Five Best Fantasy Books (Not Just For The Young)
Source: WSJ
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking-Glass
By Lewis Carroll (1865, 1871)
The only good thing, I found, about having gone to Rugby School, the famous and wretched boys’ boarding school in the British Midlands, is that Lewis Carroll went there too. The two Alice books are wonderful for children, and in some ways perhaps too good for children, full of adult wisdom and trickery. The first book, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” was initially met with dismissive notices (though John Tenniel’s illustrations were well received), but it quickly became a beloved classic. What is most admirable about the second book, “Through the Looking-Glass,” is that it is emphatically not a return to Wonderland; Carroll’s great feat is to have created two entirely discrete imagined worlds for his heroine. I have loved Alice all my life and can still recite “Jabberwocky” and “The Walrus and the Carpenter” from memory if asked to do so, or even if nobody asks.
See The Rest HERE
Defying Science Greg Egan’s Trilogy
Via: Io9
Greg Egan’s next novel, The Clockwork Rocket, takes place in a universe where the laws of physics are different… and if a spacecraft travels fast enough, its journey takes no time for those left behind, but decades for those aboard. The Clockwork Rocket is the first book of the Orthogonal trilogy, and it comes out in late 2011 or early 2012.
Quick Look –
When Yalda was almost three years old, she was entrusted with the task of bearing her grandfather into the forest to convalesce.
Dario had been weak and listless for days, refusing to move from the flower bed where the family slept. Yalda had seen him this way before, but it had never lasted so long. Her father had sent word to the village, and when Doctor Livia came to the farm to examine him Yalda and two of her cousins, Claudia and Claudio, stayed close to watch the proceedings.
After squeezing and prodding the old man all over with more hands than most people used in a day, Doctor Livia announced her diagnosis. “You’re suffering from a serious light deficiency. The crops here are virtually monochromatic; your body needs a broader spectrum of illumination.”
“Ever heard of sunlight?” Dario replied caustically.
More HERE
Best and Worst Film Adaptions
From: Techrepublic
It’s rare to see a good film adaptation of a book. But what makes an adaptation good or bad? In order to look at possible reasons why film adaptations, in particular of geek books, either work or stink, I’ll focus on three areas of the moviemaking process — story, visuals, and production — and use these popular sci-fi/fantasy book cum movies as examples: Frankenstein (the novel was written by Mary Shelley), The Lord of the Rings (the series was written by J.R.R. Tolkien), the Harry Potter series (the novels were written by J.K. Rowling), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (the novel was written by Rick Riordan), and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the novel was written by Douglas Adams).
Story
A story can make or break a book, whereas a movie can have very little story and still be entertaining (a number of action and horror films come to mind). In the titles I picked as examples, all of the books are good stories. When you watch the movie versions of these books, you see a much wider range of story. The Lord of the Rings film retained much of the story and removed sections that were too slow for moviemaking or were easily trimmed without damaging the flow. Other movies, such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, rewrote major parts of the books, and some movies are complete 180’s from the book. When the movie’s storyline is so different than the book, ardent fans of the book are often displeased and sometimes even offended; and yet, sometimes the result is an equally good story.
The Rest HERE
Free Audiobook
Source: American Consumer News
Doctor Who: The Last Voyage, written by Dan Abnett and published by BBC WW, has made Audible.com’s Best Sellers List for the week of November, 11 2010 and is now available in audiobook format from Audible.com. The audiobook version of Doctor Who: The Last Voyage was narrated by David Tennant has received an average ranking of 4.41. The audio-book has a run length of 2 hours and 14 min. and is categorized as “Science Fiction & Fantasy”. It was first released in January 2010 and a sample of the audio book is available.
The book’s written description is, “The TARDIS materialises on board the maiden voyage of a pioneering space cruiser, travelling from Earth to the planet Eternity. The Doctor has just started exploring the huge, hi-tech Interstitial Transposition Vehicle when there is a loud bang, a massive jolt, and a flash of light. Shortly afterwards, he discovers that nearly all the passengers and crew have disappeared. Unless the Doctor and flight attendant Sugar MacAuley can take control and steer the ship, they could crash-land or keep slipping through space forever. And as if that wasn’t enough, something awful awaits them on Eternity.Written exclusively for audio by Dan Abnett and read by David Tennant, The Last Voyage features the Doctor as played by David Tennant in the acclaimed hit series from BBC Television.”
What do you think about today’s news?
