensure that Niven's progressive-for-the-60s "casting" of Louis Wu as lead character won't be redone for the screen as Louis Wilson...)

I'm pretty sure Niven just thought it was really funny having a character whose name looked like that but was pronounced looweewoo.
posted by straight at 2:23 PM on May 15, 2020


Is there any sci-fi from the 60s and 70s by white men that hasn't gotten a visit from the suck fairy?

Some of Niven's short physics-puzzle stories like "Neutron Star" and "At the Core" are still fine because there's not much to them except the physics puzzles and weird aliens. But I wouldn't really recommend any of his novels to anyone who wasn't very specifically looking for something like them.

I still have a soft, shame-faced spot in my heart for the Dream Park novels, though.
posted by straight at 2:37 PM on May 15, 2020 [3 favorites]


Is there any sci-fi from the 60s and 70s by white men that hasn't gotten a visit from the suck fairy? Maybe some Clarke and Bradbury.

Clarke was likely a pederast. Bradbury (post 9/11) went off on conservative rant about how Fahrenheit 451 was not about censorship and government overreach. Aaaaand back to square one.
posted by Ber at 2:45 PM on May 15, 2020


Has everyone forgotten that Louis Wu was wearing Yellowface to his 200th birthday party?

His skin was not pale yellow brown, but a smooth chrome yellow the color of a comic book Fu Manchu. […] As with all flatlanders, cosmetic dyes were the colors of Lewis Wu..

I doubt that would go down well in the Chinese market.
posted by monotreme at 2:54 PM on May 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


A serious problem with adapting Ringworld is that it originally served as a kind of a "capstone" novel to the Known Space universe as it existed at the time.

Maybe they could somehow weave a bunch of the Known Space stuff in as flashbacks or prelude to finding the Ringworld? That might be more interesting than just a bunch of weird-Ringworld-thing-of-the-week.

I'd love if they went with the puppeteers bringing Teela because they're open to the idea that luck might be a thing (and as an instance of them meddling with humans the way they have with the kzinti), but then having the whole thing debunked as just a form of the perfect prediction scam. Because I like where her story goes in Ringworld Engineers and the moral dilemma she and Louis Wu face. I think you could do all that part having left aside the luck stuff as not being real.
posted by straight at 2:57 PM on May 15, 2020


Oh, if we're going into the 70s, maybe add Pohl's _Gateway_?

Maybe some of Varley's EightWorlds stories?

Gene Wolfe?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:14 PM on May 15, 2020 [3 favorites]


I am astonished. My term for cringe-your-face-off-bad sci-fi is "Nivenshit". I really hope this adaptation lampoons rather than reminisces.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:52 PM on May 15, 2020


Does it have to be men? How about Andre Norton, Zenna Henderson, Judith Merill etc etc?
posted by Mogur at 5:00 PM on May 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


Oh, if we're going into the 70s, maybe add Pohl's _Gateway_?

This is one of my favorite series, even the sequels which I am the sole fan of. There was supposed to be a TV adaptation of Gateway coming, but who knows now. Somehow I never actually read Ringworld, so I guess now is as good a time as any.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:38 PM on May 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


Clarke was likely a pederast. Bradbury (post 9/11) went off on conservative rant about how Fahrenheit 451 was not about censorship and government overreach. Aaaaand back to square one.

The question was about whether the books hold up, not whether the personalities hold up. Bradbury certainly does, though his peak is 50s-60s not 60s-70s. And 451 is one of his weaker works IMO - actually in general the key to the 50s/60s stuff is that the short stories are generally better than the novels.
posted by atoxyl at 6:15 PM on May 15, 2020 [4 favorites]


Deep space is my dwelling place,
The stars my destination.


Been a while since I read this last but...maybe with some updating?
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 6:19 PM on May 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


Personally I think there's a difference between books that have some offputting and offensive moments - The Stars My Destination is certainly one of those as the person above me seems to be hinting but one could fix that in an adaptation - for a modern reader and books that are just dumb and poorly written to a modern reader.
posted by atoxyl at 6:23 PM on May 15, 2020 [3 favorites]


I still have a soft, shame-faced spot in my heart for the Dream Park novels, though.

same
posted by fleacircus at 8:50 PM on May 15, 2020


Best passive-aggressive post wording in a while :D
posted by Saxon Kane at 8:51 PM on May 15, 2020


Never having read the book, I assume that "The Ringworld is unstable!" is sung a la "You don't make friends with salad!"
posted by knuckle tattoos at 10:59 PM on May 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


Dream Park would be the right material to go with. Also, everything Varley writes reads like a screenplay, in a good way. But I guess the studio execs are still widgey about Millennium.
posted by mikelieman at 12:13 AM on May 16, 2020


I recently reread the first Berserker anthology and I still think it would be a fun TV show. It's corny old SF, absolutely, but there's some good bones there. The whole goodlife/badlife mindfuckery is so twisted and ripe for riffing, and it's good just how unrelentingly menacing the Berserkers are.

I suppose it's morally problematic, since it's not anti-war and the main vibe is, "No really, this time, the Other is not just some folx who also love their family; they really really are an implacable inhuman force bent on your total destruction. NO, REALLY." Part of the thing that works is that it's always denying that expected turn to soft humanism.

But sometimes collective threats are implacable like that. We don't need to always follow the guiding star of individualism that leads in a pretzel path up our own asses, like BSG or Mass Effect, or that what we need is the Doctor's to come be magically English for us. (NB I don't remember later Berserker books lol.)

The murderbot extinction threat well is not dry is what I'm suggesting. The idea of "maybe humanity will just be too fucking stupid/corrupt to save itself from an existential threat," could resonate today.
posted by fleacircus at 5:08 AM on May 16, 2020 [2 favorites]


Megastructures: Ringworlds you say?
posted by zengargoyle at 7:01 AM on May 16, 2020


I recently reread the first Berserker anthology

Fred Saberhagen, right? He's also got that Book of Swords series? Does anyone know if he's a Milkshake Duck, too?
posted by mikelieman at 8:20 AM on May 16, 2020


Also if you've read a lot of Bradbury it makes sense that Fahrenheit 451 was always more about mass media (a major preoccupation of his) than about political censorship. Though I suspect at the time he wrote it he did mean a little bit of both.
posted by atoxyl at 12:50 PM on May 16, 2020


A while back there was rumor of a ‘Rendezvous With Rama’ project with Morgan Freeman attached. It has been so long ago I think the project died.
I would have watched that. :sigh:
posted by Gadgetenvy at 8:18 PM on May 16, 2020


There's . . . just very few ways this ends up being even tolerable. I might watch it if they style the puppeteers after the vision in Barlowe's Extraterrestrials.

Of the other development hell projects mentioned, I agree that Fifth Season deserves a film treatment, disagree that anything by Neal Stephenson does, feel the Dark Tower hasn't actually had one, and can't be arsed to even try to read Robert Jordan, although in these Covid times maybe that's exactly what I need.

I also suspect any attempt to film a Culture novel will end in my being disappointed and saddened.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:58 PM on May 16, 2020 [1 favorite]


That wasn't intended as a diss of Stephenson, (although Diamond Age sucks, fight me), but more that I just don't think any of his books (except maybe Diamond Age, see above) would make good films.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:00 PM on May 16, 2020


I might watch it if they style the puppeteers after the vision in Barlowe's Extraterrestrials.

True Story: It wasn't until last year that I realized that I'd mistakenly been picturing the puppeteers heads as Ollie from Kukla, Fran, and Ollie instead of Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent as described in the stories.
posted by The Tensor at 12:02 AM on May 17, 2020 [1 favorite]


The Ringworld is petty impressive as the biggest and dumbest of the various Big Dumb Objects in SF. Nice visuals.

But ultimately, yeah. What story do you tell? Nivin's story was, frankly, kinda bland. It was basically a tour of the zoo type story showing off the Ringworld and his sexism. Without the background of the Man/Kzin war, the Puppeteers, and the Protectors a lot of the big reveals in Ringworld don't make a lot of sense.

I'd rather they tried adapting something newer. It was, at best, kinda OK and had an interesting BDO.
posted by sotonohito at 9:41 AM on May 17, 2020


Yeah, you'd really have to do it as a Known Space series with Ringworld as the finale, but you need the Ringworld to sell the idea at all so you can't wait until Season 4 to get there.
posted by straight at 11:57 AM on May 17, 2020


The Protectors would be fun to do absolutely as in the books. A race of genocidally abusive space-Dads. Tool guys with anti-matter. Of course the Ringworld is an unstable piece of crap.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 12:19 PM on May 17, 2020 [4 favorites]


I do love that Niven, Mr Hard Science himself, didn't bother to do the math to see if Ringworld was stable.
posted by octothorpe at 3:46 PM on May 17, 2020 [1 favorite]


@fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit
> Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Man [...]

Of course, this is all I could think about during /Cats/ ... Tay as C'Mell :-)


@aspersioncast
> I just don't think any of his books (except maybe Diamond Age, see above) would make good films.

They're mostly waaaaaaaay too long. Maybe /Zodiac/ ...
posted by nickzoic at 9:20 PM on May 17, 2020 [1 favorite]


Never having read the book, I assume that "The Ringworld is unstable!" is sung a la "You don't make friends with salad!"

In the introduction to the sequel, "Ringworld Engineers," Niven says that after someone figured it out he'd sometimes get teased by fans at conventions chanting that. He didn't include sheet music but I imagined it as some variation on "nya nya nya nya nyaa nya" (like the egg thieves in Spyro, or the end of the Journey song "Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin").
posted by straight at 3:43 PM on May 18, 2020


He was specifically hassled about it at the 1971 Worldcon.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:53 PM on May 19, 2020


More specifically it was supposedly a group of MIT students who worked out the physics and "confronted" him with their findings at the con (held in Boston that year). He took it in stride and added some corrective rockets to the design in the next book in the series.
posted by atoxyl at 5:30 PM on May 19, 2020


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