Tag: io9

Read it 1st – Coming Adaptations

Posted July 5, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Adaptations / 0 Comments

readit1stSince become a bibliophile I’ve tried to read the books before seeing the movie adaptation, but this is often difficult; there are so many books being made into movies and often I don’t find out about them until closer to the release date. There is a site called Read it 1st which sends out newsletters of books being turned into movies but sadly this site has been inactive for a while and Hank Green is just too busy doing all the jobs. So with a little help from an article from iO9 and some Google searching I’ve decided to give people an idea of the 30 new film adaptations currently in the works. Just a warning some of these movies are still in development and some may never make it to a release date.

  • All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
  • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  • Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia
  • Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
  • Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
  • Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo
  • Delirium by Lauren Oliver
  • Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  • If I Stay by Gayle Forman
  • Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  • Maximum Ride by James Patterson
  • Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare
  • Neuromancer by William Gibson
  • Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
  • On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  • Ready Player One by Ernie Cline
  • Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson
  • Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
  • Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
  • The Forest of Hands & Teeth by Carrie Ryan
  • The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Hobbit by JRR Tolken
  • The Host by Stephenie Meyer
  • The Maze Runner by James Dashner
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
  • The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
  • Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
  • Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
  • Wettest County by Matt Bondurant
  • World War Z by Max Brooks

Railsea by China Miéville

Posted June 16, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Young Adult / 0 Comments

Railsea by China MiévilleTitle: Railsea (Goodreads)
Author: China Miéville
Published: Random House, 2012
Pages: 448
Genres: Young Adult
My Copy: Personal Copy

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

I’ve only really enjoyed one China Miéville novel (The City & The City) but I am a fan of what he does for literature and speculative fiction. His latest novel Railsea is his second attempt at a YA novel and while I’ve not read his other YA novel Un Lun Dun I must say I wasn’t really impressed with this one. I really loved the complexity of The City & the City so I was looking forward to see Miéville’s take on Moby Dick. Granted I should have read Moby Dick before this book but I found this book was too simplified and weird; writing without some intelligent plotting just ends up making the book weird.

Set in a dying dystrophic world that is now desert, Railsea is an adventure novel that tells the tale of three young orphans joining the train to hunt for Mocker-Jack; the giant Mole. The book mixes adventure elements that remind me of Treasure Island with Miéville’s own genre; which he calls ‘weird’ and is a mix of fantasy and steampunk. The main protagonist, Sham, was pretty average in this book but the train captain Abacat Naphi peaked my interest. I think she was the Ishmael in this book; even considering Mocker-Jack as her nemesis.

I thought this book might be more of a children’s book rather than a YA novel; io9 said it best when they said this book was for “kids who cut their teeth on Thomas the Tank Engine, then Lemony Snicket”. It just felt odd and too simplified but a twelve or thirteen year old would probably enjoy it as a gateway into the YA fantasy/steampunk genre. The main issue I had with this book was the overuse of the ampersand. There is way too many in the book; even a large amount of sentences starting with ‘&’. It just never looked or felt write when reading it and I found I got really annoyed with it.

This book is for young teenagers and China Miéville fans, anyone else interested in trying this author might want to look elsewhere. I’m a little disappointed with this book but would be interested to see how my other friends find it, if they read it. There are some interesting elements in this book but for me I felt more frustrated by it. I hope others love and enjoy this book more than I did. Miéville has a lot to offer the literary world but I personally think skip this one and go read The City & The City.

IO9’s 20 Science Fiction Novels That Will Change Your Life

Posted April 15, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Listology / 0 Comments

I just stumbled across a list of 20 Science Fiction Novels that Will Change Your Life on the io9 blog. While I haven’t read all the books there are some great choices there and I thought I should share it with my readers as well. Whether you agree or not, this is an interesting list;

  1. Frankenstein (1818), by Mary Shelley
  2. The Time Machine (1895), by H.G. Wells
  3. At the Mountains of Madness (1931), by H.P. Lovecraft
  4. I, Robot (1955), by Isaac Asimov
  5. The Dispossessed (1974), by Ursula LeGuin
  6. Kindred (1979), by Octavia Butler
  7. Wizard (1979), by John Varley
  8. Consider Phlebas (1987), by Iain M. Banks
  9. He, She, and It (1991), by Marge Piercy
  10. Sarah Canary (1991), by Karen Joy Fowler
  11. A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), by Vernor Vinge
  12. The Bohr Maker (1995), by Linda Nagata
  13. The Sparrow (1996), by Mary Doria Russell
  14. Cryptonomicon (2000), by Neal Stephenson
  15. The Mount (2002), by Carol Emschwiller
  16. Perdido Street Station (2002), by China Mieville
  17. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003), by Cory Doctorow
  18. Pattern Recognition (2003), by William Gibson
  19. Newton’s Wake (2004), by Ken MacLeod
  20. Glasshouse (2006), by Charles Stross

For those of you not familiar with io9, it’s a blog part of the gawker network that focuses on the subjects of science fiction, futurism and advancements in the fields of science and technology.