Book Reviews

A picture is not worth a thousand words.

As viable as movies are as an pure art form that communicates to its audience, movies will never be able to surpass the storytelling bravura, ambience, and erudition found in books. With the exception of oral traditions, there is no better method for sharing stories than with the use of our written form of language. Books will always be the best way to experience something that we don't know about, or to increase our knowledge of something we do know about.

But I do love it when books are made into movies. It's always fun to speculate on the merits of how a novel, novella, or short story will turn out as a visualized narrative.

However, some of the best novels, those that have the full complexity of character, place and time, have always been difficult to translate accurately into film, or at least in a way that satisfies the readers imagination while still honoring the author's original objective. Starship Troopers, The Sun Also Rises, The Killer Angels, Neither the Sea nor the Sand, The Shining and Dune are all celebrated novels that have been adapted to the screen, and most of those with satisfactory results. But those films have never been fully realized in a way that their written source material was. Because novels can be endlessly revised, expanded, corrected, and then professionally edited before publication, they attain a level of accomplishment and assuredness that movies, by the very nature of their collaborative building process, can rarely match.

If the film industry adopted the same methodology as novel writing, allowing additional embellishment, re-shooting and re-scripting as a permanent part of its cycle of creation, movies would be demonstrably better, or at least better by degrees, which is sometimes all that is needed to make them more palpable and refined. But time constraints and contractual obligations often place restrictions on filmmakers, limiting their ability to provide the neccesary fine tuning that is needed to deliver a completely mastered product for viewers. Even a filmmakers willingness to spend excessive amounts of money on production values and special effects can't keep a feature film from appearing decidedly uneven upon completion. It doesn't matter whether it's an independent film or a summer blockbuster, movies usually fail to live up to our full expectations.

Simply put, the list of movie disappointments far exceed anyone's list of movie triumphs. Unlike the wealth of excellence found within literature, there is a dearth of critically acclaimed films in comparison to the actual amount of movies that have been made.

And yet the films mentioned above all have winning attributes, somehow overcoming the impediments that undermine the adaptation process within the medium. Gettysburg, based on The Killer Angels by Michael Sharra, is a towering achievement cinematically, with standout performances and a glorious music score. The Shining and Dune both have a special uniqueness about them, and the middle section of The Sun Also Rises featuring an aging Errol Flynn and his pal Eddie Albert running with the bulls in Pamplona is superb entertainment, in an otherwise turgid and tedius epic.

Sometimes films will surpass, or at least equal their source material. Rosemary's Baby, Gone with the Wind, The Lord of the Rings, Murder on the Orient Express, Psycho, and John Carpenter's The Thing and Christine, are all renowned films that can stand proudly alongside their literary inspiration.

Some of my favorite science fiction novels probably wouldn't translate well into movies, even with the overuse of computer generated imaging effects that seem so perfectly suited to the science fiction genre. Larry Niven's Ringworld, Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, and Tom Godwin's Space Prison, might prove difficult to adapt, at least to my way of thinking. The broad, awe-inspiring landscapes of Ringworld, Rama, and Ragnarok, made so convincing by the sheer versatility of language, might prove impossible to replicate in any other form but the written format in which they exist-- but then again-- I never thought The Lord of the Rings was filmable, and I was proved wrong by an obstinate New Zealander.

In the Book Review column I'll discuss some of the titles that were influential to me as a developing reader, and also as a collector, including comic books, novels, and short stories. I'll also examine new books published in the areas of fantasy, horror, mystery, adventure, and science fiction.

I'll do my best to make it interesting and informative.