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It'd be a mammoth task to turn those stories into movies... How much do you cover The Culture? Do you try to give all the background, or do you just focus on the core story? The whole ship Mind thing would be hard to get across without getting all Hal9000. The impression I got was that the Minds are pretty much more human than human due to their immense intelligence... how do you get that across to audiences?

Knife-missiles, gel-suits and ships that think (go with Farscape & run with it).

Give it a couple of years. Be assured we'll probably be disappointed. :/
I'm betting Hollywood won't get the ironic ship nomenclature.

Surface Detail could probably be adapted in a simplified form: Gritty female protagonist, debt slavery, life after death, ultimate revenge, heaven and hell as realisable concepts...

I just re-read Use of Weapons last week. Too many different settings for a movie. I guess it's Consider Phlebas that will be turned into a shitty movie that i hate. Lots of action scenes, they will love it. Also there's a potential sequel with Look to Windward.

Too bad there won't be any more novels by Banks, ever.

I'm happy if there are never any movies of his scifi stuff, the mainstream novels were pretty bad on screen. (Complicity and Crow Road got made into tv series) If you havent read his mainstram stuff, its equally good.

On the other hand i do know a form of AV+code that might have a shot at showing off the layers and complexity of a mind.....

It would have to be a sympathetic director who knew his stuff in order to turn sci-fi stories into decent movies, someone in the line of JJ Abrams and / or Peter Jackson.

Actual SF:
* William Gibson
* Isaac Asimov
* A.C. Clarke
* P.K. Dick
* Pierre Bordage

Not really S.F. but still: H.P. Lovecraft

felice: I really hope somebody gives one particular canadian a huge pile of money for something like that: https://vimeo.com/24927298. That's a tron fan video, shot in a few days. Check some of his other videos on vimeo too, he's got the right skills and a big love of SF :)

I'd also want him to do the soundtrack. His last album, in the style of a lost 80s SF film soundtrack. (And it's a seriously great album too :)

* P. K. Dick
* Frank Herbert
* Dan Simmons (Just for the Hyperion series, did not like quite as much his other works)
* Kim Stanley Robinson (For the Mars trilogy)
* Jules Verne (When steam-punk was actual SF ^^)
* Douglas Adams
* Howard P. Lovecraft (he did science-fiction too, like that novel with lezard-men and crystals on Venus)
* Gérard Klein (only read "Le Gambit Des Etoiles", but I loved it)

In BD category, there are kick ass stuffs too
* Christin & Mezieres (Valerian & Laureline serie)
* Giraud aka Moebius

I really, really don't quite get the hype on Isaac Asimov :D

nerds

Henry Kuttner and/or Douglas Adams

As for comics (BD=Bande Dessinée in French):
Alan Moore's Watchmen (and V for Vendetta too)
Motorô Mase's Ikigami

Stanislaw Lem

I read everything written by Hubert Cumberdale.

Jack Vance
Roger Zelazny
Robert Sheckley

All three very underrated.

psonice: Oh I like Pilotpriest.

Elend: his music is great. But so are his directing skills (he's a filmmaker as a day job), and he loves sci fi. I expect this to be good :D

He's just confirmed that he'll be directing it, and also collaborating on the score. I feel a seriously great film is being born right now :D

Oooooooohhhhhhhhhh. I want!

I enoyed some of Larry Niven's books. In particular "Ringworld", "The mote in god's eye" and "Protector". The sequel to "Ringworld" ("Ringworld engineers") was kinda meh; hardly memorable.

Among more modern sci-fi, I'm a bit of a fan of Jack Campbell's space operas ("The lost fleet" and "The lost stars"). Sure, they're full of clichés; but I still find them entertaining.

Just finished Stephen King's "11-22-63", which I thought was great. It's not strictly sci-fi, but it does involve time travel.

11-22-63 was indeed really nice. As far as speculative fiction goes, it's truly a great piece of work. I think Stephen King is kind of a hit-or-a-miss type of an author and that he has had way more misses, but that one is great. Bought it from the airport on my way to last year's Evoke and I actually kind of felt bad about putting it down and going to the party :D

For the sake of completeness: Michael A. Stackpole

Ian McDonald!
He manages to make a familiar world so alien, although he changes just little bits. (Or maybe it's the other way round...)

H.G Wells for "War of Worlds", "The time machine", "The island of Doctor Moreau", "The invisible man"
George Orwell for "1984"
Aldous Huxley for "Brave new world"
Chris Marker for "La jetée" which inspired the movie "12 monkeys"
Philip Pullman for "His Dark Materials"