Childhood's Endis one of the great all time SF classics and has long deserved a quality treatment. Beyond the technical difficulties, the themes were too shocking for it to be attempted in the 20th century. It will be interesting to see if SyFy is able to rise to the challenge. Based on their butchering of Herbert's Dune, I wouldn't get up a lot of hope.
That was a great book. I have read so many science fiction novels and short stories when I was younger I have a hard time remembering them but I really remember this one.
I stupidly loaned out three sci-fi books, one was thick and had about twenty or so great short stories, and they were never returned. The short story book had one about an alien race attacking Earth and the main character, a pastor, found out the aliens were winning because they were actually being helped by God.
It seems He made several planets and civilizations and then allowed the one that He favored most to take out and colonize the others. It actually was a great story and I wish I could remember the author and I really wish I could find that short story book again. It was published around 1975.
Dune got the Twin Peaks treatment and just came out weird.
Maybe the book was too barren to expect anything better,
now that I think about it.
It, along with Niven's Ringworld and Asimov's Foundation trilogy, are on my "why haven't they made a movie of this yet?" list. I can understand if at some time in the past they were considered unfilmable, but what can't Hollywood do with CGI these days?
Based on their butchering of Herbert's Dune, I wouldn't get up a lot of hope.
I thought Dune was pretty well-done, myself. It was at least more faithful to Herbert's story than David Lynch's feature was, though admittedly the latter was more visually impressive. One thing SyFy got right that Lynch seemed to have missed was that the "prophecies" about the Fremen Mahdi were pure propaganda, and initially Paul (who was also more accurately portrayed as a teenager) was quite cynical about being a political pawn of the Bene Gesserit.